Aurora Dawn

Randy Shilts’s hometown of Aurora, Illinois, served as the archetypal backdrop for a popular comedy sketch that attempted to portray the realities of idealized American life in the postwar era. Comedian Mike Myers created the character “Wayne Campbell” and the fictional show Wayne’s World for NBC’s Saturday Night Live; it later spawned two successful motion pictures. Myers said he was seeking to re-create the hazy, lazy heavy metal days of the 1970s for kids in towns like Aurora, where nothing special ever happened, as they longed for excitement and searched for ways to express themselves.¹ Wayne’s World, it seems, succeeded