by Howie Mandel
For twenty-five years, I worked incredibly hard to garner attention for my humor in stand-up, my acting on television and in film, my creativity in voices on Saturday morning television. Here’s what amazes me: The one place where I didn’t have to perform and could just be myself becomes the biggest success in my life.
Up until this show, I had never been recognized or received an award for anything. I now have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’m also being inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. I have two Emmy nominations. But my greatest honor was bestowed by the waxing goddess Niki Mamakos, an aesthetician and waxing specialist in Westlake Village, California, when she added “the Howie Mandel” to her menu.
Women getting waxed now have a choice between a bikini, a Brazilian, or a Howie Mandel (just a little triangle left!). Ladies, that little shape that you see below my lip can also be above yours. It was a huge thrill, but then I got to thinking. I have a nineteen-year-old son who is dating, and if he should be lucky enough to disrobe somebody, that is the last place he wants to see any resemblance to his dad. That is definitely a no deal.
The show has not only brought me accolades, it has opened up other opportunities for me. NBC allowed me my own hidden camera show, Howie Do It, which was a dream come true. Allen Funt sparked my creativity with Candid Camera almost fifty years ago. Though I had been doing it all my life, I was now given a real platform to become my own Allen Funt. I also truly believe that without Deal or No Deal, you would not be reading this book.
As I write, I have already recorded over three hundred episodes of Deal, including prime time and syndication. I also hosted a Canadian version of Deal. I can’t tell you how sweet success is, especially at this time in my life.
There is also a quirky aspect to this kind of recognition. People feel they can say anything to someone just because he’s on TV. Ninety-nine percent of my encounters with strangers are positive, but I am truly fascinated by that other 1 percent. On any given day, somebody will walk up to me to let me know I look fatter or shorter in person. They will tell me they don’t like the shaved head and that I looked so much better with hair.
I don’t understand this phenomenon. I’ve been told they feel comfortable telling me these things because I’m in their living room on TV every day. This makes no sense to me. My wife is in my living room every day. I would definitely not tell her that she looks a little fatter or I don’t like her hair.
Deal or No Deal is everywhere. There are lottery tickets, billboards in Times Square, and people playing the handheld games. I’ve just recently become a bobblehead.
Last spring, I was playing the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. My wife and I were there with another couple, Louie and Kathy. They went to play the slot machines, and I went to the room. I don’t know what I was doing, but it probably involved showering or washing. After a short time, I received a frantic call from my wife. “Howie, you have to get down here!” she screamed.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Kathy just hit the jackpot!” In the background, I could hear screaming and the ringing of bells and chimes.
She told me where she was in the casino. I quickly got dressed, took the elevator down, and ran across the casino floor. As I got closer, I realized a crowd was forming around one particular machine. I made my way through to find my wife, Louie, and Kathy. The casino rep was in the midst of paying them $7,000 worth of chips. As I hugged my wife and celebrated with Louie and Kathy, I looked over at the machine that had paid out. It was a Deal or No Deal slot machine.
At the same time, I noticed flashbulbs coming from behind me. I turned around to see what it was. Hundreds of people had gathered and were taking pictures of me. I felt as though I were on the red carpet in front of the paparazzi. They had no idea that I was friends with Louie and Kathy and that Terry was my wife. The crowd had originally rushed over to see what the payout was. Then it dawned on me: In their minds, when someone hit the jackpot of Deal or No Deal, Howie Mandel showed up personally to congratulate the winner.
I addressed everyone: “Thank you for coming. I must be off. Someone just hit the jackpot in Reno.” And I ran off to find the next winner. When it comes to Deal or No Deal, I feel as if I’m the winner.
It was May 21, 2009, my lowest point physically. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like shit. And I couldn’t even make it up the stairs to my bedroom.
I was going to the hospital to have my ablation. I was trying to focus on how lucky I was to have a flutter. The flutter was on the right side of my heart. The flutter caused all the other problems. If the doctor could just burn away the flutter, then I would be fixed. I don’t know how to describe this excitement. Let’s just say I was all a-flutter. For those of you who don’t remember, Dr. Cannom told me they had to burn the right side of my heart, which made the procedure a lot less complicated than if it were on the left side.
I was having it done at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown L.A. I arrived, checked in, and put on my standard-issue hospital gown. A young doctor came in to have me sign a release. He went over all the improbable dangers of the procedure. Apparently, these were minuscule. I could have a heart attack, a stroke, or a bad reaction to the anesthesia. In short, I could die. I had never been more scared in my life. I was consumed with the fact that I might never wake up again.
To put me at ease, he said there was only a one-in-a-thousand chance of anything going wrong. He said it as if these odds would lessen my anxiety. My mind went right back to October 1987, when fourteen thousand people came to see me at Radio City Music Hall. If fourteen of those people had dropped dead, I would’ve considered that a really bad night. But you have to remember, according to this doctor those were great odds, because that’s still only one out of every thousand. So with that in mind, he asked if I would please sign the release. I fluttered. I signed.
An IV was inserted into my arm. I was quickly wheeled into the operating room. It looked like the bridge in the new Star Trek movie. It was very bright, with high-tech equipment enveloping a table. Five or six technicians were working on various things in the room. Everybody was incredibly pleasant. As much as I believe the chitchat was all about comforting me, it was disconcerting having to make small talk with people who were going to render me unconscious, strip me, shave me, and eventually dig into my groin and burn my heart.
Right before they put me out, I sat up while they taped a penny onto my back. I would imagine the penny was used as a marker for some sort of imaging, but I like to think of it as a good-luck thing. That’s the last thing I remember.
After what seemed like a minute, I was once again awake. Dr. Cannom and Dr. Ivan Ho—how’s that for literature?—were standing to my right. Let me digress for a minute. That was actually the doctor’s name. What’s even more exciting for me is the fact that hopefully someday at some time someone might mention reading the portion of my book that referenced Ivan Ho. Even though it’s spelled somewhat differently, the fact that there is a possible reference to nineteenth-century British literature in a Howie Mandel book sets my heart a-flutter.
My first words to the doctors were “Am I done?”
To which they responded, “No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“We went in the right side and zapped your flutter, but apparently that was not your problem,” Dr. Cannom explained. “The main problem is on your left side.”
My mind began to race. The good news about the flutter was that it was on the right side, the less complicated side. Now they had to work on the left side, where there was a higher probability of audience members dying.
I became defiant. “I’m not coming back,” I said. “I’m not doing this again.” I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll show them. I’ll just sit at home, unable to breathe. Boy, will they feel bad.
Apparently, while I was still out, Dr. Cannom had told Terry that the procedure hadn’t worked and he had an opening on May 26 to bring me back and do the more involved procedure. I didn’t
know this, but she broke down and cried. She had been under a lot of stress over the last few months, watching as I suffered.
May 26 also happens to be Terry’s birthday. I can think of better ways to celebrate than … I’m going to be totally honest. I was going to try to come up with something really funny here, but my mind is so fucked up that I can’t.
The next five days were hell. My heart rate was becoming more and more erratic. My breathing was more stilted. My fear of the more elaborate procedure was magnified by the fact that I had gone through it before. As someone whose whole being is about maintaining control and avoiding germs, there seemed to be no more out-of-control feeling than being knocked unconscious, shaved, cut, and handled by strangers.
I couldn’t stop shaking.
May 26, 2009. I woke up and wished Terry a happy birthday. Off to the hospital we went.
I was told the procedure would take three to four hours. I drove the doctors crazy with questions about how this would be different from the first time. They told me that the only difference was that I would wake up with a catheter.
“No!” I screamed. As a kid, I hated crazy straws. I certainly didn’t want one inserted into my penis.
He tried to calm me. “It’s really very simple,” he said. “The nurse will come in and pull it out in the morning.”
“It’s very simple for you,” I said. “I don’t want anything in my penis, or anything pulled out of my penis.”
He explained to me that they fill me with so much liquid, it must be drained. I told him that I would take care of it. Just make sure the catheter is out before I see it.
Ten hours. That’s how long the procedure took. Apparently, this was no flutter, but it was done. I was so excited. Drs. Cannom and Ivan Ho were like my genies in a bottle. They granted me my three wishes. Number one was that I would survive. I’m writing this now, so obviously it was a wish come true. Number two, I would be able to breathe. I’m inhaling and exhaling like a pervert making obscene phone calls. And number three, let me check. I’m slowly lifting my gown and revealing my bruised and taped groin. Yes, no catheter! All three wishes had been granted. Do you believe in magic? I do.
There was a price to not having the catheter. I had been injected with twelve pounds of fluid during the procedure. I was barely lucid after ten hours of anesthesia. I would wake up every few minutes to drain myself into a container. I was incredibly thirsty, so they had also given me a container of apple juice. I think you can see where this is going. I don’t need to relive it.
The next morning, another doctor came into my room, said hello, and without further ado ripped the tape from my crotch and was gone before I could say, “And your name is …”
I pulled the blankets up over me and began to drink more apple juice. I assume it was apple juice. As I was drinking, my groin began to feel moist. Was this shit going right through me? I had the eerie feeling that I was pissing myself. Was there a ditch or a puddle nearby? This was so embarrassing. I didn’t want to call a nurse. In fact, I didn’t want to call anybody. I gingerly lifted the blanket to inspect, and lo and behold, with every beat of my heart, blood was pulsating out of the wound. I was about to pass out at the sight, so I let out a bloodcurdling scream: “Help!”
The doctor who’d just taken the tape off ran back into the room and asked what the problem was. I showed him. He said, “Oh, that’s nothing to worry about.” This is something I want to pass on to my readers: If you should ever wake up with blood streaming out of your groin, apparently it’s nothing to worry about.
“I just have to apply pressure for ten minutes,” he said. He put on two latex gloves, placed one hand on top of the other, and pressed with all his weight on my groin. You have to remember, I’m a guy who doesn’t enjoy personal contact with strangers. It probably would’ve been more comfortable for me just to shake this gentleman’s hand rather than have him face-to-face with me, leaning over and doing push-ups off my groin. We were literally nose to nose, making stilted, awkward, uncomfortable chitchat. After ten minutes of psychological hell, the floodgates were closed. And the tiny village of groin was safe once again.
I was released from the hospital and went home to resume my life. The strange coincidence was that as I set out to write this book, I was diagnosed with afib, a physical condition. The bad news was that I was sure I was at death’s door. The good news was that this would become a runaway bestseller because I had prophesied my own death and the book had to be put together posthumously.
Nothing has changed mentally since I had the ablation. My life is filled with the torture of OCD, adult ADHD, and assorted other acronyms for mental issues. I still think there is a pretty good possibility I will die before I end this paragraph. It’s months before the book comes out, and I don’t know if I’ll be here while you are reading this.
There’s so much that I haven’t included in this book. I was just saying the other day how I have enough material for another book. In no way should the brass at Bantam Dell see this as a negotiating ploy. Looking back at what I did include, I’m haunted. I’m embarrassed. I’m excited. I’m embarrassed. I can’t believe I actually finished a book. I’m worried that I might have offended somebody. But most of all, I’m embarrassed. If you approach me with this book, I may have a hard time making eye contact because you now know the truth about me.
Let’s recap. I started out a lactose-intolerant, urinating outcast who fell into ditches and puddles, sometimes walked like Quasimodo, had a fear of laundry hampers, was a nesting ground for sand flies, and craved 100 percent of the attention. I then became a color-blind carpet salesman who did stand-up comedy. I went on to become a television and movie actor, recording artist, voice-over talent, Saturday morning cartoon, decoy, daytime talk show host, and game-show host. Since I have become so public with my issues, I have done a public service announcement for OCD, testified on Capitol Hill about mental health issues, and become the poster boy for Adult ADHD Is Real (adultadhdisreal.com). I guess you can call me a mental spokesmodel—and now an author. I can’t wait to find out what’s next. Most important, I am a son, a brother, a husband, a father, and a friend. I guess what I’m trying to say to my mother, my brother, my wife, my children, and all my friends and co-workers is, I don’t know how you put up with me. So, sorry, but hey, we got a book out of it.
So things are good, and for you, the reader, I have one final thought I can’t express enough. Here’s the deal: Don’t touch me.
P.S. I had to put this in. I just received a call to go to Starbucks, where a group of Chabad rabbis are going to present me with a basketball. I don’t know if I should’ve told you this now or saved it for the opening of my next book.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge:
The loves of my life: my wife, Terry, my children, Jackie, Alex, and Riley, my parents, Al and Evy, and my brother, Steve, for loving me and supporting me, but mostly for putting up with me.
Michael Rotenberg, my friend, my manager, and my second brother, who has been on this journey with me from the beginning.
Rich Thurber, my road manager, who has also become part of my family.
Andy Cohen and Steve Levine, friends and agents, the procurers of the jobs that provided many of the stories.
Bill Sobel, my attorney and friend, for making sure I have always been treated fairly.
John Mendoza, my friend and fellow comedian, for hanging with me on the road and listening to me talk about myself for countless hours while putting this book together.
Josh Young, my co-writer and new friend, for helping me put my life in readable form and maintain focus for more than ten minutes at a time.
Philip Rappaport, my editor, for his input and editorial guidance.
Nita Taublib and her team at Bantam Dell for their efforts in bringing the book to market.
Andrea Barzvi, my literary agent, for pushing to make it happen.
Lewis Kay and Nicki Fioravante, my publicists, for coordinating t
he promotion of this book.
All the people who have hired me in the past and given me phenomenal opportunities to shine, such as the always supportive Michael Gelman and the brilliant Scott St. John, the executive producer of Deal or No Deal, because without the success of that show I doubt I would’ve ever been asked to write a book.
PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
Al and Evy Mandel: Gilbert Studios.
Onstage in 1982: George Schlatter Productions.
St. Elsewhere: © 1983 Twentieth Century Fox Television. All Rights Reserved.
A Fine Mess: © 1986 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
Little Monsters: © 1989 Vestron Pictures, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Still taken from Little Monsters provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate and MGM Clip+Still Licensing.
Carnegie Hall: Betsy Brody.
Walk Like a Man (two photographs): © 1987 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of MGM Clip+Still Licensing.
The Howie Mandel Show: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution.
Gremlins: © Warner Bros. Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“Hair today,” “Gone tomorrow,” and “My fam, 2002”: Mark Elkins Studio.
Sesame Street: TM and © 2009 Sesame Workshop. Sesame Street® and associated characters, trademarks, and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop. All Rights Reserved.
“I ask you: deal or no deal?” and Hollywood Walk of Fame: Trae Patton, NBC Universal.
With Oprah Winfrey: George Burns/Harpo Inc.
All other photographs are courtesy of the author.
