Mary Mack

Date of Birth: [TOP SECRET]

Birth Name: [CLASSIFIED]

Height: [OH, ABOUT YEA HIGH, GIVE OR TAKE]

VITAL STATISTICS:

A relative newcomer to standup comedy, petite former music teacher and polka bandleader Mary Mack already boasts two comedy albumns: “Either You Wake Up Or You Don’t” and the recently released, “Pinch Finger Girl.” She has been featured on the Bob and Tom Show, XM Radio, HBO’s Andy Kaufman Awards, Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham, and Last Comic Standing. In 2005, she won California’s Funniest Female Contest.

I first became aware of Mack on XM Radio’s now defunct National Lampoon Radio with her song about Father’s Day. The other comedy channels will still play this track on Father’s Day but hearing anything from her on air is super rare (and keep in mind, they will play Gallagher’s Sledgamatic routine… ON THE RADIO… WHERE YOU CAN’T SEE IT). This means that if you aren’t stalking her… er, I mean researching her… the way I am on her website or Youtube channel it can be very hard to come across any of her work right now.

Sadly, I’ve never been able to see Mack live. About a year ago she came up to Bates College but, even from my undisclosed location, that was an hour away from me. I can’t help but feel a little selfish about that one; she had the decency to travel all the way from Minneapolis and I can’t even man up to a two hour round trip to mingle with the handful of loser co-eds who couldn’t find a party on a Friday on a college campus event when you can tell at first glance that I am not from that college, nor even remotely college-aged. Oh, no, wait. Wait. Now I know why I didn’t do that: it would have been totally creepy in every way shape and form. Right.

Mack is a rarity in standup; her comedy is not cynical or insult-based, those being the reasons I usually enjoy comedy so much. Because of her accent and wide-eyed, pseudo-naïve, happy-go-lucky action, it’s hard not to compare Mack’s act to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, so I have. I’m not sure if being compared to a slow, breathy, NPR host is what a young, female comic is looking for in a review but if all else fails, she’d be a shoe-in to breath some life into that old, creaky show.

I have seen her style described as “character driven;” the quirky Midwest girl and her tales of her old-fashioned family and her misadventures with the Big City, her car, and the G.I. Bill.

The concept of Mack’s being a character driven performance is raises one important question for me: what if you like the character more than you’d like the person? How terrifying and disappointing would it be if I ran into Mary Mack on the streets of L.A. and she was stepping out of her BMW with a handbag that had a Chihuahua peeking out of it while she’s shouting demands about a sitcom into a Bluetooth earpiece and wheels into me while locking the car with one of those annoying remotes that makes the car go BYOOP-BWIP and I say, “oh, pardon me,” and she angrily snaps her gum and puts a hard shoulder into my chest as she bumps pass saying, “get out of the way, faggot,” and disappears into a chichi day salon?

Well, character-drive comedy or no, folks, I can assure you that would never happen because I would never go to L.A.

REASON I’D SABOTAGE THIS RELATIONSHIP: Can’t stand guilty feeling that I am cheating on my first female comedic love, Maria Bamford.

Next time: MARIA BAMFORD.

Mary Mack’s Official Site

Mary Mack’s Myspace

featuring further videos including The Coffee Blogs

Mary Mack’s appearance on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham

Mary Mack’s Youtube channel

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