Category: Skit Happens - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

DOA: Hollywood; Halloween Edition - Amity Mayoral Debate

10/29/2019

TMI: Hollwood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life.

Again, I'm really satisfied with this sketch. Back in that summer it had been mentioned to me, as I noted in the forward of the skit, Politics is unpredictable. Like, did you ever notice that the mayor in "Jaws" is still the mayor in "Jaws 2?" How’d that happen?

It was something my son-in-law pointed out to me and it started to flesh itself out into a sketch over time, a perfect Halloween/Election Day combo that seems more common now as horror and politics have gotten more intertwined. Sure, there's a couple of typos and I left the name "Watt" in one place after I changed it to "Carla." So many Jaws Easter eggs in it. And it had some decent bits for the woman in the cast. And some really good throw-away lines and the Abby & Grace characters came out of left field, but really work in this context. Alas, it wasn't produced, but I hope you'll enjoy it now.

1977 Amity Mayoral Debate

Skit Happens: North Korean Edition 2

8/5/2019

Who would possibly write TWO North Korean song parodies? Me! Back in March 2013, things were ever dicey with the Axis of Evil, so North Korea was in the news a lot. Man, pundits were going nuts that we weren't just going in and invading them. I had a joke somewhere about doing it so we could make a sequel to M*A*S*H. Now we go around trying to woo them. How times have changed.

Anyway, here's a ditty I wrote up for the radio producers. It didn't make the cut.

Korea!

Skit Happens: North Korean Edition 1

8/2/2019

Well, here's an old bit I thought would never be topical again. Back in March 2012, North Korea was in the news for firing missiles, with an attempt to increase range. People couldn't decide whether to ignore him or battle him. I sent this song parody to the radio people I was dealing with. One pass. the second gave me a soft pass. He kinda liked it but didn't think the story had legs. He was afraid by the time it got produced, the story would fade away. I resubmitted it the next time North Korea started sending up missiles again. Nothing then either. Now it's 2019, and here we are again! So, I'm cutting out the middle man and posting this bit to the blog.

Launch a Missile, Korea

DOA:Hollywood - Hollywood Director (4/2019)

7/31/2019

TMI: Hollwood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life.

Sometimes my material isn't so much topical as locational. A couple ideas occurred to me while walking the dog; they were both Hollywood-related ideas. I think I had just seen a promo on TCM for a Jackie Cooper movie and it made me think of that old story of how they got Cooper to cry in movies; by saying his dog was dead. I just extrapolated from there to come up with this little ditty. TMI: Hollywood took a pass, but if TCM ever does a sketch show, I'm submitted this!

Hollywood Director

Barely Home Companion: Catsup Ad (11/00)

7/15/2019

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, I was always trying to find a way to get the gang at PHC to notice my stuff. I would try to submit to their running jokes but with a twist of my own to make it stand out. It rarely worked.
I don't know if it goes on today, but there was a time ketchup was also sold under the name catsup. Today, my spell check won't acknowledge the word. Anyway, it seemed like a goofy take to insert into PHC's Ketchup commercials. So, naturally, I wrote a song parody. The thing is, PHC didn't do a lot of song parodies. Sometimes I'm my worse enemy. But with having to come up with something each week to show them I was still alive, I couldn't afford to be too precious about what I was creating. If it was a solid idea and I could type it out, I would.

But it didn't get picked.

Catsup Advisory Board

DOA: Hollywood - To Tell The Truth D.C. Edition (4/19)

7/12/2019

TMI: Hollywood started as a parody of all things Hollywood. Then they started dealing with the wider pop-culture. Now, politics has merged into pop-culture, so they are doing more political stuff. They try to limit it, or run issues through the Hollywood looking glass, which, face it, is very easy to do with Trump in the White House. We can all write "Trump is Stupid" gags until the cows come home (but we know, under this administration that a lot of cows won't be coming home) but how do handle news that hasn't been hammered to death by late-night shows, other comics and Twitter? It's tricky. And to put all that effort into a sketch that has a slim chance to make it (especially coming from an outsider on the wrong coast) is daunting. So here's what happens...

Naturally, Press Secretary and Official Fibber was in the news during April, coming up with wacky explanations for her boss' wackier behavior. Also, ABC started running its ads for their summer game shows. There's "To Tell The Truth" right smack in the middle of things; how could I not? I learned from noted writer and late, lamented online friend John Boni that you can't just plop out a sketch or article or anything with just one note, so, sure, Sarah's a liar, so let's do variations on that. But I can go further by picking the right "celebrities" to question her and play around with the 2 other contestants. I think I had a nice mix of gags and zingers in this sketch. But, it didn't make the cut. So, we present...

To Tell The Truth D.C. Edition

DOA: Hollywood - Office of Thrones (5/19)

6/14/2019

So, there was this show, Game of Thrones--maybe you heard of it--and the series finale was the same night as the last show of the season for TMI. I don't have HBO so I never watched the show (I've just started reading the books, so no spoilers!). Not one to look a golden goose in the mouth, HBO announced future spin-offs and sequels. And then mentioned they would be showing a documentary about the final season. I instantly thought about a documentary of the show's events, which quickly assembled itself into an Office parody. It's written as a stage sketch, so there's a lot of right stage/left stage action as people step forward to address the "camera." I thought it came out pretty good.
Alas, the show is gone, and so is this sketch's chance of getting selected again.

Office of Thrones

DOA: Hollywood - American Greetings (3/19)

6/12/2019

TMI: Hollwood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. As has been my long-stated premise, topical sketches don't age well. If it doesn't get picked it falls to the wayside. For the last year or so I've been giving my orphan sketches a home on the blog. For instance...

The big news in March 2019 was the college admissions scandal, where the FBI uncovered a huge scam where a guy was getting money to bribe officials, alter SAT scores and fake high school achievements for kids to get into college while pretending to donate to charity. Actress Lori Loughlin got caught in the net and it went badly for her; arrested. Lost her job on "Fuller House" and "When Calls the Heart," and was basically banned from all things Hallmark. She was in the process of becoming the face of the company's cable offerings and that abruptly ended. So I wrote up a quick bit for TMI to play with. I was thinking of it as a video commercial parody, but it would have worked as a cold open as well. Didn't make the cut for either. While the story plays out, the initial shock and TV images have faded, so the bit really can't be salvaged, so let's just post it here, shall we?

American Greetings

DOA: Hollywood: The Ariana Grande - (3/19)

6/10/2019

TMI: Hollwood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "most." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. As has been my long-stated premise, topical sketches don't age well. If it doesn't get picked it falls to the wayside. For the last year or so I've been giving my orphan sketches a home on the blog. For instance...

-Back in March 2019, Starbucks announced it was partnering up with singer and celeb Ariana Grande to create a special beverage. The jokes wrote themselves...from the TMI Minute where I wrote she was licking each coffee cup personally, to a more elaborate "cold opening" I wrote for the stage show. I was in an "old-timey" mood that week and created a short Abbott & Costello-like routine. I even made it more topical by referencing presidential candidate, John Hickenlooper. And if that doesn't date a skit, nothing will. While my one liner was used on the TMI Minute, the sketch didn't make the cut for the stage show. So, here it is. Perhaps out of touch, it's still polling better than John Hickenlooper...

The Ariana Grande

DOA: Hollywood - This is All of Us (2/19)

6/7/2019

TMI: Hollwood has been a going concern for several years, and I've been submitting to them for the last couple. The premise is they are a live TOPICAL show, so material is submitted by Wednesday and then read and selected for the show they prepare each Sunday. It's a grueling schedule for them and rough on the writers. As has been my long-stated premise, topical sketches don't age well. If it doesn't get picked it falls to the wayside. For the last year or so I've been giving my orphan sketches a home on the blog. For instance...

Back in February of 2019, TMI:Hollywood let the writers know that actress Laura Niemi would be the guest performer on the show. She plays Jack's mom in the flashbacks of the NBC series "This is Us."

I had made some one-liners about the show on Twitter and some comments about the show as it aired to my wife, so I thought I had a handle on it. I hadn't written a parody of a TV show in a long while and it seemed like time to give that a whirl. Also, I cheated.

I pulled out an old sketch of mine, a Christmas Carol parody, where Scrooge is visited by all manner of time travelers to relive his past. As I've noted elsewhere, TMI: Hollywood has a large cast and likes well-populated sketches to feature as much as the talent as possible. Again, this seemed to work in my favor, as the original had a bunch of people. As does "This is Us." I hung a lantern on the fact that there seems to be a Christmas theme going on in February. Weirdly, it all kinda worked. To a degree, I guess. They didn't use it. I'll probably post the original as we get toward Christmas (watch this space!!!). In the mean time:

(I'm trying something different here, since most of my TMI sketches are saved as pdf files, I'm going to upload them as Scribd files, one of the options here at Weebly. It's a bit easier than pasting the word file into a text box and they having to reformat the whole thing. I hope this is acceptable.)

This is All of Us

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