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

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion: Easter Edition - P.A.U.L.A.

4/19/2019

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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...

Breaking the timeline here to go with the holidays. Easter's coming up and as it turns out, I didn't write a lot of Easter themed material. I guess it never pulled me in the way Christmas and Halloween do. But doing this deep dive into my old work, I brought up this thing that I had written and frankly had forgotten about. That prompted me to do a PC search and I pulled up one or two other bits.

Again, I had forgotten this sketch. It's an odd little bit. I see I was doing a PETA parody, though I'm not sure what triggered it. Then I have that very solemn animal speech in the middle. Don't know where that came out of. And I'm guessing I the term "vegan" hadn't been coined yet, based on one line. I may have been inspired by and on Looney Tunes cartoon, where Elmer Fudd is hunting the Easter Bunny and the Easter Bunny tricks Bugs Bunny into completing the route. We'll post it under the commercial...

With a holiday coming up, it's time to plug a book! Sure, it's got nothing to do with Easter, but what are you gonna do? It's "Novel Concept" the epic comedy adventure about a young, aspiring author who learns about all the unknowable things when you're writing what you know. Laughs, thrills and adventure all in one book? That's a Novel Concept! It's available on Amazon! Get your copy today! And your friend's copy tomorrow!

P.A.U.L.A.

The Big Jewel: The History of Radio

4/18/2019

Got an article posted over at The Big Jewel, home of Big Comedy and not jewels. I wrote it a few years ago, when I was working on PHC and other radio venues. It started as a piece for our local paper where it began with me kinda bragging about my work in radio. It was a thousand word article, originally, with lots of digressions and odd samples of radio history. I got it down to about 500 words to submit to The Big Jewel and here it is.
Screensnap below links to the site...

Barely Home Companion: Easter Edition - DUCT TAPE FOR EASTER, 4/2000

4/18/2019

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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...

While sorting through my old files, I came upon this sketch. I didn't remember it. I certainly don't remember doing much in the way of Easter skits, so this was a surprise to me.

As I mentioned elsewhere on the blog, I was always watching the calendar while I was writing for PHC, so if their schedule overlapped with any holidays, I would try to tailor something for them. Christmas, naturally, was the easiest. Easter, less so. I've only come across two Easter-themed bits. Being practical, I was always looking to shoehorn something into one of their regular bits; duct tape, ketchup, Guy Noir. Sometimes it worked. More often it didn't. It's a silly little bit that we're saving for the holiday...

Now a quick word from out sponsor, me! "Novel Concept" is one funny book and it has nothing to do with Easter! It's the zany tale (yes, zany) of an author who wants to see the world, so he stows away on a ship to Europe. And that's one of the smarter decisions he makes. From crazy captains to wayward molls and psychic prisoners, Novel Concept has something for everyone! It's got the stench of hilarity! Available at Amazon, just like everything is!

DUCT TAPE FOR EASTER

Barely Home Companion: Easter Edition - Julia Childish Cooking Segment

4/17/2019

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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...

Here's one of those bits that never dies. I present it now because just barely touches on Easter. This started as a prose piece, just a list of recipes written down by Julia Childish. It included a recipe for Easter Egg Salad, which didn't make the jump to sketch form. It was fairly easy to turn it into a radio skit, I just brought in the character of Julia Childish to walk us through the recipes. I must confess that the Julia Childish here is Dan Aykroyd doing Julia Child. I didn't really know the French Chef. After this version, I just went back to submitting the prose version, also without much success. I can see where it didn't get used by PHC (too many Oreos references?) but I thought I caught GK's voice very well and the interplay between the two characters was solid and they had done a Julia Child character before. Oh, well.

And who won't want to find a copy of "Novel Concept" in their Easter basket? You can get yours at Amazon, hard copy or digital. It's a wacky, crazy tale of a young author on a quest to write the perfect history of the Pony Express but who then gets seriously sidetracked by stowaways, French heiresses, drug lords, mythical kingdoms and murderous Senators. It's a serious of unfortunate events all in ONE book!

Julia Childish Cooking Segment

Barely Home Companion: The Nutty Merchant of Venice 6/00

4/12/2019

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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...

Okay, back to Shakespeare! These skits have been a running theme for me since college. It started with Abbott & Othello and just grew from there. I managed to get The Three Stooges of Verona on its feet but none of the others. So, I pitched them to the gang at PHC.

I thought with the success of Abbott & Othello, they might be receptive to another sequel. They weren't. Again, somewhat pop culture, maybe too long, a kinda big cast of characters, perhaps no one could do a decent Dean Martin, who knows?

I attempted to break the skit up to follow their production of Abbott & Othello; mouth trumpets, breaking up the skit with GK pronouncements and such, making it a commercial for a show coming up afterward, but it didn't pan out. I was so disappointed that I didn't even bother to write "Here's Another Fine Tempest" that may or may not have played better on radio.

The Nutty Merchant of Venice

The Big Jewel: Other Medieval Solutions To Modern Day Problems

4/11/2019

Got a piece posted over at The Big Jewel, home of Big Comedy and not jewels. Screensnap below links to the site...

Skit Happens - Dumbo

4/10/2019

Speaking of sketches that barely stay ahead of reality...
I wrote this sketch for TMI: Hollywood back in 2015. I thought the whole Disney remake frenzy was going nuts; redoing their animation films as live-action, movies based on rides, plays based on movies. It was due for a parody. So, I wrote this skit with the topper being the most ridiculous idea of making a live action version of Dumbo, Disney's sweetest and shortest animated feature. Hysterical, right? In the time it took me to finish the sketch and prep it to email to the group, word comes out that Disney has hired Tim Burton to do a new version of Dumbo. What the Spit-take is going on here???

I had to rework the bit, move the Dumbo news upfront to set the premise and end it with the Turkey Drumstick idea. I mean, okay, but it was The Pet Store/Pet Rock thing all over again. It all got rejected anyhow. But since the new movie is out, I figured I'd post it here...

Disney Coming Attractions

Called it!

4/10/2019

Here's a spot-on example of when parody becomes reality...

And here's a piece I wrote in November 2017 which I thought captured the spirit of the times. My Mt. Vernon joke got cut, but I had gone in a different direction with it any way (see below).

Mount Vernon
“Was Vernon good looking? Is that why Washington was always mounting her?”

The Tale-Teller: The Boy Who Whined Wolf - 6/00

4/3/2019

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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...

This is a sketch I wrote as therapy. I had some amazingly bad co-workers to deal with over the years and this one guy was the worse. I wrote this out of revenge. I wanted to mock him and I wanted people to hear it and laugh. I mean the guy never shut up and just kept repeating himself over and over. He was also represented in my rhubarb pie bit, too. Alas, it was not used and I had to carry on in silence.

Creativity, I'm not sure why it's not linked in anyway to the old Story-teller, although that guy was such a western-type, and I was going for a more gentile soul here, as a misdirect to how insipid the tale was. I may have been undone by the size of the cast, as well. I would really just churn these things out to my liking and not take the production necessities into consideration. And that was stupid. I mean, I wasn't a little kid here. But, as I whined about earlier, I was in a bubble. No one was pointing out obvious things like that to me. I had no mentoring, no direction no notes. I was treating it like a hobby; a hobby that kept disappointing me.

The Tale-Teller: "The Boy Who Whined 'Wolf'"

Barely Home Companion: Summer Crisis 6/25/00

4/3/2019

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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 attempt to pull out an old bit and re-work it for radio. It's a sequel to my sketch, Christmas Crisis, which was produced in CA. I think it's a sweet little piece, and the summer season was approaching as the 99-00 season of PHC drew to a close. I did rework it a bit to fit the show. Made it two kids. And re-wrote the mother to be a father and let GK go with it. Did it ever have a chance? I dunno. On one hand it seems out of character of the show, but on the other hand, the show did seem to slip in a new style of humor once in awhile and that gave me hope, that PHC and I would be on the same page more often.

Summer Crisis

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