Here's the Deal

by Howie Mandel

  I believe this entrepreneurial spirit was inspired by my dad. He was the greatest, most optimistic father anybody could ever have, always brimming with new ideas and fearless about executing them. This eventually made him the proprietor of a very successful commercial lighting company, which is the business my brother runs to this day.

  But throughout his career, there were many fun detours, each of which holds a warm and fuzzy place in my heart. He started as a cabdriver, then sold cars, stocks, and diamonds. I remember the times he would bring home new inventions to market. The two that stand out are the water softeners and Zip Grip. I have no idea what a water softener is. The Zip Grip was a way of hanging your laundry on the line without using clothespins.

  At this time, most people relied on a laundry line hanging in the backyard or basement rather than a clothes dryer. Zip Grip was an aluminum pulley system that used two lines and a row of bearings that would twist as you pulled the line. My father decided he could market this to the world. My entire family would sit on the living room floor and pack flyers into envelopes for mass mailings.

  I never saw my father discouraged, regardless of the results. All I remember is the excitement we felt embarking on new adventures. When I was about thirteen or fourteen years old, he bought a hotel in Stratford, Ontario. The entire town is modeled after Great Britain’s Stratford-upon-Avon and is home to Canada’s foremost Shakespearean festival. The hotel, the Avon, was named after the famous river. I only remember visiting it twice.

  This hotel seemed to be a small building with maybe ten rooms. The actual business was the bar downstairs. Both of my visits were to one of the rooms in the hotel. I was never actually in the bar. I can now tell you why.

  My father had a great sense of humor, and like Shakespeare, he appreciated theater. Now, remember where we are. At any given time during the festival, you could see Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet. Not to be outdone, my father would feature an act by the name of Princess Glow.

  I was never allowed to see the act, but I did see the picture. Princess Glow was a young lady weighing in at approximately 350 pounds. Her performance consisted of getting naked and taking a bubble bath in a giant champagne glass positioned center stage. For the grand finale, she would climb out of the champagne glass—which in itself was impressive. Remember, she weighed 350 pounds dry, and now she was soapy, wet, and slippery. She would leave the stage and walk throughout the audience, dropping her huge wet soapy breasts on the heads of unsuspecting bald men. Et tu, Brute? This was the show my dad produced.

  Here’s the deal with this. While doing research for this book, I asked my mom if my dad really ran a strip bar. Her reply was “No, he had bands, too.” The truth is it really wasn’t a strip bar. Forty-six weeks a year, he hired bands and maybe a comic, but for maybe six weeks, he had acts like Princess Glow. In my mind, once you have a naked woman dropping her breasts on your customers’ heads, it’s a strip bar.

  It’s like—and not to be derogatory toward anyone gay—if a man has sex with six other men but also from time to time there are women, then I would say that man has gay tendencies. Just like my mom can’t say it wasn’t a strip bar because he had strippers for only six weeks. Is that a good analogy? Probably not.

  Back to the point at hand. I believe my father is the genesis of my entrepreneurial spirit.

  I opened up a storefront selling carpet remnants downtown across the street from the YMCA. I can’t even imagine who occupied this space before I moved in. The store was about fifteen feet deep from the sidewalk and three and a half feet wide. Every morning, I opened the front door, threw some remnants on the sidewalk, and stood there waiting for customers. Sometimes after school, Rotenberg would come by and relieve me.

  More than the money—and I use that term loosely—the draw to this venture was the vagrants living at the Y. It sounds very charitable, but I was fascinated and could sit for hours with drug addicts, alcoholics, and the mentally deranged. I would have groups of them gather around me and regale me with their adventures. Unlike my friends, I didn’t have to get up early in the morning to go to school, so just about every night after dropping Terry off, I would spend time in doughnut shops being mesmerized by the people of the night.

  One particular character that comes to mind is a middle-aged man who used to sit beside me each and every night and order a jelly doughnut. He would squeeze it as he was bringing it up to his face. The pressure of the squeeze would force the jelly to protrude from a hole on the side. He would start talking at the jelly as if it were a friend: “Thanks for coming out, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” As he reached the end of the sentence, he would release the pressure, causing jelly to recoil back into the doughnut. At this point, he would scream at the top of his lungs, “Don’t you fucking walk away from me when I’m talking to you!”

  I found these times and moments to be my favorite source of entertainment, mostly because they were real, unscripted slices of life. No movie, television show, or joke could surpass this natural form of entertainment. It was like living in two different worlds. I would work all day in one world, meet friends, and go to dinner. Once they went home, I would catapult myself into a parallel universe populated by the deranged characters of the night.

  And then it was back to Mommy and Daddy’s house. Once home, I washed my hands incessantly and took countless scalding showers. The showers were preceded by the gathering of towels. One was laid out on the floor. One was used to wrap my filthy clothes. The third was used to dry myself and shield my hands as I picked up the remaining towels so that I could lift the lid of the laundry hamper to dispose of everything, having touched nothing—not my clothes, not even the hamper or its contents. All this before I would make my way into my bed. Finally, lying there blotched and chafed, fresh from my scalding shower, looking back on my evening, I’d think, Boy, were those people crazy.

  On nights when I didn’t go out, weird and wonderful thoughts would fill my head. Very late in the evening, I would go into my parents’ bedroom and stand at the foot of their bed to share. Sometimes I would stand there for a half hour just doing the Bobby the Baby voice. I would constantly elicit laughter until my father would say, “Howie, please, we need to sleep.” I can only imagine what was going through their heads. All their friends’ children, along with my friends, either were away at college or had started careers. The point is, at this age they were certainly not living at home. My younger brother was in college studying electronic technology. Here were Albert and Evelyn Mandel trying to sleep as their twenty-two-year-old son told funny little stories—until they sent him to his room.

  As I write about my life at this age, I’ll be honest in telling you that I feel somewhat embarrassed. If I’d taken out a personal ad at that point, it would have read something like this: “Howard Mandel, 22-year-old entrepreneur (carpet remnant salesman). Lives in beautiful two-bedroom apartment (with parents). Enjoys people (people who talk to jelly). Cleanliness a priority, germ-free a must (repetitive hand washing followed by many scalding showers). Loves to perform (in Mommy and Daddy’s room until he’s sent to his room).” As accurate as this account is, I don’t believe my parents saw me this way because I never received anything but unconditional love and support from them.

  It was now 1978. My father had opened the lighting company, and I was working along with him. Terry had finished high school and was working at a textile supply company. Every night after work, we would meet up and hang with some friends who included Terry’s sister, Fay, her husband at the time, and their friends. On one particular night after making a spectacle of myself (as usual), Fay’s friend Reenie said, “You’re really funny, you should go to Yuk Yuk’s.” That didn’t even sound like a sentence to me. What is a Yuk Yuk? Today, Yuk Yuk’s, HaHa’s, and the Funny Bone all make sense to people as names of comedy clubs, but at that time I didn’t know what a comedy club was.

  The following night, we made plans and went downtown to this new, hot, bustling club Yuk Yuk’s.
It was located in something of a strip mall on the corner of Yorkville and Bay streets. When I was a child, my dad would load my family into the car and make an evening of driving up and down Yorkville looking at the hippies. This was essentially our Greenwich Village. By the late 1970s, the hippies had been replaced by upscale restaurants. Yorkville was like a nightlife mecca. And for a kid from the suburbs, it made you feel you had arrived in the big city.

  We waited in line, paid the admission, and sat in our seats. The lights went down, a fanfare of music pumped through the room, and Mark Breslin, the owner/master of ceremonies of the proceedings, made his way to the stage. Mark had started the club in the basement of a church in 1975 and then moved it to Bay Street in 1978. He was the king of comedy in Toronto. Adding to the excitement, this was the first time I was seeing somebody in person whose picture had been in the paper.

  I had never witnessed anything like this in my life. He was funny, irreverent, and edgy. Throughout the night, he brought on a veritable cornucopia of comics, each being as funny and subversive as the last.

  At the end of the evening, Mark retook the stage and announced that on the following Wednesday night after the show, there would be a time reserved for amateurs, when anyone could get up and showcase their comedic wares. Everybody at my table turned to me and said, “Howie, you should do it.” Without a thought or even a breath, I said, “Let’s do it.”

  My destiny was set.

  I had no—absolutely no—concept of what was involved in preparing for this appearance. I had never even prepared for the performances in my parents’ room. The fact that somebody had set a date and said show up at this time and be funny caused a terror I had never previously felt. All the pranks and jokes that I had pulled until that point were impulsive. Wednesday night had to be a planned performance.

  Adding to my horror, my radar had been enacted. In the days leading up to that Wednesday, I was watching Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, and Mike Douglas on TV, as I had before. But now I became aware of the stand-ups. I was always aware that they existed, but I had never focused on them. I heard Johnny Carson introduce a comedian who had been plucked from a place called the Comedy Store, which was exactly what Yuk Yuk’s was. In our local paper, I noticed an article featuring the faces and talent of the people I had just seen at Yuk Yuk’s. This world had always existed, but I had never noticed it. I began to feel the gravity of the situation.

  It was April 19, 1978. Yes, the day James Franco was born. I don’t even know why I know that, but that was my debut as a comedian. Terry has always kept a scrapbook. One of the things she pasted in it was my horoscope for that day, which read: “Tonight your life will change forever.”

  We arrived at the club early to see the main show. Since I had signed up to perform, I didn’t have to pay admission. That alone was a huge event in my life. I had never gotten into any place for free. The terror rose. They must want something in return. I sat with my friends in the audience and watched the comics. I began to wonder how in the world I could come close to eliciting the response received by the acts we were watching. I excused myself. I thought it would be best if I prepared mentally. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what I was thinking. To this day, I don’t know what preparing mentally means. Let me be honest: I don’t believe I’m mentally prepared to write this book.

  I made my way backstage. The first person I bumped into was Louis Dinopoulos, who had changed his name to Lou Dinos for show business seven days earlier. He explained to me that he had gone on amateur night the week before and had been asked back. Wow, this guy was a pro. I was very impressed. He was a warm, friendly guy who took me backstage and showed me the ropes. There were no actual ropes, but he showed me three critical things. Number one, the room where comics hung out and entered the stage. Number two, the kitchen, where you could get free fountain drinks or anatomically correct gingerbread men. And number three … I’ll be honest with you, this was April 19, 1978, and I don’t remember the third thing.

  While the show was going on, Lou was introducing me to all the other amateurs who were going to appear. I was fascinated by the fact that there were other people who were willing to put themselves in this position. Before I knew it, my time had come. The professionals had finished, and Mark was introducing the amateurs one by one. We were each given five minutes to shine.

  As much as I always wanted to be funny and be accepted, there was never a time or a place for my humor. Whether it was making a spectacle of myself in a classroom or being crude in public, the funny came out of the fact that the time or place was inappropriate. Now I was being called upon to create humor in the most appropriate of places at a designated time.

  I heard Mark Breslin announce the most terrifying five words: “Ladies and gentlemen, Howie Mandel.”

  I made my way toward the stage. I passed through a dark hallway to a curtain. The audience response to my introduction died down rather quickly, though I could still hear the overenthusiastic table of my friends. Having never been on a stage before, I felt very uncomfortable standing there.

  I remember seeing interrogation scenes in movies. The Nazis would tie their victim to a chair in the center of a dark room. There always seemed to be a single light thrust upon the victim, which apparently was the main tool in extracting secrets. I never fully understood that concept until the moment the spotlight at Yuk Yuk’s hit my face. All I could see were the eyes in the first row, and they seemed to be saying, “You vill now tell us za secret, Jew boy.”

  I began to laugh nervously. This was somehow contagious, and the audience members began to giggle with me. My fear turned into self-consciousness as I extended my hand toward the audience and asked, “What? What?” I actually meant, “What are you laughing at?” The more I asked, the more they laughed. The actual secret, which was never revealed, was that I didn’t have an act.

  The Bobby voice suddenly came to mind, and I made that funny little sound I had showcased in class and my parents’ room. I had the little boy spew foul and filthy dialogue. This seemed to bring even more laughter, to which I responded, “What? What?” Until lo and behold, a light came on signaling my time was up.

  I promise you, I had done absolutely nothing. But I received a great response. Laughter was like a warm blanket enveloping me and injecting me with a druglike euphoria. Just like sex, this first time was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will never forget. As I said good night and proceeded to leave the stage, Mark Breslin passed me, looked me in the eye, and said, “Stick around, we’ll talk.”

  I walked out of the spotlight back into the real world to rejoin Lou Dinos and the rest of the comics. At the end of the show, Mark came back and told me that he thought what I had done was very good—and he would like me to come back next week to do it again. To which I said, “Sure.”

  I was overwhelmed. I ran to the front of the house, found Terry and my friends, and couldn’t wait to share my good fortune. He wanted me to do it again. I didn’t know what it was, but he’d invited me to do it again. That night, on that stage, at that moment, I became addicted.

  I couldn’t wait for the next week. I was totally consumed. I started showing up every single night just to be part of that world. I hung out with Terry, Lou Dinos, and the other comics, watching the shows, sharing funny stories, eating gingerbread, and, like a sponge, soaking up the intricacies of this newfound craft.

  This wonderful place was very different from anywhere I had ever been. For the first time it clicked: there were other people like me. Lou Dinos had told me that during the day he was working in a warehouse and was constantly in trouble because his sense of humor was misunderstood. Most of these people spent their time trying to think of funny stories or putting on goofy hats and standing in front of strangers hoping to be accepted and loved. They were outcasts like me.

  While most people in the 1970s were going to discos, this was a nightclub for misfits who weren’t into dancing. Most of us had day jobs and looked at these nighttime expe
riences as a fun diversion. This was not considered a career path. It was like playing pickup basketball with your friends. Just because you can’t wait for that game each and every Wednesday does not mean you are so delusional as to believe that you will one day play in the NBA.

  Mark Breslin’s invitation to come back lit a fire in me the likes of which I had never experienced. Years later, I was to meet a phenomenally entertaining artist by the name of Denny Dent, who taught me one of my most significant life lessons: Your happiness lies in finding your passion. He conveyed this message in a unique way. In front of an audience of thousands, he would blast a rock song and paint a wall-size intricate portrait of the artist whose music you were hearing. Before your very eyes, as the song crescendoed and came to an end, he would step back and reveal his completed masterpiece. As his career blossomed, he would use his performance to deliver a motivational message.

  Through our friendship, I found out that Denny had gone through a very dark period in his life. He never set out to be a two-fisted musical speed painter. It just so happened that at one of the lowest moments in his life, he threw caution to the wind, blasted on a boom box, and began throwing paint. Within minutes, to his own dismay, he had actually created an amazing image. It wasn’t anything he had planned or even knew he had in him. This find turned out to be his calling. He ended up making a great living, raising millions for charity, and motivating countless conventionally thinking people.

  His ultimate message in life was that we are all artists regardless of what we do. If we could just throw caution to the wind and be more passionate without giving any thought to the ramifications of our actions, or where they might lead us, chances are we could create something special. A computer programmer may end up with a program the likes of which has never been seen—Microsoft. Somebody who is innovative and passionate about marketing can end up with the next Pet Rock.