Everyone's a target for Carlos Mencia

There's nobody Carlos Mencia won't skewer. Black, white. Hispanic, Anglo. Gay, Christian, Muslim. His hit Comedy Central show, "Mind of Mencia," slams them all.

So it's no surprise that the Honduran-American comedian raised in an East L.A. housing project is joking about why Hispanics (actually, he prefers the term Beaners), are sometimes compelled to choose the most Anglo-sounding repairman in the phone book.

"I had that experience with my fridge. It was a huge Sub-Zero. There was something wrong with it, and my brother said, 'I know a guy.' And I was like, 'Bro. No, I want some guy to come here and say there's something wrong with the computer, and it's gonna cost a [boat]load of money to replace, but it's gonna be under warranty for a year after that.' My brother's friend would have just blown on it or something."

Mencia, 39, is not so uptight that he can't see the humor in certain cultural broad strokes.

What Mencia won't do, he says, is take one of the many movie roles he has been offered in which he would play the worst stereotype of all - a Hispanic valet parking attendant who adds nothing to the story.

Somehow, playing a giant-mustachioed Mexican who works at a south-of-the-border resort in "The Heartbreak Kid," opening today, seemed a major step up.

In the latest Farrelly brothers movie, starring Ben Stiller, Mencia plays the strongly accented Tito Hernandez, a hotel employee who ultimately has everybody's number.

"I grew up with guys like Tito. Guys who live in the ghetto, but they have a $10,000 plasma TV in their living room. You know they didn't steal it, but what's up with that? What it is, is that he's a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy."

Mencia, whose real name is Ned, was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the 17th of 18 children. His father is Honduran and his mother Mexican.

In recent years, Mencia has found the kind of fame and fortune he never even dreamed about. When he was in seventh grade and growing up in East L.A., he was doing so well in school that his teachers wanted to bump him to the 10th grade. His father, fearing he'd wind up in a dangerous setting with much older kids in gangs, took him back to Honduras.

"I went to live in this village. I don't even know if you can call it a village. It was basically a few huts in the middle of nowhere. And I had to work. I had to milk cows at 4 in the morning and get a machete and chop things up. Man's work. The experience taught me humility and to respect what you have and understand how blessed you are."

He eventually returned to Los Angeles, graduated from high school and started studying to become an electrical engineer, but his keen observations always cracked up his friends, who talked him into trying stand-up comedy.

"After my first time onstage, I never looked back," Mencia said. "I always thought that I would go to college, get a job and be sort of middle-class. I figured my kids would be able to go to a state college. But the success I have had, this is ridiculous. This is all on a level I will never really understand." *