Play ball! Just in time for opening day, the Weekly Humorist website published my latest piece, "Take Me Out to the New & Improved Ballgame." Check it...OUT!
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I was cleaning out the hard drive and I came across this article I wrote. I didn't remember much about it and looking at the time-stamp it's from 2010. Back then Vince McMahon was the king of wrestling. He had taken over the WCW. He was trying to create Extreme Football, which would be like football only with more concussions. He was all over TV and looking to expand his brand as his wife started to dabble in politics. I know I wrote it, but I'll be danged if I can figure out if I sent it out to anyone at the time. Well, what with interest in pro wrestling still high and Young Rock on TV, maybe I'll just put his nostalgia piece up here. Wrestling Spin-offsVince McMahon is the king of wrestling. He owns the WWE and the WCW and has shows on every cable station (Wrestling on the SyFy channel? Really? I always figured wrestlers were mutants, but still) But, with his wife running for office now, and the kids grown up with title matches of their own, he needs to expand his brand, widen his horizons. Face it, he’s going to have a lot of free time should his wife win. So what will the Next Big Thing be? Pro Wrestlers Senior Tour - two words; aging demographics. Also, aging wrestlers. And with the success of “The Wrestler” why not start booking the old men of the WWE before they go running off inventing the next kitchen grill or run for governor somewhere? NASCAR Raw – Hell on Wheels as burly race car drivers zip around the track. Only here, drivers are allowed to leap from moving cars onto other cars and try to pin them to the track. WFHL – hey, burly men with sharp skates pounding each other in the middle of the rink with hockey sticks. It’s a natural. Extreme New York Stock Exchange (XNYSE) – Face it, the economy is in the tank and it’s Wall Street’s fault. If they’re going to rip us all off, at least let’s make it entertaining. Can’t you just hear them yelling things like "can you smell what the Rock is trading" and "I got your margin call right here!" Man, will the ticker tape fly! World Spelling Bee Federation - Burly kids spelling words like "Xtreme," “HHH” and "NXT." And the spelling bee places already have lots of folding chairs to use. Wrestling With the Stars – WWE stars wrestle 3rd and 4th rate celebrities on TV. Who wouldn’t watch that? Six Flags Over WWE - Theme park, where the rides include The Pile driver, The Folding Chair Whack-A-Mole and the Sleeper Hold. Also, the Wrestling mascots will pound you. Westminster Dog Show Heat! - Burly dudes with burly Rottweilers. With rabies! And folding chairs. WWF on Broadway – Hey, if Disney can do it, why not Vince? Who wouldn’t want to see Mickie James in "Annie?" Or find out if Triple H is a triple threat? end While updating the blog, I stumbled across this lost bit. I wrote it but 3 years ago, as the talk of the Olympics was comingling with the talk of the pandemic. I submitted it to a number of sites, but it didn't make the cut, so it it is. Just project yourself back to July 2021 when everyone was getting sick, but they still wanted to jump and run and stuff. The Pandemic GamesOccasionally, I'll churn out a prose piece, an essay, a news parody, a list of stuff. Sometimes I'll be forced to turn them into a sketch or something, trying to get the bit out there if I couldn't get it published somewhere. I've an stuff printed in the Staten Island Advance, the NY Post, Themestream (the self-publishing of the early internet), and the occasional humor site like Modern Humorist or The Big Jewel. Some of those things have folded. Some reject my work. Some don't respond. There's some second tier humor sites that have accepted my pieces, but I don't know anyone who reads them. So, if I'm going to publish things on obscure internet sites, why not just put it on my blog? So, here it is, a look into writing and show biz: Inside PitchA bit I wrote a few days ago, trying to find a different take on the whole situation in a different light. It's getting very hard to submit pandemic material these days. But, write what you know... The Days of QuarantineOn the first day of quarantine my true love gave to me Purell and a roll of T.P. On the second day of quarantine my true love gave to me two santi wipes… On the third day of quarantine my true love gave to me three frozen pizzas… On the fourth day of quarantine my true love gave to me four online memes… On the fifth day of quarantine my true love gave to me Five Rubber Gloves! On the twelfth day of quarantine my true love gave to me twelve pounds of chocolate… On the twenty-second day of quarantine my true love gave to me 24 press conferences… On the thirty-second day of quarantine my true love gave to me 32 bars of soap… On the fifty-seventh day of quarantine my true love gave to me 57 razors… On the sixty-twelfth day of quarantine my true love gave to me a haircut because I’m looking really shaggy… On the Liberty-Biberty day of quarantine my true love gave to me a plastic bag to wear on my head in lieu of a mask… And a Purell and some T.P.! Remember back in December 2019 when the biggest news was Trump's campaign posting (on purpose) a video where Trump was photoshopped onto the body of Thanos from Avengers: Endgame destroying everyone. Me, neither, until I turned up this bit I wrote and submitted around. Wow, the idea of Trump being responsible for the deaths of a lot a people was just a far off dream for him back then. Anyway, here was my take on the situation back then... Team Trump Online Video UpdatesTo: @Trump2020 Cc: @POTUS, @RudyColludy, @LevParnas, @ThatIgorFruman We’re looking at the numbers on the recent video we shared on Twitter and they are insane! The video blew up big time. The people love seeing the President portrayed in a copyrighted clip as Thanos as he’s about to disintegrate the entire universe! When combined with the number of views of our tremendous “Game of Thrones” build-the-wall meme, you can see we have this election in the bag! So, with that in mind, we’ve been going through Wikipedia (not Wikileaks; LOL) to find more iconic and trademarked pop-culture characters we can infringe on. It’s quite a list! Auric Goldfinger: this was a no brainer! Who loves gold more than Mr. Trump? Picture the scene where James Bond is tied to a table with a laser working its way up toward his groinal regions. Only, in the clip, we’ll put Nancy Pelosi’s face on Bond. So when she says, “Do you expect me to talk?” and Goldfinger/Trump replies “No, I expect you to die” our supporters will go nuts. Many clinically. Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Style, wit, grace, intellect-who better displays these Trumpian characteristics than Dr. Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs”? We all agree that we should use the scene where Lecter silences all the lambs, i.e., the braying Democrats. Zombie from “Return of the Living Dead”: We can have Zombie Trump trying to eat the brains of the Democratic leadership, but he keeps saying “These Democrats have no brains!” (If he hasn’t said it already, maybe work the phrase into his next rally) and “I’m still hungry!” (which we’re very sure is on file somewhere). Jack Torrance: This is Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” Just imagine having Mr. Trump come busting through the door saying “Here’s MAGA!” while Hillary (or Nancy or Barrack or James Comey or whoever’s on Mr. Trump’s Most Wanted list that week) screams in terror? That’s Trumpism in a nutshell, baby! The Emperor from “Star Wars”: Lifetime ruler alert! Picture the scene where Emperor Palpatine (now Mr. Trump) tells Luke (now Adam Schiff) “It is of no concern. Soon the rebellion will be crushed.” Or something like that. If that doesn’t make people want to join the Trump Empire, then nothing will! Lord Voldemort: What could be more dramatic and uplifting for the Republicans then the scene where Lord Donald finally strikes down his mortal enemy, Hillary Potter, with the forbidden spell of “Avada Kedavra” which, we believe, is Latin for “Lock her up!” Godzilla: Hey, when you think about destroying a corrupt town like Washington D.C., what comes to mind quicker than Godzilla? Imagine Mr. Trump’s head over Godzilla’s as he stomps through town screaming “Drain the swamp” or “Lock her up” (depending on focus group feedback) and we can turn the fleeing populous as members of the Demon-cratic Party (pretty good, right? I just made that up now). In fact, we can lift a whole clip of fleeing Democrats from the Daily Show and their “World War D” footage. I’m sure they won’t mind, either. Gollum: Okay, he’s another gold-phile, but we can have the scene were Frodo is trying to throw the ring (say, the Constitution) into the flaming fires of Mount Doom and Gollum/Trump leaps out and rescues the ring, yelling: “My precious! My precious,” which would totally be in character for Mr. Trump and his love of the Constitution. Get back to me on any of these ideas. Me and Lester are ready to put any one of them together! And wait until you see the amazing fake Time covers we’re prepping! And we’ll make sure we don’t send out this text as a tweet again! Here's something I was bicycling around to the few sites I have a relationship with.... DisneyWorld Announces New Post-Virus AttractionsYes, a lot of vacation plans went awry when the Disney theme parks closed in the face of the Coronavirus. It was the right decision to make, but disappointed us. But, like everyone else, Disney is making plans for its reopening. To that end, they’ve just release a list of the new attractions that the Disney Imagineers are re-theming for their post-quarantine openings: Small World So Wear a Mask Personal Space Mountain Spinning Quarantea Cups SARS Tours Transmission to Mars Hot Zone Tower of Terror Infected Mansion Peter Pandemic River Hospital Boats EPCOUGH The Hall of Pestilence Ventilators of the Caribbean Country Bear Quarantinee Shelter-In-Happy Place The Carousel of Virus Here's a topical piece and I lost my site that took topical pieces. Maybe I'll turn it into a sketch, but these days with the news cycles, no one will remember...
Ok, I’ve seen “The Avengers: Endgame,” and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was an amazing achievement of wrapping up 11 years and 21 movies that all occur in the same cinematic universe. Think of it as an epic “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley” and “Mork & Mindy” cross-over event on “Law & Order.” But, here’s the thing: Happy Easter! And here's my addition to your basket, my Easter piece for Cracked magazine, #343, May 2000!
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Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. Archives
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