Posted on 07/16/2005 6:59:44 AM PDT by ConservativeMan55
By LOLA OGUNNAIKE
Just because my name is Carlos Mencia, don't think my show is going to be about the difference between Mexicans and white people,'' the veteran comedian Carlos Mencia said one recent morning as he made his way to work in Los Angeles.
No, Mencia's new Comedy Central series, ''Mind of Mencia,'' is not just about such differences. Unlike the comedians Paul Rodriguez or George Lopez, Mencia, an East Los Angeles-bred comic, mines more than his roots for laughs. During his brash half-hour show, which debuted Wednesday evening, Mencia, 37, goes after blacks, whites and several other groups in the ethnic rainbow. Parodying a popular Snickers commercial, he plays a man trapped in a cave that's being bombed. ''Not going anywhere for a while?'' a voice-over asks, as Mencia, dressed in a turban, takes a bite of a chocolate bar.
Mencia's frat boy-friendly show comes at a time when Comedy Central is trying both to recover from the recent disappearance of the comedian Dave Chappelle and to widen its audience with a handful of new shows. Starting in the fall, David Spade, the star of the NBC sitcom ''Just Shoot Me,'' will be the host of a show that spoofs programs such as ''Access Hollywood'' and ''Entertainment Tonight.'' D.L. Hughley, the comic who once starred in his own comedy series that appeared on ABC and UPN, will return to the air later this month with his own show, ''Weekend at the D.L.'' And the acid-tongued Sarah Silverman is also working on a pilot.
While Chappelle's show helped increase the channel's black audience to 20 percent from 7 percent, both Mencia and Comedy Central executives say that he was not given a show to increase Latino viewership; that would be a bonus, they said.
''The fact that he could potentially bring in a more diverse audience for us is part of the appeal,'' said Lauren Corrao, executive vice president of original programming and development for the channel, ''but when you see the kind of comedy he's doing, it really does appeal to a broad range of people, even though he comes at it from that very specific point of view.''
In the opening monologue on Wednesday night's show Mencia joked that Middle Eastern people stopped at airport security checkpoints have gotten off relatively easy compared with the trials that other minorities in America have had to endure. Mencia, who has an intense delivery style reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson's, remained unapologetic when asked if his material was too harsh on those of Middle Eastern descent, potentially fanning the embers of intolerance.
''If the worst thing happening to Middle Eastern people is that Carlos Mencia is doing a joke about them being stopped at airports, that's a pretty awesome state of affairs,'' he said. ''When's the last time you heard about a Middle Eastern person being beaten to death?''
Naturally, Mencia's unabashedly un-PC humor has already earned him comparisons to the racially charged work of Chappelle, who in April made like a runaway bride and bolted, just weeks before his hit show was due to return for a third season.
Being called a Latin Dave Chappelle does not bother Mencia, he said: ''Last year Dave Chappelle was voted the funniest man in America, and if I'm being compared to him, then I'm a blessed human being. I'm glad they're not comparing me to Gary Shteckle. Nobody knows who that guy is.''
With the exception of his show's opening, which parodies the opening of Chappelle's show (instead of a blues duo playing against a white backdrop, Mencia has a mariachi band), ''Mind of Mencia'' has been tailored to look nothing like Chappelle's series, by Comedy Central's request. Mencia's show is an amalgam of stand-up, man-on-the-street interviews and brief spoofs.
''I would love to do full 3-to-5-minute sketches, but Comedy Central said no,'' Mencia said. Comedy Central executives told him, ''That's Dave Chappelle's show,'' Mencia said.
With a hint of frustration, he recalled being stopped from doing a sketch about how the pope is chosen. ''Nobody knows what goes on behind those closed doors,'' he said. ''I wanted to have a sketch where priests solemnly walk into a room chanting and as soon as they close the door they're partying, drinking wine, the nuns are flashing people for beads. They're doing shots and whoever falls off the chair can't be the pope. Really weird, abstract, goofy stuff. They said that's a sketch. I'm like, 'Yeah but it's funny.' 'You can't do sketches. That's Dave Chappelle's show.'''
Corrao said that it was Mencia's stand-up that attracted the channel. ''I don't think we would have ever gone to him and said, 'Let's do a Hispanic sketch show,''' she said. ''That's not what he does. That never even entered our minds.''
One of 18 children, Mencia, who is actually half-Honduran and half-German and not Mexican, said he did not grow up longing to be a comedian. He was not the Ritalin-deprived class clown or the type to pass jokes with the peas at the dinner table.
''I was never funny,'' Mencia said. ''I'd be funny once a year at Christmas. I'd do impressions of how people talked and danced, but that stopped when I was about 11.''
It was not until seven years later, after a joke he told at work went over well with his co-workers, that Mencia dropped out of college, quit his job at an insurance company and decided to pursue comedy.
He recalled the genesis of his first joke: ''There was a plane flying from the big island of Hawaii to the island of Oahu, and midflight the fuselage came apart and a flight attendant was sucked out of a plane. I remember watching the news and they're telling this story and they said she's presumed dead. I remember going, 'You think she's dead, guys. Go out on a limb on this one.' I went to work and I was like, what is up with that? Was she wearing Kotex with wings and flew away?''
Mencia said he left his colleagues in stitches, including Joe the resident curmudgeon. ''He came up to me and said, 'Seriously, you're unbelievably funny; you should do stand-up comedy,''' Mencia recalled. ''It was this creepy surreal moment. Man, if Joe thinks I'm funny, maybe I should do this.''
A few weeks later Mencia bought a joke book, reworked a number of the bits to fit his personality and jumped onstage during an open-mike night at a local comedy club.
''When I stepped offstage I knew,'' he said. ''I called my mom and said, 'This is what I've been put on this earth to do.'''
Since then, Mencia said, he has worked no fewer than 400 shows a year and for the last seven years, he's worked 48 to 50 weeks annually, joking about everything from racial profiling to surly McDonald's employees.
Though his show is still in its infancy, he fully expects to step out of Chappelle's shadow someday soon, he said.
''The easiest thing to do is put someone in a file of somebody you already know,'' Mencia said. '''Hey, you remind me of Sam Kinison' or 'You remind me of Richard Pryor.'
"That's fine because I know that's the process. Eventually my own file will be created."
Thus guy's show is hilarious!
He LOVES America!
A great replacement for Chappelle!
He does sound funny.
...I can just visualize that Snickers bar parody.
LOL
Here are some of his videos.
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/mind_of_mencia/videos/season_1/index.jhtml
He sounds funny, but what is your basis for calling him a conservative? The creator of Family Guy, for example, is equally un PC, but he is an admitted leftist.
He hates Michael Jackson too...
He'll scream "HE'S A STUPID FREAK WHO SLEEPS WITH BANGS CHILDREN! WHO LET THIS GUY OFF???"
I may just check out his show.
...Hopefully the PC Thought Police won't force him to apologize or get Comedy Central to take the show off the air, like GLAAD did to Dr. Laura and Paramount Television.
I've known about this guy for years, he did some time on Opie and Anthony and he's a riot.
He related this story about walking through a parking lot.
These guys said "Hey man, we're locked out of our car, can you get in it for us?"
He said "Like, because I'm a beaner, I can somehow break into any car like magic"
He continued "So I looked it over for a second, grabbed a big rock, bashed out the driver side window and said 'there ya go'"
Rofl.
Ok perhaps Conservative is a bit too defined.
He loves America, and frequently bashes liberal ideas in his shows.
He doesn't believe in Affirmative Action, he hates Michael Jackson, he is glad the Supreme court banned pot.
Those are just the ones I've seen so far.
Also..he produced a CD called "America Rules"
Good point.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
bttt
Check out some of the videos on his web site too.
oh I LOVE THIS GUYS SHOW!!!! He is too funny! I like his rant about working in the airport and if he ran things he would let all the white people just "go through" and then the mexicans because"why would they hijack a plane?" but the middle easterners he would stop and check thoroughly and if they complained and wanted to know why he was "racially profiling them" he would point to framed photos on the wall of the 9/11 hijackers and say "because you look like number 5 and 10, CHECK HIM TWICE!
LOL
and then he was like "Blacks wouldn't have bombs in their shoes. Do you know how much they paid for those shoes? Their shoes aren't a bomb..they are the bomb!"
LOL. Check out "Mystery road sign".
I saw, lol.
He went around asking people what they thought it was.
Look out for his half-hour comedy special on Comedy Central. You get more of a sense from that that he's not a Paul Rodriguez-type Hispanic leftist comedian.
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