| Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large |
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Happy Halloween!! For the end of our Halloween Countdown, let's go with a classic, the Monster Mash, as sung by yours truly. I'm surprised they didn't throw me overboard... Anyway, thanks for following along! And if you like Halloween comedy, check out my book, Halloweenies, available at Amazon! It's all treat and no trick!
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 As mentioned earlier in the month, there's definite overlap between Halloween and Election Day. And the election of 2016 was it's own force. Then you had Negan on The Walking Dead, and he was such an annoying jerk. Mix in the standard charges of Chicago-style voting fraud, were dead citizens were supposedly voting. I had adapted to the longer style, it's kind of a promo, but just to announce the amusing show title and then runs into a plot where I goof on the election, Trump and that season of TWD. It' incredibly topical which means it's well passed it's "use by" date. But we present it here because that's what the internet's for. So, to remind people that Halloween is coming and I have a Halloween book to sell, here is... The Walking Dead Election Special I adore this sketch. Yeah, yeah, it's mine...but I thought it was the quintessential Prairie Home Companion bit. It was Halloween, it was a take on a classic tale and it was ABOUT SOUND EFFECTS. Garrison Keillor loved doing SFX skits on the radio. I thought I nailed it. Alas, it was not to be. I re-did it a couple times. Even got it accepted to a Halloween-themed stage show, but that collapsed when they lost funding. It was part of a radio script I submitted to a contest, but they broke up my anthology 20-minute script and just featured another bit (War of the Worms) from the full script. Oh well... Anyway, all in good fun and here to remind you to get a copy of Halloweenies today! The Tell-Tale SFX Well, here's a brief bit of nonsense. It was originally written for PHC but rejected. I attempted to submit it elsewhere to zero success. It's short. It's goofy. How do you make zombies more terrifying? You remove the one way to kill them; the head shot. But that opens up other problems... Anyway, all in good fun and here to remind you to get a copy of Halloweenies today! The Attack of the Headless Zombies Here's a two-fer for today, a couple of song parodies. I'm not even sure when or for whom I wrote these. Cracked Magazine certainly did song parody lyrics, I night have submitted them there. Prairie Home Companion occassionally would to pop song parodies and I'm pretty certain I sent them out to them. The file I found these in was dated 2006, so I must have pitched them to ACN and All Star Radio to boot. I might have included them in an early draft of my script, "Halloweenies." It's all very fuzzy, like a lollipop at the bottom of a trick-or-treat bag. The song titles are easy to see, but the songs themselves were trickier to scan. So, to remind people that Halloween is coming and I have a Halloween book to sell, here is... Sing-Along Hey, I bet you thought I couldn't get a second Ketchup Advisory Board Halloween sketch rejected by PHC, didn't you? Well I did! Once you caught the rhythms of this bits, they became fun to write, there was a undertow of absurdity to them that I really enjoyed. I mean, this characters were like THISCLOSE to losing it over little stuff. I often would recycle the intro monologue items from previously submitted skits if a piece didn't get used and mixed them in with a new line (It was also a good place to slip in the occassional pop culture reference). The line about the boy off seeking his birth parents was one odd thing I liked and kept pitching. And there's a couple of lines I lifted from my Halloweenies script and the meaning of Halloween. Oh, well. So, to remind people that Halloween is coming and I have a Halloween book to sell, here is... Ketchup Advisory Board: Halloween 2003 Well, here I wrote a sequel to the Halloween bit that didn't get used in 2002. It's people showing up to trick or treat in the middle of the show! Again! But this time I was doing some serious recycling. A lot of the dialogue is lifted from my Halloweenies script (which made its way into the book version, available now on Amazon). The song is one we sang as kids growing up. Plus, I was trying to give the bit a real "Lake Woebegon" feel to it, letting Keillor wax nostalgic at the end. It's very loosey-goosey structure-wise; dialogue triggers a scene; is it a flashback? Is it stream-of-consciousness? Is it a segue? Is it "This is Us?" It's radio! It's any of those things! Thanks, Marconi! I'll note here the format of the sketches. They never gave me a template. I looked at the sketches they posted online and that was the format, a two letter character "name" and dialogue, with a list of the initials and what they stood for at the top. It got tricky coming up with 2 initial characters. Hey, maybe that's why they didn't get picked! And don't forget, Halloweenies on sale at Amazon! Order your copy today! Costumes 2003 Frankly, this is a quirky bit I'm really not surprised didn't make the cut. This was kind of the material that I was starting to generate as I started working on the script version of "Halloweenies" (now available at Amazon). Oddly, I don't have anything like this in the script or the book, misguided older trick-or-treaters. While I did hear GK delivering the lines, the things said weren't necessarily in character for him. But it was a standard PHC bit; Keillor meeting odd people only here, with a Halloween theme. It was radio. I never found myself painting "aural landscapes" with radio. I like to write dialogue, so it's just a series of funny exchanges. Wasn't the first time I'd fall into that trap. Wouldn't be the last. And don't forget, Halloweenies is on sale at Amazon! Order your copy today! Trick or Treat 2002
 Here's a bit that had a real brief shelf life. It was the Halloween after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Then we had the anthrax scare, as envelopes tainted with anthrax were mailed to people and organizations around the country. Everyone in comedy was trying to figure it out, Prairie Home Companion included. I submitted a couple of things. One piece did get on air. One of my efforts that didn't make it to air was this piece, a horror parody about the various mailroom precautions that were being put in place. Re-reading it, I'm surprised that it actually plays out as a long, plotted parody piece, far longer than most of the stuff I submitted. Also, how quickly I was kinda blocking out the real horror and going all-in into the comedy. It's very much of its time, and yet, removed from it as well. And don't forget, Halloweenies is on sale at Amazon! Order your copy today! It Came From the Mailroom Again, when trying to tie the Prairie Home Companion pieces into my desire to write Halloween-themed sketches, the Ketchup Advisory Board would seem to be a natural, right? Who doesn't think of ketchup blood for Halloween? Apparently, a lot of people, because PHC passed on this bit. Some of these things I didn't even bother to re-work and submit elsewhere. Granted, I had some success writing bits for their various Councils and Boards, but a lot missed. In my mind certain bits were so married to the style and pace of PHC, changing them would simply reduce them. Hey, I can think that; it's my mind. Anyway, that really qualifies them as "Skit Happens" subjects. This one is from October 2000... And don't forget, Halloweenies is on sale at Amazon! Order your copy today! Ketchup Advisory Board - Halloween |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. 
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