Happy Birthday, Chicago! (1987)
Celebrate Chicago’s birthday in 1987 with a variety of skits!
Some of the newspaper columns written by Mike Royko are reenacted, parodied, and read live on stage!
Accompany Will Clinger on an adventure where “Chicago Gangster” reenactment culture and standup comedy collide!
This video consists of two parts. The first is an interview with Satori Shakoor, a performer in the Los Angeles area with her own one-woman show. The second is said show, although unfortunately the recording of the show is not complete.
“The 80s in Retrospect” is a mockumentary produced in 1979. The documentary “begins” in the middle of the footage (10:06), and features a series of mock commercials, scenes from a New Year party, a scene within a restaurant, and a soliloquy in a train station. The tone of the “documentary” shifts between comedic irreverence and earnest social criticism. The beginning of the footage (before 10:06) establishes the basic premise that polluted radio and television waves sent from Earth are being re-broadcast to Earth from a “space” Haight-Ashbury. The “documentary” footage, then, shows the “polluted” nature of television and radio media. Produced by The Anybody You Choose Video Group at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Tongue-in-cheek polemic against a 1979 Chicago Magazine article about the failures and debaucheries of Southern Illinois University–Carbondale (“Burned Out in Carbondale”). The video takes the form of a 60 Minutes-esque investigation. It has several humorous segments and parodies, including rounds in a dilapidated library, an academic adviser who is actually a magician/diviner, and a woman who passes through a neighborhood bar (PK’s) selling test answers.
Two hour cable program produced by Nancy Cain and friends in L.A. in the mid-90s focusing on Christmas shopping and the death of Superman.
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping stage a lengthy peace revival filled with song, dance, and sermons raging against American consumerism.