Category: Christmas - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Sketchy Tales: PHC-Ketchup Advisory Board (Dec. 03)

12/28/2022

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's one of those submissions with a happy-ist ending. As I've mention before, I was always looking to write one of PHC's signature bits, not the big ones like the cowboys or the english major, but I tried his Guy Noir character (and got a line or two picked up for one sketch), I submitted for duct tape and ketchup to some success. But a many of my sketches had to pass through the GK-rewrite process.

One of my pet peeves is how we're inundated with Christmas music from Thanksgiving on and then somewhere around noon on Christmas Day, the radio station all go back to their standard playlists. I used the ketchup sketch to whine about that. But the folks latched onto the idea that music today sucks and people seem overly attached to 1950s pop music. It's weird how that's the premise they focused on.

A version of my sketch was produced and there's a couple of my lines in their version. I got a check and an online credit. And enough confidence to continue submitting to the show for a couple of more years.

I'm posting my version of the sketch, followed by the audio of the PHC Dec. 27, 2003 production (which they have in their archives, here

Ketchup Advisory Board: Post-Holiday Blues

Barely Home Companion- Wonderful Pharmacy (Dec. 03)

12/22/2022

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've done a ton of "It's a Wonderful Life" parody. I love the movie, but, face it, after multiple viewings, you start to see the plot holes and odd bits of business. We have to recall that movies weren't really meant to be see a hundred times. You saw them in a theater when they were released, maybe again if they did a re-release. Once TV came onto the scene, suddenly movies were being seen a lot more frequently. And home video, DVDs to VOD and streaming, well you can catch every mistake old movies made. There are entire websites devoted to this. But, again, we do it out of love.

And face it, Wonderful Life covers a lot of territory and makes a lot of sly points. And as our history moves on, it's fun to take new events and work them into the frame work of a classic film. It's a solid, established foundation that can let you build upon with any goofy idea. Back then, some of George Bailey's behavior in the movie struck me as...unbalanced. How would he deal with some of his burdens in modern times? There's a pill for that. So, here's yet another updating of IAWL, written for PHC that got passed over. Merry Christmas you broken down old radio show!

It's a Wonderful Pharmacy

Barely Home Companion- It's a Most Wonderful Life (Dec. 03)

12/21/2022

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'm not sure how I never saw a "It's a Wonderful Life" and a "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" mash-up before. I mean, it's right there; they're both about Christmas and have the word "wonderful" right there in the title! I really like writing song parodies. There's something about the structure that makes working jokes into a medley that much more rewarding. And that's to the internet and online rhyming dictionaries, wow, has it gotten easier. The first time I really tackled a song parody was doing a version of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" about Medicare for a MASH parody. I mean, I was showing it to friends like I cracked a code or something. It was a rush for me (Less so for them). Anyway, I put this together to get it to PHC in time for the holidays and they passed on it. Humbug.

It's a Most Wonderful Life

Dispatches From My DVR – Holiday Horror

12/11/2022

I watched a couple of movies this week that I recorded after hearing them both mentioned last year on Eli Roth’s show, “History of Horror.” They make for an interesting double feature (so many spoilers ahead)…

Barely Home Companion: Oak Christmas Tree (Dec. 03)

12/9/2022

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...

Each Christmas season, the show would set up camp in NYC and not ever invite be to a broadcast, even as I made an extra effort to create city-specific material for my hometown. Of course the biggest deal in New York at Christmas time is the tree at Rockefeller center. A couple of things converged to make this script. I hope how or when, but I definitely misheard the lyrics to "Oh Christmas Tree." Maybe it started as a song parody somewhere, but that thought was kicking around. And I remembered an old sketch. The radio comedy team of Bob & Ray appeared on SNL and SNL-adjacent shows several times. One sketch had them as to midwestern guys who made their way to NYC to donate a tree to Rockefeller Center. They showed up with this scraggly tree that had taken a beating in transit and then they had to sit there as the person they were dealing with explained to them that they already had a tee and it was, like, 50 feet tall. Classic Bob & Ray. I think this sketch is more of an homage to them than a ripoff. But since probably no one remembers that sketch or saw this one, I don't think it matters. Also, there's a Monty Python reference thrown in for good measure ("The Larch") which was solely for my benefit. Also "the pining." I wonder how close I came to typing "for the fjords." Oh, well. Merry Christmas!

Oak Christmas Tree

Skit Happens: Blurt, the Elf Without a Filter

12/5/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Categories of "Skit Happens" or "From the Slushpile," I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them to. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. Anyway, these things are burning holes in my hard drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog, so...

I started working on this in 2020, thinking we might be able to do a Christmas show, and that hope just vanished. I wound up setting it aside and then going back to tinker with it from time to time. It kinda came about from "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" and the character Hermie. I mean he was a little blunt about people's dental hygiene so I figured what would happen if it was about everything else. It works fine. The elf Tweedle is named for one of the lead character in my novella, "Lost Claus," available over at Amazon. It's kinda evergreen, although I'd have to update the toy that got too popular if it goes foward.

Blurt, the Elf Without a Filter

Barely Home Companion -Letters from Santa (Dec. 2002)

12/20/2021

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...

Yet, I was pulling out material from my Christmas catalogue of comedy. This was originally a prose piece that I posted at Themestream.com and other "pay-per-click" sites, and decided to attempt to adapt it into a radio sketch. It came out okay at best. A lot of topical humor for a PHC bit, with references to Enron energy crook Ken Lay, and PETA while the original had even more of those. There's a couple of double entendres that probably didn't help my cause but it was so short it would be over before you had a chance to get offended. So, it was a pass from PHC. If I ever find the original prose, I'll have to post it around here.

Letters from Santa

Barely Home Companion - The Virginia Monologues (Dec. 2002)

12/13/2021

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...

Remember that play, "The Vagina Monologues?" What if you could turn it into a Christmas sketch? I had written this up in a flurry of Christmas material one holiday season. It was a sketch, a prose piece (a critic's review) and this radio version. It was dicey going in. I mean, these lines are barely double entendres, they are single entendres. But I liked the idea of mixing Christmas with pretentious theatre. Was it rejected because it was too risque or because I wrote "flume" instead of "flue" ? Who knows? But, at least I got it published over at the Big Jewel humor site.

The Virginia Monologues

DOA: Hollywood: Christmas Edition - A Zoom Carol

12/28/2020

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

Barely Home Companion: Christmas Edition - No Wellness (12/00)

12/23/2019

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's a bit that kicked around in several forms. A PHC sketch. A non-PHC sketch. A prose piece that kicked around until it found a home in my local paper before they were online. Then I expanded it and posted it on my blog. It's a list. It's puns and word play. And it's all of a theme. I enjoy writing those.

We present this holiday comedy to remind you that my Christmas Comedy Caper, Lost Claus is available over at Amazon. So buy your copy today and avoid the post-holiday rush!

No-Wellness

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