The truth is, if there’s anything truly weird about Mandel, it’s that he sure does seem to do an awful lot of hanging out for a self-confessed neurotic. When he’s not touring, he spends every morning at the local Starbucks with his friend (and opening act), comedian John Mendoza, and the two have lunch every day at the same restaurant at the Calabasas Commons with an eclectic group that includes a travel agent, a lawyer, and an electronic parts salesman. But then again, as Mendoza wryly offers in the pilot for Hidden Howie, “I’m an observational comedian. This is what I do: I observate.”
Which is precisely what Howie Mandel does. “I don’t like jokes,” he says. “When it’s like, ‘A guy, a duck, and a priest walk into a bar,’ right away it goes off in my head, ‘Well, a guy and a duck and a priest did not walk into a bar, so you’re just making this up, and if you’re making it up, why is it funny? If it really happened, that’s funny. And you should call me if you’re ever in a bar and a priest and a duck walk in.’”
Indeed, Mandel’s humor is rooted in the ridiculous situations people will accept and “how far I can go before somebody will say something.” It’s the same thing that amused him back when he summoned the construction crews to his high school. “The whole message my parents gave me growing up was that there’s a time and a place for everything,” Mandel reflects with a smile. “And now, in my adulthood, in my career, this is the time, and this is the place.”
