Welcome to The Second City Archives, in which we post an exclusive clip each week of some of comedy’s biggest superstars performing early in their careers on the legendary Chicago stage. Second City has generously given us a glimpse into their extensive archive of live performances, and over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some rare and retro comedy never before seen on the web.
For our first Second City Archives clip of 2016 we’ve got a sketch that tackles a hopeful, encouraging theme for the New Year: begging for death. From the 1990 revue Flag Smoking Permitted in Lobby Only or Censorama, the above scene stars David Pasquesi as the exhausted Grim Reaper, who comes home after a long day of ending people’s lives only to be pestered by an after-hours visitor played by Bob Odenkirk, who was sent over by Dr. Kevorkian. “What happened to the old days when people deserved to die, huh?†Death says. “Every day was a struggle to live. Nowadays it’s too easy to get too much time to sit around and think how shitty your life is.†Check out some more clips from Flag Smoking here, here, and here.