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 no idea where this bit came from.  Obviously it was inspired by The Amazing Kreskin, but why here, why now?  Was the Amazing Randy in the news uncovering psychic scams?  I don't recall.  I do remember that Kreskin made a point of announcing he was neither clarvoyent or psychic; that he was a mentalist!  He was a magician with a schtick.  Anyway, it seemed like a decent premise.  And it kinda fit into  the whole Halloween season.  I wrote it up and sent it in.  It didn't get picked, so now we are delighted to present: 

Yeah, I've been distracted lately from the blog.  Fortunately it was do to writing.  I managed to finish a screenplay!  And get some material out into the world.  

Now,  back to the topic at hand, my days at PHC: As the 2002-2003 season began, it was noted that Keillor had turned 60 that year.  It felt like a valid topic to address on the show,  so I attempted a song medley.  I took all the songs I knew that were about 16-year olds and changed them to 60-year olds, then just adjusted the lyrics to fit all the typical old age jokes I could squeeze in.  It wasn't selected, which made it seem like the new season was going to be like the old season.

I always liked it.  I always wanted to perform it at friends birthdays but never had the nerve.

This is one of those things I felt compelled to write, but didn't really want to write.  It was April 2002, the show was back in NYC for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  I'm not the kind of guy that wears my heart on my sleeves, yet at the same time it was something that had to be addressed.  I submitted a Keillor-sque monologue about the city.  It's a battle of heart and mind; acknowledging the grief while acknowledging the living.  It was a lot of things I observed as i continued working at my job in lower Manhattan.  There weren't exactly a lot of allowances for us workers, we still had to show up, we still had to do our work.  We couldn't wallow in sadness, we had to wallow in routine and deadlines and quarterly results.  So, there are a lot of mixed emotions and wry observations here.  I tried to put it in Garrison terms, but I suspect I fell short, as the material wasn't used.  I'm debating whether I should include in the chronological run of my submissions or to hold it as a 9/11 tribute.  So, if you see it in April, you'll know which I did...

It's been more than six months, and New York City is coming back to life...to the point they have gridlock because the volume of traffic is back to pre-attack levels, even though the amount of streets is still not 100%.

The uniforms are still in force, with police on every corner.  At one point, of course, state troopers were here and the army reserves.  They looked less like an occupying army than a large group of tourists who all happen to dress alike.

The firehouses are now shrines to the fallen; flowers, candles, photos and signs displayed out front.  The notes and pictures from school children around the country are taped to the walls, the overhead beams, the outside doors.  Slowly, the firehouses are coming back to full force but many rig bays are empty as they await replacements for the equipment lost.

With the return of routine comes the return of the routine.  Tasks which were deemed necessary at one point seemed seem less so after the attacks.  The legendary "New York minute" was about a minute and a half.  But in the last few months, "necessary" seems necessary again.  But if you get too much into a normal activity, you'll suddenly remember, "two of the world's tallest buildings used to be right over there."  And now they're not.  What could those clerks, those secretaries, those merchants have done to be the target of such blind 
hatred?  Nothing.  Not a thing.

But the city is getting its footing back.  You know this because the sidewalk vendors are back in force.  The little Asian ladies are out; selling flags and pins instead of umbrellas.  There's a black guy, next to the bootleg video guy, selling postcards and pictures of the twin towers and 
flags.  He has flags.  At one point, flags were a near-impossible-to-find item in the city.  But the sidewalk guys had them.

Oddly, no one finds this ghoulish or crass.  It's what New York does...every baseball play-off and series; they're out there with their Yankee shirts and Met caps.  When New York 
had its subway series it was like a long block party as the dealers hit the streets with their wares.  Football, hockey, even the Olympics, the vendors are there.  New Year's Eve they 
were there with the eyeglasses shaped like the year and the explosive poppers.  They mark the seasons and the events of the city.  And this is the biggest event of all.

So as New Yorkers continue to get a grip on the situation, it seems natural that they'll buy the T-shirt or get the ribbon pin to mark it.  And with a debate looming over how to exactly 
memorialize the tragedy, buying a FDNY baseball cap seems the easiest thing to do.

And the tourists are returning.  They seemed awed.  Even relieved to see the rest of the city still here.  They are joyful that they are getting a chance to see the city before something else happens to it.  Also returning, those people who walk around the city with these little wheeled suitcases and two-wheel hand carts.  They scurry along the sidewalks with an unimaginable number of personal possessions tailing behind.  Personally, it's my belief that if you need to travel with that much stuff, maybe you shouldn't be leaving your home in the first place.

A big stop for them is the Ground Zero viewing ramp.  A large ramp was build across the street which would allow viewing of the site formerly know as the World Trade Center.  It proved 
so popular, that tickets are now necessary to attempt to control the crowds that line up.  Is it ghoulish?  Hard to say.  People travel to see the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or the grave sites at Normandy.  It seems necessary, somehow.

The sorrow is not far from the surface.  You just have to watch the flatbed trucks drive downtown with the twisted beams of the WTC heading for the barge to feel your stomach tighten.  Or the latest announcement regarding more recovered bodies.  But shock is passing and people are getting back to the business of living.

We wish them well.

Ok, so a new movie just came out and I'm a little bit more excited about it than I usually would be.  The movie "Free Guy" is hitting theaters and I'm thrilled that someone I know is in it!  Mark Lainer is an actor I met back in 1988 or so as part of a comedy troupe I became involved with.  I've written about Style Without Substance many times on the blog.  They were a remarkable group of talented people.  It really was an exciting and creative time in my life and I was thrilled to be part of a team.

Mark was an incredibly funny actor (and totally still is).  Any part you handed him--mime, priest, colorizer, beach nerd--were much improved by his presence.  We did a lot of sketches together and I was lucky enough to get tapes of some of them.  I want to share them here.

I stumbled across another movie channel on cable recently, HDNET, and they were doing a Three Stooges marathon, three of their features and the TV-biopic produced by Mel Gibson in 2000.  They went right onto the DVR where they joined The Three Stooges movie (2012) I had previously recorded from HBO.  So now I was about to do a mega-marathon.

​I grew up with the Stooges.  They were on every afternoon here in NYC, after school on WPIX, Channel 11, hosted by Officer Joe Bolton.  They did 190 shorts for Columbia pictures.  Even though it felt like I saw them all, I know I hadn't.  I got to go to some midnight matinees in the 1970s where they showed the "banned" Stooge wartime shorts. I got to see some more when home video came out and then more when IFC made a point of showing them, uncut, on cable. What I never saw as much was the features they did.

Some final plague prestidigitation

Okay, a follow up to my last SNL post about season 6.  I started watching season 7 of the heavily re-launched SNL.  It was now officially Dick Ebersol's show.  Hold overs from the season 6 finale, Denny Dillion and Gail Matthius, were gone.  New hires, Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky, and Tony Rosato made the leap.  Christine Ebersole and Mary Gross joined the cast.  And, of course, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy would stay and rule the roost.   Old man background
actor, Andy Murphy, made it too.
 
After a brief cold open, the new intro began, calling NYC the most dangerous city with  a video reel showing a less-appealing side of New York (this has newly-rehired head writer Michael O'Donoghue written all over it).  And the stage looks like they’re doing it from a abandoned warehouse instead of some iconic NY location.
 
 There was no host.  The cast just ran out, took a bow and ran off into the first sketch.
 
The first sketch was a strange two-hander with Gross and Duke as vacationing nuns.  It took a while for the audience to warn up to it, but there was a solid laugh at the end.  It reminded me of Will Ferrell's first sketch about telling the kid's to get off the shed. Obviously, they were committed to it, but it didn't rock the audience.
 
They did a sketch about a one night stand, went to a commercial, then came back to a funeral sketch that WAS A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS SKETCH!  Weekend Update became SNL Newsbreak.  Oh, and Brian Doyle Murray was still around and now the Newsbreak co-anchor (with Gross).  It seemed to be renamed so they could do a clever sight gag the first night that they would be stuck with to diminishing effect for the rest of the season.  And the cast had the lines memorized. Not much use of cue cards that I could see.