I had a pretty solid week last week with a joke or two every night!  Some rewording, some slight twisting or expansion, but a lot used.  And a lot of premises used, too.  A hat tip to the gang especially; I submitted a joke about the QAnon Congresswoman Greene challenging congresswoman AOC to a debate.  I had made the joke, "I expected her to challenge AOC to an arm wrestling match."  TMI picked up the straight line and reworked it to "Wouldn't challenging her to a duel be more on brand?" Which is the prefect punchline for that set-up and those characters.

I'm proud that I'm able to more and more remove myself from the political arena and get back to some pop culture jokes, which don't get used much but I was worried about my ability to come up with jokes post-Trump.  And I've managed to channel a lot of that disgust toward many others in the GOP, so I'll be flexing that muscle for a while.  The group is taking off next week, although I'm still waiting to hear if they will be producing the monologues for the week.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time), if you want to see the jokes that got away.  And here's my contributions for last week:

PHC was still in NYC for the month of April, so I would naturally try to gear my material with my hometown in mind, and slip in my mention of the Staten Island ferry.  I used to read that National Lampoon made it a point to adjust the parody to the medium it was going to be in; so they wouldn't do a TV satire like MAD magazine, they would do a TV satire like resembled printed matter; a press kit, a diary. or studio notes on a script.  Same with the "commercial parodies."  They would format ad parodies as magazine ads, mimicking the style of typical magazine ads.  SNL took it to the next, logical step-went doing commercial parodies they would try to imitate the style of the video ads on TV.  Sure, they started out in the 70s as in-studio announcer style (Bass-O-matic) but moved quickly into filmed bits (Little Chocolate Donuts) because that was the style boomers were used to.  Over time, they commercials became almost solely pre-filmed bits, again, following the more elaborate style of the 80s and beyond, to the point now that companies are paying them to parody them.  This was never the case with PHC.  Sure, GK would often segue into a bit by announcing "this portion of the show is brought to you by..." and announcing something (Duct Tape, Ketchup) but it would simply be a PHC-style low-key verbal bit.  Even my first skit for PHC (Abbott & Othello) was set up as a "later tonight on Public Radio" preview commercial.  

In NYC, Circle Line cruises are a tourist institution.  We see the boats in the harbor all day long.  So, naturally I wondered, what if you took it to the next level?  Cruises to nowhere were becoming popular at the time, so I decided to combine the concepts.  I like the way it turned out.  Short, sweet, absurd and, I thought, written very much in the PHC style.  But no, they didn't use it.  And since that ship as sailed, let's present it here:

A lot of venting this week.  It was a strong start to the week, with 2 jokes and one set up.  The spring break was used as-is.  The COVID vaccination joke, well, after telling us to cut down on the Trump jokes, they took my line "don't want the rich catching COVID from the landscapers" and turned it into a Trump joke.  I wrote a joke about Putin being selected the sexiest man alive and after coming up with 2 punchlines where I was desperate to avoid a "falling out of a window" gag, they went with a "falling out of a window" gag.  Then Thursday...Thursday.  I wrote a "Masked Singer" joke.  While I wrote they were changing the name to "The Double-Masked Singer" it got changed it to this "cast doesn't have to worry, since they are all masked."  To me, that was the obvious line, and one I feel we've used before.  Something about a furry convention, I think.  Anyway I wanted to avoid that, so I thought I'd reference the recent issue of "double masking."  They reworded the Pence book joke.  Then the MacGyver joke.  I mean, I wrote that the show was going to be cancelled unless he could get a paper clip, double A batteries and a roll of aluminum foil.  For some reason they decided they had to go straight on-the-nose by saying "unless they could MacGyver a way out" and a different list of items.  Why???  Comedy is so subjective.  And Friday, frankly similar set-ups were used; Prince Phillip's death, ancient Egyptian city discovered, but there was so much reworking the punchline to where despite some words being repeated or inferred (Meaghan Markel, Indiana Jones) they ended with a totally different punchline and intent.  But two jokes they used verbatim again, even though I felt they were my sillier, weaker lines.  Oh, well.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time), if you want to see the jokes that got away.  And here's my contributions for last week:

GK: of course I love New York, but sometimes the size can be overwhelming and somewhat impersonal.  For example, it's a minor point, but I was in the subway yesterday and I lost my umbrella.  Just an umbrella, but you know how it is, you leave, get off the train or taxi and you don't realize you've forgotten something until the doors are shut and the vehicle is gone.  Very frustrating.  And that's it,  it's gone.  You'll never see it--

    (foot steps)

RR: Wait, wait, Mr. Keillor!

GK: Who are you?

RR: I'm Ron Roselli, I'm the head of the New York City Department of Lost & Found.

GK: The Department of Lost & Found?  What is that?

RR: We're the agency in charge of holding on to all the lost umbrellas, wallets, hat boxes, key chains, gloves, books, backpacks, and water bottles that people lose.

GK: You hold them.

RR: Until someone picks them up.

GK: I had no idea.

RR: Apparently most people don't.  We need to work on getting our name out there.

GK: What are you doing here?

RR: Yes, sir.  I heard you talking about the item you lost and I got my people right on it.  We wanted to get you your umbrella back.

GK: You have my umbrella?

RR: We have all the umbrellas, socks, riding crops, left shoes, purses, Macy's bags, watches...

GK: I see.

RR: Our agents scour the city finding all the misplaced items and bring them to the office where they are identified, tagged and sorted.

GK: So you have my umbrella?

RR: Back it in boys!

    (Beep, beep, beep of a large truck backing in)

RR: It was black, right?

GK: No, actually, it was a blue one.

RR: Hold it, hold it!  Bring in the other one!

    (Trucks gears grind, then another truck backs in)

GK: That's, what, a dump truck?

RR: Lost item redemption vehicle.  Let me get back there into the bin.

GK: Be careful there.

RR: (from far away) Is this one it?

GK: I don't think so, no, no.

RR: How about this one?

GK: That's not it.

RR: This one?

GK: Oh, that's a nice one---

RR: Don't even think about it.  How about this one...

SS: Garrison?

GK: Yes?

SS: I just wanted to return the umbrella you lent me yesterday.

GK: Oh, you had it?

SS: Remember, it was starting to rain and you offered it to me, since you had just found it in that taxi.

GK: Oh, right, the taxi umbrella.

RR: You're umbrella was from a taxi?

GK: I suppose it was.

RR: For shame, Mr. Keillor, for shame.

GK: You'll be wanting it then?

RR: You know it.  Let me see that, one blue collapsible umbrella.  Okay, if anyone out there has lost a blue, collapsible umbrella just give us a call at the New York City Dept. of Lost and Found.  Thank you.

GK: And thank you, Mr. Roselli.

                                                                                     end

Rough week for me.  Only 3 jokes.  Granted it was a short week with no show on Good Friday, but Monday and Tuesday I got shut out.  I managed to spring back with one on Wednesday's show and 2 on Thursday's.  But many of the premises were my submissions where the punchline went in a totally different direction.  For example, there was a joke about a disease that effects bears so that they are unafraid of humans.  I wrote "So, be careful out there, Mr. Ranger!"  So that Yogi Bear reference gets changed into "It's call Yogi Bear-itis." Which, okay, but if you're going to make that joke, why not go for Yogi Berri-berri?  My other line was "It's called Colt-45," which in retrospect should have been "Cub-45."  Joke writing is not for the thin-skinned.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time).  And here's my contributions for last week:

And up & down week for a number of reasons.   The Ellen joke I thought was just odd and a little surreal, and that got in.  Go figure.
The Mitch McConnell got a 180 on my punchline.  I said "And worse, Biden wouldn’t even pick Mitch's wife for a cabinet position!" and it got flipped to how mad he'll be IF Biden picks her, which I'm starting to wonder was simply Tonya misreading the line.  And the insurrection joke was just a much wordier take on my original "Well, Sure, undocumented immigrants haven’t tried to overthrow the elected government."
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I put in the NY Theater joke because the set up was mine, verbatim but the punchline was rejiggered for another version using "shot."  Now, while I submitted "but instead of getting two shots, you'll get one shot and an encore,"   "It'll be the same shot everyone else gets, but with jazz hands," and "Actors are requesting the Moderna vaccine, because they get a shot and a call-back" we both missed the obvious "And these actors aren't throwing away their shot."  Silly, right? 

The show of the 25th was the first anniversary show and the troupe took a well-deserved victory lap for their efforts.  It was a fun show, I got a shout-out and they talked a lot about how they put the show together, which is something I've been remarkably lax about learning.  I send the jokes and that's it.  You can check out that episode here.

This is a quirky bit that I stole from myself.  There's a scene in a screenplay I wrote, "The Importance of being Ernie" (or "I was a Teenage Screenplay writer"), that had this scene it it.  It was a brazen attempt to update Abbott & Costello wordplay into the newer slang...well, the newer slang, circ. 2000s, which is really 1990s when I originally wrote the scene.  It was a set piece which I could easily copy and paste elsewhere.  Which is what I did, essentially.   I don't recall where the premise set-up came from, if that was based on some real-life rumors that were floating around at the time or not.  But it's a simple bit of silliness that didn't stand a chance at PHC.  So, here it is, as seen in "The Importance of being Ernie," Translating Youth: