Here's the second part of my Christmas 2-fer. The Florida Radio Project produced my piece, "A Candy Cane Christmas." This idea has been bouncing around my head for ages. The Hallmark Christmas machine has gotten out of hand the last few years, churning these holiday rom-coms out to the extend that it's spilled over into 2 other cable channels. I like to think I was poking fun of it first, but the pop culture zeitgeist has definitely zeroed in on it, from SNL sketches to Comedy Central movie parodies and back to Hallmark, which has started to poke fun at itself in a couple of recent movies. The sketch had made the rounds to various comedy outlets, with little success (try finding a stage troupe that also does Christmas shows). I then incorporated it in to MY version of a holiday rom-com, a screenplay I wrote called "Merry Broadcast." The Florida group did a great job with it and the audience was onboard, so enjoy A Candy Cane Christmas:
Back in December, I had a 2-for of Christmas cheer. The Florida Radio Project did two of my scripts. First (second will be another post), they did a new version of "The Nick Files: Lost Claus." After having written a couple of radio adaptions of my Nick Flebber stories I took a look back at "Lost Claus" which was, to be honest, a glorified radio sketch that was a cross between my original screenplay and a comic story I made to parody my old K-mart job. So, I attempted to fill it out with some scenes from the original versions and beef up my page count/run time to 30 minutes. Then I sent it out. And it sleigh-ed the audience. Ha! Check it out for yourself:
 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... One of those sketches I have no recollection of. What inspired it? Beats me. Not a wrestling fan. PHC had turned Jesse Venture into a reoccurring character on the show. Wrestling was big again, bouncing between cable and broadcast TV. The various smackdown shows were big POV. Obviously, I wrote it but why did I ever think PHC would use it? I can't say. Anyway, there didn't, so here it is... Christmas Smackdown 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 kinda covered this sketch back in 2018 here. It started with the age-old question: What is the deal with that Dolly? It's a couple of quick jokes about defective toys meeting up with the Misfit toys, so get it, make some gags and get out. Was doing a parody of a 40-year old TV special too pop-culture for PHC? Who knows. I thought it was a solid little sketch. The fact that I was able to dust it off and expand upon it years later means it was a good premise that got better with each execution. PHC passed, so as part of our look at Christmas past, here is... The Island of Recalled ToysI'm very happy that this piece found a home. It's been a prose piece, a radio sketch and a version of it is in my screenplay, "Merry Broadcast." And now it's a prose piece again. Hope we get some eyeballs on it  As we are aware, the holidays are not always a season of cheer for all people. It’s beyond the “holiday blues” that we’ve all heard about. And it’s a bit beyond medical science. Let’s look into the holiday’s maladies and try to steer clear of Sickmas and resist the general feeling of no wellness. Find out how on Weekly Humorist!
 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 feel like I wrote and sent this to PHC on a dare. There was no way in Noel that Keillor would allow a parody of Ted and Ted's Excellent Adventure on air. Talk about out of his wheelhouse. But I had the title kicking around for quite some time (I even used it here). But now a sketch was written and had to be sent somewhere... Ted & Bill's Excellent Advent There used to be a time when TV shows would go on hiatus in December to be replaced by Christmas specials. That doesn’t happen much now, and people lament it because they only remember the good specials. Hey, they all can't be Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol! So check out Lesser Known Holiday Specials, now up at Weekly Humorist.
 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... Before Trump got "elected," it was pretty much agreed that Bush 2 was the worse president (the fact that Trump hates George W. makes us pretty sure Trump knows this, too). George was an easy target and PHC had "him" on multiple times over the years. In fact, my last produced sketch was a Bush bit earlier in 2004). So, with Christmas coming and the Great Recession in full swing, it was time to combine the two for this sketch. Didn't make it, even though it would have killed in NYC. George Xmas 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... PHC's annual holiday stay in the city of New York was always bittersweet to me. I knew I could right hometown-centric pieces but I also knew there would be no acknowledgment that the show was in my hometown. No invite to see the show. No free passes. No chance to meet the cast I had written material for. My opportunities were dwindling here and even if I had a sudden burst of creative energy, there was little chance it would make a difference. Communication was a one-way street. I submitted things by emailing them into a void. No responses ever. Not even to direct questions. Going into (what would be my final Christmas season with the show) reminds me of an incident that happed a few years earlier. I had a small publisher once interested in my manuscript Lost Claus. Spoke to him on the phone. He liked the book. But he liked the idea that I worked on PHC. Would GK have me on the show to talk about the book. And silly mean gave him an honest answer, "No." I mention how little interaction I had with the staff at PHC. I mean, I once asked him about hosting or presenting at the Writers Guild Award show and got no response. I was blunt with the publisher about my experience with PHC. And I never heard from that publisher again. Granted the only reason he contacted me was to try and use me to get on PHC, so when that wasn't an option, I was useless to him. Anyway, the holidays were here. The show was here, so I went with a silly joke about the Christmas tree and the Ronco Clapper. It's a fine little black-out bit, even if it was trying to do a sight gag on the radio. They passed. Rockefeller Center
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 |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. 
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