TEMPE, ARIZ. -- Frank Caliendo does 10 minutes of impressions of Robin Williams and John Madden, much to the delight of his audience. Then, he sits down quietly in the back of this writer's Media Literacy class at UWM.

Just a few years ago, Caliendo played to audiences of fellow students in his UWM classes, and before that at Waukesha South High School. His following has grown considerably.

Caliendo now plays to hundreds of people in tours of comedy clubs nationwide. His April 2 appearance at Giggles in Germantown has been sold out for a couple weeks. He makes another appearance there in June, and tickets are going rapidly. Upcoming appearances in Minneapolis and Peoria also are sold out.

Perhaps Caliendo has become best known for his impressions of John Madden and others on the FOX NFL pre-game show. He also was a regular on "MADTV" and WB's "Hype."

He's done sketches on the "Best Damn Sports Show" and standup on Comedy Central's "Premium Blend." "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," "NBC Late Friday," "The Late Late Show with Craig Kilbourn" and "The View."

On March 29, Caliendo will perform at the Washington correspondence dinner before Vice President Dick Cheney, members of Congress and the journalists who cover the President and Congress. President Bush had been scheduled to attend, but the White House recently informed Caliendo -- who does hilarious impressions of the President -- that Bush will not make the affair.

Frankly, Caliendo, now 32, has become one of the hottest comedians around. This writer caught up with his former student at a performance at The Improv in Tempe, Ariz., and spent a morning with him, his wife, Michele, and son, Joey, at their Tempe home.

"I learned a lot doing those impressions in my classes back in those days," said Caliendo, a 1996 graduate of the UWM Journalism and Mass Communication Department.

"I really wasn't that interested in becoming a journalist because I'm not an intrusive type of person, but a lot of what we studied applied to what I wanted to do in other ways, and I knew I could always fall back on the degree if comedy thing didn't work out. I also needed to take a risk, and try what I was really interested in."

Caliente often infused life into some evening classes by starting them with an impression or two. He always knew when to quit though and become serious. He was a near 4.0 GPA student and could have become a fine journalist, but the "comedy thing" has worked out very, very well.

"I think I always did know when enough was enough," Caliendo said. "Even back in high school, I was never a disruptive student or really got in trouble because I was always doing jokes or anything."

Caliendo did a little club work while still a student at UWM, but had mixed success. After his graduation, he started to pick up more club work, in Chicago and elsewhere, first as an emcee, then as a middle act and finally as a headliner. He also did well making comedy tours of college campuses.

"I was able to pick up work right after graduation," he said. "I liked doing clubs, still do like them, in fact. The college tours were fun too. I was closer to their age, so connected with them. I was able to use the college tours as leverage to move up to more headliner work at clubs."

Caliendo hooked up as a regular on "Hype" and then "MADTV." Through those gigs, he gained recognition, to the point where Jimmy Kimmel asked him to do his Madden impressions as part of his segment on the NFL pre-game show.

"That actually is an interesting story because Jimmy wanted me to join the show, and his producer said he had this other guy who did Madden that he wanted on the show. It turned out they were both talking about me," Caliendo said.

When Kimmel moved on, Caliendo joined the pre-game crew and now hangs with Terry, Howie, Jimmie and the others.