​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 guessing there must have been some genetic engineering news floating around back in September 2003.  Along with lots of Harry Potter and fantasy films with their fantastic beasts.  And when the title Faux Paws popped into my head, well, a sketch was born.  It's a standard commercial parody, and PHC never shied away from those, especially if it had an SFX spin to it, coming up with weird animal noises, but they passed on it.  But it has a happy ending, as I was able to sell it elsewhere.  I've included the audio at the bottom of the post...

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...

This is one of those PHC rejected scripts that found a hope eventually.  A goofy idea I had for a commercial parody that I put together.  PHC passed, but I held on to it to submit to other venues and it finally got picked by All-Star Radio comedy.  I've posted the audio below the script.

​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...

This piece has an odd history.  It started as a college essay.  Some class was looking for us to write an essay based on material we had read.  One of the things was "The Maltese Falcon."  So I latched onto that and wrote up a story about meeting an old-school private eye to find out what the job was really like back in the film noir days.  I was very much in a Woody Allen phase in college (prose-wise) having read his collections of essays and short stories.  I think I got an A on it.  I know it's sitting in a file somewhere, if I really had to back up that claim.  It was this time I started to believe I would be a writer, so I clung to my creations like something precious that I might get to release some day.  Instead, whenever I kind of hit a dry spell, I would pull something out and rework it.  This was one of those times.

I often would think that if I could nail one of the regular bits, it might impress PHC enough to be used.  That thinking is very wrong; it's tricky to submit a version of their baby and not have them focus on the mistakes and shortcomings.  Always better to hit them with something new (usually).  Guy Noir is one of GK's signature bits, and having played around with the form with my own creation, Nick Flebber, and my Christmas-tery, Lost Claus, it was a genre I felt comfortable doing.  A new week and month were upon us as the season was winding down and I remembered the detective bit and pulled it out, shaping it into a radio sketch.  It didn't make the cut.

Back to Nick Flebber: as I played around with the character in different mediums, I turned Lost Claus into a novella.  I would adapt it to radio.  I pitched it as a series and wrote two pilot episodes, which I adapted into novellas.  And I started writing more adventures.  I needed to increase the page count for my one novella, Space Case, so I turned the radio sketch into a short story.  From there, I adapted it back into radio episode.  It's been produced by a local radio group and I'm awaiting the audio link.  You can read more about Nick Flebber here.   I still work my favorite line "I always get my man plus expenses" into a few other episodes.  And not to spoil the ending, but I always liked my little "Some Like it Hot" reference at the end.

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...

This was an unusual thing for me to sell two bits that PHC rejected back-to-back, but that's what happened here.  Was the sketch to technological for PHC?  Was it not "humorous" enough for them?  I would never know because there was never any feedback.  But I learned to take it in stride, especially knowing that my material may have a second chance elsewhere.  The premise was cool; Caller ID was all the rage, so I just took it to the next level.  It's just a variation on those "technology out of control" bits, most recently on display on the Colin Jost Alexa commercials.  So here's the bit as written for PHC and below it is the bit as produced by ACN.

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...

This one has a happy ending.  Okay, how many times have you been stuck in traffic or cut off by some maniac and wanted to yell at them?  A lot.  Well, instead of just sitting in my car and muttering about it, I wrote a sketch!   I helps me blow off steam.  I can often write things out of my system, it's a way of venting.  So, I wrote this up so PHC could reject it.  But I was working the angles at this point.  PHC was the big fish.  But I had developed two other leads to follow for radio-based comedy.  So, if I listened to the show over the weekend and they didn't used my submission, I would re-work it a bit to submit to American Comedy Network, which syndicated jokes and bits to radio station nationwide.  If they passed, it went off to All-Star Network, which did the same.  So Mike's Auto Mike did get produced at ACN several weeks later, which I've included below the script.

Through an amazing string of events and much confusion on my part, I submitted my award-winning script, "Cupid is as Cupid Does" to the Radio Theater Project in St. Petersburg in Florida (thinking it was some other group). Turns out they enjoyed the script and wanted to produce it!  So, I sent them a couple of other Nick Files scripts I had written and they decided they were open to producing them!  They do their shows monthly, usually the last week, and this was from their February show, so the Cupid script worked for their Valentine-themed show of multiple scripts.  Just this week they produced another episode, "The Leprechaun Con" which worked for St. Patrick's Day in March.  As soon as they post that I'll post it here as well.  It's interesting to think that I've created a radio  "series" of sorts.  Right now RTP is sitting on 4 additional scripts.  And because of that, I began another 2 scripts that I'll be sending them shortly.

Nick Flebber was created for my Christmas script "Lost Claus" and I've since spun him off into new adventures and cases.  The first couple of scripts were cobbled out of a couple of TV scripts I wrote for that pitch.  Then I pulled out my old research and ideas and started some original audio plays off the confidence I gained from my fractured success with other contests and stuff.  RTP really put me over the top, being open to all the scripts.  I hope people are noticing. 

Anyway, if you enjoy the Nick Files, check out his other adventures on Amazon.

​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...

This sketch is a part of a much larger narrative.  I talked about it here, but to recap; while my screenplay "Lost Claus" was kicking around, I decided to adapt it into a sketch for PHC.  The sketch is essentially the opening scene from the screenplay and a reworked interview scene at the North Pole with Santa's daughter.  Oh, and the confrontation with the villain. And then kind of leapfrogged to the happy ending.  I thought it was pretty amazing.  PHC passed.  Happily, the sketch version went on to some greener pastures.  I turned it into a flat out radio script and began submitting it around.  It won a contest and was produced (here).  It was then later produced by another radio troupe.

In retrospect, it was probably a long shot a best.  It was pretty long (Almost 20 pages).  I thought I nailed Guy Noir pretty well.  It was filled 

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...

This is actually a sketch tale and not a skit happens post, as this sketch made it in.  I got a lot of nice feedback on this one.  It's my homerun.  Granted, they rearranged it a lot; GK is out and a regular announcer is in.  The annoyed husband is now the wife.

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, it was time to recycle some material.  I've recycled this bit so many times, I've forgotten when I did it.  It was a parody of local newscasts that would race to be the first ones on the scene and their live reports were pointless because they didn't know anything, because they just rushed to the scene and went on air.  My favorite would be the newscopter that would hover over a scene and try to explain what was going on from hundreds of feet in the air!  So I took it to the next level, where the newsvan and helicopters were actually affecting the events or they were trying to create mayhem so they could report it.  I submitted it to a summer network pilot, "Where's the Party" and they used some parts.  A few years I reworked it for radio.  PHC had introduced some characters who did breaking news, so I adapted it to that.  PHC didn't use the bit.  I re-worked it again and it got picked up by one of the radio syndicators I freelanced for, and they broke it up, (as written) into a running gag.  I'll attach all the versions after the PHC version.  It's one of those solid bits I wrote that eventually found a home.  Yay!

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 March approaches, we were deep into award season.  You had the Emmys, the Tonys, the Grammys, so why not the Noisys?  It seemed like the perfect set-up to do one of PHC's patented SFX bits; an off-beat excuse to allow Tom Keith to run through his assortment of sound-making toys.  It's a short bit with a lot of silly pun-like sound cues and I thought it worked quite well.  I don't recall trying to foist it on to the other radio outlets I was dealing with, they were all dealing with pop music outlets and probably wouldn't consider a sound-effects heavy bit, even if we could tie it to awards season.  Needless to say, PHC took a pass on it.