What The Cast Of Salute Your Shorts Looks Like Now

They ran, they jumped, they swam and played, they rowed and went on trips—but while the friendships they made at Camp Anawanna might have lasted forever, the cast of Salute Your Shorts has moved on to bigger, better things. Here's what the stars of the Nickelodeon cult classic, from Budnick to Pinsky to good old Ug, have been up to since their show concluded its run.

Back in the day, Michael Bower played the lisping, pudgy character of Donkeylips, a.k.a. the boogie-woogie bugle boy of Salute Your Shorts' opening credits. And now? He's everywhere. Between movies, television, social media, the odd commercial, and an exclusive performance of the Camp Anawanna anthem for TMZ, Bower is the member of the Salute Your Shorts cast you're most likely to spot on a screen near you (and to recognize instantly; he looks pretty much exactly the same.)

Bower worked steadily in Hollywood after Salute Your Shorts came to a close, snagging mostly small roles in small-screen projects; his most notable feature film role was in Dude, Where's My Car?, where he appeared in one memorable scene wearing a full-body bubble wrap suit. More recently, Bower played bit roles on Raising Hope and the horror anthology parody series Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories. These days, though, he's most active on the internet, where he hosts his own web series, tweets prolifically, and runs a fansite for the Oakland Raiders.

Though best known for striking terror into our hearts as Ug, Camp Anawanna's buzzkilling head counselor with terrible taste in hats, Kirk Baily has gone on to have quite a robust career post-Shorts—although his face has been seen onscreen rarely in recent years. Baily played one-off roles on all the shows you'd expect for an actor of his age and status in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Melrose Place, Star Trek: Voyager, NYPD Blue, Judging Amy, and Felicity, to name a few), but he's been far more successful and prolific as a voiceover artist on some seriously big-name projects.

Since 2002, Baily's voice has been featured in dozens of video games and television shows, as well as in feature films like Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Hotel Transylvania. And if you happened to catch Buried, the claustrophobic 2010 thriller starring Ryan Reynolds as a man buried alive, you heard Baily (albeit briefly) as the voice of a 411 operator who answers one of Reynolds' frantic calls for help. Meanwhile, if you want to see Ug again, you can spot him as a Coast Guard officer in the one and only feature film starring teen YouTube mermaid sensations The 3Tails... or in your nightmares, wearing his Zeke the Plumber mask. Shudder.

The whimsical, wonderful Z.Z. Ziff was the free-spirited hippie dreamgirl of Camp Anawanna—and while Megan Berwick didn't continue acting after her years of playing Z.Z. on Salute Your Shorts, she did grow up to have just the kind of career her character, an eclectic and big-hearted idealist, would have been proud of. After getting her M.A. in International Political Economy at Stanford, she became a development manager at the non-profit lending platform Kiva Microfunds. And when the cast of Salute Your Shorts held a reunion panel at the Comikaze expo in Los Angeles in 2012, Berwick sent an adorable video message apologizing for her inability to be there in person—because she was living in Haiti, putting her skills and smarts to work as the leader of a social protection program that helped moms send their kids to school.

In addition to sharing a name with one of the most famous works of art in human history, Venus DeMilo was the actress who played Telly, the athlete of the Camp Anawanna crew. Unlike some of her Salute Your Shorts co-stars, DeMilo was a steady presence in Hollywood for a solid decade after the Nick show wrapped; she was a repeat guest star on Family Matters, appeared in two separate roles on Sister, Sister, and had an 18-episode arc on long-running CBS soap The Bold and The Beautiful. Now, DeMilo keeps a lower profile (and keeps seriously busy at the gym, if her Instagram pics are any indication.) And whle you might still occasionally catch her in front of a camera—she was the victim of an indoor lemon landslide in this 2011 Pine Sol commercial, and popped up in 2016 as a TV commentator on The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story—you're more likely to spot her holding one. After getting an education in filmmaking at Marymount Manhattan University, the actress became interested in making her own movies. Next on her to-do list: a documentary.

Trevor Eyster was known as "Tim" back when he played the bespectacled Sponge on Salute Your Shorts, but while his name may have changed, he definitely hasn't let go of his glory days at Camp Anawanna. Eyster currently Instagrams under the nostalgic handle @salute_my_shorts, and has a robust appreciation for all things outdoorsy and off-the-grid. (Check out his giant bonfire-building skills, yo.)

Eyster stopped acting pretty much immediately after Salute Your Shorts ended, and stayed away for a good 20 years—minus a one-episode guest spot in 1998 on the sci-fi series Babylon 5—but as of 2013, he appeared to be making a small-scale comeback, mostly in short films with a TV appearance thrown in here and there. However, he's clearly keeping his options open; as of this writing, Eyster also advertises himself as a Nature-Connected Life Coach, which means that if you'd like to be your best self in the great outdoors, you can let Sponge be your guide.

Of all the stars of Salute Your Shorts, Heidi Lucas is the most difficult to track down—and like fellow Anawanna alum Megan Berwick, it seems like she knew early on that she didn't want to stay in showbiz. After the series wrapped, the highly photogenic Lucas popped up on Boy Meets World and spent two years as a Noxzema spokesgirl, but left Hollywood for good in the mid-1990s. Lucas attended Indiana University School of Law and reportedly works as an attorney, which might be why she has no internet presence whatsoever. Clearly, she's not interested in being found by former fans.... or in reliving her glory days as Anawanna's most glamorous camper. Lucas was noticeably absent from the big 20th-anniversary Salute Your Shorts cast reunion at Comikaze in 2012, although she did put in an appearance when the crew got together three years later at the Everything Is Festival in Portland, Oregon.

Although Cooksey is probably best known for playing Budnick, Anawanna's ginger-haired, be-mulleted bad boy, his Salute Your Shorts role was actually one of the few times he actually appeared onscreen. Cooksey was—and is—an experienced voice actor, and has been since childhood. Even during his Shorts years, Cooksey could also be heard as the voice of Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures; since then, he's racked up voice work on dozens of shows including Static Shock, Xiaolin Showdown, and Phineas and Ferb.

Meanwhile, as vocal as he is in Hollywood's animation studios, you won't hear much from Cooksey on a personal basis. His Twitter account has been dormant for ages, and his free time is taken up by either music (he's currently the lead singer in a rock band called Shelter Dogs) or family; Cooksey has been married since 1998 to makeup artist Amber Leigh, and is the proud father of two children.

Who's got two names and is the most successful Camp Anawanna alumnus ever? That's Blake Soper, a.k.a. Blake Sennett, who had a whole 'nother career as a prominent musician after he made it big as a child TV star. After Salute Your Shorts, Sennett was a prominent regular on 1990s faves like Boy Meets World and 3rd Rock from the Sun, and even made a one-ep appearance on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But he wasn't done yet! In 1993, he met fellow child star Jenny Lewis—and in 1998, the two founded rock group Rilo Kiley. Sadly, the band eventually broke up (as did Sennett and Lewis, who were one of the indie scene's most adorable power couples for several years), but Sennett is still making music. His latest project, Night Terrors of 1927, released its first studio album in 2015. And despite his success—and lots of traveling, which he documents on Instagram—Sennett still gamely shows up for Salute Your Shorts cast reunions whenever they take place.

Unlike the rest of the Salute Your Shorts cast, Erik MacArthur only stuck around for one season before his character disappeared from the show. The scripted excuse? Chicken pox! But in reality, it seems like MacArthur was a) having second thoughts about his acting career, and b) a little homesick. While the rest of the cast returned to Camp Anawanna, MacArthur returned to his home in Hawaii to finish high school—and though he did come back to Hollywood, most notably in a small role in the 1998 retro dramedy Pleasantville, it seems that his heart wasn't in it. After writing and directing the 2006 film Bottoms Up, a direct-to-video flop starring Paris Hilton and Jason Mewes, MacArthur vanished from showbiz and is presumably living his life like the rest of us mortals... albeit with the occasional convention trip to reunite with his old Salute Your Shorts crew.