Watch “A Day Which Will Live in Comedy” from Top Story! Weekly Episode 118: “Are You Ready for Some Jobs Speech?”

We do a show every Sunday night at iO West based on the news of the previous seven days. And when I saw that this past Sunday would be September 11, it posed a quandary: we couldn’t just ignore the anniversary, but anything we did would have to be tasteful and respectful while still being funny. And then I hit on it: make the sketch about the very difficulty we were having on doing a comedy show on the anniversary of a tragedy, only set it on the anniversary of another, analogous tragedy. I’m pretty proud of the results; I got more compliments on this sketch than on any I’ve written in a while.

A DATE THAT WILL LIVE IN COMEDY by Michael Hughes

Starring Matthew Harris (Neil), Brent Pope (Larry), Brian Vestal (Gus), Shannon Ayers (Rosie) and Colin Contreary (Pete)

Directed by Michael Hughes

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Dick Cheney Makes a Movie Based on His Book “In My Time” – with Hartley Sawyer and Drew Seeley from “Glory Daze”!!

We had a very attractive cast in Top Story! Weekly this past week. So when I started thinking about how to make a sketch about Dick Cheney’s new book – especially about the gap between Cheney’s account of what happened and everyone else’s – I thought about having Cheney cast someone very handsome to play him in the movie version of his book. That lead to the sketch below, which got the show off to a great start. But Hartley Sawyer and Phillip Wilburn get all the credit for the movie trailer!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GukIUfpsHsY

DICK CHENEY, AUTEUR by Michael Hughes

Starring Phillip Wilburn (Dick Cheney), Kipleigh Brown (Marci), Hartley Sawyer (“Dick Cheney”), Derek Reid (“Colin Powell”), Shannon Ayers (“Cheney Aide”), Amy Paffrath (“Valerie Plame”), Drew Seeley (“Scooter Libby”) and Matt Moore (“George W. Bush”)

Directed by Michael Hughes

Watch Elton John, George Michael, Lionel Richie and Ke$ha Singing About the Economic Crisis – with Drew Seeley and Hartley Sawyer from “Glory Daze” – from Top Story! Weekly Episode 117: “Dick in a Book”

When you have someone in your show who’s had a Top Five single on the Billboard charts, you want to have them sing! So we took a sketch concept we’ve done before, tweaked it a bit, and came up with this dynamite closer to the sketch portion of our show featuring Derek Reid “Dancing on the Ceiling” as Lionel Richie, Kipleigh Brown skanking it up as Ke$ha, and an awesome duet between Drew Seeley as George Michael and Phillip Wilburn as Elton John – plus Amy Seeley and Hartley Sawyer hosting. This was pretty great. Enjoy.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL ECONOMIC CRISIS MUSIC by Kristina Adelmeyer, Michael Hughes and Phillip Wilburn

Starring Amy Paffrath (Amy), Hartley Sawyer (Hartley), Derek Reid (Lionel Richie), Kipleigh Brown (Ke$ha), Drew Seeley (George Michael), and Phillip Wilburn (Elton John)

Directed by Michael Hughes