Coonridge Live! — A Kuster Fundraiser
2004 · AmVets, Jacksonville, Illinois
"You've seen the movie, you've played the video game, you've read the column. Now's the time to come face to face with… Coonridge Live!" So promised the radio ad for this "totally ridiculous evening of humor (and wisdom)," staged October 1, 2004 at the AmVets in Jacksonville, Illinois as a benefit for judicial candidate Larry Kuster.
Coonridge was Ken Bradbury's beloved fictional small town — a place where the locals trade gossip, mangle theology, and argue over which pew is whose. For this fundraiser Ken assembled a string of his signature sketches and rapid-fire one-liners, performed by a quartet of voices billed simply as Sylvia, Bob, Marian, and Ken. The evening opened and closed with volleys of stand-alone Coonridge wisecracks ("Three pickups, a John Deere and a motorcycle. The Methodists must have a funeral today.") and built toward "Kuster Phone," a sketch written especially for the occasion.
That centerpiece bit imagines a campaign caller trying to win over the irascible Crumps, who hang up on Republicans and Democrats alike — until they learn the candidate married Mary Kuster, "one of the finest ladies to ever marry a cow milker." It's classic Bradbury: affectionate, irreverent, and built on real biography (Larry Kuster's actual vita, from a Kewanee dairy farm to a Juris Doctor at the University of Iowa, supplies the sketch's running gags). The ad signed off with a wink: "Larry, do you approve of this ad?"
Running Order
- Opening Lines
- Camp Sunshine
- Mope and Whine
- Nebo
- Small Town Laws
- Pairing Up
- Big Buffet
- Midwest Familiar
- Kuster Phone
- Church Music
- Closing Lines
Sketches
- Mope and Whine — a send-up of newspaper "Open Line" call-in columns, complete with Marian's escalating search for her 43-pound Lutheran cat lost near the Methodist church.
- Pairing Up — couples bicker through pop-culture costumes: Barbie and Ken, Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Batman and Catwoman, the Simpsons, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.
- Camp Sunshine — letters home from a backwoods Bible camp, narrated by put-upon camper Lucille, gushy social director Gloria, and the testosterone-poisoned sports director Uncle Ernie.
- Kuster Phone — a campaign cold-call to the Crump household that doubles as a comic biography of the candidate.
Cast
- Performer — Sylvia
- Performer — Bob
- Performer — Marian
- Performer — Ken
Production Notes
- Written by Ken Bradbury.
- Performed October 1, 2004 at the AmVets, Jacksonville, Illinois, 7:30 p.m.
- A benefit for judicial candidate Larry Kuster (also spelled "Custer" in the radio ad), a Jacksonville attorney with the firm Rammelkamp, Bradney, Kuster, Keaton, Fritsche & Lindsay.
- Tickets were sold at Due Gatti's Coffee House, OTW on West Walnut, and Colton, Downy and Hubbard.
- Promoted via a WLDS radio spot under the banner "Coonridge Live!"