My short play, "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Sobriety" will be part of the Hudson Classical Theater Company's WAGG short play festival March 22 & 23 at the 102nd Street Field House. It's a free event, but you need to reserve a seat at Eventbrite here.
 Weekly Humorist, a humor magazine I often submit to and occasionally get in, runs these Hashtag Games on Twitter (X), where they name a topic and we submit humorous responses. These games play right into my gag reflex, so I always throw up something. I've taken to setting my calendar to get online every Wednesday to "play" (and by "play" I mean submit content to their website for free--I like to think of it as pun bono work). I always submit a bunch of them on X (Twitter) and some of them get selected for inclusion to their online site. I can't help but notice that no matter the adject used in front of the game's theme, the entries all wind up devolving into simply things that are gross or disgusting. Ask for scary, or bad, or wrong something and eventually the posts veer away from the usual definition. Forget about defining what a "snack" even is here. Anyway, I submitted by usual dozen or so entries and got 5 in, so that's good. I tried to keep scary as in "Halloween scary," but I veered off to into gross and one of them got picked. Then again, different things scare different people. Check out the scary (or gross) fun at:
 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... As autumn approaches, my mind goes all Halloweeny. It's a favorite holiday of mine (as many of my posts attest to). No one I know actually likes candy corn. In fact, many people I know actively despise it. Personally, I don't mind it, but it's not chocolate, so that's a big strike against it. But it's part of the season. And like so many other products, I'm sure the candy corn companies are trying to expand their markets. I borrowed one of PHC's favorite tropes and created the Candy Corn Council that has some plans for that. I've used candy corn puns in my work in Cracked and The Staten Island Advance, so the concept for this bit was always bumping around in my head. Marrying it to a PHC council seemed like a natural thing to do. And I liked trying to make additional uses for candy corn kinda sound practical (British tea time?). Also the fact of the ridiculousness of advertising candy corn as "fat-free" (which I've seen) makes it a perfect target. I forget how the Christo gag came about, but I think the sketch was built around it, from wherever it developed. I like it. Christo had some of his draping cloth exhibits in the news around this time, but it probably doesn't make as much sense now, but google Christo to understand the fat joke. Candy Corn Council 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... So, for Halloween, I did a copy and paste; a bunch of quick ideas that were kicking around or used for prose, I pulled together for this series of brief commercials featuring lessor known horror movies. I worked them into other things, and heck, I may again, because these could be really spooky tales! They passed, so here it is: Halloween Horrors 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 more I attempted to submit a sketch into one of their regular features and tying it into the Halloween season. I did several of these ketchup ads over the years and I often recycled some of the opening monologues from a previous one, then added a new one. I would keep using ones that I was fond of figuring no one had heard any of them yet, so I can just paste it in. They were never heard. And they were not sketches I could submit elsewhere, so they died on the vine, the ketchup vine. Oh, you can still buy my book, to help you re-live your fondest Halloween memories. Get you copy here. I actually used to go through the kids candy each Halloween night and extract the lesser sweets and bring them to work, where my co-workers descended on the candy bowl like locust. Hey, free candy. It was a tradition for a long time. Many of my co-workers would approach me Halloween week and ask, "Are you going to bring in candy after Halloween?" and I often replied, "No, my kids are in their twenties now. They don't trick-or-treat anymore. I haven't done that for years! Where have you been? Go back to the cage." People hate to lose out on free candy. Ketchup Advisory Board 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...  A Halloween commercial parody! I honestly believe this was a clever and original idea back in 2003. Now, a quick Google search shows many images of a TGI Friday the 13th logo. It's quick, filled with puns, screams and voice impressions. I would say maybe it's too pop-culture-ry, but the pop culture it alludes to was old when I wrote this. And with the Halloween season upon us, it's got enough Dracula and Karloff to appeal to Boomers. Right now I'm even to lazy to check to see if I included the sketch between the chapters of my book, "Halloweenies," where the Dad of the family is an aspiring writer and has written all these Halloween sketches to submit to people (Where does he get his ideas???). You can check it out over at Amazon... It was a solid bit and I set it around, but it never got picked up anywhere. Maybe it's made up of too many clams, but I had fun with it. Maybe I even posted it during one of my Halloween runs in years past. Could be. But for Barely Home Companion, this was the next item up. So, enjoy T.G.I.Friday the 13th 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... What with Halloween approaching, I was obligated to come up with a Halloween sketch. What I did here was take a lot of bits and pieces, jokes and routines along with some one-liners and observations I've had over the years and cobbled them into a radio bit. Garrison talking with some Trick or Treaters, who really don't get it. I thought it was a solid PHC bit. No one else did. I may have worked some things into another long form piece, I don't recall right now, but here's my tribute to Halloween 2002... Trick or TreatFrom 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...  Halloween was a big deal for PHC. Halloween was a big deal for me. I pulled out all the stops for October 2001, I created a couple of sketches that I kinda knew wouldn't work for them, but they were Halloween and where else was I going to place them? Then I came up with a anthrax-inspired horror movie parody (at the time the National Enquirer and NBC were receiving anthrax in the mail). Here's the thing; I posted these bits on the blog before, so, back when I was doing it all as Skit Happens for a big Halloween countdown to push my book, Halloweenies. I'm just going to link them below:
 From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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 an interesting bit (for me). I once read a Woody Allen short story about Dracula. I was so impressed with it. I wanted to write something like it. So I did. He did Dracula, so obviously I would have to do Frankenstein. This was originally a short story. It was published as part of an anthology series years later (which has since gone out of print...which is weird for an ebook). The story was dialog-heavy (as much as my prose is) so I figured I could adapted it as a radio skit for PHC for one of their October shows. It was a pass. I note in my journal at the end of October, 2000, that I had struck out again with PHC. Four Halloween bits...Keillor going on and on about how "Americans don't make the most use of it [Halloween]" and proceeds to do practically nil on it . But winter! Don't get him started about winter! I submitted to other venues after that, but it never got picked. It's my attempt at "racy" and there's one line ("Have you ever discussed politics with him?") that is straight up Woody Allen, although my attempt at making it more "me" (calling him a "feeb" instead of an "imbecile") really undercut it. I actually took the script and collected together with a couple of my other horror bits and submitted it around as an episode of "The Nether Regions," a "Twilight Zone" type radio anthology show. One group produced another part of the anthology, so this skit has yet to become...ALIVE!  Sooo, Halloween is coming (it's one of my favorite holidays) and I have a Halloween book to sell. It's "Halloweenies," a tale of a boy and his costume...and friends. And family. And cops. And gangsters. It's funny. Frankenstein & Igor 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. Again, I'm really satisfied with this sketch. Back in that summer it had been mentioned to me, as I noted in the forward of the skit, Politics is unpredictable. Like, did you ever notice that the mayor in "Jaws" is still the mayor in "Jaws 2?" How’d that happen? It was something my son-in-law pointed out to me and it started to flesh itself out into a sketch over time, a perfect Halloween/Election Day combo that seems more common now as horror and politics have gotten more intertwined. Sure, there's a couple of typos and I left the name "Watt" in one place after I changed it to "Carla." So many Jaws Easter eggs in it. And it had some decent bits for the woman in the cast. And some really good throw-away lines and the Abby & Grace characters came out of left field, but really work in this context. Alas, it wasn't produced, but I hope you'll enjoy it now. 1977 Amity Mayoral Debate |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. 
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