You may or may not be familiar with Howie Mandel, but he has been around and been fairly famous for quite a few years. Howie was on the TV show St. Elsewhere in the 80's, performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and has done stand-up comedy all over the country and Canada, where he's from.
A few years back, Howie was making one of his standard appearances on The Howard Stern show, when as blurted out, not knowing they were back on the air after a commercial break that he was a germaphobe and always had been.
This started what Howie has described as the other part of his life, where he openly admits to being deathly afraid of germs and doing untold things to make sure he doesn't come into contact with any. If you watch his game show "Deal or no Deal" you may have noticed that he only does a fist-bump, instead of a handshake.
Howie is afraid of being touched on the hands, so this is why you never see him touching other peoples hands with his own, and this is what a pretty big bulk of his life is like.
Here's The Deal - Don't Touch Me
This book is filled with a lot of really touching moments as he describes things in his life, from his wife and children, to his quest to be able to live life without a dreaded fear of constant germ infestation. Tied in with all of that are a whole lot of really funny stories of pranks, jokes and simply funny things that Howie does on any given day, and some of these stories are gems.
I am not much of a reader generally, as I don't have much time, but I loved this book so much and was laughing so hard while reading it that I actually read the entire book in two sittings, with the second being only an hour or so. Of course, the book is not very long, so for the average reader it still wouldn't take you very long to get through it, but two days for me is pretty amazing.
I couldn't spoil any of the stories in the book by giving away the joke, or the ending, but I was literally laughing so hard at some of the tales that I couldn't breathe, and had to stop reading temporarily. Howie has a great way of telling his stories, and even if he didn't, many of them are so unbelievable that I think most people would get a good laugh regardless.
My recommendation:
If you really like Howie Mandel, you will absolutely love this book. It is hilarious 90% of the time, and the other 10% of the time, it is pretty heart-warming.
If you are not as big of a fan of him as some people are, I believe you would still enjoy this book quite a bit. Just to read about what somebody with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can go through in an extreme case is definitely enough to make you aware that there are people in this world who can not help who they are anymore than others can.
No comments:
Post a Comment