Happy holidays, readers! It’s the most wonderful time of year here at Goose Lane, and we’d like to share the cheer with all of you! Take a look at our blog over the next month for holiday tips, festive clips and helpful gift ideas from our staff and friends.
Remember: if you're shopping online, all of our books are 20% off online, just use discount code NOEL19 with every order.
Today, we're going back in time all the way to 2016 to revisit a comedy gem by the beloved host of CBC Radio's The Debaters, Steve Patterson. The gem in question? The Book of Letters I Didn't Know Where To Send, a collection of gut-busting letters to everyone from male bikers to airlines to gluten.
Patterson's letters, long a staple of his stand-up comedy routine, address a number of recipients, from real people, to groups, to inanimate objects and concepts. He airs grievances, offers support or creates just plain confusion in unplainly humorous prose. From the political to the personal, from the philosophical to the mundane, no subject — or target — is off limits. Patterson's letters may not change the world, but frankly, it's too early to tell.
Listen to The Debaters online!
Take a look below at just one of these hilarious letters, addressed to Canadian pop star Justin Bieber:
"Dear Justin Bieber,
Look, young man, it would be easy to sit here and criticize all that you seem to have become: an obnoxiously rich, obnoxiously famous, obnoxiously obnoxious little shit who "represents" Canada wherever he goes.
But I'm not going to do that.
Given the level of wealth and fame you have accumulated at such a tender age (all as the result of busking in Stratford, Ontario, putting that video on YouTube and then that video being viewed by millions of people, including a grown man named "Scooter," who showed it to pop star Usher, who launched your celebrity career), it's really no surprise how irresponsibly you have acted when not on stage. Heck, I did some of the things you have done (bar fights, house-egging, getting arrested) when I was in my 20s with approximately one-billionth of the fame and fortune."
Be sure to pick up your copy this holiday season!