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

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Face the Conundrum (May '04)

5/19/2023

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's "Later on most of these Public Radio Stations" bits were very freeing. It was a real chance to jump out of the context of the show and do anything. I got to do it on my first time out, Abbott & Othello. Around this time, I was working on a pilot series, "Where's the Party?" a talk show, where the premise was a swinging party at a rich guy's penthouse; Playboy After Dark meets Fernwood Tonight. And at one point we were struggling with a way to do actual sketch-sketches and not just "party bits." Someone mentioned a TV set. A party goer could be in a corner watching TV and we could do anything on that TV; a news parody (which I did), sit-coms, sports, anything. It was our launching pad out of the single set. And could be filmed and presented as such (ala Monty Python) verses the taped party scenes.

Anyway, this sketch was a re-working of some jokes that I had kicking around that I never quite found the right set-up for. Maybe this wasn't it either, but it appealed to my contradian side. Also, I think the idea of parodying those Sunday morning news shows as they devolved into these bizarre attempts at "gotcha" attitudes and odd "what-if" scenarios questions. I think it just never jelled enough for PHC's purposes and they neglected to use it.

Face the Conundrum

Leave it to the Prose: Early Drafts of my Annual HR Review

5/17/2023

Early Drafts of my Annual HR Review

My company started doing annual reviews now. And the weird part is they wanted ME to review me initially, then have my supervisor review my review and see how close I got it. One of the sections of the review was to name 3 goals I have for myself for the upcoming 12-month period. Only three??? So I had to leave a bunch off, such as:

Winning the lottery.

Not killing Dave in accounting.

Perfecting my slam dunk.

Making the FBI Most Wanted list.

Flakier pie crust.

Triggering the morality clause.

Cash that Nigerian prince’s check, for sure.

A hat trick of some sort.

Practicing my revenge spells.

Putting vodka in the water cooler.

Mastering Candy Crush.

Going viral on TikTok.

Returning those secret documents.

Barely Home Companion - 30th Anniversary (May '04)

5/12/2023

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...

What an epic sketch this was. I hit every character, every callback, every cliche of a show celebrating an anniversary I could. Perhaps I was too much the outsider (EVEN AFTER ALL THIS TIME) for him to accept the idea of me submitting something like this. Maybe making fun of his bread & butter wasn't the wisest move. Maybe it was too pop-culture-y. Or worse, too dated pop-culture-y (Tiny Tim jokes? Really?) Maybe sending an incomplete sketch was undercutting myself...

Apparently there's a reel missing between PHC in Space and GK's finish. It looks like I was going to write something there, but it just goes from GK line to GK line.

I don't know how I forgot to put in sound effects jokes. The penguin joke is one GK told often on the show. The voice impressions were all regulars. It was a sketch that had to cover a lot of ground and I think it worked, but what do I know?

30th Anniversary

Barely Home Companion - Us Guys at the Shore (June '04)

5/12/2023

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...

Every so often, PHC would travel to Ocean Grove, New Jersey, which is part of the Jersey short. They would do the show from this huge, old auditorium built right on the beach. Again, since he was approaching my neck of the woods, I pulled out a Jersey shore sketch that I had written. I have written about this sketch before as it was preformed by the comedy troupe Style Without Substance. It's a funny sketch and did well in front of audiences. It was a long shot getting PHC to do it. It's not appealing to his demographics at all. And GK doesn't strike me as a beach-guy. But, it was the Jersey shore (I changed the title from "at the beach" to "at the shore"), it was funny and I pulled out the sight gags for radio, so why not?

Us Guys at the Shore

Ghosts of Strikes Past

5/9/2023

Someone on Twitter recently posted his video from the last WGA strike 15 years ago, just to show how little has changed for the studios and what they think of writers. And it's spot on. I'm posting it here, though, because, I'm in it. I'm one of the picket sign holders in the background. I even use a screen-cap of it in my blog header.

This is the writers of the Daily Show putting together a video to explain the reasons for the strike. The WGA wanted to have a picket line in front of the NY Stock Exchange on Broad St. You know, to let the big corporations that own the studios and networks that they were serious. The city wouldn't give them a permit to picket the NYSE, and basically forced them to picket several blocks over by Battery Park. I don't know what passer-bys thought; were we protesting pigeons? Did Castle Clinton alarm us in some manner? Anyway, this was all down by where I work my day job, so I grabbed by WGA jacket, took a long lunch and jumped in the picket line.

Good luck, WGA.

Barely Home Companion - Nose Staple (May '04)

5/5/2023

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...

When I pulled this out and started to read it, I thought, "Yeah, this is gross. I get why they didn't go for it." But now having read the whole thing, it's really very wacky and goofy. And the long fingernail joke goes back to my college days about an accident involving nose-picking and the Guiness book of records for the world's longest fingernails. I use the audio well. It's silly and quick and is a parody of medical commercials. I don't know why PHC looked down their nose at it.

Nose Staple

Barely Home Companion - On Assignment (Apr. 04)

4/28/2023

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...

The war in Iraq was in full swing (along with some other odd nations) and the news was handling it like it was ratings gold; special reports, imbedded reporters, all USA all the time. Another hook was the idea of news reporters being "on assignment" which was a catch-all phrase meaning "none of our business." It was a short bit, but it was a bit worth submitting.

On Assignment

Barely Home Companion - Nicknames (Apr. 04)

4/21/2023

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 don't have much memory of this bit. It's a good idea, but not really well executed. I really choked on the attempts at nicknames for comic effect. And some of it doesn't quite scan well these days. I like the dismissive end line, which calls back the premise of the sketch, where you can't be bothered to remember people's names.

Nicknames

Barely Home Companion - Jokes Illustrated (Apr. 04)

4/14/2023

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...

Okay, I think I lifted this joke from an old public access show I worked on, Big B's Traveling Sideshow (which I had done before). The show had done a bit called "Jokes Illustrated" (not written by me) which did the old time "Masterpiece Theater" bit to old jokes. I wrote a sequel to it, which was a bit more elaborate and never got to do it. So, I pulled it out here, when I might have been stuck for an idea. It's not a bad sketch but it didn't make the cut.

Jokes Illustrated

Dispatches from my DVR: Review of the Pink Panther

4/10/2023

Between TCM and other Retro cable channels, I’ve gotten to see the original Pink Panther movies. One forgets how many of them there were. But I found them and watched them.

The original “Pink Panther” (1963) was one of those early 1960s comedies that was supposed to be a risqué and daring farce with an all-star international cast. And it is that. And there’s Peter Sellers, playing Inspector Clouseau, but here he’s just a conceited policeman who seems a bit clumsy. He’s basically the slapstick comic relief in a plot about The Phantom (a suave jewel thief), Clouseau’s wife (who is in love with the jewel thief), The Phantom’s nephew (who is an aspiring jewel thief) and a princess with a valuable jewel.

The Inspector Clouseau that we came to know and love shows up the following year (1964) in the movie “A Shot in the Dark,” which became the true template for the movies going forward...

comedy, writer, Dan Fiorella, Daniel fiorella, screenplay, sketches,radio,computer games, television writer