People I'd Like to Meet in an Empty Room With a Baseball Bat: Carlos Mencia

What can't be said about Carlos Mencia that hasn't already been said about Rosie O'Donnell- they are fat, loud, annoying, utterly-unfunny and dirty Mexicans. Except he's not even a real Mexican. This is discussed along with many other finer points in a great video provided to us by the very deceptively hilarious Joe Rogan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsq1uTLBHBc.

My big beef with Mencia boils down to the fact that he is thoroughly unentertaining. I've given his show a chance- many times actually- he is a hack. His only shtick is racial humor that he pummels you with like a two-year old throwing koosh balls at your knee and expecting it to hurt. I'm reminded of the scene in Will Ferrell's forgettable movie "Kicking and Screaming" where he returns from a mid-field conference with his dad and the ref and replies that all he heard was his dad saying, "pffffft" and the the ref saying, "pffffffft" and that was the extent of the discussion. This is how I feel about Mencia. All I hear is some fat guy screaming about accents and burritos for half an hour.

The problem is that people who like Mencia claim that he is pointing out the racial divide and making light of it- like Chappelle did on his show. No. What he does is beat you over the head with racial humor- it'd be like your mother trying to wake you up in the morning by bashing you across the back of your head with a 2x4. Chappelle did racial humor, but in a smart way. He had inventive skits that proved his point, but they were also generally funny and well-liked across the board. Take the "Mad, Real World" skit that he did. While that was trying to show how the black person on the show always got portrayed as the troublemaker, it could have been about any minority. He just chose black because he is black. The skit was based around a social phenomena, not the skin color or language spoken. Meanwhile Mencia just continues to hack away at proving that Mexicans are lazy because they come from Mexico.

Additionally, Dave wasn't only racial humor, he did other topics. He only did the racial stuff when the idea occured to him, when he had a good premise. Unlike Mencia who seems to just be forcing it out; I can't remember ever seeing a skit that didn't involve a joke about Mexicans, Latinos or Hispanics. Then again, maybe its the "pfffft" syndrome kicking in, all Mencia is to me is loud noise. Meet me in room 666 Carlos, I'll bring the Louisville Slugger.