During a recent comedy show, Carlos Mencia said, “White people, when you landed on Plymouth Rock, you did not have a visa.”
The humor might get lost in the written word, but it elicited laughter and cheers from the audience. Mencia has also been known to imitate a Hispanic saying, “Welcome to McDonald’s.”
Mencia, who has appeared on Comedy Central, has recorded at least 10 albums and is known for poking fun at race, religion and politics. He will appear Oct. 7 at Genesee Theatre.
He recently took some time to speak seriously about his chosen profession and the world, without slipping in a single funny one-liner.
Comedians have different styles and approaches, he said, but his is one that’s “very visceral. What inspires me is being in the realm of things that emotionally incite me.”
And at the same time, he said, his No. 1 mission is to make people laugh. “I’m bound by the comedy. No matter how relevant, important the subject, I still have to make it funny. That’s my job.
“What I did a long, long time ago was I formatted my brain, like a computer program or an app. I take in information and it comes out in a comedic way. I’ve worked on stage for a long, long time to make that happen. Now it’s just innate. It happens.”
Born in Honduras, Mencia, who now lives in the United States, credits his father for inspiring him.
“The funniest stuff I ever heard, believe it or not, are not jokes, but stuff I heard my father say when I was growing up. He pointed out absurdities and stupidities saying, ‘Can you believe this guy? Hey this is what is gonna happen to this guy.’ And then it would happen.
“It was so fun and funny and nobody ever got offended. And that is where I learned more than anything what comedy can do. That is how some comedians have been since the court jester days, when the court jester was there to tell the king the truth in a funny way.”
That kind of comedy “allows for people to laugh, and here’s the beauty of laughter, when you open the door, in your mind to laugh, you also open that door to your knowledge and to your thoughts and to your emotions.”
He takes news onto the stage and uses comedy to get people to think. “Georgia and Alabama passed strict laws five years ago making it difficult to live there without papers, and they thought they got what they wanted,” he said. “But here’s what happened, millions of dollars of crops, specifically tomatoes, rotted away. Because once the people left, there was no one to pick them.
“I did a joke about it on stage when it was happening,” he said, and audience members did not know about it, he said. “I thought: We live in a country where information like this is at your fingertips. How can you not know this? It’s one of the most important issues of our time.”
Mencia has had his demons over the years. About a decade ago, he was accused of plagiarism by several other comedians, and he struggled with the issue.
Today he espouses a philosophy from his father about not taking anything too seriously. “No matter what you think, the world doesn’t stop for anybody. My father used to tell me, ‘Everything you think is the most serious thing in the world, in 100 years, it won’t matter.’
“Living in the moment is what’s important,” he said. “Life is so unpredictable — the ebbs, the flows, the ups, the downs, the goods, the bads. It’s the life we live.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance writer.
Carlos Mencia
When: 8 p.m. Oct. 7
Where: Genesee Theatre, 203 N. Genesee St., Waukegan
Tickets: $38-$48
Information: 847-782-2366; www.geneseetheatre.com
