Yeah, I've been distracted lately from the blog.  Fortunately it was do to writing.  I managed to finish a screenplay!  And get some material out into the world.  

Now,  back to the topic at hand, my days at PHC: As the 2002-2003 season began, it was noted that Keillor had turned 60 that year.  It felt like a valid topic to address on the show,  so I attempted a song medley.  I took all the songs I knew that were about 16-year olds and changed them to 60-year olds, then just adjusted the lyrics to fit all the typical old age jokes I could squeeze in.  It wasn't selected, which made it seem like the new season was going to be like the old season.

I always liked it.  I always wanted to perform it at friends birthdays but never had the nerve.

PHC was winding down for the 2001-02 season with their big Season Finale.  I always would try to put something together that was bigger and broader to make a year-end splash.  The show announced it would begin live-streaming the show on the internet and that triggered this idea, a sketch about radio sight gags.

It's something I've alluded to before, with things like "radio magicians" and such but the idea of online video made this a skit that had to be submitted.  I checked my journals from this time and I was pretty distraught, trying to finish up a screenplay, trying to get a paying gig as I watched Cracked magazine start to implode.  The day job was a nightmare and the family kept me busy.  I noted in my notebook how I had an idea, then forgot it, then remembered it as I was writing I forgot it.  I was upbeat about the idea and thought it was funny and how I had to add a mime to the end to punch it up.  Again, a brief bit of silliness and sound effects that I would have bet PHC would love!  I would have lost that bet.  The show aired for the last time that season without me.  And again, a very specific sketch that couldn't be submitted elsewhere 

This is one of those pieces I had totally forgotten about.  PHC was on one of its road trips and was doing a show from Kettering, Ohio, which usually meant they liked to do some bits about the town they're in and it's history.  I had become fond of these times because they forced me out of my box.  As noted, I was running on creative fumes, submitting old material to the show.  So, I did some internetting about Kettering, Ohio and wrote up a lecture about the town. 

I have to say, rereading it now, it's actually pretty good.  I present the facts in a goofy fashion and had fun with the topic and the man the town is named after.  Naturally, I was disappointed it wasn't used, more so because there was absolutely nowhere else to send it.  That was the thing with PHC, you wanted to write in its voice but that made it harder to submit rejected material elsewhere.  It was something I always did with the more neutral or generic comedy sketches, but these type of things were dead in the water.  Well, here it is for the first time anywhere; a celebration of Kettering, Ohio on its 50th anniversary:

Yeah, I was in a real writing slump at this point.  I pulled this item out of the file and thought it would be considered.  It's basically a one-act play I wrote years earlier, back when I had no idea what one did with a one-act play.  Still don't.  I consider them long sketches.  It's in my wheelhouse of little guys getting it over on the system, only this time literally. 

​I vaguely remember getting the idea and mulling it until the ending came to me.  I wrote it up.  Presented (I believe) to a workshop I was part of at the time.  I think that's what brought the idea up, sitting in a workshop seeing people present their stage plays and all I ever brought in was my little comedy skits, so this was me trying to be a mature writer...kind of.  Anyway, I had not business sending it to PHC.  I didn't even try to set it up as a typical PHC bit.  I can't say I was surprised when I checked the website that Monday to discover it failed to make the cut....

Another sketch lost to the dustpan of my mind.  Reading  now, certain memories are being jogged.  It was a news item, that some charity was linked to Middle East terrorist groups.  I merged that with a long-gestating idea about bad charities; Veal-on-Wheel, Fur Coat drives, that I had been submitted to various venues for ages (they even ended up on the blog).  How I merged it into a Ketchup ad, I'll never know.  I did lift the awful/falafel rhyme from my days at the Plague, that college humor magazine I go on about.  And even with all that going for it, it didn't get picked.  Oh, well

PHC was still in NYC for the month of April, so I would naturally try to gear my material with my hometown in mind, and slip in my mention of the Staten Island ferry.  I used to read that National Lampoon made it a point to adjust the parody to the medium it was going to be in; so they wouldn't do a TV satire like MAD magazine, they would do a TV satire like resembled printed matter; a press kit, a diary. or studio notes on a script.  Same with the "commercial parodies."  They would format ad parodies as magazine ads, mimicking the style of typical magazine ads.  SNL took it to the next, logical step-went doing commercial parodies they would try to imitate the style of the video ads on TV.  Sure, they started out in the 70s as in-studio announcer style (Bass-O-matic) but moved quickly into filmed bits (Little Chocolate Donuts) because that was the style boomers were used to.  Over time, they commercials became almost solely pre-filmed bits, again, following the more elaborate style of the 80s and beyond, to the point now that companies are paying them to parody them.  This was never the case with PHC.  Sure, GK would often segue into a bit by announcing "this portion of the show is brought to you by..." and announcing something (Duct Tape, Ketchup) but it would simply be a PHC-style low-key verbal bit.  Even my first skit for PHC (Abbott & Othello) was set up as a "later tonight on Public Radio" preview commercial.  

In NYC, Circle Line cruises are a tourist institution.  We see the boats in the harbor all day long.  So, naturally I wondered, what if you took it to the next level?  Cruises to nowhere were becoming popular at the time, so I decided to combine the concepts.  I like the way it turned out.  Short, sweet, absurd and, I thought, written very much in the PHC style.  But no, they didn't use it.  And since that ship as sailed, let's present it here:

This is a quirky bit that I stole from myself.  There's a scene in a screenplay I wrote, "The Importance of being Ernie" (or "I was a Teenage Screenplay writer"), that had this scene it it.  It was a brazen attempt to update Abbott & Costello wordplay into the newer slang...well, the newer slang, circ. 2000s, which is really 1990s when I originally wrote the scene.  It was a set piece which I could easily copy and paste elsewhere.  Which is what I did, essentially.   I don't recall where the premise set-up came from, if that was based on some real-life rumors that were floating around at the time or not.  But it's a simple bit of silliness that didn't stand a chance at PHC.  So, here it is, as seen in "The Importance of being Ernie," Translating Youth:

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie 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 have had no idea what generated this sketch idea.  I mean, I reference something called "Words Can Heal" but where would have I heard about that?  It sounds like it was some kind of "Be Best" thing of the 'naughts.  Reading the sketch, most of it is still applicable.  Oh, the hunter/gather bit?  I had been working that gag into everything for a while.  Finally got it into Cracked as a "Prehistoric Web Page" gag.  I still use it ("Oh, he's a hunter, but he identifies as a gatherer."  See, still works.)  It didn't get picked, though.  It's not a bad little bit, but it is very much of the PHC template, so there was never an attempt to re-purpose it elsewhere.

This here is pure silliness.  I have a habit of occasionally dropping all pretense of sophisticated comedy and will write absolute goofball stuff.  Things like Us Guys ,  Comic Con and this sketch.  It was President's weekend coming which meant the Dayton 500 was happening.  Now, is there an overlap between NPR listeners and NASCAR fans?  I dunno.  But once the idea of a goofy trio stepping in for a missing pit crew, it was a classic comedy premise along with topical humor, political jabs, silly names and, as mentioned earlier, goofiness.  Unsurprisingly, it didn't make the cut.  Maybe because of the goofiness. This is one of those bits I should be able to recycle somewhere.  Maybe next year when sketch comedy makes a comeback post-COVID.

This was the second piece I submitted for their first week back in Feb. 2002.  The Winter Olympics had been held, so it seemed like a perfect time to re-work and submit the winter version of the radio Olympics.  The show often went off on nonsensical SFX adventures, just playing with the medium of radio, but I never got to a place where they would use one of my takes on it.  I really tried to go beyond just a series of sound effects and give the bit some surreal basis to exist and then marry silly events to justify the various sound effects Tom Keith (the SFX guy) had in his repertoire.  It's a fun, silly, quick-paced piece that didn't make the cut.  Oh, well..