Heard the one about the word “chancla” making it into the English dictionary?
According to New York-Puerto Rican comic Bill Santiago, “The next edition of Funk and Wagnalls will include the word chancla — cheap sandal that doubles as a disciplinary device in Latino households.
See also: chancletazo, fuete and pow pow.”
Latino comedy used to mean funny accents and squealing, “Cuchi cuchi.”
These days, chistes are more sophisticated — and a whole lot less about getting the cheap laugh.
“We’ve come a long way,” says Delilah Ramos, owner of the Laugh Lounge on the lower East Side, which hosts Latino shows each month.
“It’s no longer about the cucaracha joke.”
While George “El Mas Chingon” Lopez had his comedy show canceled a year ago on ABC, Comedy Central premiered his stand-up special “America’s Mexican” on Sunday and the network has also renewed “The Mind of Mencia,” starring Honduran-born Carlos Mencia.
The series kicks off its fourth season on May 21.
But if you want to find the funny stars of tomorrow, the John Leguizamos in the making, check out any of the comedy clubs around town.
You will hear one-liners about dating: “I don’t go out with Latinas anymore,” says Joey Vega. “Latina women have strict rules about dating — like you go out with them for a while and you can’t cheat.”
Vega, who is in his 50s and says he has been an “up-and-coming comedian for 25 years,” is considered one of the pioneering “Latin Legends of Comedy,” who include J.J. Ramirez and Angel Salazar. They’ve been cracking jokes since the ’80s.
Relative newcomers such as Guatemalan-Puerto Rican Erik Rivera, 24, bust out immigrant mom jokes: “Thirty-five years in this country and she still hasn’t mastered the language,” Rivera says of his mother, who used to complain about his bad English grades with her own muddled words: “What will you be thinking when you were did that?”
Kenny Ortega, a thirty-something Puerto Rican from East Harlem who heads the show “Funny, Fat and Fabulous” at Comix in the Meatpacking District, credits his mother more directly for his act.
“I get my humor from her,” he says. “But don’t tell her, because then she’ll want her 10%.”
In one of his favorite routines, Ortega recounts a doomed childhood trip to Great Adventure — or, “the ghetto Disney,” as renamed by Victor Cruz, 27, a Bronx Puerto Rican comic who shares his own funny bit on the theme park.
Nicaraguan Joseph Rocha, 40, the sometimes host for the monthly “Comedy Caliente” show at the Comic Strip Live on the upper East Side, says these Latino nights are a chance to meet the community.
“The scene is so widespread and all over the place,” he says, counting 10 clubs throughout the city where any number of Latinos perform on any given night.
As for the audience, Rocha says they range from blue-collar workers to bankers, and that they come from a number of different nationalities.
But, he says, “Whenever I holler for ‘Nicaraguans in the house,’ you never hear ‘Woohoo!’ You always hear, ‘What?’”
Funny Fearless Female
While the “Baby Mamas” continue to pack ’em into Times Square movie theaters, working in this town as a funny female ain’t all chicks and giggles.
“The worst part about being a Latin female comic is being pegged a Latin female comic,” says Gina Brillon, who hosts shows four nights a week at the popular Times Square Comedy Club.
The Bronx-born, 27-year-old Puerto Rican-Italian says that writing and performing may be tough.
But, like comedy legend Rodney Dangerfield’s “I-get-no-respect” routine, being female in the laughs business is seriously tougher.
Brillon says there are less than a handful of other Latina comics working regularly in this city — among them Peaches Rodriguez and Sara Contreras.
Together, they challenge the notion that women aren’t funny, and they struggle with comedy clubs that don’t book enough women.
But even when they do get a gig, Brillon says it’s not easy.
“One of the biggest complaints is that whenever there’s a female in a show and there’s a male comic hosting, he’ll say, ‘We got a treat for you. There’s a lady coming up.’
“And you just feel — well, you feel like a whore,” says Brillon. “You’re like, ‘They wouldn’t have noticed that I was female?’ I think they would’ve caught on eventually.”
