Last night The Bastion caught Schadenfreude's staged reading of hilariously terrible '80's sci fi movies "Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn" and "RobotJox" at the Neo-Futurarium, and then scooted on over to Simon's Tavern for a drink and some chitchat.

Schadenfreude founding member Justin Kaufmann won The Bastion's nerdy little heart by revealing himself to be an NPR insider with his initial friendly e-mail upon our launch on Monday. He invited us to last night's show, in which full-on robot punches were thrown, Kate James did an uncanny recreation of Kelly Preston's indescribably bad performance as Dhayana in "Jared-Syn," and "because it's the future" was given as the explanation for everything from excessive perspiration to the sudden making out of lead characters.

The Bastion is very interested in creative developments in new media, and naively asked Schadenfreude whether, despite the live-performance nature of their collective endeavor, they "taped their shows." In fact, they are mad bloggers, dedicated podcasters, archive years of videos, host many photo-type experiments, and are committed to sharing new content online on a daily basis. In short, their site is crammed with goodies.

Justin and cohorts Stephen Schmidt and Adam Witt gave us lots to think about, in regards to the nature of comedy culture in Chicago, the delights of modern prankery, the beauty of the D.I.Y. ethic, and the wonders of modern media. More on the topics that came up in our interesting conversation coming soon.

-Elizabeth McQuern