Category: Barely Home Companion - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Putin's on the Fritz (May '05)

5/17/2024

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...

Vladimir Putin, what ever happened to him? Back in 2005, he was the leader of Russia and its young democracy. It was a tough time for Russia, so Putin came up with a novel idea; stay president for life by holding bogus elections. Sure, he paid lip service to the concept helping spread freedom, but his heart wasn't in it. I decided to write up something, then this title popped into my head. It became a song parody, which is a risky thing to submit. Sure, I got "The 12 Days of Christmas" up, but nothing else. They did the song parodies occasionally, so it wasn't an unheard of concept, but in my waning days, I was throwing everything I had, whenever an idea presented itself, at PHC. This one didn't stick either.

Putin's on the Fritz

Barely Home Companion - Hedda's Cheese Shoppe (May '05)

5/10/2024

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...

Here I'm stealing from myself. I had written a script about a less-than-stellar trip we to Wisconsin. It was a natural for a script; a bunch of native New Yorkers go to Wisconsin for a wedding. A real fish-out-of-water story. Most of the script was based on actual events, including a trip to the cheese shop. We had time to kill, the hotel was connected, physically connected, to the mall, so we decided to check it out. And there we came upon a cheese shop. There was a culture gap between that way we in New York talk about cheese and the rest of the world. New Yorkers use Italian words that Italy doesn't even use. It was a brief stop, but enough occurred that it inspired this scene in my screenplay. As I often did, when I was low on ideas, I'd pull something out of the files and dust it off and make it pretty. It remains a short bit, but with my habit of writing odd store sketches, it seemed to be a natural. And like the many shop sketches before, it was rejected.

Hedda's Cheese Shoppe

Barely Home Companion - Bush Press Conference (May '05)

5/3/2024

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...

You all remember George W. Bush, right? He was the former holder of the title "Worst President" until present circumstances happened. I mean, he didn't seem like a bad guy, but he never struck anyone as the sharpest crayon in the box. He always looked like he was in over his head, and the fact that his vice president, the self-appointed Dick Cheney, seemed to be running the show didn't help that impression. Also, he supported terrible policies, but had sense enough to not to push too hard. He allowed a terrorist attack but then signed a big corporate tax cut and that seemed to even things out.

He had a folksy charm and was in the habit of handing out nicknames to members of the press. This is a short sketch, practically a black out, where I just took that sole idea and ran with it. PHC did to political humor and W was one of his running targets. Cast member Tim Russell did a good impression of W and he often popped up in bits. I occasionally submitted Bush skits, so I kind of figured this might give me a leg up on getting picked. It did not.

Bush Press Conference

Barely Home Companion - Homonyms! (Apr '05)

4/26/2024

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...

Ah, yes, homonyms. I've actually written about this sketch before, here. It was a silly idea that just came together. I thought the wordplay would naturally work for PHC. They passed. Later on, I pulled it out again to my other radio outlets. They passed as well. As I wrote on the blog, one place was a maybe, then the same-titled sketch appeared on the show 30 Rock. That pretty much pulled the rug out from this bit. Here it is, the PHC version:

Homonyms!

Barely Home Companion - GuestStar (Apr '05)

4/19/2024

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 before GPS, the big development was OnStar, a direct connect to roadside assistance. You pushed a button and you were speaking with someone who could help. I had done a couple of OnStar parodies, especially after GPS systems began offering character and celebrity voice options. I wrote this one up special for PHC, for their voice guy, Tim Russell. Same goofy premise, you turn on the service and some celebrity pipes in to guide you along. I thought it was a clever bit and a natural for the show. Maybe I should have padded it out a bit and inserted the voices full names in each. They didn't pick it. So, here it is, long passed its "sell-by" date:

GuestStar

Barely Home Companion - Law & Order: Fashion Police (Apr. '05)

4/12/2024

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...

Rereading this after all these years I now realize this bit is short, it's based on an old red carpet show trope and it was a TV show parody, which means it never stood a chance of getting picked to go on air. Fashion week in NY was usually around April and maybe that's what inspired me to write it up. I can imagine that I saw no reason to try and punch it up or make it longer, so I went with short and sweet. After all, who needed yet another Law & Order parody back in 2005?

Law & Order: Fashion Police

Barely Home Companion - NYC Olympics (Apr. '05)

4/5/2024

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...

Granted, I've done these "Olympic" sketches before, coming up with wacky events, but I have no recollection of this particular one. After a hiatus, The PHC troupe was back in New York City. They news at the time was the city was making a bid to host the 2012 Olympics (spoiler alert: They didn't). It was a very bizarre time. The mayor was pushing for it. But, frankly the citizens didn't want it to happen. It would have actually been a tri-state Olympics, with events spilling over into NJ, CT, upstate NY and even Staten Island. It was the perfect bit for radio; ridiculous visuals that you couldn't possibly do, sound effects galore and a steady patter of jokes. Funny bit. They didn't use it. Maybe that's why NYC lost its bid...

NYC Olympics

Barely Home Companion - Mock Barriers (Mar '05)

3/29/2024

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...

Working in lower Manhattan, people were still very security conscious. But it had gotten to ridiculous levels. Buildings all over NY had begone erecting stone and cement blocks in front of their buildings to prevent terrorist attacks. I should point out here that 9/11 was an air attack, so---? Some tried to make them look artful. Others had them designed as planters. Most just put out big cement blocks. I wasn't impressed, so I wrote a sketch. PHC wasn't impressed, they didn't use it. Maybe there could have been more to it, pad it out, do sound effects, but I was just going through the paces at this point (again).

And this was after the show was off the air for a month. My last sketch was submitted the end of February and here it was the end of March. You'd think I would have been chumping at the reins to get new material to them.

Mock Barriers

Barely Home Companion - New Bush Budget (Feb '05)

2/23/2024

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...

I wrote this 19 years ago? Man, here's a skit whose time had come again. I have no memory of this, what inspired it or writing. I had small kids back then and they were always sick, so that could have been part of it. I'd really forgotten about this sketch, otherwise I would have tried to do something with it during COVID. It's not any more stupid than ingesting bleach or sticking a light where the light don't shine.

The idea of wrapping kids in bubble wrap was something I would use again, working on an industrial PSA for safety. I submitted a sample and got the gig, but then I had issues with the "notes" they were issuing and how they wanted to keep repeating the bubble wrap gag, despite me giving them several different variations.

Bubble Boy Wrap

Barely Home Companion - Copyright Pirates (Feb '05)

2/16/2024

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 upon a time we used to watch movies on video tape cassettes. The home video market was exploding as people wanted to get the latest release ASAP and for cheap. Enter the video pirates, people who would go into movie theaters and record movies off the screen with their cam-corders. This was before cellphones when sneaking a video camera into a theater could be tricky. I think that's all the context you need to read the bit. It was a hot topic back then and I had attempted to tackle it a couple of times. Just merging the ideas of high-tech and classic pirates was too strong to resist. Who doesn't like a sketch with pirate lingo? PHC, apparently. They didn't bite.

Copyright Pirates

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