Carlos Mencia is currently on tour following his Comedy Central Special, NewTerritory which debuted in December. He is looking forward to performing this weekend at The Funny Bone on the Levee. During this visit, unlike his performances here in the past, Mencia will be performing for more than one night. Mencia sees this as an opportunity to create a bond with the Greater Cincinnati area. He also is performing in a more intimate setting, a club rather than a big theatre.
Like most individuals, Mencia has grown and evolved. Mencia said he is not the same person he was a few years ago. This is reflected in his view on life and his performances. Mencia said he “lives in a different place. I ask myself, what can I do today? I wake up and want to be OK with myself.”
Mencia commented that there are different rewards and challenges in performing in television, movies and stand-up. For him “the immediacy, uncensordness and rawness of performing live stand-up” is what is best about comedy.
The controversy about Mencia stealing jokes won’t go away and he said he can’t defend that issue. He feels that no matter what he would say, people would either believe him or not. He cannot control that. Mencia believes comics’ time would be better spent writing, creating and being for one another. “That’s the place where we should live. Comedians should bring together, not tear apart.”
For people that are disgusted by some topics in comedy, Mencia has this to say: “I come from a place that has a lot of drive-by shootings, lots of violence and death. There is starvation in the world. So when I hear that people are disgusted by what they hear in comedy I think, with all of that, if the thing that disgusts you most is a joke, how great is your life?”
Mencia also points out that people are funny about how they react to jokes. “They love them if they hate the victim, but hate them if they like the victim. It’s just comedy!” While comics speak their truth, they have a stage persona. Some are known as angry or neurotic comics. He said, “Nobody thinks Will Farrell is really an idiot. People don’t think Jeff Dunham goes around sticking his hand up people’s asses. Comics are actors.”
This weekend Mencia said that people who come to his shows can look forward to “something completely different than what you think or what you expect. Each show will be different.”
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