Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large - Easy as Falling off a Blog

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion- Bush in England (Nov. '03)

11/25/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

There was a time when we could send presidents to England and not get embarrassed to death. But also, there was a time when we could send George W. Bush to England and hope for the best. He was there in November of 2003 and PHC had a great impression of him on the roster, so it was something I would pull out once in a while. With a weekly show and you have to look to the news for any idea to build a sketch around. It's a quick, goofy bit with the "Brits have different words for stuff" trope thrown in. Nothing too deep here, just playing W has a good-natured knucklehead. Didn't make the cut.

Bush in England

Barely Home Companion - Turkey Carols (Nov. 03)

11/21/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

Yeah, one of my pet peeves; as soon as Halloween is over, the Christmas music begins. We just shoot by Thanksgiving without a glance. So, this was my solution. It was kind of inspired by "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." There's the scene where the kids go to check up on Linus in the pumpkin patch and when he sees them, he says "Have you come to sing pumpkin carols?" I didn't get the line when I was a kid, but has I got older, I loved the line, the perfect juxtaposition of the holiday traditions. And it also falls into my wheelhouse of song parodies. Alas, PHC didn't bite. So, here's a sketch you can sing to! Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey Carols

Barely Home Companion- Text Message for the Blind (Nov. 03)

11/15/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

It's a short piece, that I used to mock the text culture that was getting revved up with the youth. Text reading IA was around and starting to expand, but it was an idea I had and I needed to get something together for the week's show. They saw my ploy and didn't select it. I don't believe I bothered submitting it anywhere else because I knew it was lacking. Today, with the text-slang and emojis I could probably take it further, in light of the fact that the service exists in cars and to read scripts.

Text Message for the Blind

Barely Home Companion: Kroc of Gold (Nov. 2003)

11/11/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

Another skit torn from the headlines! As the sketch itself explains, the Kroc family donated a lot of money to NPR. And what would PHC do with such a windfall? Why, blow it on expensive nonsense! Of course, they wouldn't really, but that's where the joke is. It's fun coming up with over-the-top bric-a-brac they'd waste their money on. It's a quick, funny bit, but it didn't make the cut.

Kroc of Gold

Barely Home Companion - Horton Hears a What? (Nov. 2003)

11/4/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

I have a thing for Abbott & Costello, as I've mention before. When my kids were little, we read them all the Dr. Suess books. The play with language was incredible. I remember the original TV version of "Horton Hears a Who." How it took so long to combine the two, I don't know. But when the idea hit, it hit hard. Naturally, I wrote it up for PHC, thinking if they went for my "Abbott & Othello" sketch, they would go for his one. They did not.

The tag line, "Theatre with an r-e" was something I often thought and said whenever I saw the spelling "theatre." I had to keep it tight, but I really thought I transferred the rhythms and timing of the original sketch and the little surprises of comebacks into the patter. And it's over before you even realize I've been plagiarizing again...

Horton Hears a What?

Barely Home Companion-Ketchup Advisory Board (Oct. 2003)

10/28/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

Once more I attempted to submit a sketch into one of their regular features and tying it into the Halloween season. I did several of these ketchup ads over the years and I often recycled some of the opening monologues from a previous one, then added a new one. I would keep using ones that I was fond of figuring no one had heard any of them yet, so I can just paste it in. They were never heard. And they were not sketches I could submit elsewhere, so they died on the vine, the ketchup vine.

Oh, you can still buy my book, to help you re-live your fondest Halloween memories. Get you copy here.

I actually used to go through the kids candy each Halloween night and extract the lesser sweets and bring them to work, where my co-workers descended on the candy bowl like locust. Hey, free candy. It was a tradition for a long time. Many of my co-workers would approach me Halloween week and ask, "Are you going to bring in candy after Halloween?" and I often replied, "No, my kids are in their twenties now. They don't trick-or-treat anymore. I haven't done that for years! Where have you been? Go back to the cage." People hate to lose out on free candy.

Ketchup Advisory Board

Barely Home Companion: T.G.I.Friday the 13th (Oct. 2003)

10/21/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

A Halloween commercial parody! I honestly believe this was a clever and original idea back in 2003. Now, a quick Google search shows many images of a TGI Friday the 13th logo. It's quick, filled with puns, screams and voice impressions. I would say maybe it's too pop-culture-ry, but the pop culture it alludes to was old when I wrote this. And with the Halloween season upon us, it's got enough Dracula and Karloff to appeal to Boomers.

Right now I'm even to lazy to check to see if I included the sketch between the chapters of my book, "Halloweenies," where the Dad of the family is an aspiring writer and has written all these Halloween sketches to submit to people (Where does he get his ideas???). You can check it out over at Amazon...

It was a solid bit and I set it around, but it never got picked up anywhere. Maybe it's made up of too many clams, but I had fun with it. Maybe I even posted it during one of my Halloween runs in years past. Could be. But for Barely Home Companion, this was the next item up. So, enjoy

T.G.I.Friday the 13th

Dodging a Bullet Point!

10/19/2022

A few weeks ago, a friend came into the city to visit and we met up for dinner at his favorite steakhouse in midtown. He’s been to this restaurant many, many times. When we got there and he claimed his reservation, the head waiter fawned over him relentlessly, because he was such a valued diner. He was filling our water glasses as soon as we sipped the water. He hovered to make sure everything was up to expectations. He announced that dessert would be on him. Then a celebrity entered the restaurant and the obsequious waiter disappeared as he shifted his attention to this new arrival. We barely got our dessert (he tried to talk us out of it) and it took 30 minutes to get the check. We had gotten thrown over for the new king of late night TV, Greg Gutfeld...

Skit Happens: Impractical Jokers: Bible Edition!

10/17/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" or "From the Slushpile," I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them to. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. These things are burning holes in my hard drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog, so...

The Gospel reading in Mass back in August was from Luke 11:11-12 that went “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” That triggered this sketch. It's not a great sketch, but I could see it as a video somewhere. I wrote it back in August, and set it up back then for the blog to post now, so it really is a very fresh creation, and very much suffers from one of my "what am I supposed to do with this idea now?" creating apathy. I put some continued work in the other sketches I had written, but I plateaued pretty quickly on this one, which may also come from the fact that I don't watch Impractical Jokers. Maybe if I watched it, for background, I'd get more traction for the bit...but again, to what end? Sorry, this intro is more of a bummer than I had intended...

Impractical Jokers: Bible Edition!

Barely Home Companion: Costumes (Oct. 2003)

10/14/2022

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

And now we enter my favorite time of year, Halloween. I so desperately wanted to get a Halloween sketch on air. But I never managed it. This piece is a little bit of plagiarism. I lifted the dialogue from my screenplay called "Halloweenies." Just some stuff with kids discussing the pros and cons of costumes. I thought I turned it into a sweet little sketch about the importance of the right costume.

I later adapted the screenplay into a novella called, oddly enough, Halloweenies. It's the adventures of a 10-year old trying to get the perfect costume. You should totally check it out.

The song is a little ditty we used to sing as kids. I think it was written by the same guy who did "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells." The show had done a version of the song years prior, which was included in the CD set PHC sent me when I first became a writer for the show. Anyway, it didn't get selected for the show. But the spirit lives on...

Costumes

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