All the News That’s Fit to Spoof

“This is NCR, National Corporate Radio News: Our News, for You. Coming up next, stay tuned for ‘All Things Condescended,’ the news that makes you feel smarter than your friends who watch TV.”

This uncanny takeoff on National Public Radio announcer Frank Tavares is brought to you by comedian Miles Hindman, member of the sketch comedy troupe “The People Who Do That.” At 10 minutes before 7 every Tuesday evening, he and four other comedians hustle into the Kill Radio studios, a cluttered Internet radio station in a small office space two stories above the rush-hour mayhem on the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, and prepare to bombard cyberspace with a weekly dose of dementia.

Thus begins an hour of unchained lefty political satire so scathing that Air America booked the troupe for a performance in April. Whether the subject is Rush Limbaugh (“drugs, slander and the law are no match for the powerful white male”); terrorism (“Al Qaeda writes a letter to say it’s feeling kind of neglected”); or politics (“Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control have found traces of ethics in the Senate Office Building, prompting most senators to flee in terror”), The People Who Do That dishes out madcap hilarity along with razor-edged irreverence.

The group began performing together 10 years ago in Tucson, Ariz., but core members Hindman, Derek Iversen, Merry Resnick, Kimberley Mooney and John Seymore began moving to Los Angeles in the late ‘90s and cultivated a devoted Angeleno fan base by performing sketch comedy at local clubs, which led to booking on Kill Radio, a radio collective run by activists, journalists and DJs.

NCR was born after the group chose not to jettison its satirical commentary while performing at the San Francisco Fringe Festival on Sept. 11, 2001. “Suddenly, ridiculousness turned into truth,” Mooney says.

Two years later, the troupe put out a CD of NCR public radio-spoof segments, which has been offered as a premium during a fund-raising drive for KPFK-FM and is in rotation on college radio stations. This month welcomes a followup CD, “Let Feardom Ring.”

When not writing new material for NCR or comedy shows at area venues, the group promotes its CDs at www.thepeoplewhodothat.com and embraces traditional labor. Hindman, for example, is a clerk at a postal services store, while Iversen is a production coordinator and Seymore a prop artist. “We’re like a rock super group,” Seymore says. Iversen smiles. “Yeah, we’re like Menudo.”

--JESSICA GELT