Coors Light Comedy Commandos Taylor Mason and Mary Wong entertained the audience at Sandburg Auditorium Monday night with political and racial humor.

“I liked the audience. They could think. Some places are like the land the SAT forgot,” said Mason.

Mason, the first act of the night, started by playing the “Flintstones” theme song on the piano, singing it as it would be sung by entertainers such as The Who, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Bon Jovi.

He also joked about the NFL players strike. “Let the jocks sit and put the farmers in for two games. The national debt would be paid off just like that.”

is audience analysis was demonstrated by opening with the line, “Here we are at NIU, gateway to Rockford.” Later in the show he said, “Suburbanites, that’s not a nice name. You’re not from the suburbs; you live by the mall.”

e compared life when he was in college to what college life is like today. “When I was in college, I drove a duster with a bumber sticker that read, ‘Impeach the dean.’ Now students drive BMWs with car phones, and on the way to class they check on their stock options.”

In the second half of his act, Mason performed a ventriloquist act. He and his dummy, which was wearing red high top shoes from K-Mart, did stand-up comedy and a sing-a-long.

Three black comedians, Tim Miller, Kevin Norman and Ali Bozeman, make up the comedy act Mary Wong. The group, which performed as a threesome, a duo and individually, mixed their act with racial and political humor as well as musical raps.

They opened the act with a skit about a “woman walking in the wrong part of town getting mugged by black stereotypical muggers.” One member of the act, Norman, was the woman while Miller and Bozeman came out onto the stage wearing green shower caps talking in street jive pretending to mug the “woman.”

Bozeman joked about the vanity of women in his individual act. “When you see three woman together, one looks great, the other looks okay and the other looks like a science project,” he said. “They’ll walk up, and the first one will say ‘hi, I’m Kelly, these are my friends Janice and Amoeba.'”

Political humor was incorporated with racial humor in the act. “Ollie North is innocent—he’s white, ain’t he,” Bozeman said during his individual skit.

The group closed out the night with an original rap song about the group and the act. However, they will not divulge information about the origin of their name.

Mason, Norman and Bozeman all agreed that the NIU audience was a receptive one. “It was a real good audience,” said Norman.

Comedy Commandos’ six different acts play in colleges and clubs around the country, Mason said. “We change up. The same groups don’t work together all the time. I’ve worked with them (Mary Wong) before, so we know each other pretty well,” he said.

Mason has been doing professional comedy for four years and has been with the Comedy Commandos for almost a year. He also has appeared on television. He performed on the “NBC Today Show” and on Way Off Broadway. He is scheduled to perform in New York City in front of a comedy club crowd on Friday on the “USA Network Night Flights.”

e earned a master’s degree from Northwestern in science of advertising and went on the road right away. “I was a waiter for three months and that is all,” Mason said.

e said he writes a lot and takes his writing seriously. “I use a lot of integrity, and I don’t use profanity on stage.” “I’m booked through next spring. I had 250 dates last year and 200 dates this year. But I’m doing well,” he said.