by Howie Mandel
Lizzie Zuckerbrot became even more determined. She had an idea. “Let’s remove all the pictures and start from scratch,” she said.
Another hour passed and Lizzie Zuckerbrot was once again down to the last picture. Now, I don’t know if this is true, but I think Lizzie Zuckerbrot is solely responsible for that famous saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Because that’s exactly what she did. Michael and I could not contain ourselves as we watched her remove the pictures for the third time.
This went on for the entire evening. For the life of me, I can’t remember how it ended. But Michael was one of the first people who seemed to share my sensibility: finding humor in others’ duress. He quickly became one of my best friends.
Years later, after he finished law school in Canada, Michael moved to Los Angeles and became my lawyer. Today, he is still my best friend, my manager, and a co-owner of 3 Arts Entertainment, a major Hollywood management and production company.
At this point, I became something of a social butterfly. I was attending parties, hanging out with various groups, and solidifying friendships that remain to this day: Michael Rotenberg, Jeff Weiman, and my nearest and dearest, Terry Soil, who is now known as Terry Mandel. It took her years just to say yes to going on a date with me, not for my lack of trying.
Terry was always around. She was blond and beautiful and five feet six without heels. I was just breaking five feet without heels. In my mind, we were the perfect match. I would try to talk to her, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I don’t think it was only because I was half a foot shorter than her—I also had a reputation of being an out-of-control, crazy person. I wish I’d had the foresight to tell her that one day I would be asked to write a book and I would mention her.
Lo and behold, I finally had a breakthrough and we set a date for a Friday night. She had very strict stipulations for the date. Number one, it had to be a double date. Number two, she would be with Jeff Mintz and I would be with another girl. But I could still say, “I went out last Friday with Terry Soil.”
Days passed. Weeks passed. Months passed. Maybe even a year passed. And then one particular day in 1973, she was okay with going out with just me alone. I would imagine for her it was out of a lack of anything else to do, but I can’t tell you how excited I was. It was a very special night.
I needed to prepare. I took out my favorite pair of jeans and my squirt gun. I filled the squirt gun with Clorox bleach. I put the jeans on a table and began squirting the outline of a tongue protruding from my fly on the pants. In minutes, the blue had disappeared and I had a white tongue hanging off of my crotch.
As I look at that paragraph, I’m with you, people—it’s not funny, it’s not tasteful, it’s ridiculous. But then remember, I never think, I just do.
Like a gentleman, I drove to her house to pick her up. I arrived on time. I rang the doorbell. Terry came to the door, looked at my groin, and didn’t say a word. Luckily, she was standing between me and her mother, who came around the corner to ask Terry who this young lady was. It was me, Howard Mandel.
I don’t think her mother ever noticed my groin, and Terry never mentioned the tongue on my jeans. She quietly got into my mom’s Cutlass Supreme convertible, a real cool car on a real cold night. I was feeling great.
We were heading to a movie, and the roads were terrible. I remember I made a left turn onto Bathurst Street as the rear tires must have hit a patch of ice. The car began to fishtail. The back end swung around the front and kept going, sending the car into a tailspin. This whole experience felt like slow motion. My eyes were bulging. I saw headlights—spinning—taillights. I saw a tree, then a curb, then a bus, then headlights again. I was in my own little Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
And then the two wheels on the passenger side slammed up against the curb. The car was catapulted up on its side, about to roll over. I thought we were going to die. Time seemed to stand still as the car teetered on two wheels, slammed back down, bounced once, and came to rest on all four wheels.
My heart was pounding so fast, I thought it would come out of my chest. I looked over at Terry to make sure she was all right. She seemed to be all in one piece except for the fact that her arms were crossed and her face was contorted.
After a long pause, the first two words off her lips were “Very funny.”
Wait, did I just hear her right? Did she think this was a joke? No matter how profusely I denied it, she was convinced that I had almost flipped the car and killed us for a joke—which pretty much sums up my reputation.
It’s also why I don’t have a GED. To this day, I’m upset I didn’t finish high school or go to college. I constantly acted out impulsively.
In high school at Northview Heights, I did everything from throwing a chocolate bar in the pool to make it look as if someone defecated (and then I dove in and ate it) to hiring contractors to give unauthorized bids on an extension to the library. I disrupted so many other activities and classes that school officials called in a psychologist for testing. As an adult, I have been diagnosed with ADHD, which in my case manifests itself in trouble focusing, impulsive behavior, and basically everything that eventually curtailed my academic career. But the psychologist just chalked it up to having a bad attitude—obviously ADHD didn’t seem to be recognized in the early 1970s.
As luck would have it, I ended up contracting mononucleosis and missing class for three months. I fell so far behind, I had to leave Northview. I enrolled myself in another school that was on the semester system in order to catch up, but within weeks they found out I didn’t live in the district and had me removed.
I ended up at Georges P. Vanier Secondary School, where things quickly went downhill. I had a friend who knew someone in a university medical program where they dissected cadavers. The friend of a friend gave me a human foot, which of course I packed in my gym bag, brought to school, and left in someone’s shoe in the locker room during PE. The energy it took for me to come up with and execute these extravagant stunts far outweighed the energy and time I was putting into academics, which eventually fell by the wayside.
My educational career was over. Where was I to turn? I was the only one I knew at my age who didn’t have a place to get dressed and go each and every morning. Who was the joke on now?
This was a lonely, scary moment in my life. One of the things that got me through it was that my parents continued to love, encourage, and support me in every way. They connected with a friend in the carpet business. I got a job at Carpet Liquidators, apparently my only option for the future. I was selling carpet. I was a bona fide full-time carpet salesman. Let’s get this straight: I was a bona fide full-time, color-blind carpet salesman. Wait, there’s more: I was a bona fide fulltime, color-blind carpet salesman with an insatiable need to be the center of attention. And here is how it manifested itself.
The customers were called ups. There were three or four salesmen, and we would take turns attending to the customer. Whenever it was my up, I would put on a performance for the other salesmen. First and foremost, I wanted to entertain myself and the people at the office.
This was not much different from any given night at Howard Johnson’s. I would have the other salesmen stand close enough so they could overhear me. I would do everything from talking gibberish to positioning myself awkwardly just to see if I could elicit a reaction. Making the sale was secondary to getting the laugh.
I had business cards made up where my name on the card was “Howard Men.” Whenever customers decided to make a purchase, I would ask them to step into my office. I could see the look on their faces as we approached the door that said “Men.” I would invite them into my office very professionally, open up a private stall, lower the seat, and ask them to make themselves comfortable while we completed the contract. Most people were so off-kilter that they wouldn’t even ask why they were sitting on a toilet filling out an order.
I was constantly consumed with my own pranks. I had no sense of boun
daries. There was no teacher to tell me to stop. At the time, I had started dating Terry regularly. She was one of the first people who understood my sense of humor and enjoyed being in on the joke. I like to say we began dating. She describes it as going to a show every night. Eventually, she was forced to set boundaries.
The first boundary came when I was with her at a department store makeup counter. She was chatting with a saleslady. I didn’t happen to be the center of attention, so I was getting bored. Like a six-year-old, when I get bored, stuff happens.
I started putting my fingers in the makeup testers. Each finger became caked with a different color. Terry concluded her purchase, then we left the counter and began strolling through the mall. I became very amorous, pinched her face, and started whispering sweet nothings, like “Look at you … aren’t you cute today.” Then I touched her nose with another finger and whispered, “Look at that little button nose, you’re such a doll.” Each statement and each touch left a different mark.
As we continued through the mall, the mess on her face grew. Within minutes, she looked like a crazy Indian, causing people to stare at her as they whisked by. Terry seemed to notice the stares, but I believe she interpreted them as if the people were mesmerized by a supermodel passing in their midst. Her walk developed into a swagger, as if to say, “I look so hot today that people can’t keep their eyes off me.” It actually reminded me of the attitude I had wearing the paper hat pushing the egg salad cart. At that point, I probably should’ve told her what I had done. But that’s the problem with me: I never quite know when to quit.
I told her that I just remembered I wanted to buy something for my mother and we would need to head back to the makeup counter. I started running back through the mall like an idiot. There was no reason to be running, but because I was running, she chased me, yelling, “Why are you running? Where are you going?”
Now you have to picture this: There is a guy running through the mall like a crazy person, being chased by a young lady wearing messed-up war paint.
We were both out of breath by the time we arrived at the makeup counter. The saleslady asked if she could help us, all the while looking incredulously over my shoulder at the spectacle that was Terry.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know how to say this, but my girlfriend has trouble applying makeup.”
The saleslady looked at Terry’s multicolored, streaked face and didn’t say anything.
Terry spoke up. “No, I don’t,” she said adamantly—as if she were defending her makeup job. Now Terry looked at me, burning a hole in the back of my head and thinking, What the f–– are you talking about?
“Well, you do,” I said.
“I do not,” she shot back. “I know exactly what I’m doing. Why are you saying that?”
Terry was so annoyed with me that she turned to walk away. In that moment, she caught a glimpse of her profile in a mirror and realized what had happened. She swung her purse as hard as she could, slamming me on the shoulder, and then stormed out of the department store.
She was really upset. So was I. I thought I had lost my girlfriend through my antics, giving no consideration to the consequences. Terry made me promise never to play a practical joke on her again. She was to be considered out of bounds, so that meant that I could not do things to her, but I could do things with her.
I remained in the carpet business for a few years and eventually opened up my own company, National Broadloom Sales. National Broadloom Sales consisted of one room and a phone. I would take out ads advertising a shop-at-home service. And as calls came in, I would answer the phone with various voices that made the operation seem much bigger than it actually was.
The receptionist was me in a falsetto voice saying, “National Broadloom.” When someone asked to speak to a salesperson, I would accidentally transfer her to the warehouse, which was me in a low voice saying, “Warehouse.” But if the customer said she was looking for a salesman, I would reconnect her to my regular voice, answering, “Sales,” and make an appointment to go to the house and show her my wares.
Terry was my first truly captive audience. After either school or work, she used to come with me on these sales calls. My goal was to see how outrageous I could be at the same time I made a living. Once in the home, I would have the family or the customer select the color and style of carpet they wanted. Next I would explain that I had to take measurements.
One particular time, I proceeded to take off my shirt. I was standing there bare-chested. You can’t imagine the awkwardness the family felt at the sight of a strange, bare-chested man standing in their living room, getting ready to measure for the carpet. The discomfort was palpable. I can’t tell you how many times they just looked back and forth at one another in silence. I know they wanted to flee, but this was their house. I took a pen and drew the room on my stomach, noting the measurements. As soon as I finished, I had the family sit on the couch, while I lay at their feet with the floor plan and my nipples facing up at them.
Pointing to the rooms I had drawn on my chest, I said, demonstrating, “See this room that starts at my belly button? That is the family room. You want earth-tone shag to go up here just below my left nipple.” But I knew that’s not where they wanted the earth-tone shag, it was where they wanted the brown Berber, so they stopped me.
“No, sir, that’s not right.”
“Okay, show me where you want the shag.”
At first, it was really uncomfortable for this poor lovely family, but eventually it was like “This must be how you buy carpet.” The conversation slowly evolved into a sense of normalcy. The husband remarked, “You see where your left nipple is? That’s where we want the Berber to start.” Then the wife cut in, “Honey, no, I think the earth-tone shag should go from his belly button to his right nipple.” All the while, their young daughter would be saying, “Mommy, why does the carpet man not have a …” At that moment, her mother would shush her, as if she were being rude.
I learned from this that people would rather suffer in awkward hell than be embarrassed by standing their ground and saying, “What the fuck is going on?” It was too dangerous because I was in their home and they couldn’t escape, so they just made this world real and comfortable. Thank you, Allen Funt.
Another time, I was called up to measure a massive house. I pulled out a six-inch ruler and began measuring. My goal was to see how long they would let me stay. I put the ruler on the floor, held my finger at the end, and then mumbled to myself, “Two,” flipped it over, and said, “Three.”
The man of the house interrupted and told me he had a tape measure, to which I held up my hand and said, “Please, please. I’ve lost count. I have to use my own equipment.” And I would start again, “One … two … three.”
The atmosphere was always so uncomfortable. Nobody would ever confront me during these stunts. They would just sit there and endure it in total discomfort, which is my favorite kind of comedy. I consider those sales to be the first time I was being paid for comedy. These were my shows. Nobody was booking me in a club, but I was invited to perform at someone’s house and I was getting paid for it.
Up to this point, you might think I was putting myself on the path toward becoming a comedian. I promise you there couldn’t have been anything further from my mind. All these shenanigans were just impulsive bursts of misbehavior that happened to garner some laughs. As it turns out, they were simply a product of who I was—a twenty-two-year-old ADHD-OCD-laden color-blind carpet salesman desperately in need of attention at any expense.
I was still living with my parents in a two-bedroom apartment in suburban Toronto. Show business was not part of my psyche. I knew absolutely nothing about show business. At the time, my idea of show business would’ve been selling television sets.
My only previous foray into the arts had been in high school. After failing numerous academic courses, I picked up a class in theater arts for what I believed would be an easy pass. Our teacher, Mr. Brown, would have us dress in blac
k and curl up into a ball as if we were a seed. He would drop the needle on a Simon and Garfunkel record and instruct us to bloom slowly to the music. As Paul and Art’s music filled the room, I lifted my head and began to bloom. The girl to my right also began blooming, spreading her petals. This caused my stem to rise. Apparently, my plant was sprouting a new branch. That’s about all I remember from theater arts, except for the fact that I got a C in blooming.
Everybody else I knew was charting a path to their future. I wasn’t charting, nor did I have a path. But I did have a goal. I wanted to be a millionaire. I wasn’t saving money. Anything I made went directly into my pockets. Anything I wanted emptied my pockets.
My impulsiveness didn’t serve me well in business. While running National Broadloom Sales, I decided I needed a marketing campaign. I went to the local paper to buy ads. I was told that if I signed a contract to guarantee them fifty-two half-page ads in a year, I would receive a discount. Impulsively, I signed the contract without any thought. That’s not true. My one thought was that I was on my way to making a million dollars. Every week for fifty-two weeks, my company would have a huge ad. Every week for fifty-two weeks, as per the contract, I had to pay thousands and thousands of dollars. Every week for fifty-two weeks, I didn’t earn thousands and thousands of dollars. Needless to say, I was on my way to losing a million dollars. National Broadloom Sales eventually closed its doors. Make that its door.
My frenzied, scattershot behavior became my modus operandi. Within days, I reopened as North American Carpet Sales—another room, another phone, but now I was going to take the entire continent by storm. Within months, it was a mere cog in the wheel of the conglomerate that became well-known … to me as HMI, Howard Mandel International. I sold smoke detectors, tied up the rights to a toothbrush you could floss with, and began selling novelty items, such as the Uncle Sherman Flasher Doll. This was a toy I had seen on one of my family trips to Miami. It was a stuffed old man in a trench coat that when opened revealed his package. This was certainly going to make me my million.