They came to town via Austin amidst huge buzz from the sketch community, so I was pumped to see what these boys could bring. If you were hanging around the fest later Friday night, you already know that I thought this show was phenomenal. At the risk of sounding like a Rolling Stone movie review, I’ll add that I laughed the entire time. Hard.

Take the absurdity of Monty Python and mix it with the wit and hilarity of Kids in the Hall and you've got yourself the makings of Backpack Picnic. The Austin, Texas-based sketch comedy troupe, best known for its top-rated Internet shorts on onnetworks.com, will perform as part of the Chicago Sketchfest.

This series will combine one-off skits and recurring character pieces that offer intelligently crafted stupidity and push the button on weird.

“What absolutely convinced me to start a company in this area was when I realized just how large the disruption was,” said Kip McClanahan, the co-founder and chief executive of ON Networks, an online studio in Austin, Tex. “It touches everything — how video content is created and monetized, how it’s distributed and consumed."

Have you ever been talking to some of your friends and wished you could have taken something back? Well, one of the guys from Backpack Picnic does and he lost a new, bright red corvette because of it.

Somewhere between dry satire and slapstick comedy is where Backpack Picnic's humor lands, verging on the merely surreal but still enough to make you laugh out loud.

Almost a decade in the making, Backpack Picnic has undergone many permutations and seen many places to become what they are now: a sketch comedy troupe comprised of Mitch Baker, David Bewley, Rene Pinnell, Jeremy Lamb, and Shannon McCormick.

Austin's OnNetworks is one of the many new websites changing the status quo thanks to shows like Backpack Picnic, a sketch comedy in the vein of The State or Kids in the Hall whose tiny bytes of absurdity are tailor-made for the iPod generation.

Don’t get me wrong, Backpack’s not for everybody – it’s about as random as it comes – but it’s definitely a breath of fresh air in the sketch comedy landscape where lame writing and tired clichés flourish.