A Carlos by any other Name

Mencia’s long road from the farms of Honduras to the hills of Hollywood.

by Juliah Inez Rueckert

Carlos Mencia is a very focused golfer. “You can only appreciate golf if you play it,” he says. “That’s just the way it is.” He silently steps up to the tee to consider his ball, all the while shifting his weight with a childlike bounce. Clearly comfortable at the beginning of a round at the PaciWc Palms Resort in City of Industry, he says it is all right to call him by his given name. “Believe it or not, Ned is more comfortable,” he says. Carlos Mencia was actually born Ned Arnel Mencia, a disclosure that prompts many to ask “Is it short for Neduardo?” He assures us that it’s just Ned. This mild-mannered introduction might seem odd to fans of the foul-mouthed Latino comic, known for taking his ethnic perspective to intense levels of comedic rage. He changed his name early in his career after Mitzi Shore, owner of The Comedy Store, suggested that his name at the time, Ned Holness—complete with his birth father’s surname—didn’t quite Wt with his on-stage persona of an angry Spanish-speaking immigrant. But on the golf course, he is Ned.

Ned, who doesn’t smoke, stands with a golf tee in his mouth. In direct contrast with his comedy, he lives very cleanly. “I’ve never even been buzzed,” he says casually. “I don’t know what that’s like; don’t know what it’s like to have a drink.” Ned now stands alone on the fairway, surrounded by patches of well-manicured grass, with nothing but himself and the small white ball. He hits it into a sand trap.

 “It’s cool when you’re out here, because you can’t get phone calls,” Ned declares. His time is usually taken up by handling all of the pressures that come with a blossoming career. At this moment, he has roles in a handful of movies, is starting a comedy tour, and is currently in production for his tv show on Comedy Central, “Mind of Mencia,” which ranks second in the channel’s ratings after “South Park.” “Golf is the only place where I don’t leave with jokes,” he says as he expertly digs his ball out of the sand and carefully rakes the area for the next golfer.  He watches Randy approach his own ball near the green. Randy takes his shot, and rather than hitting the very nearby green, his ball lands in the sand trap that Ned had just raked. “Now that’s funny,” Ned muses. Humor is his business, and golf is his pleasure. “It’s almost like it’s virtual reality. We’re in the middle of a really big city. This is Los Angeles. In the middle of all that craziness, in the middle of City of Industry, we have birds chirping behind you. It’s really a great escape.” Ned travels this course with a small entourage of friends who are also colleagues. Fellow golfer Randy Shropshire directed and produced “Carlos Mencia: Not for the Easily OVended.” Also on the course is Alexis Ramer, a long time friend before signing on as Associate Producer of “Mind of Mencia.” Rather than golWng, she follows the group around in a separate golf cart, taking phone calls and writing emails on her Blackberry. Ned also brought his brother, Albert, who works as an assistant on the show.

Actually, Albert is the only of their near 20 siblings who is younger than Ned, and the family tree is as complicated as it is big. When he was eight months old, just after the family had emigrated from Honduras, Carlos’ mother gave him up for adoption to her brother, Pablo, because she discovered he couldn’t have children. The two families lived next to each other in the Monta Vista projects in East L.A., so Ned came to know both sets of parents. Ned spent a lot of time playing at Albert’s house as a child, though his mother kept a close eye on him. “I would try to con my mom,” he says. But, as is frequently the case with doting mothers and rambunctious sons, his attempts to pull the wool over her eyes would back fire more often than not. And Ned’s mom wasn’t afraid to let her son learn his lessons the hard way. For instance, growing up Ned would consistently badger his mother with requests to sleep over at Albert’s house, which was full of playmates. “I just wanted to hang out with them. Then I’d come back,” he says. “And my mom would be like, ‘uh, you said you were gonna sleep over there, now you gotta sleep over there.’” This was a tough pill to swallow because sleeping over wasn’t nearly as much fun as hanging out. And Ned would often protest, “They sleep, like, three people to a bed! I want my own bed!”

Not only did such experiences foster an indelible bond between Ned and his mother, but they also provided an early opportunity for him to roll out many of the humorous facial gesticulations which he now puts to work in his comedy.  His adoptive father Pablo was the Wrst to introduce him to golf at the age of eight. “I don’t know if he [had] ever played golf before,” Ned says of his father. Although they lived in an area in which golf was not commonly played, Ned recalls that his father told him he would need to know about games like golf. “He bought me clubs and he’d take me out on the range,” Ned recalls. “My dad wanted me to know what it was all about.”

Nowadays, Ned tries to get his father to golf with him, but Pablo is not interested. Ned understands now that his father’s interest in golf was for the beneWt of his son. “It was all for me,” says Ned. “It was a really weird revelation, because I always thought my dad was a golfer.” Ned turns his attention to the golf course. “This is all about geometry; I like math,” he says before kneeling on the green, golf club extended to line up his next shot. Soon, he takes his putt. “Did that stay straight? Wow,” he says after missing what he had assumed would be an easy shot. “I’m not reading these things at all, bro.” Before leaving the green, he takes care to replace a few divots. He has been having trouble putting on most holes of this particular course. “It doesn’t really obey the laws of physics, you gotta take into account the grass is pumping up.”

The application of scientiWc principle to the game is not a stretch for Ned; in fact, he came very close to getting an electrical engineering degree at Cal State, Los Angeles before stepping onto The Laugh Factory stage one day. After three minutes on an open mic, he fell in love with comedy, and later decided to quit school to pursue it. He soon got a job seating audiences and parking cars at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where he would eventually become one of their regular comedians. “[Comedians] have a big responsibility for us to say things that other people can’t say.”Ned pokes the most fun at his own demographic. He recognizes that his minority status lends a specific perspective to his comedy. “I never got an application that said I was applying to represent the Latino community,” he says, although he is often seen in that role. On the golf course, however, he can leave all of that behind and doesn’t worry about being funny or relevant here.

By the 18th hole, Ned is determined to make up for the diYculties he’s had putting on the PaciWc Palms course. He crouches on the green, club extended and left eye closed. “Of course I think it’s gonna break, but now I don’t trust the course,” he declares, “So I’m going straight at it.” The putt goes awry. Seconds later his not-so-mild-mannered stage persona escapes amid frustration with a hilarious flurry of obscenities. “I cannot believe you broke out of the hole.” he yells at the ball.Within a few more seconds, he is again calm. “Ah, I could have had a birdie. But, oh well,” he says.

Though he never hesitates to spend a few hours clearing his head on the course, Ned’s priorities are clear. He has been taking more time oV than ever to be with his family. Because on top of the comedy tour, movies, and the production of “Mind of Mencia”, he is also raising a 6-month-old son, Lucas. The proud father looks forward to introducing young Lucas to the sport, much like Pablo introduced him to it so many years ago. “He’s already got clubs!” Ned proudly exclaims.