TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life.
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 From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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... Again, dealing with comedy, post 9/11, I attempted to deal with something that was going on with my daily commute to work. All buildings were requiring IDs to get in and around the office buildings. Everyone had the same basic lanyards (or those guys who left the card in their wallet and would then hip check the scanner). It wasn't until later I started to see "fun" lanyards with designs on them. But before they appeared, I wrote this. It didn't get used and we probably lost out on a fortune by not planting our flag on the fashionable lanyard planet. Secure Fashions TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life.  So, last week, the producers of TMI: Hollywood decided to try and put together a Christmas show. It's one of the troupe's annual traditions and they've been having so much fun and success doing TMI: Daily on Zoom, it seemed like a great way to get the cast together. When they made the announcement to the cast about doing new Christmas sketches, they made it sound like they had material. When I, as a writer, asked where the material was coming from, they said they were hoping the writers would submit. It was a two-day window, but I actually came up with two decent ideas, and despite the insanity of the day job, I was able to knock out the pages. Both skits are VERY pandemic related, so they (hopefully) won't have shelf life 'til next Christmas, so I'll be presenting them here. But, neither made the cut. I've been watching a lot of versions of A Christmas Carol this season, and reading about theater groups doing versions of it virtually, so the idea of the spirits' intervention as a Zoom conference call played out in my head nicely and flowed so easily onto the page. I hope you can see it and enjoy it! A Zoom Carol 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 bits I really loved. I loved when I got the idea. I loved how it flowed as I wrote it, I loved how it came out. And how I kept adapting it as prose, stage sketch and here as a radio bit. It was coming on the end of the year, which meant many companies were dealing with medical plan renewals and sign-ups. It's one of those things you hate to do, but have to. And the plan never seems to get better as the company forces into a new plan. I decided to hit on that and how it felt. And this was years before Obamacare was even a thing. I thought it was a winner but it didn't get used. Medieval Medical TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. TMI: Holiday 2020
From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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...
Meanwhile, back at life in post 9/11...With the hunt on for Osama Bin Laden after the terrorist attacks, there were lots of reports of where he was alleged to be. And he kept releasing videos. And kept declaring one jihad after another, to keep his base energized. And that's where the idea for this sketch came from, that he's in the cave reduced to declaring jihads on every little annoyance. Seemed like a classic sketch premise.
Now what they did to it was use the premise, use the gags, reorder them, reword them and then have it wander off into some weird winter wonderland bit. And for that, the credit reads: © Garrison Keillor 2001, additional material by Dan Fiorella
I often joked that Garrison Keillor was exactly the kind of guy the WGA was created to fight. As I've said before, GK was pretty random with credits and here is the strongest display of his randomness. It's obviously my work, tinkered with. I am hardly the "additional material," he is. Hey, yeah, it's been a long time, but if I just silently accept it, the terrorists win. But as some outsider, I was grateful to be reminded that they were still reading my submissions and seeing stuff good enough to use. And pay for. Here's my version of the skit followed by the broadcast version that PHC archived here.
Bin Laden, Done That After getting nothing in last week, I got a goodly number of jokes in this week, even with striking out on 2 of those days. The coin flip toss joke punch line was fixed by someone who understands football better than I, but the basic joke was intact. I'm taking credit for the Mitch McConnell joke because they took my set-up and re-used the "gridlock" punchline for an earlier "Biden elected" joke I got in. Maybe that's a "running gag" they want to keep using. The pro-life joke punchline was extended to explain what my original gag "Except for all the dead people" alluded to. And there was some re-phrasing and added words to the Dissing the GOP joke and the Russia joke. Surprisingly, they took my ball drop line as is, and it was one of the more off-beat lines I submitted. And the Santa joke was basically changed from a random guy to making it a Trump joke, and that totally makes sense. TMI: Hollywood will be doing the Daily Updates as stand-alones until 12/22, and I think they may have a surprise or two before the end of the year, so keep checking their FB page for postings. Have a pleasant week, all and stay safe!  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... Leading up to Christmas time seems like a logical time to make fun of some of the Christmas gift commercials that actually get on the air. Except at PHC, where topical is atypical. The idea was silly and funny and I thought short enough to get too analyzed. But it relies way to heavily on pop culture and TV, always GK's blind spot. Needless to say, they didn't use it. HOUSE OF CHIA From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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 show was off on one of its road trips in December 2001, and, as usual, they liked to put together material for the host city. This week it was Buffalo and, well, I probably didn't feel like doing much, so I wrote a bit about Buffalo wings. It's one of my patented "lesser known" bits where I look at the earlier or later versions of something that would be more humorous than the actual item. Plus, I copied and pasted in the chicken wing stuff from Wikipedia, maybe. The show didn't go for it. I feel like I may have attempted to re-work it into another radio bit when I found out there was a "Nation Buffalo Wings" day. Here's the version that was submitted to PHC: Buffalo Wings 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 one I knew never had a chance. It's just some silliness I wrote up and then grabbed it for PHC. They had a reoccurring character, a fashion model, Cynthia Maxwell, and I figured I'd adapt it for her, maybe actor Sue Scott would set in and fight for another role. Alas, no. I'm sure mispelling "midriff" throughout didn't help my chances either. American Society for the Prevention of Midrift Abuse |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. 
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