Okay, been in the middle of a couple of binges.
 
During the pandemic, my wife discovered "Downton Abbey."  A friend told her about it.  It turned out to be one of those shows where she said "How did I not know about this show?"  I was aware of it, thanks to Saturday Night Live parodies, but I hadn't actually seen it.  So, now we were off to find it.  I had to sign up for PBS streaming.  Then it dropped off there and popped up on Netflix.  Oh, and then there was a movie, so I had to sign up for HBO to see that.  And when she wanted to see it again later on during the pandemic?  Peacock.  Then the new movie came out and that's on Amazon Prime.  Oy.

Occasionally, I'll churn out a prose piece, an essay, a news parody, a list of stuff.  Sometimes I'll be forced to turn them into a sketch or something, trying to get the bit out there if I couldn't get it published somewhere.  I've an stuff printed in the Staten Island Advance, the NY Post, Themestream (the self-publishing of the early internet), and the occasional humor site like Modern Humorist or The Big Jewel.  

Some of those things have folded.  Some reject my work.  Some don't respond.  There's some second tier humor sites that have accepted my pieces, but I don't know anyone who reads them.  So, if I'm going to publish things on obscure internet sites, why not just put it on my blog?  So, here it is, a look into writing and show biz:

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" 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.  There are a lot of "short play festivals" out there these days that accept "plays" that are under 10 minutes, so it seems like I might have an outlet for the sketches, but sometimes I get very insecure about my material.  Are they really plays?  They're comedy skits.  I feel like I'm setting myself up for rejection, you know?  But it's something I have to try.  It's not like I haven't submitted to festivals like that before.

In the mean time, these things are burning holes in my thumb drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog.  So, we'll be playing around on here, I suppose.

I noticed something in the last few years on SNL; topical isn't always topical.  Yes, they have the political cold openings and Weekend Update, but when SNL started, they would do movie parodies of then newly-released movies and then a lot of Boomer-related things (and guests) from early TV.  The latest generation of writers, thanks to cable TV and streaming, have a much broader and deeper field to harvest.  I think I first realized it with Bill Hader and his various Vincent Price holiday shows.  I can't believe for a minute that the audience would know who Vincent Price, Liberace, James Mason and others were, but maybe they did, thanks to Nick-at-Night or TVland.  They do parodies now of decades-old Disney cartoons.  They set up movie send-ups from the 1940s and 1950s.  They can do a sketch about anything (as long as it is funny).  

The Wizarding World movies (formerly know as "Harry Potter movies") are still in the public mind thanks to the books, movie prequels, Broadway shows, cable TV showings and theme-park rides.  And if in the presence of any of these things, a sketch idea can pop up still.  We still watch the movies whenever they play on TV (usually once a month on one cable station or another) and, if I'm paying attention, something new will appear to me: An odd piece of logic, a plot gap, a continuity issue or a background character I hadn't noticed.  Or the various characters names.  How did no one figure out Professor Lupin was a a werewolf?  How do you name your kid Malfoy and not know he'll be evil?  Or why would any kid WANT to be placed in a school called "Slytherin?" Well, this seems like something the Sorting Hat would have a hand in...

While we still figure out how things are shaking out for small theaters post-pandemic (even harder to figure out since we aren't post-pandemic, really) TMI: Hollywood is still shuttered.   In the mean time, I was looking for something in my files and came upon this-a Stranger Things parody from April 2018.  Domino's Pizza had just started a ad campaign that they would deliver pizza ANYWHERE; ​to beaches and parks and so many other places. 

I honestly don't remember if it worked out for them or if they even still do it.  Meanwhile, Stranger Things had just come out and it was a massive hit.  So, what was more natural then to have them deliver to the Upside-Down?  

I had totally forgotten about this sketch.  I re-read it and not to toot my own horn, it's pretty good.  Now, you have to remember, TMI: Hollywood had a huge cast.  It was strange to me that they didn't break the troupe up into groups to handle sketches with casts of 4 or 5.  Instead, they insisted on sketches with big casts.  And they had to have some heft to them, beyond just five pages.  This sketch checked both boxes there, was topical and in the news (which was the format of TMI, it had to be a news item).

The parody is very much in a Mad/Cracked magazine manner.  There's a lot going on and I think each cast member got a moment, both big and small.  Frankly, I read this and I can't remember where some of the bits of business came from; the escalating tip, the Minotaur poop reference and the call-back to it.  My brain amazes me sometimes.  

Since Stranger Things is back on the radar with a record-breaking season 4 (spoiler alert: it's just a big build up to Season 5), I present: 

Hey!  I wrote a Stranger Things song parody!

My Stranger Things
(to the tune of "My Favorite Things.")

Dungeons and dragons and
whispers from ceilings
Bright, flashing lightening and de-mented feelings.
Mutated black bats that kill with their wings
These are a few of my Stranger Things…

Mad psychic powers and fierce Demogorgons
Secret mind projects and all kinds of jargon.
Kids named with numbers and major mood swings.
These are a few of my Stranger Things…

Frozen waffles
Frozen waffles
Then my nose just bleeds
I simply remember my Stranger Things,
And then destruction proceeds.

Children go missing in dimensional portals
Soviet agents and lethal immortals
Drifting black snow stuff and Christmas light strings
These are a few of my Stranger Things.

Frozen waffles
Eighties fashions
Then the mall explodes
I simply remember 
my Stranger Things
And binge all the episodes
​

Honestly, I don't recall the circumstances of this piece.  I looked back in my journals and apparently I was being crushed by work.  I don't remember writing it but it's definitely something I wrote.  GK was fond of listings his staff of writers at the end of each show.  Except they were all fictional names; Sandy Beach, Bob Wire, etc.  Rarely did he mention any actual writers.  After having such a cold streak regarding my submissions, and this being the last show, I apparently decided I needed to parody the situation.  So I start as a standard PHC commercial segue, have that go awry, then call out the writer.  There's some back and forth and I slip in a SFX comedy bit while I'm at it.  I can't imagine why I thought they would go for it,  They didn't.  I must have felt better after writing it.  I felt better after reading it just now.

Sometimes commercial parodies are a quick and easy way to get something on paper, to create something to submit, just to keep your visibility to the powers-that-be.  I pulled out the old journal from this time and to discover the origins of this sketch. There was a big news story about people finding out that McDonald's fries included meat juice in the fryer and suing them about it.  It's always been a thing; Even more recent, the Subway Mystery Tuna story.  There have been more than one one attempt at suing companies for selling junk food.  But, seriously, why do you think they call it junk food?  It made sense to turn it into a selling point.  At least it did to me.  PHC, not so much.  So here we go now...

P.S.-I love how I can type in any phrase into the search engine and get an image to use on the blog.  This posting phrase?  Food Lawyer!  Ha!

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 is one of those PHC rejected scripts that found a hope eventually.  A goofy idea I had for a commercial parody that I put together.  PHC passed, but I held on to it to submit to other venues and it finally got picked by All-Star Radio comedy.  I've posted the audio below the script.

​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 piece has an odd history.  It started as a college essay.  Some class was looking for us to write an essay based on material we had read.  One of the things was "The Maltese Falcon."  So I latched onto that and wrote up a story about meeting an old-school private eye to find out what the job was really like back in the film noir days.  I was very much in a Woody Allen phase in college (prose-wise) having read his collections of essays and short stories.  I think I got an A on it.  I know it's sitting in a file somewhere, if I really had to back up that claim.  It was this time I started to believe I would be a writer, so I clung to my creations like something precious that I might get to release some day.  Instead, whenever I kind of hit a dry spell, I would pull something out and rework it.  This was one of those times.

I often would think that if I could nail one of the regular bits, it might impress PHC enough to be used.  That thinking is very wrong; it's tricky to submit a version of their baby and not have them focus on the mistakes and shortcomings.  Always better to hit them with something new (usually).  Guy Noir is one of GK's signature bits, and having played around with the form with my own creation, Nick Flebber, and my Christmas-tery, Lost Claus, it was a genre I felt comfortable doing.  A new week and month were upon us as the season was winding down and I remembered the detective bit and pulled it out, shaping it into a radio sketch.  It didn't make the cut.

Back to Nick Flebber: as I played around with the character in different mediums, I turned Lost Claus into a novella.  I would adapt it to radio.  I pitched it as a series and wrote two pilot episodes, which I adapted into novellas.  And I started writing more adventures.  I needed to increase the page count for my one novella, Space Case, so I turned the radio sketch into a short story.  From there, I adapted it back into radio episode.  It's been produced by a local radio group and I'm awaiting the audio link.  You can read more about Nick Flebber here.   I still work my favorite line "I always get my man plus expenses" into a few other episodes.  And not to spoil the ending, but I always liked my little "Some Like it Hot" reference at the end.

This was a fun, goofy script that I tried to keep going.  I actually think I wrote it for the stage, but realized it would be a perfect radio sketch.  PHC thought otherwise.  I just liked the vibe of the sketch with its slight Python-airs, so but I circulated it around afterward back in its stage form.  But never got it on it's feet.  Oh, well.