9:30pm Hey You Millionaires + Blackout Comedy
The local men of Millionaires dwell on sadder themes (including a dark sketch comedy show featuring a character struggling with a terminal illness). But James Asmus, Jim Fath and John Bohan care about staging and pacing their work well, so it’s always funny. Blackout Comedy’s shows are rife with “blackout scenes,” shorter sketches that build quickly to a huge laugh, then… pow! Blackout.

Friday 4

8pm Team Submarine
At the end of their Sketchfest show last year, this local duo burst into a song called “Mannequin Dick,” joined by, among others, Chewbacca and obese-Wolverine doing the twist. Needless to say, we’re jazzed to see what they’ve cooked up this year. For more with the Team, see Sketchy Premises.

9pm Last Call Cleveland
If ever there was a group that has adapted a standard sketch-comedy formula—slightly skewed premise taken to logical conclusion—with tremendous success, this is it. Cleveland’s boys (guess where they’re from…) are all fine actors, and their material touches on a racist barbershop quartet and what the Washington Generals talk about at halftime. We’re guessing it’s not all the winning they do against the Harlem Globetrotters.

Last Call Cleveland

10pm Davidson!
The exclamation! point! in this Los Angeles group’s name denotes action. And that’s just what it delivers—scenes start with a bang, er, laugh. Our favorite video sketch opens on a blind date between an everyman dude and a Stephen Hawking–caliber female paraplegic, then segues into the line, “So your picture on your profile is from…before the accident?” and the ha-ha magic commences.

11pm Rue Brutalia
Two New York guys, longer scenes, clever material. True, a lengthy piece about whittling or having two people talk simultaneously as the same person may sound like grating concepts, but the pair’s moxie allows them to pull it off.

Saturday 5

Head Cheese

6pm Salsation!/Flambango/The Uncomfortables
All are sorta okay Chicago groups but none really jump to mind as a must-see—it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you grabbed a pulled pork panini at Cooper’s (1232 W Belmont Ave) and caught these three groups another time.

7pm HeadCheese
A couple of in-your-face Chi-town guys and gals present an in-your-face show about big-budget corporations permeating every aspect of culture. Plus, they’re quite handy behind the camera—their Breakfast Club parody looks good enough to put…in your face.

8pm The Cool Table
For almost a year, the local group Table has done a weekly show with a healthy number of new sketches each time. The stuff’s raw, high-energy and pretty freakin’ entertaining. When we last saw the jokesters at the Sketchfest kick-off party in August (just in time for…January’s fest?), they covered the stage with Pixy Stix and rolled around in the sugary powder, so clearly they don’t mind a mess if it’ll get a chuckle.

9pm Brick
Chicago fest fave Brick had to call it quits a few years ago because members were splitting for the coasts. This year marks an anticipated reunion for the stage-savvy crew, as well as the return of its balloon-man sketch, the tale of a man made entirely of, whoa, balloons. (For more on Brick, click here.)

10pm Canadian Content
Yes, it’s a group worthy of being deemed “sorta like Upright Citizens Brigade, only from a colder, mountier place.” In UCB fashion, CC introduces really odd characters and concepts (Blunt-O-Grams—singing telegrams that solely feature James Blunt’s “Beautiful”) to be woven together by show’s end.

Canadian Content

11pm Approximately 3 Peters
This group of Toronto men—approximately three of whom are named Peter (one’s Ian)—unleash their inner dorkiness, exploring ideas like creating a Dr. Frankenstein–sorta monster in an attempt to look cooler at their high-school reunion. If only…

Sunday 6

4pm Oprah Frampton + Rub-A-Dub-Dub
Chicago’s Frampton rocks the stage with sit-down, MTV Unplugged–style acoustic grunge. The music stands on its own, but songs such as “Name That Panda” and “I Got Two Black Friends” will make it clear it’s a comedy show. Rub-A-Dub-Dub, also from these parts, is composed of three buddies who met in Second City classes, unlike any other group on the Sketchfest bill. That, friends, is what is known as “sarcasm.”

5:30pm Pornstar Mustache + Size Eight
This Chicago sketch group aims to evoke the same creepy feeling its namesake ’stache inspires. In one sketch, for example, a man shares things he wishes he had said to his exes before breaking up with them. Size Eight features Kerri Van Auken and Megan Powell, two hometown ladies who are angry enough to rail against Botoxed “beauties” and gold diggers—no, not the prospectin’ kind.

7pm Refrain + Sexy Toast
Music connects the comedy in Refrain, a show directed by Chi-town awesome-guy TJ Jagodowski (of the cultish TJ & Dave improv show). Locals Sexy Toast, on the other hand, don’t have the same artsy aims—they tackle relationships and zombie prevention.

January 10

8pm Johnny’s Regret + Robot vs. Dinosaur
Johnny’s Regret presents Second City–style sketch comedy (you can tell the group’s from Chicago), the kind you might see at a Touring Company show. It’s not life-altering, but it’s pretty funny. Robot vs. Dinosaur performs sketches storyteller-style—longer pieces that flow together.

9:30pm Barb Lamenter + B.S.
The weird but endearing Barb Lamenter—a character mined from Jet Eveleth and Holly Laurent’s (of the venerable Harold team the Reckoning) previous sketch run—is back. She wrote letters to TV icons last time, now she’s staging a fake talk show with shadow puppets. B.S. is comedy from Blaine Swen and Sean Cusick, two accomplished Chicago staples.

January 11

8pm Stephen/Scott
These two Los Angeles transplants present Too Old for Sketch, a show that questions growing up (e.g., getting married, having kids and other buzzkills) and is performed as if it were these guys’ last time onstage. We’d call it “balls out” if they hadn’t sort of exposed themselves already.

9pm The Apple SistersThe New York Sisters have also tapped into the country-radio vibe (see The Fowler Family Radio Hour). The actors also have killer voices, so their mock commercials sport some sweet, sweet harmonies amidst the hilarity.

10pm Press, Release, Repeat
High-energy, low-concept comedy is this Canadian group’s calling card—you’ll see what we mean when you go to its MySpace page (you have to search for it) and watch the Hummer video.

11pm The 3rd Floor
In one video segment, a no-guff-from-no-one cop says, “A lot of cops think they’re tough enough to clean up the streets…but only one of them has a vagina.” His name is the Vadge. That alone made us laugh.

January 12

6pm Eclectic Muse
The idea for this show, “a group of superenlightened gurus and leaders of the transformational industry travel the country to heal broken souls,” is, um, inspired.

7pm OneTwoThree
This rambunctious local trio is prone to breaking up a row of talky scenes with a flag routine or an impromptu silly dance. And the comedians wear sweet monogrammed belts while they do it.

8pm The Cupid Players
Admit it, when you hear love-themed musical, you think it’s gonna be lame. But Cupid has been around Chicago for a bit—the troupe knows what it’s doing. Directed by Sketchfest producer Brian Posen, the group’ll have songs about masturbation to satiate your sexual side, and the cast’s fine comedic skills will appease your funny bone.

9pm Elephant Larry
This long-standing New York group can do it all: thinking man’s material about seafaring folks throwing down for a shanty-off, and a bit called “Caveman or Cookie Monster” that’s rife with simpleminded joy. Seriously, we could watch Mr. Monster shove, nay, rub (the costume mouth is covered in felt) cookies down his throat for weeks, and it’d still be funny.

10pm Backpack Picnic
Scenes about prehistoric laptops and exploiting gullible hooligans smack of a Kids in the Hall kind of strangeness. Sign us up. Also, this is your only chance this year to see what sketch comedy is like in Austin, Texas.

11pm Galileo Players
Science gets its comedic due (finally!) from the Chi-based Players, a touring sketch group that’s just as likely to joke about Darwin as it is dicks.

January 13

4pm Off-Off Campus + Awkward Silence
The titular campus is that of the University of Chicago (this is its resident comedy group). Awkward Silence, as the name implies, explores situations where not responding is probably the best tactic.

5:30pm We Have an Uncle Dick + Skinology
Fleshy themes abound in this double bill—hometown brothers Patrick and Timmy Tamisiea pair up to tell tales like that of the aforementioned uncle—and Chicago’s Skinology uses blow-up dolls to play the parts not covered by Logan Hall and Danielle Uhlarik. Dare we say it’s a flesh concept?

7pm Planet Terrance + The Evidence
The improvisers in Planet Terrance met while working the night shift at Second City (finally, not an improv-class story), and their show’s full of material on God and the devil. The Evidence is a young group that lets its scenes slowly build.

Sketchfest plays out Thursday 3 to Sunday 6, and January 10 to 13. See our Sketchfest schedule for the full listings.