When Shannon received her BA in US History from the University of Chicago, fully expecting to become a pipe-smoking professor in a big leather chair, she joked that instead she was going to be a movie star. She insists it was just a joke. But soon she was studying and performing at Second City, ImprovOlympic, and the UCB Theater. She counts among her improv dearly beloved: Del and Chicago's Cinco de Bob, UCB's Mexican Popsicle and Frank Johnson, Robot TV's robots, and the swing, baby cast of hundreds. Recently she made her network debut on Conan as a piece of cheese. She's appeasing the gods of academia by launching littlecommie.com. Her early history over laps that of her sister, Tamara. But don't ask her to deconstruct it.

Tammy was born on a Friday the 13th in Torrance, California. Before her 13th birthday, she attended 13 schools in Los Angeles, San Diego, Memphis, and Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Tamara studied Greek and Latin for three years at Barnard College, and performed in the chorus of a Greek-language production of Antigone.A former member of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, computer animator, and amateur sketcher, this month she adds grad school dropout to her list of accomplishments. She adored and studied with the late Del Close for two years, and performed on rare occasions at the ImprovOlympic in Chicago. She loves you, Jim Peterson.

Michelle has never done anything like this before, except for last year. Like her sisters, Michelle is a native Californian, but unlike her sisters, she was a hotshot swimmer. When she was sixteen, she convinced Tamara to trade in their guitars for a really cool Fender acoustic, and then she ran away with it. Last year she passed her Series 7, and this summer she moved to Sacramento with husband Jeff and the Fruit fetus.