Friday, March 27, 2009

Siskel & Ebert on ‘Dice Rules’

I don’t like talking bad about people. But Andrew Dice Clay was the worst thing to happen to standup comedy in my lifetime.

(Second-worst thing: Dane Cook. Third-worst thing: Carlos Mencia. I could go on. But I don’t dwell on negativity.)

I remain baffled by the fact that Dice used to fill coliseums. I bought a few of his albums just to try and figure out why anyone considered him funny. (I failed.)

Gene and Roger didn’t like Andrew Dice Clay’s 1991 concert movie. To say the least.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

UBM, you are right. The Dice-man is the worst. It's been a while, but I remember listening to him only once for 10-15 minutes and not coming even close to a laugh.

Congratulations. Glad you and George Pelecanos are on that team with Simon in New Orleans for 'Treme. It would be nice if you guys included the facts about the federal government attempting for years (prior to Katrina) to virtually pay for the complete overhaul of the entire levee system if only New Orleans would participate financially even to a small degree. It would have saved almost 1,800 lives and over $80b. Of course, you would have to interview former Louisiana governors and politicians, but some of them may still be incarcerated.

Vince Spence

blizzard said...

Oh man - do not get me started on Carlos Mencia...that guy is a pure comic hack...and apparently steals other comedian's material regularly.

p.s. he's not Mexican and if I were, I'd be very insulted that he's made a "career" insinuating that fact.

p.p.s. the only truly hilarious thing about Carlos Mencia is that he changed his name from Ned Holness! Now that's comedy!

Invisible Woman said...

Sooooo agreed with Dane Cook and Mencia...I mean WTF?

@blizzard: is it really true about the name change?

blizzard said...

@Invisible Woman:

Supposedly his mother is Honduran (and Mencia is either or maiden name or her re-married name) and his birth father is German (hence the decidedly non-Hispanic surname Holness)

The story goes that when he decided he was going into comedy he wanted to use the "Mexican" angle and changed his first name to Carlos for that purpose...

I suspect a guy on stage making 'beaner' and 'wetback' jokes with the name Ned Holness doesn't go over as well as if its coming from a guy named Carlos Mencia. Ha.

Anonymous said...

I consider Mencia worse than Clay, because Mencia has blatantly stolen from other comics. That's the cardinal sin.

Anonymous said...

Wow. Part of Mencia's shtick on his short-lived TV show was that it was okay for him to make "beaner" (do people actually use that word?) jokes because he is one. To find out now that not only is he not Mexican but that he changed his first and last names to make it appear that he is seems like he was doing some Hispanic version of black-face. Sad.

Anonymous said...

I doubt I would find the comedians mentioned here funny even if I were stoned. In fact when I was still a stoner I watched Andrew Dice Clay on TV and found his fake tough guy act stupid and entirely inauthentic. He may have dressed the part but he lacked that unspeakable something I have seen in funny tough guys growing up out here in the sticks. His shit sounded like a clarinet player from the high school band getting handed a tenor saxophone and run out on stage to play in Miles Davis' Quintet. Painful to bear and left wondering if he had friends.

Anonymous said...

Don't get me started on that turd Mencia. The only reason anybody cares about him is because Comedy Central needed a quick schedule-filler after Dave Chappelle, a far superior comic, up and quit on them.

dez said...

p.s. he's not Mexican and if I were, I'd be very insulted that he's made a "career" insinuating that fact.

I'm only half-Mexican, but I'm wholly insulted by Mencia's act.

Part of Mencia's shtick on his short-lived TV show was that it was okay for him to make "beaner" (do people actually use that word?)

Er, um, yes, some Mexicans do call each other that, in jest. :-)

Anonymous said...

Wikipedia isn't exactly the source of record, but it has information on Mencia's parents and a comment he made about Hurrican Katrina.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Mencia

Dan Coyle said...

When I was like 12, Clay sounded funny to me. He said shit I would never be allowed to say. That was different.

I'm not 12 anymore. And that says it all, really

(PS He was pretty good on Crime Story, though)

DeAngelo Starnes said...

Dice was very unfunny. The best line he had was his opener "So I found my tongue up this chick's ass." It was all down hill from there. The white dudes with whom I attended law school in LA during the late 80s/early 90s swore by this cat though.

Undercover Black Man said...

(PS He was pretty good on Crime Story, though)

True enough, Dan. I remember that.

Undercover Black Man said...

The white dudes with whom I attended law school in LA during the late 80s/early 90s swore by this cat though.

And that's probably the crux of the biscuit right there, DeAngelo.