carlos mencia

Ned Arnel Mencia (October 22, 1967), better known by the stage name Carlos Mencia, is an American comedian, writer, and actor. He is currently the host of his own show on Comedy Central, Mind of Mencia. He was born seventeen of eighteen children in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. His father, Roberto Holness, is from Honduras, and his mother, Magdelana Mencia, is from Mexico. He was raised in East Los Angeles, California by his aunt Consuelo and uncle Pablo Mencia, going by the name Ned Holness in honor of his father. By his own admission, staying out of trouble was difficult growing up, but with the help of his family he excelled in school and stayed out of gangs. He majored in electrical engineering at California State University, Los Angeles but left early to pursue a career in comedy after a successful performance at open mic night at The Laugh Factory.

Career

Taking his stage name, Mencia was a quick success at such venerated LA stand-up venues as The Comedy Store and The L.A. Cabaret. This led to appearances on The Arsenio Hall Show and Buscando Estrellas, where he attained the title "International Comedy Grand Champion." Then, in 1994, Mencia was chosen to host HBO's latino comedy showcase Loco Slam.

Mencia followed up Loco Slam by hosting Funny is Funny! on Galavision in 1998. He would continue to do stand-up, including a very successful tour in 2001 with Freddy Soto and Pablo Francisco, "The Three Amigos." Mencia also did two half-hour specials on HBO, the second of which won him a CableACE Award for Best Stand-Up Comedy Special. After the release of his first comedy album by Warner Records, Take A Joke America, Mencia performed his break-out performance on Comedy Central Presents in 2002.

By the time his career began to take off in the early 2000s, Mencia was also working as an actor doing guest appearances in the television shows Moesha and The Shield, and starring in the film Outta Time and the animated show The Proud Family.

In the summer of 2005, Comedy Central gave Mencia his own half hour comedy show, entitled Mind of Mencia. The show mixed Mencia's stand up comedy with sketch comedy, the same basis for the highly popular Chappelle's Show, which had abruptly stopped airing after late 2004. The show achieved moderate success and was brought back for a second season in the spring of 2006 and for a third season that summer.

Mencia is a frequent guest on the Opie and Anthony radio show on XM Satellite Radio and CBS Radio. He will be taking part in Opie and Anthony's Traveling Virus Comedy Tour.

Comedy

Like many comedians, he focuses on race, sexual orientation, politics, religion, class and society, but in a style which intentionally violates rules of what is politically correct by, for example, making a point to use racial epithets or terms such as "retarded" rather than "disabled" or "mentally handicapped" and otherwise going out of his way to offend liberal sensibilities, such as by advocating capital punishment and sustaining a generally high level of raunchiness in his material. A staple of his material is diatribes denouncing the actions of people he considers to be stupid, often using his trademark "DEE-Dee-dee!." He has stated that the phrase doesn't refer to people "who were born retarded," but rather people "who were born, and are now retarded." He often advocates Social Darwinism "survival of the fittest" type solutions to this perceived problem of too much stupidity. Some consider his jokes to be intentionally provocative and racist, focusing on stereotypes for the sake of publicity or easy laughs. Mencia, however, says he does not focus on any one race, but that he creates comedy about all races, ethnicities and religions equally, without the desire to have his words taken too seriously. He has the opinion that life should be filled with comedy, as shown by his catchphrase "If you ain't laughin' you ain't livin'".

Criticism

In a 2005 interview by Howard Stern, comedian George Lopez claimed that he and Mencia were involved in a physical altercation at a comedy club. Lopez alleged that Mencia appropriated 13 minutes of Lopez's material, without permission, for Mencia's HBO comedy special. Lopez told Stern, "It's not really a feud, I mean, I think I won."^[1] Shortly afterwards, comedian Joe Rogan wrote a post on his website publicly accusing Mencia of being a plagiarist, alleging that Mencia stole jokes from a number of comedians.^[2]

Mencia responded to the accusations while being interviewed on Tucson's The Frank Show, stating that Joe Rogan had fabricated these allegations out of jealousy. On his own website, Mencia denied accusations of plagiarism, arguing that the material in question was too generic to be attributed to any single comedian.

A slide show on the Maxim Magazine web site recently named Mencia as the 12th worst comedian of all time,^[3] although television viewers themselves had voted him into 2nd place of the top 25 stand up comics in Comedy Central's 2006 "Stand Up Showdown".^[4]

Bobby Slayton was on Elliot in the Morning stating that Carlos Mencia is "the biggest thief in show business".^[5] http://www.eitmonline.com/live.html

Filmography

• In Living Color (TV), playing a Valet in episode six of season two, October 28, 1990
• Moesha (TV), playing "Carlos" in the episode "Life Imitating Art," February 9, 1999
• The Proud Family (TV), starring as Felix (voice) (2001-2005)
• The Shield (TV) playing "Gabo" in the episode "Two Days of Blood," May 28, 2002
• Outta Time (2002), playing "Juancho"
• 29 Palms (2002), playing "The Comedian"

Not including his comedy specials for HBO and Comedy Central, Mencia has also appeared on Comic Relief, and hosted Loco Slam in 1994, Latino Laugh Festival in 1997, Funny is Funny! in 1998, and Uncensored Comedy: That's Not Funny in 2003.

He has released three comedy DVDs, Down to the Nitty Gritty, Not for the Easily Offended, and a compilation of his HBO specials.

Discography

• Take a Joke America (2001)
• America Rules (2002)
• Unmerciful (2003)
• Not for the Easily Offended (2003)
• Down to the Nitty Gritty (2004)
• Mind of Mencia (2005)
• No Strings Attached (2006)

Mentions in Popular Culture

• The September 29, 2006 update to the popular political blog Wonkette referenced unusual jokes about Italian-Americans and Swedish-Americans made by U.S. Senator Conrad Burns as "sub-Carlos Mencia material."^[6]

References

1. ^ Lopez (MP3). Redban.com. Retrieved on 2006-09-05.
2. ^ Mencia. JoeRogan.com. Retrieved on 2006-09-05.
3. ^ The Worst Comedian of all time. Maxim Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-09-05.
4. ^ Mencia. Comedy Central. Retrieved on 2006-09-05.
5. ^ Mencia. Elliot in the morning. Retrieved on 2006-10-02.
6. ^ Crazy Old Man Angers...,[1]Wonkette, September 29, 2006

External links

• Official Website
• Carlos Mencia at the Internet Movie Database
• Mind Of Mencia website at ComedyCentral.com
• Carlos Mencia on My Space