Category: Sketchy Tales - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Dylan Reads Dylan (Nov '04)

11/3/2023

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...

Bob Dylan releases a book. Audio books are becoming a thing. One of the cast of PHC does Dylan and has done him several times. What more natural than a sketch about Dylan reading his own book? I'm sure others came up with it, maybe. I mean, PHC didn't use it. But I took it and submitted to All Star Network. They produced it. I mean, that's what keeps me going; sometimes the no you get isn't the only opinion out there. The next guy could be a yes.

Dylan Reads Dylan

Friends of Leon: Pepsi Challenge Outtakes

9/25/2023

Apparently Pepsi is celebrating its 125 anniversary of not being Coke. They are doing many things to mark this milestone, but one of the things they are not doing is showing this video that parodies their famous "Pepsi Challenge." That honor goes to me.

First, some backstory. Sometime after college, I signed up for one of those Stand-Up comedy workshops with my college humor magazine cohort, the late John Rawlins. In that class we met a guy who was trying out stand-up. We got friendly, but not so friendly that I remember his name. But he insisted we should meet some people he was dealing with who were trying to put together comedy ventures. So we did. We hit it off and put out a fanzine called "Salvator Deli" for a couple of issues. Then attempted a stage show. A video program was always something the group was looking to do, so when in 1985 one of the members had a friend who was looking to do something on NJ Public access, so we decided we could fit that bill. We gathered up sketches and went to Jersey. We called ourselves "Friends of Leon." We worked on a cold-open together, then did material we all brought in. My contribution was the Pepsi Challenge outtakes. Look, I'm a writer and a bit of a ham, and tend not to pass up an opportunity to perform, so I'm the lead here. What we have here is a bunch of writers performing their own material. I only digitized my two contributions, because I only wanted to toot my own horn when the whole concept of YouTube came about. There were several others sketches and I preformed in them, too. But since I wasn't looking to be an actor, I only copied the skits I wrote.

Maybe I'll get into this stage of my writing life and how that led to another venture, Big B's Traveling Sideshow. Frankly, so many of these threads cross and mingle, I don't remember everything as it happened, just flashes of events. But it's something worth revisiting (for me, anyway). Until then, let's present Pepsi Challenge Outtakes!

Prairie Home Companion - Duct Tape Surgery (Oct. 2001)

2/24/2023

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...

Here's a bit of weirdness; I've been forced to relocate my audio bits as the old website suddenly ceased to exist, taking all my material with it. Since a group I'm dealing with uses SoundCloud, I've started setting up shop here. As I was doing so, I realized I never posted one of my PHC bits.

It was October 2001. Garrison Keillor had heart surgery over the summer. It was now just a month after 9/11. This was the first show of the season. I had submitted a sketch sort of referencing 9/11, a Guy's Shoes bit I wrote about here. They did use a version of it. But, I actually got a second piece on the show, the one and only time that happened for me. I combined GK's heart surgery with his running bit about duct tape and he opened the show with it.

This reminds me of the fact that GK never kept in touch with me. I spent the latter half of the summer checking the PHC website to find out when the show was back on the air. Especially this summer with his health and after 9/11. The show usually started in October and I don't remember if they pushed it back at all. But I know that no one had reached out to me to see if I was okay or to inform me if the show schedule would be changed. And I had to do that for the rest of each season, checking when it was on or where it was broadcasting from.

Anyway, here from Oct. 6, 2001, is Heart Surgery and duct tape.

Dan Fiorella · PHC - Duct Tape Heart Surgery

Barely Home Companion: Faux Paws (Sep. 03)

9/16/2022

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...

Faux Paws

Gi60 1-Minute Play Festival- "Countdown to Love"

3/10/2022

I'm finally getting around to posting the video of the production of my 1-minute version of "Countdown to Love" aka "Countdown to Valentines" aka "The CPHCCVDMF." This is from October, 2021.

I really liked the original version of the script that I had written for "TMI: Hollywood" years earlier. It didn't get used there. I turned it into a monologue for my friend's annual Valentine's Day night of monologues for the following year and, as luck would have it, that year she didn't do it. Then I reconnected with a group of friends from my "Pen to Stage" days on Facebook. They announced they were accepting short works for their annual night of 1-minute plays. They have been doing it for years, and I was not really aware of it. So, I pulled out the short monologue, re-inserted the cable TV executive and, ta-da, "Countdown to Love."

Because of the pandemic, I didn't attend in person, but I streamed it live at home. It was an eclectic night of material. Towards the end of the show, my piece came up, and it was perfectly cast. Two of my old Pen-to-Stage cohorts, Joan Lunoe and Mickey Ryan were cast in it. When I dropped a note to the director, Rose Bonczek, also from Pen-to-Stage, to thank her and compliment the job she did and the casting, she told me "how could I not cast them!" It was like old times!

Here, for your brief viewing pleasure is "Countdown to Love."

Sketchy Tales: I Knew Him When...

8/13/2021

Ok, so a new movie just came out and I'm a little bit more excited about it than I usually would be. The movie "Free Guy" is hitting theaters and I'm thrilled that someone I know is in it! Mark Lainer is an actor I met back in 1988 or so as part of a comedy troupe I became involved with. I've written about Style Without Substance many times on the blog. They were a remarkable group of talented people. It really was an exciting and creative time in my life and I was thrilled to be part of a team.

Mark was an incredibly funny actor (and totally still is). Any part you handed him--mime, priest, colorizer, beach nerd--were much improved by his presence. We did a lot of sketches together and I was lucky enough to get tapes of some of them. I want to share them here.

Barely Home Companion - Storeman Plant Store (June 2002)

6/11/2021

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...

Man, I just wouldn't give up. The season was winding down and I was pulling stuff out of the trunk, big time. Again, despite the lack of success of my Storeman's Pet Place or Storeman's Travel Agency , I submitted yet another store sketch. This one has a slightly more interesting life. It's one of my early sketches, when I was deep in my Monty Python phase. I was really trying to come up with a replacement for my Pet Store sketch, something solid I could use as a sample. The storekeeper was becoming a more unhinged Groucho, or a less tall John Cleese. The character does ricochet all over the place, personality-wise. But it was a contest to see how many absurd lines l could come up with for some of the straightest lines I could dole out. It's a litany of puns, absurdity, wisecracks and darkness.

Years after I wrote it, I submitted to a group of young adults who were doing a sketch comedy show on Manhattan Public Access TV. They liked the bit and took me and a couple of friends on as writers. That will be a tale for another day. But, they did produce the Plant Store and I included that version at the end. Excuse the bad picture ratio, this was one of the first videos I attempted to transfer from a VHS tape to digital and I never quite got control of the aspect ratio.

So, as I attempted to keep my presence felt at PHC, I submitted this to them, after re-fitting it to kinda fit the format of the show. It, too, was rejected but only in the sense they didn't use it. It's not like anyone was writing back to me saying, "no thank you."

Storeman Plant Store

Barely Home Companion - NPR NEWS FLASH (March 2002)

4/23/2021

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!

NPR NEWS FLASH

Barely Home Companion - NPR News (March 2002)

3/15/2021

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 a heavily recycled bit. I had come up with a couple of sketches and pitched them as a series of black-outs for an ABC comedy pilot called "Where's the Party," a sketch-comedy-music-talk show. I honestly don't remember how the idea came about, but there were a series of sketches about a news team that was so desperate to be the first on the air that they caused the problems. It got produced in 1991. The bits got scaled back a bit (as you'll see in the video below) for budget reasons. But the radio version went all out again, as originally written. So I pulled them out and submitted it to PHC. They didn't go for it. Years later (I think 2010) I submitted to the All Star production Network and they did do two of the full sketches. I'm including them below, as well. So, again, first rule of comedy writing, Never Throw Anything Out.

NPR News

Sketchy Tales-Still a Barber After all These Years

8/22/2020

This post may spin out into another series of posts, but in the mean time, let me share what happened to me last week...

I got a haircut! There's slightly more to it than that. I went to the hair salon and they brought me in to the available barber, an older gentleman who looked like he's been around enough scalps to handle himself. There was some initial chit-chat about the pandemic, wearing the mask, social distancing. The usual laments about the area stores not being able to open yet and how hard it is for them. Then he adds, "Yeah, somebody oughta smash Cuomo's head with a baseball bat." I got kinda quiet after that. He, however, was on a roll. "Trump's gotta send in the troops to straighten stuff out!" "How can a bartender be a senator?" (I responded, "Well, they say anyone can be president, so I guess anyone can be a senator." I should also note here, she's not a senator, but a Congresswoman.). "The cops' hands are tied! How can the people tie the cops' hands like that?" (They're the people, I didn't respond). "You know how she got to be senator?" (back to her) "She's got all that money." ("Oh," I do respond, "she's one of those rich bartenders...") I mean, I'm not going to argue with the guy. He's cutting my hair! He's got scissors! He's got a razor! I can't even simply nod (did I mention he's cutting my hair?), so I just kept saying "Uh-huh. Uh-huh." He finished up, I paid the inflated price of the haircut and gave him a decent tip for having to work during a pandemic. But I remember thinking, "This should be a skit!" Then I remembered I wrote that skit, like 30 years ago! It was apolitical, but getting a haircut from an angry barber was the premise!

The skit was preformed by the Staten Island comedy group, "Generation Sketch" back in the 90's. They recorded it for the local public access channel. I had uploaded a number of my sketches on Youtube, but I realized as I started to think about this post that I never uploaded the barber sketch! So I had to pull out my VHS tape (google it) and run it through my digital converter and here we are!

I present for the first time in a generation:

Generation Sketch: Still a Barber After All These Years

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