I Hate to Complain, But... - Softcover

Foster, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0888822146 ISBN 13: 9780888822147

Publisher: Dundurn Press, 1999

Synopsis

It is rare that one can pick up a book and find all the answers to the problems of Life. Yet in this one book, we find these answers, and learn a few more things that will keep us up at night. What really happened when Mike Harris woke up after emergency surgery in a hospital still smarting from budget cuts? Why did Linda Tripp turn on Bill Clinton? How many people knew that after the Manhattan Project, the world's leading scientists gathered at Jane Russell's house to devise the strapless bra?

This is a book for everyone: it's an exercise program for the not-too-ambitious senior, a step-by-step guide for the teenage lad on his first date, an advice column for the young spinster who, at the ripe old age of 22, is still trying to find a first-class man.

We listen in as two American broadcasters cover the Olympic Games as only Americans can.

We learn that even the big guns at the TSE were unaware of the biggest corporate takeover in history when S Claus Corp seized control of its philanthropic rival, EasterBunCo.

Yet, for all its humour, the book still brings us close to tears as the author reveals the tragedy of his thirty-year love affair with Sophia Loren.

If Shakespeare were alive today, he would read this book?

About this title

From the Publisher

If Shakespeare were alive today, he would read this book.

After all, it answers some of life's most important questions: why women shouldn't try to meet the men of their dreams in the laundromat, how to perform the "around the shoulder arm sneak" manoeuvre, and how to lose weight on a beer diet.

Part political tract (a detailed discussion of Senators' sleeping habits), part economic analysis (why a monthly income of $50 won't get you a bank account), and part common-sense advice (what to do when you find a bra in the parking lot at A&P), I Hate to Complain But . . . takes up where Stephen Leacock left off. This collection of columns, originally published in the Orillia Packet and Times, describes with Foster's particular and quirky humour, growing up in small town Ontario in the fifties, and what's it's like to still be there forty years later.

Jim knows his subject: "Leacock didn't write about Orillians because we were dull. He realised very quickly that there must be something strange leaking into the drinking water that caused what appear to be normal human beings to act like they ware all goofed up on mind-altering drugs or magic mushrooms." In his writing, Jim mines that weirdness for a fresh and hilarious perspective on everyday life.

With an associative style that somehow links semaphore with duckboots, these columns reveal the ridiculous in every situation. They have offended a good number of Orillians, and other Ontarians, but have certainly made more of them laugh.

From the Inside Flap

A collection of columns by Jim Foster, an award-winning columnist for the Orillia Packet and Times, the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, and the Oro Medonte Severn News.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0888822146
• ISBN 13: 9780888822147
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180