Posted by Joe Rogan on Wed, Feb 14th, 2007 07:26pm

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*cking 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.

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 shitty f*cking feeling. It's like watching your girlfriend getting f*cked 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 shit has his own show on comedy central.