Letters (from) Archives

Letter to Chris Noth: "Mr. Big," "Detective Logan," and Owner of N.Y.C.'s Cutting Room I was totally digging that 10' by 15' painting of you hung over the door. I liked how it was you, but younger. And thinner. With more hair. I thought that was cool.
Selling Myself, Installment II In March I became a published author, and I quickly realized how important self-presentation is to creative success. This is the second in a series of letters in which I "sell myself" to various prize committees, billionaires, and television executives.
Selling Myself, Installment I The following is my application letter for the Pulitzer Prize.
Update: A case of beer was dropped off to their offices, around lunchtime on October 28. I hope they enjoyed the beer and expect to hear from them shortly.

Dear Pulitzer Prize Chairman Lee C. Bollinger:
I am a winner. I've always been a winner. . .
A Scientific Proposal to the Executive Program Directors of the ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC Networks I know an omen when I see one, and it needn't even involve a two-headed goat.
Dear Wikipedia Dear Wikipedia, Recently we took off on an endeavor for a publishing house that required one single piece of information about nearly one thousand individuals: We needed to know their date of birth. Since we live in a nation...
Dear Heinz Ketchup, Pt. II Heinz “Say Something Ketchuppy! II” Contest Entries P.O. Box 5075 Clinton, Iowa 52736-5075 Dear Heinz Ketchup, How’ve you been? It’s been too long. I’m sorry I never replied to your last correspondence. I was real busy for a while, you...
Dear VH1 So I come home last night and find you’ve commissioned your official nostalgia buffoons to muse about 1999. What the fuck is that? Can I have a moment to breathe here?
Dear Sam Raimi Last evening, I attended a midnight screening of the première of Spider-Man 2. I arrived at the theater full of optimistic glee and peanut M&Ms. Three minutes into the film, both were expended. Sam, I won’t sugarcoat it: the movie sucked hard.
Dear Sandra Bernhard Dear Ms. Bernhard, Remember when Slavenka Drakulić’s Divine Hunger played in New York for a week, to near full houses at a theatre below 14th Street? The night I went, I was in the second row. After taking out my...
Dear Game Show Network GSN (Game Show Network) Attn: Consumer Affairs 2150 Colorado Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90404 Dear Game Show Network, Congratulations on your recent name change from the far too verbose Game Show Network to the wonderfully pithy GSN. Hopefully, this altered...
Eat, Shoot, & Leave This!: Dear Lynne Truss Dear crazy Ms. Truss, Jeepers, lady, have you gone totally bonkers? On page 172 of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, your chipper, chirpy handbook for the pathologically meticulous, you recommend punctuating as follows: 4   Though it...
Dear Nesquik Dear Nesquik (née Nestlé Quik),
I've been drinking your chocolatey-flavored milk since before I was even born. Of all liquids on the planet, your chocolatey-flavored milk is my favorite, surpassing even soapy water, turpentine, or Colt 45. I've won numerous Nestlé Quik-chugging contests ...
Dear Outback Steakhouse Dear Outback Steakhouse, I believe you owe me something in the neighborhood of 85 bucks for the three days in August of 1997 that I served as a waiter-in-training in one of your fine establishments. A scuffle regarding the unapproved...
Dear Food Network Food Network 1180 Sixth Avenue New York, NY 10036 Attn: Consumer Relations Department February 12, 2004 Dear Food Network, On February 8, 2004, after watching Bobby Flay and portly gentleman strap the feedbag onto a rather hungry group of fireman...
Dear Regal Cinemas Michael L. Campbell Co-C.E.O., Regal Entertainment Group 7132 Regal Lane Knoxville, Tennessee, 37918 January 22, 2004 Dear Mr. Campbell, While we may have had our scuffles in the past, this time you have gone too far with your latest...
Dear Neal Pollack Dear Neal, I haven’t read any of your books, but I did enjoy reading your blog. I guess this whole “putting an end to the online journal” is just a way to get people to buy up your books. After...
Dear Christina Aguilera Dear Ms. Aguilera, I used to believe that you were just another irritating pop star, but I recently read a bit of gossip about you placing Kelly Osbourne in a headlock, and I freely admit that I was wrong. You...
Dear Honorary Mayor of Hollywood 30 July 2003 Office of the Honorable Johnny Grant 9800 Sunset Drive Hollywood, CA 90028 To the Honorable Honorary Mayor Grant, I write you this letter in desperation. I have tried to appeal to anyone who will listen but no...
Dear Spike Lee 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, Inc. 75 S. Elliot Pl. Third Floor Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217 Dear Spike, I understand you're in the process of suing TNN because they changed their network's name to Spike TV. They said it was...
Dear KTU WKTU 103.5 P.O. Box 630 New York, NY 10277-1747 Dear KTU, You fine gents truly are the beat of New York! And how! Now and again, whilst puttering along the Belt Parkway in my brand new motorcar, I'm wont to...
Dear Spam Dear Spam,
I love your meatlike product! It is delicious! I've eaten a spambled-eggs breakfast five days a week since ’58. These days, I can't even stomach the taste of real pork anymore! I'm not kosher or anything, but give me Spam over God's genuine pork any day . . .
Dear Sally Field's Agent Sally Field c/o Creative Artists Agency 9830 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA 90212-1825 April 7, 2003 Dear Ms. Field, Let me begin by saying that I am a tremendous fan of your work. My friends always thought it odd that...
Dear N.Y.T.B.R. Pt. V The Editor The New York Times Book Review 229 West 43rd Street New York, N.Y. 10036 April 6, 2003 Dear N.K.O.T.B., All through the dark of night, I lurked by my local newsstand, half hidden by the milk crates and...
Dear N.Y.T.B.R. Pt. IV The Editor The New York Times Book Review 229 West 43rd Street New York, N.Y. 10036 March 30, 2003 Dear N.Y.T.B.R., You guys don’t want to acknowledge my book. Fine; I’m passed that. I do think it’s worth your while,...
Dear N.Y.T.B.R. Pt. III The Editor The New York Times Book Review 229 West 43rd Street New York, N.Y. 10036 March 23, 2003 Dear N.Y.T. Rook Beview, You want blurbs? I’ll give you blurbs. Behold: “Abraham displays a Swiftian gift for satire . ....
Dear Froot Loops Kellogg Company P.O. Box CAMB Battle Creek, MI 49016-1986 Dear Toucan Sam, America is facing some tumultuous times, economically, socially, politically. The winds of change blow, and the good or ill effects are not always within our control. In times...
Dear HBO Dear Home Box Office,
I love the HBO. Love it. Your award-winning original programming rocks my socks. Your hit movies also have a rocking effect on my socks. But the thing is, your little catchphrase slogan, "It's Not TV, It's HBO," keeps me awake at night. Because, you see, it is TV...
Dear N.Y.T.B.R. Pt. II The Editor The New York Times Book Review 229 West 43rd Street New York, N.Y. 10036 March 16, 2003 Dear N.Y. Times Book Review, What gives? Another week passes and still you ignore my amazing novel, Clams Casino. Look, I...
Dear Secretary of Transportation I'd go so far as to say that you are the best Secretary of Transportation since Samuel K. Skinner.
Dear Oxford Dear Oxford University,
Listen, I'm in a bit of a bind here, Oxford, and I could sure use your help. You see, what started as an innocent little white lie six months ago ("Why, yes, I can steer a tugboat...") has snowballed, as lies often do, into an elaborate web, which has become very tangled, and is not like a snowball at all...
Dear N.Y.T.B.R., Pt. I The Editor The New York Times Book Review 229 West 43rd Street New York, N.Y. 10036 March 8, 2003 Dear New York Times Book Review, Surely you’ve heard of me and my little novel, Clams Casino. The literati are ranting...
Dear Maxell Dear Maxell MF 2HD High Density 3.5" Floppy Disks, Your disks are so awesome! I love them more than hot dogs. When I’ve got one of your fine, fine High Density 3.5” Floppy Disks in my hand, I know I’ve...
Dear M&M's M&M's/MARS Attn: Consumer Affairs Department 800 High Street Hackettstown, N.J. 07840 Dear Green M&M, Your chocolate candies are so freaking great! Seriously, I love them as if they were my own little, multi-colored, chocolate children. You guys blow Skittles away,...
Dear Dairy Barn Dairy Barn Merrick Store 2081 Merrick Road Merrick, N.Y., 11566 Dear Dairy Barn, O.K., I love your stores. Every morning, on my way to work on Freeport's famous “Nautical Mile,” I stop just off the road and enter the Freeport...
Dear AOL Dear AOL,
I heard that you and your Time Warner cronies lost a bundle a while back--something like 54 billion clams, the biggest quarterly loss in earth's history. That's like the gross national product of Uruguay or Bulgaria. Wowzers. I empathize with you, AOL. I can relate, sort of: I had fulsome losses at Harrah's, in Atlantic City, this weekend, my biggest quarterly loss in history...
Dear Coca-Cola Dear Coca-Cola,
I'm a big fan of Tito Puente (who isn't?) and of Coca-Cola (again, who isn't?). Both are refreshingly satisfying: T.P., to my ears, and C-C, to my mouth. Yesterday, I took a trip to Spanish Harlem, to check the discount bin of Señor Umberto's Dis-Count Salsa CD Shack ...
Dear Dr. Zizmor Dear Dr. Zizmor,
I've seen your rainbow-colored advertisements plastered all over the 4, the 5, and the F trains. You're the most famous dermatologist underneath New York City! You're right up there along with ...
Dear the Gap Gap Customer Relations 100 Gap Online Drive Grove City, Ohio 43123-8605 Dear the Gap, I’m working on a screenplay for a major motion picture that will be coming soon to a theater near you. I write this letter to invite...
Dear Starbucks Dear Starbucks people,
If you take three of anything that are different sizes, the laws of physics dictate that you have to have one that is the biggest one and one that is the smallest one. The leftover one is the middle one. This law will hold true for all things: three apples, three oranges, three cups of coffee, or even . . .
Dear Sierra Mist Sierra Mist PepsiCo, Inc. 700 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577 Dear Sierra Mist, I must admit that at first I was suspicious. My love of lemon-lime ("limon") sodas is no secret in the international community. When I was notified...
Dear Lesotho 7 February 2003 Ministry of Communications P.O. Box 36 Maseru -Lesotho Africa Dear Lesotho, I don’t know the right way to say this to you. I’ve been hiding my feelings for so long, it’s tough to say them out loud....
Letters
or,

Possible Egregious Violations of United States Postal Code Title 18, Section 1341: Frauds & Swindles

Mailbox

Yankee Pot Roast wholeheartedly encourages correspondence with strangers, and believes letter writing to be a lost art due its proper respect. Y.P.R.'s epistolary collection includes only genuine letters, signed, sealed, stamped, and sent. Should Y.P.R. actually receive responses from our pen pals, those replies will be posted here, for supplemental enjoyment. Say what you will about the United States Postal Service and the trigger-happy, disgruntled-employee Falling Downs that occured in post offices during the middle and late 1990s, but Y.P.R. maintains that the delivery of a sealed envelope from the mailbox on the corner to the doorstep of its intended recipient, across the continent, in just days, for pocket change is a hell of a bargain. Y.P.R. salutes you, local postal carrier. Godspeed.

Please write: ypr @ yankeepotroast.org


This page is an archive of recent entries in the Letters (from) category.

Dear Y.P.R. is the previous category.

News from Abroad is the next category.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

 

Syndicate

RSD | RSS I | RSS II | Atøm | Spanish

 

 

Shop
Bea!
Support

 

Submit

 

Submit

 

From the Y.P.aRchives

 

Fun, Fickle Fiction (for Free!)
Fact, Opinion, Essay, & Review
Poetry & Lyric
Advice, How To, & Self-Help
Listicles

 

Spectacular Features, Calendrical Happenings, Media Gadflies
Media Gadflies
Calendrical Happenings
The Book Club
Roasts

 

Semi-Frequent Columns
Letter from the Editors
Disquieting Modern Trends

 

Interviews
Interviews with Interviewers
One-Question Interviews

 

Correspondence (Letters To and Letters From) Letters from Y.P.R. Letters to Y.P.R. Birthday Cards to Celebrities

 

The Y.P.aRt Gallery Illustrious Illustration Photography Photomontage Graphic Design Logo Gallery

 

Pop Stars in Hotel Rooms Shreek of the Week of the Day What's Up with That? Fuit Salad Nick's Guff Vermont Girl The M_methicist Daily Garfield Digest Polish Facts: An Antidote to the Polish Joke

 

New & Noteworthy Et Cetera, Et Cetera, Et Cetera

 

Contributors' Notes

 

The Y.P.aRchives

This journal is powered by Movable Typo 4.01.

Crockpot!
© MMIII—MMVIII,
Y.P.R. & Co.