Michael arrives at Camp Anawanna and becomes very popular with some of the other campers. Budnick then forces Michael and Sponge to join a ""secret club"" along with him and Donkeylips. As part of the club initiation, Sponge and Michael go to steal something from the girls' cabin. In a rush to avoid getting caught Michael takes, and then accidentally breaks, Telly's glasses.
Budnick tells the gang a ghost story about the camp's old custodian, Zeke. It is said that Zeke, who had lost his nose in an accident, was unable to smell a gas leak, which killed him. Budnick tells the group that whoever touches Zeke's plunger, will have horrible nightmares haunted by Zeke. Of course, everyone had bad nightmares that night. And so the entire group, with help from Ug, set up an elaborate plan to get revenge on Budnick.
Budnick finds a treasure map that supposedly leads to the buried cash of the camp's late dance instructor Sara Madre. He sells two copies of the map: one to Michael and Sponge, and another to Z.Z., Dina, and Telly. In order to find the treasure, the groups must go across the camp doing odd dance steps. As the groups try to be the first to the treasure, Donkeylips and Budnick find that watching the hunt is hillarious.
After Michael accidentally ruins some brownies that belonged to the camp's meanest kid, Thud Mackie, he needs to do something or face a beating. After all of his attempts to smuggle brownies into camp are foiled by Ug, he decides the best thing to do is leave camp. With everyone's help, he creates a video that exaggerates the horrors of camp to send to his grandparents. The video plan works, but Michael doesn't really want to leave, leaving him with a choise: stay with his friends at camp and be pounded by Thud, or leave.
At the girls' bunk Telly and Dina each try to bribe Z.Z. to vote one of them as Bunk Chief. At the guys' bunk, as punishment for putting a goat into Ug's cabin, all the boys must do the prep work for the Indian Counsel Dinner. They decide to get back at Ug by doing something that he would never expect: behaving.
The gang forms a basketball team that must play in a small camp tournament to earn the privilege of representing Camp Anawanna in a big basketball tournament. If they lose, their pictures are taped to the bottom of a toilet seat in the main lodge. Telly is the team's coach, but no matter how hard she pushes them, they keep losing. Once Budnick takes over as coach, though, everything starts to turn around and they start to do well.
Sponge uses the camp phone without Ug's permission to call into a radio contest. He wins the first round of the contest and a $100 prize. In order to win the grand prize, $1000, he must stay awake for 24 hours and wait for a phone call from the DJ and answer more questions. In exchange for a cut of the prize money, the others help to keep Sponge awake, sneak him past Ug to the phone, and force him to study for the questions.
In order to win a lobster dinner, Sponge and Donkeylips enter the wrestling tournament. Unfortunately Sponge is too light to wrestle and Donkeylips is too heavy. Ug gives them a few days to change their weight, and Telly agrees to train them. Meanwhile, the other campers are trying to avoid the horrible camp food by getting Sponge and Donkeylips to sneak burgers into camp while they are out training.
In order to get out of the daily activties, Michael and Budnick fake being sick. They end up spemding the day in the nurse's station with no good food (the fridge has ice cream in it, but is locked), and watching spanish TV. Meanwhile, the day's activity, unknown to Michael and Budnick when they faked ill, is a trip to the beach. The others look forward to a day of fun in the sun, but Ug decides to put Z.Z. incharge of the map and they all get lost.
The group must put on the camp's presentation of Cinderella. Dina is cast as Cinderella with Michael as the prince. Telly must play an ugly step-sister and Donkeylips is the coachman. Dina comes down with stage fright, however, and skips most rehearsals. She spends most of the time signing autographs and acting like a star around camp.
Dina leaves a love note for Michael on a painting that she thinks is his. It turns out to be Donkeylips' painting and he is thrilled that there is a girl that likes him. He starts leaving little gifts for Dina, who thinks that the gifts are being left by Michael. Eventually, Donkeylips asks Dina to the dance, leaving her with a choise of whether she will go with him or break his heart.
After Ug breaks up with his girlfriend, he starts to crack down on the kids for every little rule violation. When a new mail carrier named Mona shows up and seems to take an interest in Ug, the kids try to get them together, thinking that he will ease up on them if he starts to go out with her.
Z.Z. tires to get the others to clean up the camp. Unfortunately they really don't care. So Dina helps her throw a party to try and raise awareness, but that just makes a bigger mess. After the garbage man offers Z.Z. money for the camp's recycleables, she decides to bribe the campers into cleaning things up.
The gang finds out that Michael had to leave camp because he has the chickenpox. Into his place in Bunk 13 comes a new kid, Ronnie Pinskey. Ug then places the bunk under quarentine because they were all exposed to Michael's chicken pox.
It's backwards weekend, and the campers have elected Budnick to be the weekend counselor, while Ug had to be a camper. At first, Budnick lets the campers do whatever they want, but then is forced to punish them to restore order. This upsets the campers and they all, including Ug, pull pranks on him to get revenge. Meanwhile, Z.Z. and Dina are fighting over a frog that could win a jumping contest, and its owner a night in town.
Telly, tired of losing to another boy at tennis, thnks she needs a new metal raquet to beat him, instead of her old wooden one. Budnick gives her a metal raquet, in return for a favor, to be named in the future. But Telly begins to get nervous as Budnick acts as bookie, taking bets on her upcoming match.
Dina promises everyone that she will get Jamie Mallet Jr., a huge rock star, to perform at the camp dance. She finds out that Jamie is staying at a nearby camp to relax and get some rest from the celebrity lifestyle. Dina tricks him into thinking the camp he is at is too dangerous and to come and relax at Camp Anawanna. When he arrives, he is overrun by fans. Dina then gets angry when Jamie spends most of his time hanging out with Pinskey instead of her, because Pinskey isn't treating him like a celebrity. As revenge, she spreads lies about Jamie through the camp.
The girls decide that they want to be away from each other, so they ask Ug to change the bunk assignments. Meanwhile, the boys find a buffalo skull in a cave near camp. After they bring it back bad things start to happen and Ug orders them to bring good luck back to camp by returning the skull. Budnick decides to start a ""caveman club"" for the boys. The girls decide to steal the skull from them and get caught in the cave during a storm.
Dina is describing to the other girls what her perfect boyfriend would be like. She then realizes that Budnick matches all of her criteria, and she falls in love with him. Budnick, after resisting for a while, decides to return the feelings and falls in love with her.
Dina decides that she doesn't love Budnick after all, but Budnick still loves her. As a way to get him to stop following her, she tries to make him change his regular habits. But he doesn't really see what's going on until she decides to cut his hair.
After sleeping through the camp's Club Choice Day, Pinskey ends up in Sponge's computer club. He then decides to use the camp's outside modem line to make long distance phone calls. Sponge gets blamed for all the calls. To try to make it up to him, Pinskey invites Sponge on a date with him and two girls from another camp.
Pinskey and Sponge start a camp newspaper. While Sponge is writing actual news stories, Pinskey starts a gossip column, which soon becomes very popular. When he writes that Telly may have cheated at a recent sports event, it starts to get everyone into trouble.
Donkeylips wants to play on the offensive side of the camp's Capture the Flag team, but even though he knows the strategy, he is put on defense because he is so slow. But when the offensive crew is captured by the enemy, it is up to Donkeylips to lead the defense team to save the day.
Mona Tibbs, the mail lady, has joined the park service to be closer to Ug. He thinks this is good because she will go easy on the camp when she comes to inspect it. Instead, she nitpicks every little thing and reports the camp for several infractions. The campers decide to make it worse by pointing out more flaws, hoping to be put in a hotel while the camp is fixed if it is shut down. They find out, however, that they would be transferred to other camps. They quickly set out to clean up camp and help Mona and Ug patch things up.
Ellen, Dr. Kahn's niece, comes to visit camp, and Ug orders the campers to treat her like royalty. She is a real brat and the gang is ready to use vigilante justice on her, but Ug, though he is also bothered by Ellen, stops them because he is trying to gat a raise. The gang decides to try the silent treatment, which sends Ellen over the edge. In the end, the gang gets the ultimate revenge, and Ug gets his raise for teaching Ellen a lesson.
The campers start a birdhouse company for career day. Dina is appointed leader and Donkeylips is put in charge of production. After seeing how the others are being lazy, Donkeylips and his workers go on strike. Meanwhile, Ug and Sponge search for items to put in the Camp Anawanna time capsule.
The cast of Salute Your Shorts, one of the most memorable Nickelodeon shows of the '90s, reunited at the Everything Is Festival in Portland, Oregon on May 28.
"Black Nerd Comedy" presents the Salute Your Shorts Reunion panel at Stan Lee's Comikaze 2012. Features clips from the panel, interviews with the stars, and footage taken at their autograph line.
Bloopers, mistakes, and pranks from Season 1 of Salute Your Shorts.
A slideshow of behind the scenes photos from cast and crew of Salute Your Shorts.
The original pilot for Nickelodeon's "Salute Your Shorts aired only once in October 1990. It featured different actors for some characters and starred Ian Giatti as Michael, Danny Cooksey as Budnick, Kirk Baily as Ug, Michael Bower as Donkey Lips, David Tom as Sponge, Kelley Parker as Dina, Teri Johnston as Telly, and Alexandra Kurhan as Z.Z. The pilot episode aired October 6, 1990 as a special on Nickelodeon. After the series was picked up, the cast had to re-audition for their roles.
