Category: Christmas - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Ted & Bill's Excellent Advent (Dec '04)

12/15/2023

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

Leave it to the Prose: Lesser Known Holiday Specials

12/14/2023

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.

Barely Home Companion - George Xmas (Dec '04)

12/8/2023

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

Barely Home Companion - Rockefeller Center (Nov '04)

12/1/2023

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

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

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