Carlos Mencia

Ned Arnel Mencia (born October 22, 1967), known by his 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.Ned Arnel Mencia was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Mencia was raised in East Los Angeles, California by his aunt Consuelo and Uncle Pablo Mencia. 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 an open mic night at The Laugh Factory. He also has an older brother named Joseph Mencia who often appears on Carlos' program Mind of Mencia.

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 also worked 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.At the end of 2004, Comedy Central began talks with Carlos Mencia for his own program shortly after their renewal of comedian Dave Chappelle's contract for Chappelle's Show. In March of 2005, prior to Chappelle's April 28, 2005 departure from the production of Chappelle's Show and subsequent trip to Africa, Comedy Central announced Mencia's own half-hour comedy show, Mind of Mencia. The show mixed Mencia's stand up comedy with sketch comedy, the same basis for the highly popular Chappelle's Show. The show achieved moderate success in its first season and was brought back for a second season in the spring of 2006, becoming Comedy Central's second highest rated program that summer.

Maxim magazine recently named Mencia as the 12th-worst comedian of all time, although television viewers themselves voted him on 2nd place of the Top 25 stand-up comics in Comedy Central's 2006 "Stand Up Showdown".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, for example, making a point to use racial epithets or terms such as "retarded" than "disabled" or "mentally handicapped". A staple of his material is denouncing the actions of people he considers to be stupid, often using his trademark "DEE-Dee-dee!" He has stated that the phrase does not refer to people "who were born retarded," but rather people "who were born, and are now retarded." As said in his "Dee-Dee-Dee" song, "Dee-Dee-Dee doesn't mean mentally retarded, it means stupid. And all of you stupid people out there are going to find this song hilarious." He often advocates Social Darwinism's "survival of the fittest" type solutions to this perceived problem of too much stupidity.

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. Mencia responded to the accusations while being interviewed on the Tucson, Arizona The Frank Show, stating that Joe Rogan had fabricated the plagiarism charge out of jealousy. On his own website, Mencia argued that the material in question was too generic to be attributed to any single comedian.On February 10, 2007 Rogan confronted Mencia on stage at the Comedy Store and continued his allegations of plagiarism. A video of the altercation was posted on his website. In the video, Joe Rogan's arguments were backed by different audio and video clips from other comedians including George Lopez. The Comedy Store later canceled Joe Rogan's upcoming shows at that particular venue.

George Lopez has accused Mencia of plagiarizing his material. In an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Lopez accused Mencia of plagiarizing 13 minutes of his material in Mencia's HBO special. He also claimed he had a physical altercation with Mencia over the alleged plagiarism.Mencia is a frequent guest on the Opie and Anthony radio show on XM Satellite Radio and CBS Radio. He took part in first Opie and Anthony's Traveling Virus Comedy Tour in 2006. Mencia starred in a Super Bowl XLI commercial for Bud Light which was the #1 most replayed commercial according to Tivo.