They call her Mary Mack — maybe the funniest young lady around.

"But we know here as Miki Budge," laughed Dan Zimmer, her former high school band director and leader of the Dan Zimmer Polka Band.

When Miki Budge graduated from Webster High School in 1993, she had no plans of ever being the popular comedian she has become.

“Being fifth in a family of six kids, I was kind of a goof-off, but I didn’t think about being a comedian as a job,” added Budge.

“My favorite thing was running cross country and I sang in the choir,” said Budge who grew up close to Little Sand Lake in the A and H neighborhood.

After graduating from UW Oshkosh, Budge went on and earned her masters degree at Middle Tennessee State University.

While she was still teaching, Budge had a polka band in Tennessee. “We weren’t very good and I had to keep stalling for time so I talked a lot. The people kept telling me they liked the talking better than the music,” said Budge.

Budge’s roommate told her to prepare a story because she had arranged for a chance to perform on stage.  “I thought it was a comedy night and it turned out to be black poetry night,” said Budge.

“I still did my story but I knew I had to come up with a good name that fit the only white Caucasian in the room. I came up with Mary Mack, the song we had the kindergarten kids sing to get them settled down,” explained Budge, now known as Mary Mack.

Mack was tiring of being a teacher by this time and wanted to do something else. “I just wanted to be my own boss and I put two and two together after my polka band routine and my story telling at the black poetry night and went out to do comedy,” said Mack.

It has not been an easy road to achieve the success Mack now enjoys. “When I first started comedy I was really poor,” she recalled

Mack went on the university tour for one year. “I was living in motels and working 50 weeks in a row. I had a skillet and a crock pot in my trunk and I would get groceries and cook in the motel,” she explained.

All of the hard work and travel has paid off for Mack. Mack’s been featured on the nationally syndicated "Bob and Tom Radio Show", XM Satellite Radio's National Lampoon Comedy Network, and in Minnesota's Polka Spotlight.

After winning the 2005 California's Funniest Female Contest, Mack went on to appear in the Vancouver Comedy Fest (2007) and HBO's Andy Kaufman Awards (2007).

She made her national TV debut this summer on Comedy Central's "Live at Gotham" (July 25) and NBC's Last Comic Standing (Thursdays starting May 22).

Mack made it through two rounds on Last Comic Standing. “I lost money on that gig because I cancelled a lucrative one in New York to be on the show,” said Mack.

“The major thing I got out of the show was television exposure wearing bad make-up,” Mack added.

Mack writes all of her own material while managing her business on her own. “There are the lights and sound, the publicity, the bookings and then I am on the computer eight hours a day sorting e-mails and doing my own blog,” she explained.

“I try to respond to everyone that writes,” Mack added.

Mack gets her ideas for writing from things that happen in her real life. “I seem to be a magnet for weird events,” she said.  

Mack’s unique style draws from her varied and equally unique background ranging from schoolteacher to polka band leader along with her childhood experiences growing up in northwest Wisconsin.

Mack's endearing stage presence and off-kilter musical surprises have ."

 

 

Mary Mack’s Self Written Bio

I was born on a pirate ship in the middle of the desert. I guess the oceans receding thing is right. Anyway I was born on this boat on dry ground when, low, this white stork swooped down from the sky (not from the heavens, because that would take too long) and he swooped just a little more down and exclaimed, "Low again, here's a baby. I've been looking for one of these for a while now. How 'bout if I rescue you from this boat, dry lander?" And I, not talking yet at such a young and impressionable age, said, "What the #+#+, I don't care." So the stork, knowing skin color, not love, dropped me off in Minnesota with a couple of honkies who already had a whole bunch of honky kids (apparently, our skin matched at the time). And then those parents said, "Low for the third #+#+ time. We didn't really want a white one again, but alas, storks only knoweth skin color, not love. Yet even so, we'll love her just to spite that #*+@# stork." After five years, the parents said, "All ye kids and you in the bell tower, we will move north to the Wisconsin woods so ye can eat cleaner dirt." And we kids said, "What the #+#+, except our oldest brother who was too busy planting pot between the corn rows of my parents urban garden. This particular son said only, "Give me forty acres and I'll turn this rig around." But this not being his bio, I left with my family to the woods where my youngest brother was almost run over by a mama moose out in the horseshoe pit, and I being of the passive aggressive sort, enjoyed the incident somewhat, and had a good day that day. But that is neither here nor anywhere else in the nearby vicinity, and the whole point is we all just moved up to the sticks where we learned the art of being slightly humorous, because there was nothing else to do. Amen.