Category: Sketch - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Law & Order: Fashion Police (Apr. '05)

4/12/2024

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...

Rereading this after all these years I now realize this bit is short, it's based on an old red carpet show trope and it was a TV show parody, which means it never stood a chance of getting picked to go on air. Fashion week in NY was usually around April and maybe that's what inspired me to write it up. I can imagine that I saw no reason to try and punch it up or make it longer, so I went with short and sweet. After all, who needed yet another Law & Order parody back in 2005?

Law & Order: Fashion Police

Barely Home Companion - NYC Olympics (Apr. '05)

4/5/2024

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...

Granted, I've done these "Olympic" sketches before, coming up with wacky events, but I have no recollection of this particular one. After a hiatus, The PHC troupe was back in New York City. They news at the time was the city was making a bid to host the 2012 Olympics (spoiler alert: They didn't). It was a very bizarre time. The mayor was pushing for it. But, frankly the citizens didn't want it to happen. It would have actually been a tri-state Olympics, with events spilling over into NJ, CT, upstate NY and even Staten Island. It was the perfect bit for radio; ridiculous visuals that you couldn't possibly do, sound effects galore and a steady patter of jokes. Funny bit. They didn't use it. Maybe that's why NYC lost its bid...

NYC Olympics

Barely Home Companion - Mock Barriers (Mar '05)

3/29/2024

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...

Working in lower Manhattan, people were still very security conscious. But it had gotten to ridiculous levels. Buildings all over NY had begone erecting stone and cement blocks in front of their buildings to prevent terrorist attacks. I should point out here that 9/11 was an air attack, so---? Some tried to make them look artful. Others had them designed as planters. Most just put out big cement blocks. I wasn't impressed, so I wrote a sketch. PHC wasn't impressed, they didn't use it. Maybe there could have been more to it, pad it out, do sound effects, but I was just going through the paces at this point (again).

And this was after the show was off the air for a month. My last sketch was submitted the end of February and here it was the end of March. You'd think I would have been chumping at the reins to get new material to them.

Mock Barriers

Hollywood'a-Should'a-Could'a: MAR*X

3/18/2024

I was debating this post as a "Skit Happens" entry or the newest category, "Hollywood'a-Could'a-Should'a," because it's about a sketch I wrote after I finished college. I was every into mash-up sketches, taking two different titles and coming up with a sketch. I did "Laverne & Sherlock," "Cagney & Lucy," and all of my Shakespeare sketches. I picked the Hollywood'a because I kind of lost my mind a bit when it came to this bit.

Barely Home Companion - New Bush Budget (Feb '05)

2/23/2024

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 wrote this 19 years ago? Man, here's a skit whose time had come again. I have no memory of this, what inspired it or writing. I had small kids back then and they were always sick, so that could have been part of it. I'd really forgotten about this sketch, otherwise I would have tried to do something with it during COVID. It's not any more stupid than ingesting bleach or sticking a light where the light don't shine.

The idea of wrapping kids in bubble wrap was something I would use again, working on an industrial PSA for safety. I submitted a sample and got the gig, but then I had issues with the "notes" they were issuing and how they wanted to keep repeating the bubble wrap gag, despite me giving them several different variations.

Bubble Boy Wrap

Barely Home Companion - Copyright Pirates (Feb '05)

2/16/2024

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 upon a time we used to watch movies on video tape cassettes. The home video market was exploding as people wanted to get the latest release ASAP and for cheap. Enter the video pirates, people who would go into movie theaters and record movies off the screen with their cam-corders. This was before cellphones when sneaking a video camera into a theater could be tricky. I think that's all the context you need to read the bit. It was a hot topic back then and I had attempted to tackle it a couple of times. Just merging the ideas of high-tech and classic pirates was too strong to resist. Who doesn't like a sketch with pirate lingo? PHC, apparently. They didn't bite.

Copyright Pirates

Barely Home Companion - Peanut Butter (Feb '05)

2/12/2024

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...

Well, here's me attempting to humorously addressing Black History Month. It's just one of my standard goofy historical flashback where some significant seems to take some detours. If you every read about the history of gasoline, it's just amazing how gasoline, a waste product in the creation of kerosine, became the the very life blood of the nation. So, it may have been with peanut butter. Nobody gets it right immediately. Nor did I, as this sketch wasn't selected. Here it is, my peanut butter sketch...

Peanut Butter

Barely Home Companion - New Bush Budget (Feb '05)

2/9/2024

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...

Reading this old piece, I had forgotten (in light of recent developments) how awful the George W. Bush years were. His "Compassionate Conservativism" was a real misnomer. This was the proto-type of what the GOP would devolve into; "small' government bent on slashing the budget, privatizing Social Security (which was only stopped by Bush's Wall Street collapse and "The Great Recession.") and education. War was needed to enrich the military-industrial complex (invading the wrong country was simply collateral damage), Halliburton allowed to run amok, bank collapses, huge corporation failures and a glib cynicism. As long as they had theirs, it didn't matter much if anything trickled down to the working class. And PHC was never shy about pointing that nonsense out.

I don't know why I went with a wacky lacky to explain the budget, instead of Bush himself. But I had a lot to say about the budget and the vulture capitalism that was coming home to roost. It's a very topical piece with lots of topical references, some long forgotten. I hope this triggers some of the bleak memories and reminds us the the GOP was always this way, only less rude.

Alas, my venting was for nought, as the piece wasn't selected. After all this time, it still irks me that I can't just say rejected, because no one ever told me "No, we won't be using this." I'd have to listen to the show and check the website to see if it was used or not.

New Bush Budget

Barely Home Companion -State o'Union 2005 (Feb '05)

2/2/2024

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...

It was time for the State of the Union address and I decided to go back to that well and see if I could get another skit approved. Reading it down, man, was the GOP already headed down the wrong road. The didn't want to govern, they just wanted to boss people around. The didn't want freedom, they wanted to tell people want they could and couldn't do. Yes, Bush was a buffoon, but the people around him were scary and powerful.

State o'Union 2005

Barely Home Companion - Ground Hog (Jan '05)

1/31/2024

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...

Again, when all else fails, go with a song parody. Staten Island has a very strong ground hog culture, with our own Staten Island Chuck, who famously bite one mayor and was killed when another mayor killed him by dropping him...allegedly. So, as the month came to a close and Ground Hog Day was within sight, I took the old Elvis song and made it about ground hogs that kinda scans. Anyway, I predicted it wouldn't get picked and it wasn't!

Ground Hog

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