Reno 911! bad boys bust Corky mascot

Kellen Jenkins / The Bulletin

Cedric Yarbrough, Officer Jones from Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, performs his impression of Aaron Neville Thursday night at Albert Taylor Hall.

Emporia State’s police force was two cops richer for one night only on Thursday when Cedric Yarbrough and Carlos Alazraqui of Comedy Central’s “Reno: 911!” performed in Albert Taylor Hall.

Yarbrough plays Deputy S. Jones and Alazraqui plays James Oswaldo Garcia on the hit show. Their characters are often featured together in scenes. The two performed standup comedy, improv and participated in a question and answer session with the audience.

ESU received a few jibes during the course of his performance. Alazraqui commented on the statue of Corky in the circle drive outside of Plumb Hall, which features Corky walking to class and which Alazraqui admitted was a bit confusing. Alazraqui wondered why he wasn’t flying to class since he had wings. Corky suffered a few more blows to the ego during the evening with the actors questioning how effective a hornet mascot was at intimidating opponents.

“It’s got to be hard to instill fear when you’re a hornet,” Alazraqui said before pretending to step on a bug on stage.

Alazraqui talked about his childhood with an Argentinean father and a Scottish mother in Concord, Calif. Alazraqui attended Cal. State Sacramento where he started his career in standup by competing in open mic competitions at the school. He won the San Francisco International Comedy Competition after his fourth attempt in the contest. He used his winnings to move to Los Angles to pursue a career in comedy professionally.

Alazraqui also discussed his background in voiceover work. Before landing the role of Garcia, he was better known for the voices of Mr. Weed, Peter’s boss at the toy factory from “Family Guy”, Rocko on “Rocko’s Modern Life” and most notably as the voice of the Chihuahua in the “Yo quiero Taco Bell” commercials from the ‘90’s. Alazraqui elaborated on his reasons for entering the field during the question and answer session.

“I was too ugly for live-action acting,” Alazraqui joked.

Yarbrough joined Alazraqui on stage a quarter of the way into the show. When asked why he was late by Alazraqui, Yarbrough had an excuse.

“I’m drunk,” he joked.

Yarbrough dragged the microphone stand around the stage claiming he would be taking it to Bamboozer’s later that night.

The actors participated in an “impression off”. The event had the actors pitted against each other in a battle of who could do the largest amount of accurate impressions. Alazraqui started off the competition with an impression of Bill Clinton to which Yarbrough responded with an impression of Bill Cosby.

“Topical,” Alazraqui said of Yarbrough’s first impression.

Alazraqui also did an impression of Captain Kirk from ‘Star Trek’, Jason Alexander of ‘Seinfeld’ fame and Tony Montana from ‘Scarface’ as a children’s birthday party clown. Yarbrough impersonated Billy and Charlie from the Internet viral video featuring the children as well as Gnarls Barkley.

Yarbrough explained during his performance that he had had no previous standup work and had gotten into the comedy field through acting. He had done voiceover work as well and is best known for his part as Tom Dubois in Cartoon Network’s animated adaptation of “The Boondocks” comic strip. He had also had parts in “Meet the Fockers” and “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin”.

Yarbrough commented on Hollywood and how frequently celebrities use fame to get out of legal situations. He recounted a situation where he had been pulled over for driving erratically only to be let off when the cop recognized him and liked the show.

Following Yarbrough’s stand-up routine, the actor left the stage for more clips of the show to be shown to the audience. The actors came back out on stage afterwards dressed as their characters for an improv session.

A student was chosen from the audience to act as a suspect while the actors pretended to be their “Reno” characters. The situation had a female student in trouble with the law for a pornography ring while the actors intimidated her into confessing.

A question and answer session followed the standup comedy portion of the evening. Microphones were set up at the front of the theater for audience members to ask questions directly to Alazraqui and Yarbrough. Questions could be posed to the actors themselves or they would answer as their respective characters.

One question from the audience was about the show itself. Yarbrough stated that about 90 percent of the shows dialogue is improvised on the spot. The actors have a set idea of what specifically needs to happen in a scene but for the most part they are allowed to get to the point in any way they please.