Midweek blahs?

Then start hanging around the Second City comedy theater. They're providing a lot of weeknight laughs lately.

You're a little too late to catch Pat O'Brien's farewell show, which I attended on Wednesday evening along with countless friends and sixty (sixty!) O'Brien family members and guests in from around the country. The stage was also packed with well-wishers, who sent Pat off in style as he heads to New York to write for Saturday Night Live. Second City tradition holds that a cast member's final performance is a celebratory affair with the usual post-show improv set shelved in favor of the departing player's favorite sketches, peppered with loving anecdotes from their current and former castmates. Pat's curtain call was a warm goodbye for a beloved fixture of the Chicago comedy scene.

However, the comedy revolving door continues to spin, and even as people graduate from Chicago's proving ground to industry jobs in New York and Los Angeles, so do others come back. This week, for example, Second City alumni Frank Caeti (MadTV, Reno 911) and Matt Craig (The Office, According to Jim) return to the Pipers Alley institution to mount their fast-paced sketch show, FrankenMatt. The critically acclaimed two-man comedy attack, playing Tuesday and Wednesday, should be just the thing to cure your midweek blahs. My Flavorpill preview is here.