​​​​​​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 more I read over this George W. sketches, the more I see how the GOP has been running the same con since the Tea Party days.  One of Bush's staff took the squeaker of a win, declared it a mandate and bragged that they now created the reality that the nation had to live in.  Before there was "alternate facts" there was "truthiness," where people made pronouncements based on their "gut feelings" about issues.  And basing the sketch on things that the administration had been saying, I extended out to a sketch.

Bush was a "regular" on the show, the show had an excellent performer who did a slick Bush,   and I even managed to get s Bush sketch on air.  I often wrote up one as my topical humor submission but there were no guarantees.

Now we can see how Trump saw this behavior and how it dovetailed so nicely into his branding and worldview (or lack thereof).  Only he was bright enough to run things and everyone else was wrong.  I mean, how much of a leap is it to go from calling "disloyal" to "enemies of the state."  The rogues who now run the party aren't held back by traditions, rules or laws.  So they just declare something and work from that premise.

See how I called it back in 2005:

​​​​​​Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News.  During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the 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 the hang of the paper at first, but I did eventually start having success getting articles published, under the byline "Jerome Howard."

I wish I could remember where some of these ideas came from, but I don't.  But there was a period of time (the 20th century), when looks were very important and companies had a policy of hiring attractive people.  Once we entered the 21st Century, there was some pushback to that concept, so those people were then fired and replaced with more attractive lackies. 

We were coming to the era when the idea of hostile work environment and the men's club of business were being challenged.  I feel like there was an actual event or lawsuit reported that might have triggered this story but I'm drawing a blank.  I'm actually surprised this was my, er, I mean Jerome's first byline.  I thought there were one or two stories before it.  Nevertheless, we were off and running!

I must have pitched it.  I followed the WWN template; the AP guidelines, quotes, counterpoints and the names of the people involved.  Usually, I'd take a friend's name and twist it.  

Well here's a coincidence; while going through some computer files, I came upon this article I had written back in 2007.  I had forgotten all about it.  When WWN cease publication, I used the moment to hype my relationship with the paper.  Honestly, I forget who I send this out to.  I can't remember if it got picked up anywhere.  And I didn't post it to the blog. 

​I was going through I period where someone had suggested I need to put more of myself in my prose.  I tried to go the Erma Bombeck/Dave Barry route and write about my experiences.  In the end, no one cared about that stuff either.  But, I was in that frame of mind when WWN went belly up, so I tried to sum up my experiences in a jaunty tale.

It's a pretty decent encapsulation, and I seem more sure of my memories of things back then.  It's a good companion piece to my WWN memories and blog posts of late.  I hope you think so, too.  

​Thanks for reading!

Well, an era has passed.  An era filled with bat-boys, aliens, Elvises and the wacky adventures of Bigfoot.  In August (2007), the Weekly World News ceased publication.  Sure, none of you actually bought it (or admitted to it) but you all followed the exploits of the World’s Fattest Man and Bin Laden as you stood in line at Pathmark.  With the demise of the paper, I think now my vow of silence can be broken.  I wrote for the Weekly World News (or World Weekly News, I was never sure) for a number of years.  I was ace investigative reporter Jerome Howard.  I was the guy who reported on the talking pig.  I was Dear Dottie.
     

     At its peak in the 1980s, the paper had 1.2 million readers.  Not bad for an after thought; the paper was born in 1979 when The National Enquirer switched over to full color presses in an effort to gain some respectability (no more “boy eats family” stories for them).  Rather than junk the old black and white presses, they decided to print out-right junk.  The Weekly World News became the home of all the news that didn’t fit.

     Now, oddly, the same people who owned WWN came to own the humor magazine Cracked (R.I.P.) I was a contributing writer there.  The editor of the WWN was a huge fan of Cracked and got the parent company (American Media, their motto: “Now checking all our mail for anthrax.”) to let him be editor.  That didn’t quite go as planned.  So while Cracked stumbled along with months growing into many months between issues, they decided to try and keep the writing staff together by offering them writing gigs at WWN. 

     Always up for a gig (especially since I had just gotten comfortable using the word “gig”), I submitted some stuff.  None of it quite met their standards.  And they did have them.  They followed AP prose style.  All their articles had to be reported as fact.  No obvious jokes.  The more outrageous the subject, the more detailed the facts had to be.  And if the story sounded that unbelievable, then, by all means, have a named expert quoted as saying “this is impossible.”  That was one of the keys to their success.  The stories always lurked on the outskirts of doubt at the intersection of plausible and fiction.  Also, to eliminate the chance of someone actually having first-hand knowledge to refute a story, they told us to dateline the article in an obscure region of the country or overseas (“Remember,” our editor told us, “It’s the Weekly World News”).

     Anyway, my attempts at plausible fiction were---what’s the term---Lame.  In the end I was offered the gig of their advice columnist, Dottie Primrose.  It was much like “Dear Abby” if Abby were a snotty harpy who despised her readers and only answered made-up questions that she wrote herself.  So with only a word processor and my twisted wits, I got in touch with my inner-bitch and began pounding out “Dear Dottie” columns.  I tackled questions concerning fat people on airplanes, crude dudes who couldn’t get dates, despondent telemarketers and witch wedding protocol. No matter the topic, every column had one common theme; people are really quite stupid. I managed to vent a lot of anger through that column.

     Not long after, there were some management changes.  The old Cracked-crew was out and some new editors were named.  I was taken off active Dottie duty but now had gotten a handle on the WWN news style and was able to launch the career of my nom-de-tabloid, ace reporter Jerome Howard.  I uncovered the outsourcing of jobs to outer space, the final hiding place of the Holy Grail (a bus locker in Mexico City) and the discovery of the dangers of secondhand cholesterol.  I reported on rouge icebergs bent on maritime revenge, outbreaks of Spontaneous Human Combustion due to global warning and low-carb communion wafers for the weight-watching Catholic.  Man, you can’t make this stuff up.  Well, actually, you can.

     The paper’s readership straddled the trailer parks and the college campuses, each getting what they needed from it.  When college kids found out I wrote for the paper (no mean feat as I didn’t make a habit of telling anyone.  Ever.), they were impressed (go figure).  When real letters started coming in for “Dear Dottie” they were very serious.  They took offense to my rude answers to poor souls seeking help, they asked for real advice, they sent in recipes and a couple proposed marriage.  They weren’t my type.  I wonder if my replacement took them up on it?

The Weekly World News became a pop-culture icon, giving us the award-winning off-Broadway play, Bat Boy: The Musical, the plot device of Mike Myers' “So I Married an Axe Murderer” and showing up in “Men in Black,” as being the home to the "best damn investigative reporting on the planet."  In 1992, WWN’s alien-in-resident, P’Lod, was photoshopped shaking hands with Bill Clinton and then George Bush.  And each acknowledged the tribute to the Main Stream Media on the campaign trail.

     WWN had long presented itself as covering the stories nobody else thought to.  Its slogan was “Nothing but the True.”  But as readership dropped, a new regime was brought it.  The offices were moved from Florida to New York and suddenly there were subtle changes.  For starters, they now ran a disclaimer, “The reader should suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment." Who puts a disclaimer on the truth?  The tone changed.  Stories had to have consistency from issue to issue.  I had a story spiked that oil companies had had discovered living dinosaurs in the Amazon and planned to killed them all to make more oil because the editor’s brother had been doing a series of articles about an explorer’s adventures in the Amazon and in one episode he found dinosaurs.  Apparently, the two concepts conflicted.  The paper formed a clique of writers and the opportunities for freelancers like myself dried up.  I got one or two further articles in the paper, but my time had passed.  And now the WWN’s time has passed.  Ha!*  

Why is it gone?  Maybe people can get their fake news on the Internet (RushLimbaugh.com).  Maybe people who were in on the joke didn’t like that fact that the paper was now letting everyone in on the joke.  And maybe the people who believed it was possible didn’t like that it was just a joke.  Maybe people just don’t want their news in black & white anymore.
​
Good-bye Bat-Boy, P’Lod, and Bigfoot.  Farewell Jerome and Dottie and the hussy they brought in to replace her.  And mostly, good-by supplemental income.  You’ll all be missed.
 
*Bitter?  Who me?

Reading this bit and doing the math, I think I was inspired by my parents' anniversary party.  They reached 50 years in December 2005 and we threw them a party.  Nothing major, but a nice restaurant for 60 or so.  There was no get fights or anything, but the usual family dynamics continued to be in play.  Again, nothing major, but enough to get the "What if-?" part of my brain thinking and slowly assemble this sketch.  I forget how I decided to my the speakers the jerks but it seemed like the natural thing to do.  And I had fun coming up with the various Ben acts that only reenforced their opinions of him.  Until you realize, maybe they're wrong.  I've certainly seen that happen occasionally. 

Unfortunately (for me), they didn't use it.  It's not a bad little sketch.  And it seems like something I could repurpose for various festivals I'm submitting to nowadays.  We'll see.  Until such time, we present it here:

​​​​​​​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.

Between the holidays and preoccupation this was the first hashtag game I fell back into.  And it's a pretty solid return.  I almost didn't do it because I'm not a music guy at all.  I mean, I like music and I listen to songs, but I can't name bands or years or groups.  So I came into this blind.  Fortunately, the internet exists and I looked up a list of 90s bands.  And even a few 90s groups, too.  So Happy New Year, everyone!

​​​​​​Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News.  During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the 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 the hang of the paper.  I spent a couple of months grappling with Dear Dottie and her advice column.  When I got phase out of that position, I had to try to work my way back in with some straight foreword news stories.  

I can't remember if anyone gave me any encouraging words to hang in there, but I did get an idea to pitch to them.  And they liked it enough to run with it.  Here I was informed of how an article had to work.  The premise, of course, had to be handled as if it were an actual event.  Drop in names and quotes to support the idea.  In the article they strongly advised us to have opposing opinions within the articles.  To them, that's what make the idea more believable, that we have show that some people aren't buying it.  Then their graphic department would go to town to bring it all to life.

With this knowledge, I tackled my first WWN story and "Dan Fiorella, Reporter."  It was also the last appearance of "Dan Fiorella, Reporter."  Somewhere between this article and my next one, it occurred to me that maybe having a by-line in the WWN would not translate well to my so-called "writing career."  There were many who looked down on the National Enquirer and the WWN (their reputation has skidded further downhill since back then).  I honestly feared that others wouldn't get the joke about writing for the tabloid so all my future stories were submitted under a nom de plume. 

By coincidence, I've been running these WWN posts 22 years to the weeks they had run.  I'm going to lose that synchronization here.  There was a gap between my last Dear Dottie and my first article, then multiple gaps of time between them.  This surprised me as I remembered this all running my stories more frequently.  Oh, well.

More to come...

​​​​​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 2005, we were still getting the TSA up to speed.  9/11 had forced them to up their game and handle more people and more situations.  Shoe bombs, underwear bombs, crying babies, were all now turning up as weapons against the west.  Scanning technology was still being refined, so the TSA had to approach their task from different angles.  

They went with inter-personal skills.  Sure, watching the baggage was important, but who was watching and judging the passengers?  As I learned about TSA training, I thought it was a premise for a solid bit.  Without any fanfare, I simply churned it out as an episode of a series.  No "next on public radio," no "welcome to another chapter," I just launched into it, without even specifically making GK the announcer.  

​I happen to like this bit, but I took a pass on it.  Oh, well.

​​​​​Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News.  During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the 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 the hang of the paper but first the editor suggested I do the "Letter and Answer" format for their Dear Abby-style advice column, except that their "expert," Dottie, was a bitch.  I struggled with the format, kinda of recycling various jokes and bits I had over the years into a letter format with a snotty answer

Well, good-by, Dottie!

Let's see; we got an Odd Couple reference.  A take on the lawsuits that were popping up over fat kids and fast food, a look at menopause, along with a nod to the movie Psycho and some straight-up jokes in the Confidentials.  It's a middling effort at best, which is a shame, as it was my last column.  Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure the reason I don't have a 12/24 column is because they asked someone else to do it.  It was his try-out and they must have liked it.  I wasn't so much as fired as replaced, because they were still willing to read my submissions.  By this time I was started to get the vibe of the paper and began pitching story ideas for articles.  And it was a better fit.  I hope you agree as I continue these WWN entries.

So, good-by Dotti, and be a dear; don't let the door hit you on the butt on your way out.  Actually, that doesn't work, as she remained but for only a few years more.  They ended up revamping the column in 2005, (which was part of a whole bigger thing) replacing Dotti Primrose with "Hi Dolly."  So, I guess I got out of the advice columnist business just in time (wink-wink).

In hindsight, a stronger column would have been nice, but if I were capable of stronger columns, I wouldn't have been "transferred" to field reporting...

​​​​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...

Don't recall much about this sketch, but upon reading it, it's pretty cute.  I stared going for a SFX sketch, which I liked to do because a) it's radio [duh], b) it was a recurring bit for the show and c) I hoped the SFX guy might like it and try to push for it to get more air time.  I noticed I got a Walmart joke in there, with the proto-War on Christmas the right would rant about even though it was corporate America that practiced the generic "Happy Holidays" so they wouldn't have to order different signs every week from autumn to year's end. 

But it starts as a SFX bit then slides into the absurd, which works then caps it all for with a salute to noise makers.  Again, I think PHC missed a bet here not using it, but that was par for the course in the mid-naughts for me.  Enjoy the read and happy New Year's!

​​​​​​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.

The last hashtag game before the holidays.  I skipped the previous week, I just didn't care for the topic.  This one came up and it was a bit of work.  WH had grabbed all the good ones, (which you can tell by the fact they posted all of theirs0 so the rest were a job.  In the end, I don't think I came up with more that 10, but I got 6 included on the WH site, so that's something.  Merry Christmas, happy holidays and I guess we'll see this stuff return in the new year!