I grew up Mexican.
I'm afraid of being poor; I'm afraid of living in the projects... I'm afraid of being thought as unsuccessful.
My choices are made out of love. When I go on stage now, I want to make people happy. I mean, when I get hecklers now, I'm nice to them!
I could always talk about being a Latino and having a Mexican mom and a Honduran dad and being from Honduras. That was always an easy go-to place. But on the other hand, it was a crutch.
I know that if any other comedian came up to me questioning something I did or said, it would be literally settled in a heartbeat. I love comedy. I give to comedy. I don't take from comedy.
Just because my name is Carlos Mencia, don't think my show is going to be about the difference between Mexicans and white people.
I was never funny. 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.
The easiest thing to do is put someone in a file of somebody you already know. '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.
I hate being judged.
I know I'm funny.
I've gotten in trouble with every race you can imagine. They say, 'I can't believe you talked about this - you're racist.' And I say, 'How can I be racist? Isn't racism exclusionary? If all of you are offended, that means I'm including every race in my jokes.'
It's a pleasure to be doing a show for Comedy Central. Traditional networks would cast me as the head of a household with 16 children, which I find extremely offensive because there are 18 kids in my family.
Some people want to live in a world much prettier than the one I depict. But it exists, and I talk about it because it exists.
I am a product... I'm a comedian. I'm not curing cancer. In the end, I tell jokes. I make people laugh.
I like to look in the crevices of things, the nooks and the crannies. I like to see the things other people don't see, don't want to look at.
I never want to forget that my job is to make people laugh.
I'm a teacher and a philosopher by nature... In the end, I'm trying to teach people to live a better life. And if I can do that on top of entertain, then I leave the world a better place.
My ancestry is really weird, because my great grandfather was from the Cayman Islands, and then his father was from England. But I lose track at that point.
I am frail like everyone else, and I take that into account when I talk about things.
My comedy is about, lift yourself. See reality. Change the reality if you don't like it. But if you can't, then deal with things as they are because crying about it isn't going to change anything.
