Blog Posts - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

One Act Wonders: Comedy Karaoke

8/10/2026

I was really asleep at the wheel for this one. I submitted my sketch, "Comedy Karaoke" to this festival back in 2025. There were emails back and forth at the beginning of this year, then, I forgot about it completely! So, when I got a plaque in the mail a few weeks ago saying I won the Audience Choice Award (also a check) I was surprised. Basically, from April to July, I was clueless, didn't check their website, didn't look up their FB page, nothing. And here's the thing-I had won the Audience Choice Award last year for my Abbott & Othello play! What a yutz!

I started nosing around the 'net to find out what I could about the show and put together the various screen shots below the fold...

One Act Wonders: In the Pocket of Big Pitchfork

8/6/2026

I'm always looking to find new homes for my orphan sketches. Apparently, if you call them "short plays" or "10-minute plays," people will look at them. I've been pretty lucky sending stuff out. Sometimes I even get proof of execution, like from the good folks at The Sidekick Troupe. They present a Summerween (it's a thing) Radio Play Festival. I submitted my little parody of old horror movies and they accepted it into the festival! It was the first time it's been up on its feet anywhere and they did a great job. They staged it as a radio play, which is a smart idea; some minor costuming, enough mics and everyone can read the scripts.

Anyway, it was great to see my piece, "In the Pocket of Big Pitchfork," be performed.

I wish I remembered how the idea came up. It's a fairly recent piece, I think I wrote it for the TMI: Hollywood group and it was a good mash-up of my love of Universal Monster movies and all the "Big Pharm" and "Big Tech" conspiracies that were making the rounds a few years back. I mean, who hasn't watched "Bride of Frankenstein" and wondered, "How much did those torches set them back?" or "Man, I wish I had the pitchfork concession there." I like this so much because they are two ideas that seems so distant from each other, yet, they dovetailed so nicely.

So, I grabbed the pictures they posted and edited my one sketch out of the show and posted them all below.

From the Slushpile: Hey, A.I., Tell me About Yourself in a 515 Words

7/15/2026

As AI makes its presence felt in our daily lives, I decided it was time for AI to explain itself. So, I asked it to, like it was a grade school assembly or Miss America contest. I hope you enjoy its reply:

Hey, A.I., Tell me About Yourself in a 515 Words

Barely Home Companion - Leonard’s Extra Loud Fireworks for the Deaf (Jun. '07)

7/3/2026

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...

Don't remember this one, but it is totally something I would write. It was the last show of the season and July 4th was just around the corner, which means people had been shooting off fireworks since mid-March. A ridiculous product made to solve a ridiculous problem. And maybe the old SNL "News for the Hard of Hearing" was an inspiration. And I liked the idea of pushing fireworks on radio. I thought it was fun. I was alone in the PHC universe to think that. As the season ended, I knew I hadn't had a piece produced in 2 years and frankly, I was starting to lose hope. But come September, I did begin submitting material again because I'm just that dense.

Leonard’s Extra Loud Fireworks for the Deaf

Barely Home Companion - Summer Blockbuster 2007 (Jun. '07)

6/26/2026

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...

Yeah, re-reading this sketch, there was no way it was ever going to be picked. As the show would head toward its summer break, I would always submit a season finale-type sketch, talking about summer plans, bogus cliffhangers, or summer blockbusters. But this thing is just a wordle meets Mad libs. I essentially tried to come up with the longest daisy chain of a movie title I could. And then another one. And one more for good measure. GK hated pop culture stuff (mostly) but these movie titles were all over the place. It was a commercial parody outside the "later on public radio" framework. But I kind of like it. Word play, non sequitur dialogue, mocking Hollywood's pandering instincts, it all comes together for a decent parody and radio bit. Oh, well. Nineteen years later, we present:

Summer Blockbuster 2007

Barely Home Companion - Celebrity Spelling Bee (Jun. '07)

6/19/2026

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...

Okay, this is one of those sketches I forgot I wrote 20 years ago. It was a goof on the slew of celebrity game shows that were then popping up on TV, especially as the summer approached. Very straight forward, attempting to use the cast's abilities to mimic celebrity voices, and very inspired by the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches on SNL. Maybe that's why there are only 3 spellers. I'm looking at it and it seems short, like I could have tossed in a few more people in there to do impressions of. So, 2007. I go to google a picture to include on the blog and what to I stumble upon? Actual shows called Celebrity Spelling Bee. See, GK? This could have been you! You could have done it FIRST!!! But did you? Nooooooo. Man, I even have a Trump reference and portray him in 2007 as a jerk. Maybe, GK, if you had done this sketch, we could have shamed him from the public spotlight and saved ourselves a LOT of grief. That's on you GK. I blame you.

Celebrity Spelling Bee

Barely Home Companion - On the Page (Jun. '07)

6/12/2026

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...

Well, here's a silly bit I had totally forgotten about mocking the reality show craze. It's a pretty good late-career submission to PHC. I think what triggered the sketch was a show that was going to be about picking a director to make a film...wash it Project Greenlight? or some such thing. Anyway, they went on and on about directors and I decided to go with a real WGA-twist to create the most boring really show ever; watching writers write. On radio! The SFX of typewriters makes me chuckle as I reread it. Maybe I can do this as an AI bit, just lose the celebrity judges...

On the Page

From the Slushpile: FEIGN-FA

6/11/2026

I wrote this one up, a topical bit, but my usual places passed on it. I had a joke in my head, "Oh, it's that time when we have to pretend to care about soccer." Then the word "feign" (which I originally pronounced as "faint
than "fein") popped into my head and the soccer organization, FAFI, and the whole thing came together. So now, with the whole World Cup thing gearing up at last, I wanted to get this piece up, so, I present my snarky attitude towards soccer:

FEIGN-FA

A.I.-Caramba! presents: Sheck-E Takes the Stage

6/8/2026

Jokes pop into my head ALL THE TIME. It's an automatic reflex, like breathing or stealing hotel soaps. Sometimes I can coax them into a sketch or a prose piece. Other times I have to tweet them out to release them into the wild. Then I started seeing comics start posting clips on the 'net; a joke or two, a whole bit, maybe crowd work. Well, I got no crowd, I got no stage, so I did the next best thing...I ran a picture of me from that brief time I tried stand-up...

...ran it through AI and created, Sheck-E, the AI comic. I then ran my jokes through an AI voice generator, took that audio and the AI image and churned out a couple of one-gag videos. Two of these are jokes I wrote awhile ago, and the others are things that popped into my head recently, which is what drove me to AI, to get it out of my system.

I think they came out pretty well and it's a format that that is easier to deal with than trying to do an entire sketch in AI or get Points in Case to publish one of my prose pieces. So, welcome ladies and gents, as we present the comic stylings of Sheck-E, the AI comic!

From the Slushpile: Things You Don’t Want to Hear During Your Cardiac Catheterization

6/5/2026

Write what you know, they say. Well, this is one of those things. I had to have a Cardiac Catheterization in an effort to insert a couple of stents into my arteries. This was a while ago and everything went fine and the recovery was 100% and feeling very much better. But like any other thing medical, some weird thoughts run through your mind. Plus, there was always jokes about things you don't want to hear your surgeon say, like "Whoops" or "That's going to leave a mark." So it was that premise just with a medical speciality. I think the bit grew out of the line "My left or his left?" I wrote it a while ago, I submitted it, got no response and just kind of forgot about it, until I was rummaging through some old files on the hard drive. Re-reading it, I may be taking too much for granted on people's knowledge of cardiac catheterizations. The basis is they run a fiber optic line from your right wrist to your heart. It's got a camera and some grabby things where they can remove some plaque, insert the stent or, (God forbid) see that things are worse than they thought and withdraw and prepare the patient for by-pass surgery. Years ago they actually made the incision in your groin area and ran the line up from there. And they prep the groin area in case the wrist path doesn't work (the closing line). I guess that brings everyone up to day. So, some humor from my golden years here is:

Things You Don’t Want to Hear During Your Cardiac Catheterization

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