Ned Arnel Mencia who is popular as Carlos Mencia, is an American comedian, actor and writer. He generally does comedy related to politics, culture, race, social class, and criminal justice.
He gained immense popularity when he started hosting Comedy Central’s Mind of Mencia which ran for 4 seasons and terminated in 2008.
What Is the Net Worth of Carlos Mencia?
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Carlos Mencia has an estimated net worth of $8 million.
Early Life
Carlos Mencía was born on October 22, 1967 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He is the seventeenth child of Magdelena Mencía and Roberto Holness. His mother was involved in a domestic conflict with his father during the time of his birth and refused to give her son the last name of his father.
His official name according to his certificates is “Ned Arnel Mencía,” however, he said that out of respect for his biological father, he adopted his father’s last name and was known as “Ned Holness” till he was 18.
Mencia went to attend Garfield High School in Los Angeles County. At the age of 19, he dealt drugs and knocked off a house.
He attended California State University, Los Angeles, with a major in electrical engineering, though he dropped out soon as he wanted a career in comedy after he performed successfully at an open mic night at The Laugh Factory. He also has an elder brother named Joseph Mencia who was seen on Mind of Mencia quite often.
Personal Life
In 2003, Mencia got married to Amy in Los Angeles, California. The couple has a child together named Lucas Pablo Mencia.
Career
Mencia changed his name to “Carlos” from “Ned” in 1988, after the suggestion of Mitzi Shore, the owner of The Comedy Store, to attract Mexican audiences.
He gave performances at respected stand-up places in Los Angeles like The Comedy Store and The L.A. Cabaret.
The success he achieved following performing at such venues brought him the opportunity to appear at The Arsenio Hall Show and Buscando Estrellas, and there he got the title “International Comedy Grand Champion.” Later, in 1994, he served as the host of HBO’s Loco Slam.
In 1998, he followed up Loco Slam by hosting Funny is Funny! on Galavision. He continued to perform stand-up, along with an extremely successful tour in 2001 “The Three Amigos” alongside Freddy Soto and Pablo Francisco.
Furthermore, he also performed two half-hour specials on HBO, the second one brought him an award for Best Stand-Up Comedy Special. After the launch of his very first comedy album “Take A Joke America” by Warner Records. In 2002, he did his outstanding performance on Comedy Central Presents.
In the early 2000s, when his career started to take wing, Mencia was also used to work as an actor making guest appearances in the television series Moesha and The Shield, and featured in the movie “Outta Time” and also the anime show titled “The Proud Family”.
Mencia performed on “Comedy Central Presents” in 2002.
Comedy Central made the announcement of Mencia’s own half-hour comedy show titled Mind of Mencia in March 2005. The show combined his stand-up comedy along with sketch comedy, similar to Dave Chappelle’s Chappelle’s Show.
The first season of the show was loved by audiences and the show got renewed for season 2 during the spring of 2006 and became the second-highest-rated program of Comedy Central after South Park.
In the summer of the same year, the show got renewed for season three prior to getting terminated in 2008. Needles, which is a portmanteau of Mencia’s birth name, produced the “Mind of Mencia”.
Sometimes, he appeared as a guest on the Opie and Anthony radio show on XM Satellite Radio and CBS Radio. In 2006, he also participated in the first Opie and Anthony’s Traveling Virus Comedy Tour.
He was also featured in a Super Bowl XLI commercial for Bud Light. In November 2009, he started to appear in commercials of a weight-loss product named Belly Burner, and he even said to have utilized it in person.
In 2011, he got on a stand-up comedy tour, along with dates at the Improv in Schaumburg, Illinois, on June 24 and 25, and ended the tour on September 16, 2011, in Las Vegas at Treasure Island.
He also co-founded the restaurant chain Maggie Rita’s and co-owned many locations. But sadly, his business didn’t continue as his restaurants had shut due to poor reviews by January 2013 but one franchised location went on to license the title.
Controversies
According to a 2010 The Wall Street Journal article, Monica, including Dane Cook and Jay Leno, were among the most hated well-known stand-ups by fellow comedians.
Maxim called Monica the worst comedian of all time in 2006. Furthermore, Mike Byoff said about him stating “Not only does he steal jokes from classic comedians but he’s needlessly racist and had [sic] no sense of comedic timing whatsoever.”
He was accused of plagiarism and stealing jokes many times in his stand-up routines.
Comedian Joe Rogan penned a post on his website in 2005, in which he accused Mencia publicly of being a plagiarist, saying that Mencia copied jokes from several comedians.
At the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard, Rogan faced off Mencia on February 10, 2007, on stage and accused him of plagiarism.
Rogan even published a video of the argument, with audio and footage from other comedians along with Bob Levy, George Lopez, Ari Shaffir, and Bobby Lee amongst others.
In fact, Rogan has also published audio and video footage of the interviews of Mencia and joke routines contrasting Mencia’s routines with those of other comedians on his blog.
Mencia was also accused by comedian George Lopez of copying his material. During an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Lopez alleged Mencia of copying thirteen minutes of his material in Mencia’s HBO special.
He further asserted that he also had a physical clash with Mencia for the reported plagiarism. The single joke that Lopez has openly mentioned was copied and utilized on Mencia’s HBO special was a “Taco Bell joke”.
This assertion was hurled back by comedian Ted Sarnowski saying that the joke he performed in 1988 on the radio was then copied and utilized without permission by Lopez, the radio station’s resident comic. Sarnowski is said to have provided Mencia with permission to utilize the joke.
Further, Mencia has also been implicated in copying a routine from Bill Cosby. In his special titled “No Strings Attached,” Mencia gave a little performance regarding a father who spends years training his son in order to make his career as a football player, just to see the son say “I love you, Mom!” during his moment of expressed winning.
Cosby did an identical performance in his concert movie Bill Cosby: Himself and penned precisely on the matter in his book titled Fatherhood. In a statement, Mencia said that he had never watched the movie but felt sorry for the correspondences between his and Cosby’s jokes.
In May 2010, Mencia talked about the plagiarism issue in an interview with comic Marc Maron on his podcast and WTF with Marc Maron. In the following year, in an interview, Mencia said that he had to undergo therapy because of allegations of plagiarism.
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