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

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Popeye's New Spinach Song (Sep. '06)

9/19/2025

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 the fall of '06, there was an outbreak of E-coli in fresh spinach. So, naturally, I had to rush out and write up a quick song parody to submit to the song that week, as a second submission. That also was rejected.

Popeye's New Spinach Song

Barely Home Companion - I Wanna be a Pirate (Sep. '06)

9/12/2025

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...

We got to see the big Broadway musical "The Producers" and I really enjoyed it a lot. It was fun and wacky and broke the 4th wall. And the songs were really good, simple with hooks that pulled you in. I didn't get to see it with the original stars, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, but what are you gonna do? This one tune hit me. It's the "Want Song," where a character realizes what he wants to get from the story. Here, it's literally called "I Wanna Be a Producer." Also at the time, the big movie for the period was "Pirates of the Caribbean." Naturally, I decided to combine them for this wacky musical parody. And try to turn it into a useable PHC sketch for the start of the 2006-2007 season. It didn't get picked, but it's a cute little ditty, even though I can no longer recall the tune. And now? Pirate musicals are all the rage.

I Wanna be a Pirate

Barely Home Companion - LADIES OF THE HOUSE (June '06)

7/4/2025

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 was for the 20065-2006 season finale, and I don't know where my head was at. This sketch was from the files. I had written it as a one act for a theater group Pen to Stage. An actress there saw it and really liked it. She was part of a group in NJ called Style Without Substance and wanted to know if she could use it for that. I agreed. She got to do it in one of Style's shows and because of that, I got to submit other material to the group and become a writer member of the group. But I must have really felt drained that I would pull it this off the hard drive. I played with it to make it audio. I've kind of forgotten about it because I should certainly pull it out to submit to all the mini-play festivals I'm submitting to now. I'll have to keep this one in mind. It's not like anyone heard it on the radio, because PHC passed...

LADIES OF THE HOUSE

Barely Home Companion - Lucky Penny (June '06)

6/27/2025

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...

Okay, the show didn't run this late into June, but apparently I actually submitted multiple sketches as the season ended. And look now: how timely is this sketch? It's about eliminating the penny. To remind everyone, they have been talking about stopping the minting of pennies forever (certainly since 2006). But now, because a certain South African got involved, it's suddenly the best idea since sliced bread. Additionally, this was a road show, there were in Illinois that week and I was trying to come up with a geo-centric sketch, thinking that might get me some consideration. Pennies were in the news, Lincoln is on the penny, hey, you see where this is going, right? I don't know if they did, but I wasn't used.

Lucky Penny

Barely Home Companion - Mel's Dinner (Jun. '06)

6/20/2025

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...

Wow, I must have been in a slum this week. This is an old sketch of mine, written originally for the group Style Without Substance. It was one of their go-to pieces and they did it several times during their existence. It's a funny sketch. It also involves several women, which could have been one of the reasons PHC didn't use it. I had to tone it down a bit for radio. But this was written I my vaudeville/Python period; silly premise, building jokes, odd logic. It's a solid bit, but in the end, it probably is better on video.

I've linked to the Style version we did for Staten Island Public Access TV.

MEL’S DINNER

Barely Home Companion - New York, New York (Jun. '06)

6/13/2025

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 2006, Bush Jr. proposed a budget where "New York City would get $6.7 million less from the State Homeland Security Grant Program than in 2006." There was a lot of pushback on this because, you know, New York had actually been attacked on 9/11 and not any of the areas where they were looking to increase the security grants. The only way to address that would be with a song parody to the tune of "New York, New York, A Wonderful Town."

New York, New York

Barely Home Companion - Hollywood School of Accents (May '06)

6/6/2025

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 ideas I had kicking around for a while when I was able to utilize the talent pool at PHC to help reenforce some stereotypes. It was a goofy, fun piece that meant no harm and spun back on a Midwest twist. I worked in some SFX, which I thought would lock this down. It didn't. But I do like the school slogan. I think it's pretty funny.

Hollywood School of Accents

Barely Home Companion - The Michelangelo Code (May '06)

5/30/2025

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 don't remember this sketch at all. And with good reason. Sure, sure, the Dan Brown books were out and doing well. But he was getting a lot of backlash. A couple of authors sued him for taking their research as his plot. A bunch of people were taking the book as fact (and this is before Tom Hanks got involved). Meanwhile, another author was being lambasted for his fictional memoir. So naturally I had to write a sketch that included Amos and Andy references and a song parody. Oh, and seal-clubbing. Upon re-reading, I can see why it wasn't selected. I mean, I didn't even begin it right. I just interrupt a movie trailer with a producer without telling anyone he's the producer? Or that you're changing the trailer randomly for a supposed movie that's already in the can? I can only imagine I wrote the song first, then came up with a sketch as an intro. But it's such a weak intro to the point of the song. But the song is pretty solid

The Michelangelo Code

Barely Home Companion - Memorial Day Bouquet (May. '06)

5/23/2025

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 2006, we were still all about demonstrative patriotism, where every business and event had to display how American they were, while things like Freedom Fries and the Patriot Act and the birth of the America First kicking around. And capitalism being capitalism was going to figure out a way to make a buck all around. If you're a florist, you need to figure out how to ride the wave. So, we started to see more attempts to make any holiday an excuse to send flowers to prove your love...of America! I think this started out has an attempt to capture the spirit of my "Bag o'leaves" sketch but instead became a "Patriotic Shoes" bit. It was unable to achieve either.

Memorial Day Bouquet

Barely Home Companion - TOME TIME (Apr. '06)

5/2/2025

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...

All righty, I have NO recollection of this sketch; where it came from, what inspired it, how I put it together. It's like I'm reading it for the first time. And I like it. Was there some big plagiarism scandal going at the time? A quick google search says yes there was. A Harvard student, Kaavya Viswanathan confessed to cribbing parts of a book for something called How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. I have no recollection of this either. Oh, well. Anyway, I ran with it and turned it up to 11 with some nice bits of cross talk in it. Sort of Pythonish, but not really.

TOME TIME

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