Category: Prose - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Hashtag, You're It! - #Icky Action Movies

6/10/2025

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.

Only 2? I only got 2 in? I was robbed. Granted, a lot of cereals have the word "pop" in it which can easily be changed to "poop," but why discount them all? I'm annoyed they didn't use my favorite, Nort 'n Honey. But I kinda screwed that one up, spelling it as Norton Honey, attaching a gif of Ed Norton from the Honeymooners, but I didn't include a picture of the cereal Nut 'n' Honey to better set up the gag. Oh, and I did it because Norton is famously a sewer worker. Yeah, I'm starting to realize that joke is too clever for its own good. But it's not a lengthy list of "winners" this week. Even the official WH entries seem light. Well, here's the link to the WH page:

All the News Fit to Fake- War on Weather (10/31/05)

5/28/2025

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.

OMG, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure I was parodying the Bush Jr. administration with their jingoism and their climate-change denying, but reading this could just as easily apply to day, especially with the Canada and Mexico angles. Now, thought, it would probably be tariffs on weather. The White House back then was going to beat back all enemies. And we were getting hammered by big storms (ala Katrina), so having them decide to declare war on bad weather seemed like a natural choice for them. I can't believe I got two pages out of this. But it reads pretty well.

And I just realized this was in the same issue as my car magnet story. I forgot they would do that sometimes. Good week for me.

All the News Fit to Fake- Bad Inventions (10/3/05)

5/7/2025

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 one I can't believe got used. This is one of my older premises, bad inventions. I did variations of it for Cracked, The Plague, and The Staten Island Advance and this blog. Similar bits were rejected by all the regulars. But here it is. This always happens. I never throw anything out, and when I get stuck for material, I resurrect something from my dead file. Sometimes it works. Other times, I'm so busy trying to remember stuff, I forget to think up new stuff. But when you are chasing a paycheck, it's an easy trap to fall into. I simply had to pad out my bad idea with some factoids to accompany it. At Cracked, the name of the thing was usually enough, with art. But for WWN, it had to be a well-researched presentation.

Hashtag, You're It! - #Sitcom A Restaurant

5/6/2025

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 almost missed this one. I kept getting interrupted while attempting to play this hashtag game. But it was a good topic. Except that WH grabbed all the low-hanging fruit. And posted all their tweets. Once I finally got into the groove, I did okay. My biggest problem was I went too far back in sit-com history to come up with puns (Make Room for Daddy, The Phil Silvers Show). But I entered a bunch, got a number of likes and got 6 of them included. Check them out:

#SitcomARestaurant

Hashtag, You're It! - #Painful Pastries

4/29/2025

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 skipped last week. I didn't care for the topic and wasn't in the mood to work blue. I'll get dark, I'll get mean, I'll get punny and silly, but doing blue material still rubs me the wrong way. I'm a prude like that and very tightly wound. But this week I went all in. The crowd seems to be thinning. I don't see a lot of retweeting. There's one participant who posts the hashtags, but the account is set up so you can't like or retweet any of them (not that they are that good). I managed a couple before I was forced to resort to a website to list the actual names of pastries. Because I just call everything "pastries." I got some good ones picked. They ignored my bad ones. They even included my favorite (S'ores) which actually came up late in the session. Ten included in all. I keep hoping this will make them more reception to my prose pieces (still very hit & miss). Anyway, check out:

#PainfulPastries

All the News Fit to Fake- Hollywood Handbook (9/26/05)

4/23/2025

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.

One of my repeating obsessions was with Hollywood. Sure, they weren't buying my scripts, so there must be a reason, right? And the reason was "they were stupid." Whether I was writing sketches about colorization, stories about altering old movies, or just my takes on Hollywood rules, I constantly goof on Hollywood and the studio system. During the aughts, the studios were starting to fall apart. And was didn't fall away was absorbed by others. The last generation of 70s whiz kids who venerated Old Hollywood were starting to age out. Movies coming out covered the gambit from great to awful (which was always the case, but there were fewer movies, competing entertainment outlets and dwindling expendable income. My take was there had been an actual handbook to how to make great pictures and they lost it. Frankly, I didn't think this story would get bought. It was an amazingly light premise and a very niche topic but they bought it. I managed to marry the bit to one of their op-ed pieces and I think that helped.

All the News Fit to Fake- Rogue Icebergs (9/5/05)

4/2/2025

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 writing about rogue dolphins, the only natural follow up would be a story about rogue icebergs. How this happened? Who knows? The movie "Titanic" had come out in 1997, so that was part of pop culture. Fears of global warming and the disappearing artic ice was totally a thing. And there had been a increase in iceberg traffic recently. I had done an article about sequels to the movie and one of them was about Rose coming back to hunt the iceberg that killed Jack, so the idea of a rogue iceberg had been kicking around my head for a while. But the fun part was a) trying to come up with a "logical" reason for it happening and b) unwinding the danger because of climate change. Pretty slick.

All the News Fit to Fake- WWN: Pizza Parlor Horror (7/11/05)

3/12/2025

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. I worked my way in with some straight forward fake news stories.

This kind of story was inevitable. Everyone knows about Chuck E. Cheese, right? The original draw was a various points, animatronic figures would appear on a stage to sing some songs and entertain the customers. It was cute, but Disneyland it wasn't. But what if one of them went all West World? Again, ridiculous situation, but if you include the right quotes from the "eye witnesses" it plays out fine. I even pulled a twist where the company decides to make rouge robtos part of their new business plan!

All the News Fit to Fake- WWN: Holy Grail Found (7/4/05)

3/5/2025

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 I worked my way in with some straight forward fake news stories.

I feel like now I was getting the hang of things at WWN. A the legend goes back forever. I even made sure to start the story with that. There was much actual news stories about the black market that deals with ancient artifacts. Also the usual stories of Mexican drug cartels and their elaborate compounds filled with exotic animals and valuable art and such. Combining them seemed natural. I filled with various experts and characters and thought I told a solid story.

All the News Fit to Fake- WWN: Spontaneous Combustion (5/16/05)

3/5/2025

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. After a while I worked my way up with some straight forward fake news stories.

This article is one of my favorites. I feel like I got to combine current events, social issues and nonsense all into one article. Stories about spontaneous combustion have been around for centuries. I think there was an "X-Files" episode about it. I know there was a "Kolchack: The Night Stalker" episode. But to link that condition to climate change (especially back when it was called "global warming") just made it one of the strongest and most original articles I submitted.

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