Category: Leave It To The Prose - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Leave it to the Prose: Camp Crystal Lake Addresses its Poor Yelp Ratings

10/27/2025

Halloween was on its way, and because of various issues at home, it's been sort of on the backburner here. Yeah, I finally put up some window decorations, but didn't pull out the figures or the lights. I've barely watched any real Halloween-related shows or movies, but I've seen the promos for all the Fright Festivals, including the slasher movies, like "Friday the 13th." And the 14th. And the 15th. And the 16th...Finally, an idea popped to mind and I wrote it up and sent it to Weekly Humorist. And they liked it. So let's head on over to Camp Lake Crystal and see how they're holding up:

R.I.P. The Big Jewel (again)

10/26/2025

The comedy website The Big Jewel (.com) ceased publication back in 2019 and it was missed as an outlet. They were always pretty cool about my submissions and helpful and not too judgmental. They did keep the site up and functional as an archive for everyone's work but I noticed this week, when I tried to link to a (suddenly pertinent) piece about the White House, the site was no longer there and was giving my security software the heebie-jeebies.

Wisely, I had downloaded the pdf files of my articles from the site and tucked them away on my hard drive. Now, with the site off-line, I've decided to set up a page on my domain for all the bits (that hopefully I'll be able to link to as holidays and news cycles come around).

So, my little bit of the Big Jewel now resides at My Work at The Big Jewel.

Enjoy.

All the News Fit to Fake- Rebuilding New Orleans (11/21/05)

6/4/2025

Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company that owned the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor (the long time editor of WWN), in an attempt to give the Cracked writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get my footing but soon I was working on some straight-forward fake news stories.

This was the end of the line for me. Back in May 2005, the paper decided to go "Bolder+Bigger+Better" and they started making a lot of editorial changes (as well as editors). This would be Jerome Howard's last byline in the paper. Post-Katrina (and after declaring war on weather) the only logical move would be to bring in every home improvement reality show and have them rebuild the city. Is it that far-fetched, really? I'm surprised some producer wasn't pitching it at the time.

But like I said, new blood had been pumped in. They ditched Dear Dottie for another fake advice columnist. They attempted to introduce new "recurring" characters. And the story process got altered. They didn't want any story, willy-nilly. They were looking for continuity from issue to issue. No longer could the paper say the hellmouth was discovered in Portland and then a few issues later say the hellmouth was located under a Pizza Hut in New Jersey. A lot of us stringers got cut loose. Sure, they allowed us to submit new stories, but they didn't allow themselves to buy any of them. It was a kick in the teeth for me at the time, too. I went into this, reluctantly, embarrassed by it and in the end I started to get a kick out of the whole set up. I'm glad Google has the issues stored online and that I had the chance to post them here (grabbing the Google screen caps, which were much better than my attempts to scan my issues). Long live Bat-boy!

All the News Fit to Fake- Car Magnets (10/31/05)

5/21/2025

Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company that owned the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor (the long time editor of WWN), in an attempt to give the Cracked writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get my footing but soon I was working on some straight-forward fake news stories.

Another WWN quickie. I was the first to uncover the risks of auto magnets. But people still put them on, even more so now. Whether it's now your smart kid's school pride or your pet's breed announcement these things are dangerous! Also, GPS was just coming out and that was all but useless.

All the News Fit to Fake- Secondhand Cholesterol (10/24/05)

5/14/2025

Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company that owned the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor (the long time editor of WWN), in an attempt to give the Cracked writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get my footing but soon I was working on some straight-forward fake news stories.

This is actually one of my favorite stories. Before people were claiming vaccine recipients were "shedding" corona virus, I had people shedding cholesterol! When I was a shoddy teenager, I complained about my uncles smoking. He countered by complaining about me biting my nails. I responded, "Yeah, but I'm not blowing my fingernails in you face." I don't know how I got away with that. Anyway, the idea of a personal bad habit effecting people around you stuck with me. There were all these stories about secondhand smoke affecting non-smokers and the big focus at the time about cholesterol levels. Combining them seemed a natural. Plus I got to mock the wearing of lapel ribbons for causes. Always fun.

Leave it to the Prose: Son of Hollywood Memo I.P. Daily Newsletter

5/5/2025

I've circled back to my roots here, creating a hodgepodge of jokes and gags, then coming up with a premise to contain them all. It started out with a couple of "content creator" type bits that I thought up, but don't have a way to produce. One of them was Abbott & Costello Elementary, which I created and posted online. Then a Shrek joke presented itself. Then, from there, I decided to write out the ideas and figured to put them into a sequel to my first I.P. Daily Newsletter article. It started out random, but then I started to chase the news a bit, and worked them together. It came out quite well. I backed up and reworked the A&C bit into a political joke, but I forgot to do the same to the Shrek idea. I could have turned it into a Hunter Biden laptop joke easily enough. Weekly Humorist like the article and posted it today! So, check it out:

Leave it to the Prose: Executive Order Declaration Concerning Bring Your Daughter to Work Day 2025

4/22/2025

I certainly have opinions about what was once called "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day." I understood the idea behind it, but I didn't quite get what me bringing my kid to the day job I hated was going to prove. I got my first piece in the NY Post on that very topic. The optics have changed over the years, but I still cringe at the thought of it, even though my kids have long since aged out of it and fortunately never got into my line of work.

But circumstances change but parody doesn't. I had a glimmer of an idea based on current events and it blossomed into this piece, now up at the Weekly Humorist. Enjoy!

All the News Fit to Fake- Pizza Fax (9/5/05)

4/16/2025

Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get the hang of the paper but soon I was working on some straight forward fake news stories.

This was part of a double-header for me. I had 2 articles in the Sept. 5, 05 issue. Once again, I was able to take a perfectly ridiculous idea, long before the idea of Grubhub was even a pixel of an idea. It's a sci-fi parody, combining The Fly, Star Trek transporters and an international arms dealer. I presented the idea as cutting edge technology, and did some solid counter-points and even mocked Wall Street to boot. It's a cute little story that hits a lot of bases.

All the News Fit to Fake- WWN: Trading Holidays (8/15/05)

3/26/2025

Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get the hang of the paper but soon I was working on some straight forward fake news stories.

After they moved all the federal holidays to Mondays to make three-day weekends for people, what would be next? Reshuffling holidays to make them more seasonal. Not sure how I came up with picking Groundhog's Day and April Fools Day as the two least consequential "holidays" that I could make an argument for switching but I pulled it off. Man, I hope the Federal Board of Observed Holidays is able to survive the DOGE chainsaw of 2025. I really like my little topper at the end.

All the News Fit to Fake- WWN: Amazing Bubble (7/25/05)

3/19/2025

Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get the hang of the paper but after a while, I was submitting some straight forward fake news stories.

For some reason, I feel like this story got pitched to me. I can't imagine thinking up a bubble story. It's a solid little story and a surprising show business parody at the end. It's now I started to realize that getting the article sold didn't mean it was going to get featured. I had some one and two page spreads made up from my stories, so I was surprised this was printed as a 1 column piece. Oh, well.

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