
![]() So, we just started watching Abbott Elementary last month, streaming it until we got all caught up and are now watching it at its regularity scheduled time on ABC. As I've often pointed out here, I grew up on old movies and grew up loving the movies and shows of Abbott and Costello. So, naturally, anything with the name "Abbott" in the title is going to trigger me. The joke is the title. The trick was how to put it together. I don't have what you would call a big support group of creatives out in the 'burbs. But I remembered there were movie scenes of Abbott & Costello in class rooms. And I knew "7 times 13" would be included, even which version. TCM recently showed "Abbott & Costello in Hollywood," and that included a scene of Lou in a kid's classroom. So, it was off to Youtube to find the clips I would need. Naturally, I had written a narrator's script to lead from scene to scene. Then I pulled up the original "Abbott Elementary" trailer and it was just music, a few scenes with dialogue from the show and just some of the wilder physical bits. So that became my template. I created a logo on MS Paint, found the whole version of the show's theme song and enough of the A&C clips I knew I needed. I played around with the editing software, make all the new clips black and wide, panned and scanned the old slips, all to maintain the visuals and got to the point where I was happy with it. It's up on Youtube and I've been posting it on LinkedIn, FB and Twitter. And if you found your way here, check it out:
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![]() 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! ![]() 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. Some final plague prestidigitation ![]() These are my final jokes from the final week of TMI: Daily. The group is taking the summer off and then plans to relaunch the show under a different title and/or format, adjusting for post-pandemic life. And hopefully the group will be back onstage in their sketch-comedy format, too. I am glad to be a part of it, in the background. Writing for this day after day kept the pandemic at bay and let my vent a lot of my fears, anger and frustration. I was one of the lucky ones, I was able to work from home the whole time and didn't have money woes or eviction fears. But many of the cast members did. They got to share and vent and make the pandemic person for us. And hopefully brought some laughter with the insights. It was a short week, 3 shows. I missed the first show because I was away. Nothing got in the Wednesday show, but then I managed to score 2 jokes in the season finale, which underwent the usual re-wording. So, take it away, TMI: Daily... Things are winding down here in Pandemic land, so the Amazing Maskoroni has a couple of final tricks to pull! ![]() Weird week for me. The show is only 3 days a week now, and I got nothing in Tuesday and Thursday, but got 4 jokes in on Wednesday, so my average remains intact. The FBI joke punchline was a much wordier version of my punchline, "So, not jovial tourists?". And the Texas power grid joke; I don't know what they was going on there. The whole joke turns on the word "power" and it got altered. The same premise and tag, but the logic that gets you there has been removed. So, the TMI: Daily summer season is 3 days a week, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for June, so check the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page for details. And here's my contributions for last week: ![]() As the crew settles into its summer schedule for June, I had a pretty good week for them just doing 3 shows a week. Some of the jokes got a little extra padding here and there but some were as written. It's funny how a couple of jokes I wrote I just knew that it would get picked. The cruise ship joke was one. The Christine remake joke too, to the point that when the punchline was said, they should show a photo of the female car from "Cars." But I forgot to write that in...and they did exactly that anyway! Sometimes we're all the same page creatively. It feels so good. Maybe why that's why I get bummed out when a joke doesn't make it or gets rewritten, I miss that rush. So, TMI: Daily is going into summer hours for now, 3 days a week, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for June, so check the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page for details. And here's my contributions for last week: ![]() 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 ![]() The horror/comedy film, STEAMED!, co-written by Beverly Bonner and Dan Fiorella, is making the rounds on the film festival circuit. How did it come together? Okay, slight detour... back when she was readying for her birthday fundraiser in 2017, she decided to put together a sample of the movie by filming a scene. Frankly, this made me nervous. They took the cops scene in Beverly's apartment and turned it into an interrogation room scene. Technically, it worked fine. It's just that the actors were in street cloths and not the actors we would be using. They were friends doing Beverly a favor. But now it was something tangible, something that made the movie seem real and it did the job.
This scene contain one bit of business that I loved, but Beverly didn't. When the cops come in, they ask if Beverly knew the landlord: |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. Archives
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