​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 had the Barney sketch waiting.  I had written the season opener sketch and that was prepped.  Then there was breaking news and I needed to write a quick sketch about it!   A sketch torn from the headlines.  Reporter Dan Rather got into a ton of trouble when he attempted to prove the George W. Bush dodged the draft during the Vietnam War.  It had been rumored for years.  Rather's group discovered a letter which seemed to prove that he got special treatment to join the state militia, which would keep him in the states.  He presented it to the public.  Then it turned out the letter was a fake.  Someone sold Rather a bill of goods and he grabbed it.  An on-air apology was deemed necessary.  So, I took the idea that while he's apologizing for that, maybe there would be a couple of other things he needed to get off his chest.  Thus begat this (rejected) sketch:

Weekly Humorist, a humor magazine I often submit to and occasionally get in, runs these Hashtag Games on Twitter (X), where they name a topic and we submit humorous responses.  These games play right into my gag reflex, so I always throw up something.  I've taken to setting my calendar to get online every Wednesday to "play" (and by "play" I mean submit content to their website for free--I like to think of it as pun bono work).   I always submit a bunch of entries and some of them get selected for inclusion to their online site.

Another cereal-based topic this week, Silly Cereals.  Now people went two ways with this, like me, some went with synonyms for silly.  Others just did random cereal puns, so making any cereal sound silly.  To each his own.  I got 3 out of 12 in.  And not even my favorites, which you'll see on X (Twitter).   But, in I am:

​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...

This was an epic "welcome back" sketch for the official season opener.  So, over the summer, there was Ken Jennings winning streak, the political conventions,  the Olympics and I'm thinking there must have been talk about the PHC movie they were working on.  It wasn't released until  2006, but I must have alluded to it here for some reason.   This sketch had everything; topical events, celebrity voices, sound effects!  I think I lifted the whole radio olympics thing from a sketch 4 years previous.  Over-stuffed to the max, it didn't make the cut.  Don't know why.  Poking too much fun at GK?   It would have filled a lot of air time.

Apparently Pepsi is celebrating its 125 anniversary of not being Coke.  They are doing many things to mark this milestone, but one of the things they are not doing is showing this video that parodies their famous "Pepsi Challenge."  That honor goes to me.

First, some backstory.  Sometime after college, I signed up for one of those Stand-Up comedy workshops with my college humor magazine cohort, the late John Rawlins.  In that class we met a guy who was trying out stand-up.  We got friendly, but not so friendly that I remember his name.  But he insisted we should meet some people he was dealing with who were trying to put together comedy ventures.  So we did.  We hit it off and put out a fanzine called "Salvator Deli" for a couple of issues.  Then attempted a stage show.  A video program was always something the group was looking to do, so when in 1985 one of the members had a friend who was looking to do something on NJ Public access, so we decided we could fit that bill.  We gathered up sketches and went to Jersey.  We called ourselves "Friends of Leon."  We worked on a cold-open together, then did material we all brought in.  My contribution was the Pepsi Challenge outtakes.  Look, I'm a writer and a bit of a ham, and tend not to pass up an opportunity to perform, so I'm the lead here.  What we have here is a bunch of writers  performing their own material.  I only digitized my two contributions, because I only wanted to toot my own horn when the whole concept of YouTube came about.   There were several others sketches and I preformed in them, too.  But since I wasn't looking to be an actor, I only copied the skits I wrote.

Maybe I'll get into this stage of my writing life and how that led to another venture, Big B's Traveling Sideshow.  Frankly, so many of these threads cross and mingle, I don't remember everything as it happened, just flashes of events.  But it's something worth revisiting (for me, anyway).  Until then, let's present Pepsi Challenge Outtakes!

​​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...

Man, it's only the second week in and I'm already submitting recycled material.  I had this piece sitting in my pile for quite some time.  I even attempted to re-work it as a Christmas sketch (which I also submitted).  But the Three Tenors was big at this time and Barney was still huge.  Both were Public Broadcasting properties, so, why not?  But, it was probably too TV for GK.  I'm he probably didn't even know who Barney was (and the quick aside to Our Gang comedies didn't help much).  It's just a silly bit of musical fluff, and I'm not shocked it didn't make it.   I had it really to go the week after the State Fair show, not realizing the season hadn't begun yet, so I had to sit on it until 9/25/04.  So, enjoy: 

​Weekly Humorist, a humor magazine I often submit to and occasionally get in, runs these Hashtag Games on Twitter (X), where they name a topic and we submit humorous responses.  These games play right into my gag reflex, so I always throw up something.  I've taken to setting my calendar to get online every Wednesday to "play" (and by "play" I mean submit content to their website for free--I like to think of it as pun bono work).   I always submit a bunch of entries and some of them get selected for inclusion in their online site.

This week was right up my alley, parodies of Disney films, coming up with Dismal Disney Movies.  The first couple came easy, then I pulled up synonyms for dismal and the list of just the animated films and ran with that.  Weirdly, I was competing with a lot of people who don't know what a Disney movie is (Popeye?  Chance of Meatballs? Hook?).  Anyway, I wrote a lot (which can be found here) getting in 4 out of 11.  Weekly Humorist published their favorites on the link below:

My screenplay, "Hitler's Script" was one of the 5 finalist in 2023's Ojai Film Festival!  And it really means something because my pal, Shelly Goldstein, was another finalist, and she's really good!  My script is  a funny, thrilling tale and I'm glad they thought so,  too!

Naturally, they misspelled my name in the press release, which is fairly common for me and my family.  Usually the conversation goes: "Oh, like the mayor."  And we say, "No."

​​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...

PHC did a special live show from the MN State Fair in 2004, two weeks before the season was to begin.  State fairs means foods and contests.  While I'm not sure what triggered this sketch specifically, it is a typical "contrarian"-type sketch that I often wrote.  Basically, it was take a simple premise, have someone defy it and attempt to act like it's fine.  So, having a peach pie without peaches seems a no brainer.  Tying the sketch to the season premiere seemed be a way to attract enough attention to get accepted.  The show passed on it.  It's still a fun little bit.  We would try again in two weeks, when the season actually got under way.