BOOKS: REAL Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book

Ninjas are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

This is only the beginning of the profound wisdom to be discovered in REAL Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book, by Robert Hamburger. This is possibly the funniest book I've ever read. While reading it in public, I found myself laughing so hysterically that I had to set the book down and recover, while everyone looked at me like I was a lunatic.

From the back cover:

Dear Stupid Idiots,

A lot of you have been saying that I don’t know anything about REAL ninjas. But that’s a bunch of bull crap! You dummies don’t know anything. And maybe YOU should get a life. I bet a lot of you have never even seen a girl naked! You idiots believe that ninjas had some "code of honor." Yeah right! If by "code of honor," you mean "code to flip out and go nuts for absolutely no reason at all even if it means that people might think you are totally insane or sweet," then you are right. But if you mean a "code to be nice and speak nicely while sharing and not cutting off heads," then you’re the biggest idiot ever!!!!!! So if you have any brains, you will shut up and get a life. So go shut up, you stupid idiot.

No thank you,

Robert Hamburger

The book samples liberally from the website, which itself is tremendously funny. The whole thing is written from the point of view of a very ill-informed pre-teen with a wild imagination.

Some ninja factoids:

These guys are sooooo sweet. And do you know why? They flip out and kill people for no reason at all. That's awesome! Do you know of anybody else who can do that? Probably not. Your dad couldn't even kill people just because he wanted to. He would go to jail in a second. But ninjas... yeah, right!

I heard that there was this ninja who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon, the ninja killed the whole town.

If Napoleon Dynamite wrote a book, this would be it. And yet, unlike that character (who remains nothing more than a maladjusted jerk from beginning to end), REAL Ultimate Power reveals hidden depths about its fictional author. As you read you come to realize that this isn't just a silly parody, it's a document from a very sad and neglected adolescent, who has escaped from a world of cruel parents and no friends into this bizarre, elaborate ninja fantasy.

The author's history paper, written while on Ritalin:

Benjamin Franklin is good. He helped make the Declaration of Independence AND invented electricity.

And off Ritalin:

Benjamin Franklin killed somebody once. And he porked a turtle, too -- a big one.

At times completely, hilariously ridiculous, and at times surprisingly moving, this is a great little book, very smart about being very stupid. It's a one-of-a-kind.

I'll leave you with the author's script for a ninja movie:

There is this super rich, stupid idiot who lives in a humongous house. At his house, this guy has babes lying all over the place. The next scene is hot. The guy takes this super hot babe back to his room to make-out. The audience will think that the hot babe is a normal babe, but, yeah right, she's a ninja. The ninja woman smashes the guy's head like a hairy melon. Then all these dogs come out of nowhere and the ninja woman has to beat the dogs' asses. First she kicks this one dog right in the nuts. The dog screams and jumps out the window. Then she jumps in the air and kicks two dogs in the nuts at once! Both dogs evaporate. Every time the ninja woman kicks nuts, a guitar squeals hard. Then the ninja woman has to battle the boss dog. The boss dog is huge. Before the boss dog can attack, she uppercuts the boss dog's nuts so hard that he explodes. Then the guitar squeals REALLY hard and explodes.