Schedule Update, Show Recognition, & an Amy Poehler/UCB Story

Come for the information, stay for an amusing anecdote from 2000

For those of you who are paid subscribers (and those of you about to become paid subscribers!), a scheduling note: due to actual work/job commitments and various vacation plans for your hosts, we will have one extra week before the next episode (covering Season 28) is released. That will be out on Monday, August 5. After that, we’ll be back on track. It’s our hope this post, and the story below, will help bridge the gap to the next show.

Meanwhile, in case you missed our X post about this, we received some excellent news from Substack:

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Now, on to my Amy Poehler story that I teased in the last episode.

(Everything’s faded above after 25 years or so, but it says “Don’t Think!” a key catchphase from the Upright Citizens Brigade TV show and is signed by all four members)

Let’s travel back to the fall of 1999, a time before Twitter/X and YouTube and Facebook and Substack and podcasts. I (Scot) was a sophomore at North Central College, heavily involved with work at WONC, the campus radio station, and The Kindling, the student humor magazine. It was Friday night, so I was in my dorm room, alone, watching Upright Citizens Brigade reruns (as, I assure you, all cool kids were doing at that time).

At the end of one of the episodes, I saw and heard a message to the effect of, “How would you like to have Upright Citizens Brigade perform in your town? Contact us at … to make it happen!”

To know one in particular, since I was alone, I said, “Yes. I’m going to make that happen.”

My fellow editors and writers at The Kindling were huge UCB fans, so it was not a tough sell to get them on board. What was a tough sell was convincing the administration and the student activities board to make it happen. We would need to use Pfeiffer Hall, the College’s main performance building, and to secure funds to set things up before we could make the money back on ticket sales. I honestly don’t remember the exact talent fee for UCB, but the number $7,500 is rattling around in my head. Or maybe $8,000 since that would be easier to split four ways. In any case, we also needed to figure out potential dates, flight and transportation issues, hotel accomodations, and contractual questions. This was a lot of responsibility for a handful of 19 and 20-year-olds.

Somehow, we fooled convinced them. We got UCB locked in to perform. And, understand, this was not a touring company or students taking improv classes. These were the founding members of UCB, featuring Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh (Veep), Ian Roberts (Talladega Nights) and Matt Besser (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story). The core four.

Of course, then the real work began.

We made posters. We placed ads in the local newspaper. We ran promos on the campus radio station. We posted on fan sites and online bulletin boards. We drove a former police cruiser outfitted with a microphone and massive speaker tied to the roof, blaring our message at beaches and hangouts in the greater Chicagoland area (Wait, I might be confusing our efforts with The Blues Brothers).

We even got the event listed in the Chicago Reader, which was a pretty big deal. Tickets were $6 for NCC students and $12 for the general public. One of The Kindling’s top men (and my roommate for three years in college), Mike Martens, designed the poster below. We, um, forgot to include the phone number so I wrote that in by hand on every single copy. Things were happening!

On the day of the event, Mike and I were tasked with picking up Amy, Matt, Matt, and Ian at the airport. We borrowed a big NCC van and made our way to O’Hare. This was pre 9/11, so we were able to walk right up and wait at the gate. I remember crafting a sign that said “UCB” to hold up like all the limo drivers do in the movies. I drove them to the hotel, where they checked in, and then spent most of the afternoon with them as we gave them a tour of the theater and took care of any last-minute questions or concerns.

There’s a quick story or two I’m going to save for the Season 29 show because, hey, we gotta spread this content to the listening audience, as well. In short, though, every one of the UCB members was fun and friendly. Amy likely is the single funniest person I’ve ever shared a room with. However, the group also had a businesslike posture. I mean, they were there for a job and they took that seriously.

Highlight of the day? Probably this conversation with Matt Walsh:

MW: “Here’s a ten. Can you go to Walgreens and buy me some tube socks? But when you get the change, make sure you ask for a bunch of pennies because…”

SB: “… because you need them for ‘Ass Pennies’!”

MW: “Yep. It’s for ‘Ass Pennies’.”

It’s a sketch, people.

The show was fantastic, a “greatest hits” of sketches from the Comedy Central program. The crowd was enthusiastic and loud. Despite skepticism on behalf of the administration, we were able to fill most of Pfeiffer — I believe it was something like 800 tickets sold. And The Kindling’s own Mike Martens even was called upon to play a key role in one of the sketches (he was asked to be “The Dolphin”, which should mean something to UCB fans).

Look, there’s me! All the way on the right side, blue shirt, next to Ian Roberts. The whole experience is a core college memory. Following the performance, after dropping off UCB at the hotel, I distinctly remember walking on clouds back to my dorm room — looking up at the sky, pausing, and trying to take the whole day in.

If you’ve never seen the Upright Citizens Brigade TV show, I highly recommend it. It’s necessary viewing, honestly. There are DVDs of the three seasons available at Amazon and various sketches can be found on YouTube. However, because of the circular Del Close-inspired nature of each episode and every season, you really should get the DVDs and watch the whole way through.

Stay tuned for our Season 28 episode coming soon and lot of more fun along the way. In the meantime, here’s two more classic Amy UCB performances below.