​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...

Once more I attempted to submit a sketch into one of their regular features and tying it into the Halloween season.  I did several of these ketchup ads over the years and I often recycled some of the opening monologues from a previous one, then added a new one.  I would keep using ones that I was fond of figuring no one had heard any of them yet, so I can just paste it in.  They were never heard.  And they were not sketches I could submit elsewhere, so they died on the vine, the ketchup vine.

Oh, you can still buy my book, to help you re-live your fondest Halloween memories.  Get you copy here.

I actually used to go through the kids candy each Halloween night and extract the lesser sweets and bring them to work, where my co-workers descended on the candy bowl like locust.  Hey, free candy.  It was a tradition for a long time.  Many of my co-workers would approach me Halloween week and ask, "Are you going to bring in candy after Halloween?" and I often replied, "No, my kids are in their twenties now.  They don't trick-or-treat anymore.  I haven't done that for years!  Where have you been?  Go back to the cage."  People hate to lose out on free candy.

​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...

A Halloween commercial parody!  I honestly believe this was a clever and original idea back in 2003.  Now, a quick Google search shows many images of a TGI Friday the 13th logo.  It's quick, filled with puns, screams and voice impressions.  I would say maybe it's too pop-culture-ry, but the pop culture it alludes to was old when I wrote this.  And with the Halloween season upon us, it's got enough Dracula and Karloff to appeal to Boomers.

Right now I'm even to lazy to check to see if I included the sketch between the chapters of my book, "Halloweenies," where the Dad of the family is an aspiring writer and has written all these Halloween sketches to submit to people (Where does he get his ideas???).  You can check it out over at Amazon...

It was a solid bit and I set it around, but it never got picked up anywhere.  Maybe it's made up of too many clams, but I had fun with it.  Maybe I even posted it during one of my Halloween runs in years past.  Could be.  But for Barely Home Companion, this was the next item up.  So, enjoy

The Gospel reading in Mass back in August was from Luke 11:11-12 that went “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?”  That triggered this sketch.  It's not a great sketch, but I could see it as a video somewhere.  I wrote it back in August, and set it up back then for the blog to post now, so it really is a very fresh creation, and very much suffers from one of my "what am I supposed to do with this idea now?" creating apathy.  I put some continued work in the other sketches I had written, but I plateaued pretty quickly on this one, which may also come from the fact that I don't watch Impractical Jokers.  Maybe if I watched it, for background, I'd get more traction for the bit...but again, to what end?  Sorry, this intro is more of a bummer than I had intended...

​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...

And now we enter my favorite time of year, Halloween.  I so desperately wanted to get a Halloween sketch on air.  But I never managed it.  This piece is a little bit of plagiarism.  I lifted the dialogue from my screenplay called "Halloweenies."  Just some stuff with kids discussing the pros and cons of costumes.  I thought I turned it into a sweet little sketch about the importance of the right costume.  

I later adapted the screenplay into a novella called, oddly enough, Halloweenies.  It's the adventures of a 10-year old trying to get the perfect costume.  You should totally check it out.

The song is a little ditty we used to sing as kids.  I think it was written by the same guy who did "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells."  The show had done a version of the song years prior, which was included in the CD set PHC sent me when I first became a writer for the show.  Anyway, it didn't get selected for the show.  But the spirit lives on...

All right, it’s Halloween and the Disney Empire is out there pushing the Sanderson Sisters and the movie “Hocus Pocus 2,” the sequel to the 1993 classic (at least according to my kids) and the Mouse House has certainly been celebrating its success for years.  Here’s the thing, I really can’t warm up to this film.  To me, it’s neither fish nor fowl.  Obviously, the fact that they tied it to Halloween guaranteed its shot at being an annual event in the dawning age of home video (more so now that Disney owns cable TV stations), but it’s kind of a mess of a film.

Let’s start with the title, “Hocus Pocus.”  That’s a stage magician’s magic words, not the spell of witches looking to eat children, WHICH IS THE PLOTLINE. 

It’s a horror comedy, but the horror is weak.  I mean the Sanderson Sisters should be wicked witches, but…they are knuckleheads.  It’s like producing a Bond movie and making the Ritz Brothers the villains.  It’s off kilter.  How can we truly feel the small town is in danger if the dangerous ones are idiots?  A solid horror/comedy works because the comedy allows the release of tension of the horror.  Here, the horror is Moe, Larry & Curly.  

The opening really comes off as an anti-bullying ad.  New kids in town, disgruntled teen, picked on.  His precocious little sister.  The beautiful girl out of the teen’s league.  THIS is the stuff of 1950’s B-picture horror (ie, the Blob, I Was a Teenage Werewolf). They uncover/unleash a horror on the community and no one will believe them!  But instead of unleashing the Creature with the Atomic Brain or a sea monster, they release the Wise-Crackin’.  While we often see movies where the villain is played straight, but saddled with minions who are the comic relief, here the Sanderson sisters are their own comic relief.
Once the Sanderson Sisters come back, we enter into a brief “fish out of water” comedy, where they have to adjust to the modern world.  But that doesn’t last long.  In fact, in no time at all, they’re singing Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ hit “I Put a Spell on You.”  Then it’s back to the “eat all the children” plot.

I mean, Bette Midler can handle it all, singing, exasperation at her sisters, cracking-wise and the panic of doom.  But, to me, this doesn’t make for a good villain.  The closest I can think of this type are Disney cartoon villains who are often so self-absorbed and focused on their villainous scheme that they come off as comedic, but still need a long-suffering assistant to reflect that.

And this isn't something new for me.  The first time I saw "Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" I was really bothered by the fact they turned Lou Costello into a Hyde monster for the big chase scene, which just reduced the horror of the real Hyde and made the whole thing silly.  Especially when they turned him into a mouse earlier in the picture.  And this coming from the team that practically created the comedy/horror movie with "Meet Frankenstein."

​My biggest beef with the movie?  The close of the second act, where the witches are lured into a pottery furnace and burned up.  Burning witches is totally a thing.  It looks like our heroes won.  Then a short while later, the sisters just come back from the ether.  It’s like they just changed their minds and decided not to be burned to death.  It’s not even like they justified the return at all, the heroes could have opened the spell book earlier and somehow that draws them back, but no, they just reappear.  All because movies dictated that there had to be a "pause" in the action at that point in the script. Darn those 1990s screenplay templates.

Meanwhile, what is the deal with the zombie?  He’s all about helping the witches, until he’s not.  Again, sure, he’s under a spell and forced to…until he’s not.  And frankly, is anyone else kinda grossed out that Garry Marshall and his SISTER Penny Marshall are playing a married couple?  Ewwww.  People carry on about Luke and Leia kissing in “Star Wars,” but not a mention about this.  And what is the deal that the witches can’t enter the “hallow ground” of the cemetery, except for the end, where Midler falls off her broom and then fights with the boy?  She seems to be handling the “hallowed ground” thing pretty well.

I know I’m in the minority about this but I concede the film has some good moments and pays homage to the tropes of the teenage horror genre.  The special effects are really good, although I have issues with two of the witches exploding at sunrise while Bette Midler gets to turn to stone, then explode. I mean, you want to set up a sequel, you have them all turn to stone, right?  I’ve sat through the movie numerous times leading up to Halloween, but my reaction is always the same; oh well.  Anyway, have a happy Halloween and stay away from black flame candles.

Next Time: I gripe about Jim Carey's Grinch movie.

Full disclosure: I have no idea where this sketch came from.  I even checked my journals and I only mention I had to re-work it some more because it wasn't gelling.  I can't remember what inspired it.  I don't remember the context.  And I forgot it existed until I started doing this.  Weirdly, the last piece I posted, "I've Got A Secret Agent," was written in full in my journal.  The idea popped into my head going to work and I just wrote it out.  I digress. Homeland Security was very much in the news.  As the elections approached, DHS and the Bush Administration kept putting out "Orange Alerts" every time a poll came out showing Democrats were in the lead.  Everything and everyone was in danger at one point or the other.  And I'm sure the administration proposed some goofy idea about getting people to get their house numbers done so they'd be easier to see.  These are the same people who brought your "Freedom Fries."  It's not a bad little sketch, a commercial parody that segues into political satire, which, to me, makes it a stronger piece.  But (and you saw this coming, I know) it got rejected.  So, dial your way-back machine to 2003 and enjoy: 

The wife has been binging "Grey's Anatomy" (again) and with everything that goes on in that hospital, it's surprising that anyone got cured at all.  So many times, a scene with the family goes "We did what we could for her" and "she died peacefully."  You hear that enough times and you start to wonder, what if they didn't?  What if she didn't? What if those things were unexplainable.  It turned into on of those "snowball" sketches, where you set the premise and just watch things got downhill and get worse.  It's a Pythonseque bit of nonsense, but I enjoyed writing it.  I actually wrote it over a series of days, jotting down a few lines, then coming back to it when thing slowed down and then finally put it all in order.