Category: Skit Happens - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Skit Happens: Pee-Wee's Playhouse 90

8/1/2023

Lord knows I have mixed feelings about Pee-Wee Herman (as explained here) but his death this week really affected me. He was a running reference in my family. My dad "portrayed" him at family picnics, when we did family shows. My kids enjoyed the shows and movies (until the whole Christmas thing). We imitated him. Paul Reubens was a guy who hustled and made a career for himself and just stood out from the crowd. And at one point I spent months writing in his voice, attempting to imitate his style and humor for Warner Bros. I really thought I had done a good job of it. Granted, things didn't work out back then and now his passing suddenly shuts a door of (possibly imagined) opportunity. Or the chance to ever tell my story to him. I mean, I friended him on social media. I linked my blog posts to him several times. No reaction. And now I'll never know if he was even aware of my existence. He was a creator and writer, and I hoped there might be a connection there, but no more.

I've been going through some old scripts, working on a new project, and I stumbled across this sketch. I have no memory of writing it and had forgotten it existed. I took the character Pee-Wee Herman and combined him with the classic "Playhouse 90" series from the 1950s. How boomer can you get? So, it's scenes from the old teleplays that were broadcast on CBS and adding Pee-Wee to them. This was for TMI:Hollywood, and they were a generation younger than I and the sketch wasn't selected. I didn't think of it as topical, but now I see how any sketch, topical or evergreen can have an undetermined shelf life. Ideas age, references fade into the past, personalities pass on. So, because I have little else to do, here's my sketch:

Pee-wee's Playhouse 90

Skit Happens: Blurt, the Elf Without a Filter

12/5/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Categories of "Skit Happens" or "From the Slushpile," I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them to. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. Anyway, these things are burning holes in my hard drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog, so...

I started working on this in 2020, thinking we might be able to do a Christmas show, and that hope just vanished. I wound up setting it aside and then going back to tinker with it from time to time. It kinda came about from "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" and the character Hermie. I mean he was a little blunt about people's dental hygiene so I figured what would happen if it was about everything else. It works fine. The elf Tweedle is named for one of the lead character in my novella, "Lost Claus," available over at Amazon. It's kinda evergreen, although I'd have to update the toy that got too popular if it goes foward.

Blurt, the Elf Without a Filter

Skit Happens: REST IN PEACE

10/3/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" (aka "From the Slushpile") I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them to. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. In the mean time, these things are burning holes in my hard drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog, so...

The wife has been binging "Grey's Anatomy" (again) and with everything that goes on in that hospital, it's surprising that anyone got cured at all. So many times, a scene with the family goes "We did what we could for her" and "she died peacefully." You hear that enough times and you start to wonder, what if they didn't? What if she didn't? What if those things were unexplainable. It turned into on of those "snowball" sketches, where you set the premise and just watch things got downhill and get worse. It's a Pythonseque bit of nonsense, but I enjoyed writing it. I actually wrote it over a series of days, jotting down a few lines, then coming back to it when thing slowed down and then finally put it all in order.

REST IN PEACE

Skit Happens: Bad Stuntman

9/26/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" (aka "From the Slushpile") I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. In the mean time, these things are burning holes in my harddrive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog. So...

This sketch came to me in bits and pieces over time. I remember getting the idea for a "bad stuntman" using a noose. I emailed myself a note saying just that. And it sat there. Slowly, things came up to fill it out during the pandemic. Just turned into a series of bad ideas, topped off with the original noose gag. There was no rush to complete it for anyone, so I would pull it up, turn the names into a running gag and just make it goofy. Weirdly, SNL did a COVID episode with a pair of bad stuntwomen showing off their meager skills and what they were doing to stay sharp during the lockdown. The two don't really have much in common, but it was just weird seeing a stuntman sketch as I was wrapping mine up. Oh, well. At least they had somewhere to send it...

Bad Stuntman

Skit Happens: Theme Park Announcements

9/19/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them to. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. In the mean time, these things are burning holes in my hard drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog, so...

I kinda forgot where this idea popped up from. SNL has been doing some "Voice work on video games" sketches. There was a lot of news about the new Jurassic Park movie coming out. Then during the pandemic, the news reported how Japanese theme parks were asking their visitors NOT to scream on the rides to prevent spreading droplets. It all just came together as this thing. It's a two-hander, so I'm not sure the comedy troupe would have leapt to do it. And it does depend on a growing absurdity that is tricky to maintain. It's cute, it's goofy and maybe it would have made the cut...

Theme Park Announcements

Skit Happens: “Do You Know Jack?”

9/12/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" (aka: From the Slushpile) I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them to. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to.
In the mean time, these things are burning holes in my hard drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog, so...

I'm not saying I was trying to write a sequel to my Homonym game show sketch, but it sure seems that's the way it came out. It's another game show for idiots and it got constructed from the end forward. The idea that all the fairy tales have a character named Jack just kind of hovered around for a long time. Then the phrase (and I believe an early game show) called You don't know Jack" worked it's way in. After that I had to decide what kind of contestants to have and during our COVID downtime, I got to pull the various threads together. And quicker than you can say jack-rabbit, I got...

“Do You Know Jack?”

Skit Happens: A Very Good Place to Start

9/5/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" (AKA: From the Slush Pile) I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. These things are burning holes in my thumb drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog. So...

Continuing with my musical comedy phase, I started this sketch with the gang from TMI: Hollywood in mind. I listed all the characters at the top (which they requested on submissions). It's a sketch where the characters get both too literal and too obtuse as Maria tries to teach them about music. I really let loose with it. It would have been a good sketch for a big cast (even though they never much cared for my song parodies). But, like I've been saying, the group couldn't over come the lockdown. I wound up sending the sketch to the producer because SNL did a parody of the same song this season, with West Side Story star Ariana DeBose screwing up the same song in a different way. They had her being obtuse and not the kids. Sure, mine's better, but they have an actual TV program to put it on.

A Very Good Place to Start

Skit Happens: Favorite Things

8/29/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" (AKA: From the Slush Pile) I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. These things are burning holes in my hard drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog. So...

As I posted else where, thanks to cable and streaming, topical pop-culture is no longer limited to recent entertainment. SNL has gotten deep into the habit of doing parodies of classic movies. In fact, they've done a number of "Sound of Music" bits in the last few years (I think it kicked off with NBC doing Sound of Music: Live). Add to that the fact that while working at home, I have on a music station (which I can't play at the office). One of the channels is for stage and screen songs. A lot of Sound of Music numbers get played, and that certainly triggered the idea for this sketch. What if the song "My Favorite Things" was, as one of the kids says, a bit on the nose?

Favorite Things

Skit Happens: Rain in Spain

8/22/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" (AKA: From the Slush Pile) I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. These things are burning holes in my thumb drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog. So, we'll be playing around on here, I suppose.

I recently went through a musical comedy phase, writing parodies of a couple of musicals. The Rain in Spain idea I actually jotted down a while ago, and with the pandemic and working from home, got to flesh it out a bit. And I mean a little bit. It's just about two pages. It's practically a black-out. Without feeling like I was going to send it to TMI: Hollywood, I didn't push myself to expand it out much. I wrote for the three main characters, got to the twist and bailed. It's still cute, though.

Rain in Spain

Skit Happens: The Sorting Hat

8/8/2022

Early on when I started posting under the Category "Skit Happens" I was posting stuff that that been submitted somewhere but didn't get chosen. Post-pandemic (if we are, in fact, post-it) I've been writing sketches and have had few, if any, places to submit them to. I don't know why I'm still writing them. It's like the idea pops into my head and I get such a rush from the act of creating, I want to get it down on paper, I need to. There are a lot of "short play festivals" out there these days that accept "plays" that are under 10 minutes, so it seems like I might have an outlet for the sketches, but sometimes I get very insecure about my material. Are they really plays? They're comedy skits. I feel like I'm setting myself up for rejection, you know? But it's something I have to try. It's not like I haven't submitted to festivals like that before.

In the mean time, these things are burning holes in my thumb drive and I have to put them out there somewhere and I have a blog. So, we'll be playing around on here, I suppose.

I noticed something in the last few years on SNL; topical isn't always topical. Yes, they have the political cold openings and Weekend Update, but when SNL started, they would do movie parodies of then newly-released movies and then a lot of Boomer-related things (and guests) from early TV. The latest generation of writers, thanks to cable TV and streaming, have a much broader and deeper field to harvest. I think I first realized it with Bill Hader and his various Vincent Price holiday shows. I can't believe for a minute that the audience would know who Vincent Price, Liberace, James Mason and others were, but maybe they did, thanks to Nick-at-Night or TVland. They do parodies now of decades-old Disney cartoons. They set up movie send-ups from the 1940s and 1950s. They can do a sketch about anything (as long as it is funny).

The Wizarding World movies (formerly know as "Harry Potter movies") are still in the public mind thanks to the books, movie prequels, Broadway shows, cable TV showings and theme-park rides. And if in the presence of any of these things, a sketch idea can pop up still. We still watch the movies whenever they play on TV (usually once a month on one cable station or another) and, if I'm paying attention, something new will appear to me: An odd piece of logic, a plot gap, a continuity issue or a background character I hadn't noticed. Or the various characters names. How did no one figure out Professor Lupin was a a werewolf? How do you name your kid Malfoy and not know he'll be evil? Or why would any kid WANT to be placed in a school called "Slytherin?" Well, this seems like something the Sorting Hat would have a hand in...

The Sorting Hat

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