博客存档 - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Hashtag, You're It! - #Icky Action Movies

6/27/2025

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 them on X (Twitter) and some of them get selected for inclusion to their online site.

This was a redo. They did this one fairly recently. In fact, that was pinned to the top of their Twitter feed until they ran this one. Oh, yeah, I was away, so I missed the last couple of games and now I'm posting this from two weeks ago. I got a respectable 5 selected, and I was the lead off for the post. It's about as blue as I've worked, but it's not gross. Check it out for yourself:

It's Stage Craft! - The Proposal

6/27/2025

Delighted to share the news that my monologue, "The Proposal," has been included in the June 2025 issue of Mini Plays Review, which is all about love.

Barely Home Companion - Lucky Penny (June '06)

6/27/2025

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, the show didn't run this late into June, but apparently I actually submitted multiple sketches as the season ended. And look now: how timely is this sketch? It's about eliminating the penny. To remind everyone, they have been talking about stopping the minting of pennies forever (certainly since 2006). But now, because a certain South African got involved, it's suddenly the best idea since sliced bread. Additionally, this was a road show, there were in Illinois that week and I was trying to come up with a geo-centric sketch, thinking that might get me some consideration. Pennies were in the news, Lincoln is on the penny, hey, you see where this is going, right? I don't know if they did, but I wasn't used.

Lucky Penny

Barely Home Companion - Mel's Dinner (Jun. '06)

6/20/2025

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...

Wow, I must have been in a slum this week. This is an old sketch of mine, written originally for the group Style Without Substance. It was one of their go-to pieces and they did it several times during their existence. It's a funny sketch. It also involves several women, which could have been one of the reasons PHC didn't use it. I had to tone it down a bit for radio. But this was written I my vaudeville/Python period; silly premise, building jokes, odd logic. It's a solid bit, but in the end, it probably is better on video.

I've linked to the Style version we did for Staten Island Public Access TV.

MEL’S DINNER

Barely Home Companion - New York, New York (Jun. '06)

6/13/2025

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...

Back in 2006, Bush Jr. proposed a budget where "New York City would get $6.7 million less from the State Homeland Security Grant Program than in 2006." There was a lot of pushback on this because, you know, New York had actually been attacked on 9/11 and not any of the areas where they were looking to increase the security grants. The only way to address that would be with a song parody to the tune of "New York, New York, A Wonderful Town."

New York, New York

Hashtag, You're It! - #Icky Action Movies

6/10/2025

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 them on X (Twitter) and some of them get selected for inclusion to their online site.

Only 2? I only got 2 in? I was robbed. Granted, a lot of cereals have the word "pop" in it which can easily be changed to "poop," but why discount them all? I'm annoyed they didn't use my favorite, Nort 'n Honey. But I kinda screwed that one up, spelling it as Norton Honey, attaching a gif of Ed Norton from the Honeymooners, but I didn't include a picture of the cereal Nut 'n' Honey to better set up the gag. Oh, and I did it because Norton is famously a sewer worker. Yeah, I'm starting to realize that joke is too clever for its own good. But it's not a lengthy list of "winners" this week. Even the official WH entries seem light. Well, here's the link to the WH page:

Barely Home Companion - Hollywood School of Accents (May '06)

6/6/2025

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 ideas I had kicking around for a while when I was able to utilize the talent pool at PHC to help reenforce some stereotypes. It was a goofy, fun piece that meant no harm and spun back on a Midwest twist. I worked in some SFX, which I thought would lock this down. It didn't. But I do like the school slogan. I think it's pretty funny.

Hollywood School of Accents

All the News Fit to Fake- Rebuilding New Orleans (11/21/05)

6/4/2025

Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company that owned the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor (the long time editor of WWN), in an attempt to give the Cracked writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get my footing but soon I was working on some straight-forward fake news stories.

This was the end of the line for me. Back in May 2005, the paper decided to go "Bolder+Bigger+Better" and they started making a lot of editorial changes (as well as editors). This would be Jerome Howard's last byline in the paper. Post-Katrina (and after declaring war on weather) the only logical move would be to bring in every home improvement reality show and have them rebuild the city. Is it that far-fetched, really? I'm surprised some producer wasn't pitching it at the time.

But like I said, new blood had been pumped in. They ditched Dear Dottie for another fake advice columnist. They attempted to introduce new "recurring" characters. And the story process got altered. They didn't want any story, willy-nilly. They were looking for continuity from issue to issue. No longer could the paper say the hellmouth was discovered in Portland and then a few issues later say the hellmouth was located under a Pizza Hut in New Jersey. A lot of us stringers got cut loose. Sure, they allowed us to submit new stories, but they didn't allow themselves to buy any of them. It was a kick in the teeth for me at the time, too. I went into this, reluctantly, embarrassed by it and in the end I started to get a kick out of the whole set up. I'm glad Google has the issues stored online and that I had the chance to post them here (grabbing the Google screen caps, which were much better than my attempts to scan my issues). Long live Bat-boy!

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