It's a testament to the quality of funny that Claire Zulkey and friends packed into the Hideout last night that so many Chicagoans were willing to hang out in such a hot space. Nobody left until John Green was done reading the last excerpt from his books, including An Abundance of Katherines and the soon-to-be-movie Looking For Alaska. (And when we say "hot," we mean "shamelessly jockeying for space by the walk-in fridge" hot, and "the ice in the bottom of the cup of what used to be your pop is melting so fast you can take a sip of water every ten seconds" hot.)

The Bastion was late to arrive and therefore missed Schadenfreude, and well as Eric Spitznagel's phoned-in reading from his novel Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter, about which Amy Sedaris said: "Like most pornography, I found Fast Forward to be a relentless and indecent assault on the traditional family values that Americans find most sacred. Makes a great stocking stuffer." Oh, and by "phoned-in," we don't mean lazy or uninspired, we mean Eric was unable to be at the event, and participated by way of telephone.

Andy Ross then proved that an intentionally bad moustache can add more to a funny character than the real one underneath:

After that, Schadenfreude's Justin Kaufmann performed his frenetic "Perry Farrell's life story in sixty seconds" bit, as a warmup to the troupe's upcoming shows at Lollapalooza (more on Chicago comedy's involvement with Lollapalooza coming soon), and filmmaker Steve Delahoyde entertained with several of his sharp and twisted short films.

And last but not least, The Bastion was glad to have a chance to tell Chicago blogger and author Mimi Smartypants that as much as we've enjoyed her in print, we found her even more hilarious onstage. As Sir Laurence Olivier told The Birmingham Repertory company in 1926, there is no mocking of Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue that can't be made funnier with handpuppets:

-Elizabeth McQuern