http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7841918711943453918&q=joe+rogan+mencia
So here's how it all went down...
I had a set at the comedy store Saturday night, and after I closed, I was bringing on the next comedian, a guy named Kirk Fox that works for Carlos Mencia.
I introduce him saying that he's a funny guy, and that he opens on the road for Carlos "Menstealia." That’s the name we call him at the comedy store, and of course Carlos doesn't like it one bit.
Carlos was apparently in the room when I said this, and the perfect combination of ego and timing made him decide that this was the night to put his foot down.
As I got off stage and headed towards the back of the room, he grabbed the mike away from Kirk, and said that I was too much of a pussy to say that sh*t to his face.
Which to me, is something akin to the hottest girl in the world daring you to f**k her while you're standing there in her bedroom naked with a boner.
Of course I had to disagree with him, and I decided to get onstage with him and have this "meeting of the minds" as it were.
On video, and for the whole world to see via the internet.
Shazam!
Now, a lot of comics have had a problem with Carlos stealing material for a long time now, but for whatever reason, many of them don't like to talk about it publicly, mostly because they're afraid that people are going to think that they're just jealous. That, and they're worried about him using his power in "Hollywood" to have them black balled for talking badly about him. But in private, they talk about it. A LOT.
It's a huge problem at the comedy store, to the point where some really good comics are refusing to go onstage if he's there watching the show, and others have a signal system to alert the guy onstage that Carlos has walked into the room.
It's really THAT BAD.
It's like a dark cloud that hovers over the place when he's performing there. He walks by and people literally stop their conversations and move away.
For whatever reason, the owner of the comedy store, Mitzi Shore, has always let him go up there, perhaps because he started there and the fact that she was actually the one to name himself Carlos Mencia instead of his actual name of Ned. Or, maybe she just wasn't aware of how big of a problem it had become. Either way, it's her club, and she's done so much for comedy in general, and me in particular, that I would never question her about any of her decisions. In fact, I had never even talked to her personally about the problem until today.
Quite honestly, I'm happy to get this video and this blog out there, so that hopefully this can be the last time that I have talk about it.
Even I'm getting sick of me talking about it at this point.
To give you a little background, when I first moved to Hollywood way back in 1994 Carlos and I were actually friends.
We hung out together a bunch of times. Played pool together, went to the gym, hung out at the store, all kinds of sh*t. That's also how I know that he's really half German and Half Honduran and not Mexican. I know it, because he told me himself.
I thought that it was weird to use a fake name, but who gives a sh*t really. No big deal.
Other than that he seemed to be a cool guy.
Then I started to see it. Over and over again, I would see him do jokes that I knew I had heard before. Then I saw some real obvious sh*t. Some jokes that I knew were Paul Mooney's, some that were right off a Richard Pryor album. I brought it up to him, and he gave me this half assed denial that I knew was a lie. That was the end of our friendship.
I didn't hate the guy, but there was no way I could hang around with him knowing he's a thief.
For someone who is not a comic, and doesn't understand what the big deal is about comics stealing jokes, please let me try to explain it to you.
It's hard to come up with material. It takes a lot of work, a lot of rewriting, sometimes an approach bombs and you have to rethink it, and often it's a long process until you get to a finished product.
Now, occasionally a joke will come to you in full form, but for the most part it's just an idea that can become a great bit with some work.
Now, when you work hard on a bit and polish and craft it, and then someone just disrespects the whole process, steps in, steals it and performs it as his own, that's a pretty intense creative violation.
I've been in the back of a club while a guy was onstage doing one of my bits and believe me that's a sh*tty f**king feeling. It's like watching your girlfriend getting f**ked onstage by a liar while the whole audience cheers.
What's even worse, is if you're a struggling comic, and the guy stealing your sh*t has his own show on comedy central.
Now, our little "beef" started out about a year and a half ago when Carlos was on the radio in Tucson, Arizona doing "the Frank show", and he started talking sh*t about me, mainly telling a bunch of weird lies about a recent night where we had worked together back to back at the store. Unfortunately for him, the DJ sent me an mp3 of the discussion, and we actually had the evening he was referring to in his story on video, and we posted it up on the internet for all to see and laugh at. His version of the night was nothing more than a weird mix of lies and bragging, and it was pretty obvious to anyone seeing the video and listening to him on the radio that the guy is screwy.
You can check it out here.
Ever since then, sh*t talking has been going on back and forth from both sides, and to be honest I've been baiting him into a "conversation" to expose him and end this all for a while now, I just never thought he would actually be dumb enough to want to do it in front of an audience, especially when he knew that we were filming it.
Ego is a motherfucker, I guess.
Either way, I'm glad we got this over with.
For the record, I don't hate the guy. I never really did.
I hated what he was doing, but him as a person it's really more like I felt pity for him.
The dude was living a gigantic lie, and no matter how f**ked up and powerful your ego is, there's got to be a part of the back of his brain that realizes what's going on, and cringes at the reality. I think maybe it's even his own subconscious knowing that he's doing something wrong that forced him into this un-winnable battle.
I'm completely convinced that if I ever got that dude high he would curl up into the fetal position and cry for hours.
Either that, or launch himself off a cliff.
When all was said and done at the end of the night, especially after I saw the video, I actually felt sorry for him. I think there's part of him that actually believes his own bullshit. I compared him to OJ in the video, in that they've both convinced themselves that they're innocent, and really I think it's a valid comparison.
Stand up comedy is an awesome, amazing way to make a living, and the comedy store is the greatest place to practice it in the known universe. It's just a really fun place, and there's a ton of funny comics that hang around there, and for the most part it's a really positive environment.
We support each other, and we make each other laugh. We have fun together, except for this one little problem. Hopefully this video will help fix that, and make everything nice-nice again.
http://www.joerogan.net/main.php
My agent dropped me because of the Carlos
This is starting to get hysterical.
As the fearful little animals scamper to a safe, dry spot on the sinking ship of lies, characters are exposed and karma is radiantly beautiful.
My agent from the Gersh agency, who is the same guy that represents Carlos, spoke to me on the phone today. He told me that he was being "put in the middle of this thing, and forced to make a choice." He said that Carlos wanted to get on the phone with me and end this once and for all, and get this... wanted an apology.
If I didn't do this, he wanted the Gersh agency to either drop me, or he would leave them.
I told them that was f**king hilarious, and said that it's been fun working with them. The fact that they would even consider asking me to do something like that meant I was going to leave them anyway, but the sheer stereotypical "hollywood" nature of conversation actually f**king shocked me.
It was like a scene in a movie. Not even a current movie. More like that Kevin Bacon movie "The Big Picture" that was about the evils of Hollywood from the early 90's.
I hung up the phone and laughed out loud. A real, hard, pleasure filled laugh.
Now can you IMAGINE if I was a young, struggling comic and all this sh*t went down? THAT is the really ugly part of it.
Now you know why people don't speak up about this sh*t.
Hollywood eats it's young.
At least the Gersh agency does.
What a fascinating, and intriguing life this is turning out to be.
So, now I'm banned from the comedy store.
The aftermath of the video of me clowning Carlos Mencia and exposing him for being a joke thief released its havoc on the internet like a tidal wave of exposure and comic justice.
Unfortunately, it also got me banned from the club.
I got a call from Mitzi Shore the owner of the comedy store yesterday, and she wanted to hear my side of things.
I told her what happened on Saturday night with the whole Carlos thing, and she told me that she would try to work it out.
She called me back today to give me a spot tonight at 10pm, and said that Carlos and I would just have to avoid each other around the store.
She asked me what times I wanted to go on stage this weekend, and I said as long as I got on before Carlos I didn’t care. I said thank you, and hung up.
Then I get a call from Tommy the manager of the club an hour later.
He told me that “they†had decided I needed to “take a break†from the store, and that Carlos was physically threatened by me, and worried about me being around.
That, and they’re upset at me for putting the video up on the internet because they had asked me to stop filming my internet reality show “the JoeShow†at the club.
They also said that Carlos apologized for the weekend, and said that they could advertise that he would be performing there this weekend.
Now, I know this isn’t coming from Mitzi, because I had just talked to her an hour before, so I’m assuming it’s her sons that have made the decision to have Carlos there and keep me out.
Mitzi’s health hasn’t been well over the last years, and slowly her sons have assumed the role of taking over the club.
Whether the decision is financial, because they can sell a ton of tickets with Carlos, or whether it’s personal, because Pauly and I have never really liked each other, either way, it is what it is.
It’s also indicative of this massive problem we have in the comedy community in general.
Here you have a club that basically sells other people’s art. They put the chairs there, sell the drinks and turn the mic on, and the artists do the rest. You have a situation where a comic that’s been known for stealing other people material gets called out onstage, exposed, and then the video is put on the internet for all to see, and their reaction is to ban the guy that exposed him and made the video. To the thief, they sit back quietly and profit from his crime.
It’s truly f**king mind blowing.
There’s not another art form in the world where the creative rights of the artist get as little respect.
If they banned the both of us for this incident, then I would understand that they're just trying to avoid conflict, but the fact that they have told me to "take a break" but they have him onstage this weekend is just a tremendous slap in the face to me, and to the art of stand up comedy.
The first thing I did when I got the call, is to phone my friend Rita over at the Improv in Hollywood and ask if I could get on there this weekend. She bent over backwards to accommodate me, and gave me spots for Thursday night at 10, Friday at 8:30, and Saturday at 10. To her, and Joel over there, I say thank you very much. I truly appreciate the support.
If anyone wants to see me this weekend, that’s where I’ll be performing.
If you want to come down and show your support and have a good time, the address for and phone number for the improv is:
323 651 5810
Hollywood Improv
8162 Melrose ave. Hollywood, CA
I’ve been working out at the comedy store now for almost 13 years, and I’ve always wondered when it was all going to end.
The comics have always speculated that when Mitzi dies the sons would probably turn the place into a parking lot. We always used to sit around talking after the show was over, wondering where we would perform in LA when the end came.
The place was even one of the reasons why I still lived in LA. I would go on the road to certain places and think about moving there, but I could never find a club that I could work out at that was anything like the store.
There’s really no place like it. At one point and time it was a mob run nightclub owned by Bugsy Segal, and the building radiates this weird energy from the years of performers, criminals, customers and experiences.
It’s an energy vortex, and a magnet for crazies. That was one of the best things about filming my reality show there, it was just guaranteed that you would get nutty people to talk to there. They’re just drawn to the place, like moths to a light bulb.
The problem is, Mitzi was always the one that kept the place together.
She’s the one with the true love of stand up comedy. She created it, she nurtured it, and she supported the art form.
As she fades, so does the essence of the club. For me at least, this decision by whoever is in charge over there now to have me “take a break†is the last sign I needed to see that the end is nigh.
It’s been a great time, but like all great times it must eventually end.
I think the way it ended, with a video seen by millions of people is just about a perfect way to go. It’s almost fitting that I get banned from there, because it makes no sense.
Nothing about the comedy store has ever made sense.
That was always a part of the beauty of the place.
If you feel like calling them and expressing your disapproval, or perhaps thanking them for banning me, the number there is 323 656 6225 [email protected]
Unfortunately, this is probably the last time you'll see my name on the Marquee there. It's been great!!
So here's how it all went down...
I had a set at the comedy store Saturday night, and after I closed, I was bringing on the next comedian, a guy named Kirk Fox that works for Carlos Mencia.
I introduce him saying that he's a funny guy, and that he opens on the road for Carlos "Menstealia." That’s the name we call him at the comedy store, and of course Carlos doesn't like it one bit.
Carlos was apparently in the room when I said this, and the perfect combination of ego and timing made him decide that this was the night to put his foot down.
As I got off stage and headed towards the back of the room, he grabbed the mike away from Kirk, and said that I was too much of a pussy to say that sh*t to his face.
Which to me, is something akin to the hottest girl in the world daring you to f**k her while you're standing there in her bedroom naked with a boner.
Of course I had to disagree with him, and I decided to get onstage with him and have this "meeting of the minds" as it were.
On video, and for the whole world to see via the internet.
Shazam!
Now, a lot of comics have had a problem with Carlos stealing material for a long time now, but for whatever reason, many of them don't like to talk about it publicly, mostly because they're afraid that people are going to think that they're just jealous. That, and they're worried about him using his power in "Hollywood" to have them black balled for talking badly about him. But in private, they talk about it. A LOT.
It's a huge problem at the comedy store, to the point where some really good comics are refusing to go onstage if he's there watching the show, and others have a signal system to alert the guy onstage that Carlos has walked into the room.
It's really THAT BAD.
It's like a dark cloud that hovers over the place when he's performing there. He walks by and people literally stop their conversations and move away.
For whatever reason, the owner of the comedy store, Mitzi Shore, has always let him go up there, perhaps because he started there and the fact that she was actually the one to name himself Carlos Mencia instead of his actual name of Ned. Or, maybe she just wasn't aware of how big of a problem it had become. Either way, it's her club, and she's done so much for comedy in general, and me in particular, that I would never question her about any of her decisions. In fact, I had never even talked to her personally about the problem until today.
Quite honestly, I'm happy to get this video and this blog out there, so that hopefully this can be the last time that I have talk about it.
Even I'm getting sick of me talking about it at this point.
To give you a little background, when I first moved to Hollywood way back in 1994 Carlos and I were actually friends.
We hung out together a bunch of times. Played pool together, went to the gym, hung out at the store, all kinds of sh*t. That's also how I know that he's really half German and Half Honduran and not Mexican. I know it, because he told me himself.
I thought that it was weird to use a fake name, but who gives a sh*t really. No big deal.
Other than that he seemed to be a cool guy.
Then I started to see it. Over and over again, I would see him do jokes that I knew I had heard before. Then I saw some real obvious sh*t. Some jokes that I knew were Paul Mooney's, some that were right off a Richard Pryor album. I brought it up to him, and he gave me this half assed denial that I knew was a lie. That was the end of our friendship.
I didn't hate the guy, but there was no way I could hang around with him knowing he's a thief.
For someone who is not a comic, and doesn't understand what the big deal is about comics stealing jokes, please let me try to explain it to you.
It's hard to come up with material. It takes a lot of work, a lot of rewriting, sometimes an approach bombs and you have to rethink it, and often it's a long process until you get to a finished product.
Now, occasionally a joke will come to you in full form, but for the most part it's just an idea that can become a great bit with some work.
Now, when you work hard on a bit and polish and craft it, and then someone just disrespects the whole process, steps in, steals it and performs it as his own, that's a pretty intense creative violation.
I've been in the back of a club while a guy was onstage doing one of my bits and believe me that's a sh*tty f**king feeling. It's like watching your girlfriend getting f**ked onstage by a liar while the whole audience cheers.
What's even worse, is if you're a struggling comic, and the guy stealing your sh*t has his own show on comedy central.
Now, our little "beef" started out about a year and a half ago when Carlos was on the radio in Tucson, Arizona doing "the Frank show", and he started talking sh*t about me, mainly telling a bunch of weird lies about a recent night where we had worked together back to back at the store. Unfortunately for him, the DJ sent me an mp3 of the discussion, and we actually had the evening he was referring to in his story on video, and we posted it up on the internet for all to see and laugh at. His version of the night was nothing more than a weird mix of lies and bragging, and it was pretty obvious to anyone seeing the video and listening to him on the radio that the guy is screwy.
You can check it out here.
Ever since then, sh*t talking has been going on back and forth from both sides, and to be honest I've been baiting him into a "conversation" to expose him and end this all for a while now, I just never thought he would actually be dumb enough to want to do it in front of an audience, especially when he knew that we were filming it.
Ego is a motherfucker, I guess.
Either way, I'm glad we got this over with.
For the record, I don't hate the guy. I never really did.
I hated what he was doing, but him as a person it's really more like I felt pity for him.
The dude was living a gigantic lie, and no matter how f**ked up and powerful your ego is, there's got to be a part of the back of his brain that realizes what's going on, and cringes at the reality. I think maybe it's even his own subconscious knowing that he's doing something wrong that forced him into this un-winnable battle.
I'm completely convinced that if I ever got that dude high he would curl up into the fetal position and cry for hours.
Either that, or launch himself off a cliff.
When all was said and done at the end of the night, especially after I saw the video, I actually felt sorry for him. I think there's part of him that actually believes his own bullshit. I compared him to OJ in the video, in that they've both convinced themselves that they're innocent, and really I think it's a valid comparison.
Stand up comedy is an awesome, amazing way to make a living, and the comedy store is the greatest place to practice it in the known universe. It's just a really fun place, and there's a ton of funny comics that hang around there, and for the most part it's a really positive environment.
We support each other, and we make each other laugh. We have fun together, except for this one little problem. Hopefully this video will help fix that, and make everything nice-nice again.
http://www.joerogan.net/main.php
My agent dropped me because of the Carlos
This is starting to get hysterical.
As the fearful little animals scamper to a safe, dry spot on the sinking ship of lies, characters are exposed and karma is radiantly beautiful.
My agent from the Gersh agency, who is the same guy that represents Carlos, spoke to me on the phone today. He told me that he was being "put in the middle of this thing, and forced to make a choice." He said that Carlos wanted to get on the phone with me and end this once and for all, and get this... wanted an apology.
If I didn't do this, he wanted the Gersh agency to either drop me, or he would leave them.
I told them that was f**king hilarious, and said that it's been fun working with them. The fact that they would even consider asking me to do something like that meant I was going to leave them anyway, but the sheer stereotypical "hollywood" nature of conversation actually f**king shocked me.
It was like a scene in a movie. Not even a current movie. More like that Kevin Bacon movie "The Big Picture" that was about the evils of Hollywood from the early 90's.
I hung up the phone and laughed out loud. A real, hard, pleasure filled laugh.
Now can you IMAGINE if I was a young, struggling comic and all this sh*t went down? THAT is the really ugly part of it.
Now you know why people don't speak up about this sh*t.
Hollywood eats it's young.
At least the Gersh agency does.
What a fascinating, and intriguing life this is turning out to be.
So, now I'm banned from the comedy store.
The aftermath of the video of me clowning Carlos Mencia and exposing him for being a joke thief released its havoc on the internet like a tidal wave of exposure and comic justice.
Unfortunately, it also got me banned from the club.
I got a call from Mitzi Shore the owner of the comedy store yesterday, and she wanted to hear my side of things.
I told her what happened on Saturday night with the whole Carlos thing, and she told me that she would try to work it out.
She called me back today to give me a spot tonight at 10pm, and said that Carlos and I would just have to avoid each other around the store.
She asked me what times I wanted to go on stage this weekend, and I said as long as I got on before Carlos I didn’t care. I said thank you, and hung up.
Then I get a call from Tommy the manager of the club an hour later.
He told me that “they†had decided I needed to “take a break†from the store, and that Carlos was physically threatened by me, and worried about me being around.
That, and they’re upset at me for putting the video up on the internet because they had asked me to stop filming my internet reality show “the JoeShow†at the club.
They also said that Carlos apologized for the weekend, and said that they could advertise that he would be performing there this weekend.
Now, I know this isn’t coming from Mitzi, because I had just talked to her an hour before, so I’m assuming it’s her sons that have made the decision to have Carlos there and keep me out.
Mitzi’s health hasn’t been well over the last years, and slowly her sons have assumed the role of taking over the club.
Whether the decision is financial, because they can sell a ton of tickets with Carlos, or whether it’s personal, because Pauly and I have never really liked each other, either way, it is what it is.
It’s also indicative of this massive problem we have in the comedy community in general.
Here you have a club that basically sells other people’s art. They put the chairs there, sell the drinks and turn the mic on, and the artists do the rest. You have a situation where a comic that’s been known for stealing other people material gets called out onstage, exposed, and then the video is put on the internet for all to see, and their reaction is to ban the guy that exposed him and made the video. To the thief, they sit back quietly and profit from his crime.
It’s truly f**king mind blowing.
There’s not another art form in the world where the creative rights of the artist get as little respect.
If they banned the both of us for this incident, then I would understand that they're just trying to avoid conflict, but the fact that they have told me to "take a break" but they have him onstage this weekend is just a tremendous slap in the face to me, and to the art of stand up comedy.
The first thing I did when I got the call, is to phone my friend Rita over at the Improv in Hollywood and ask if I could get on there this weekend. She bent over backwards to accommodate me, and gave me spots for Thursday night at 10, Friday at 8:30, and Saturday at 10. To her, and Joel over there, I say thank you very much. I truly appreciate the support.
If anyone wants to see me this weekend, that’s where I’ll be performing.
If you want to come down and show your support and have a good time, the address for and phone number for the improv is:
323 651 5810
Hollywood Improv
8162 Melrose ave. Hollywood, CA
I’ve been working out at the comedy store now for almost 13 years, and I’ve always wondered when it was all going to end.
The comics have always speculated that when Mitzi dies the sons would probably turn the place into a parking lot. We always used to sit around talking after the show was over, wondering where we would perform in LA when the end came.
The place was even one of the reasons why I still lived in LA. I would go on the road to certain places and think about moving there, but I could never find a club that I could work out at that was anything like the store.
There’s really no place like it. At one point and time it was a mob run nightclub owned by Bugsy Segal, and the building radiates this weird energy from the years of performers, criminals, customers and experiences.
It’s an energy vortex, and a magnet for crazies. That was one of the best things about filming my reality show there, it was just guaranteed that you would get nutty people to talk to there. They’re just drawn to the place, like moths to a light bulb.
The problem is, Mitzi was always the one that kept the place together.
She’s the one with the true love of stand up comedy. She created it, she nurtured it, and she supported the art form.
As she fades, so does the essence of the club. For me at least, this decision by whoever is in charge over there now to have me “take a break†is the last sign I needed to see that the end is nigh.
It’s been a great time, but like all great times it must eventually end.
I think the way it ended, with a video seen by millions of people is just about a perfect way to go. It’s almost fitting that I get banned from there, because it makes no sense.
Nothing about the comedy store has ever made sense.
That was always a part of the beauty of the place.
If you feel like calling them and expressing your disapproval, or perhaps thanking them for banning me, the number there is 323 656 6225 [email protected]
Unfortunately, this is probably the last time you'll see my name on the Marquee there. It's been great!!