Rick Reilly's Homecoming

Just started on ESPN 2 - don't know what to make of it. Kind of a "This is Your Life" kind of thing with Josh Hamilton in his high school gym with hundreds of friends and family in the audience. John Elway is next week.

I think this show might be the perfect warm-up for the season-premiere of "Howie Do It."

 

Howie Do It is on right now too. But Josh Hamilton is hot and Howie Mandel is not. Win!

 

I don't get why people like Howie Mandel or think he's funny. It totally escapes me. I remember he was good as an actor on St. Elsewhere, and then shocked to find out that A., he's a comedian and B., totally unfunny.

 

Sorry, but his stand-up back in the day was frickin' hilarious. Saw this one special where he performed in a round (with a rotating stage) and a woman got up to use the bathroom. So he heckles her a bit on the way out, nothing too spectacularly funny. But once she got out of the theater, he got everyone in her section to stand up and switch places with the people in another section. When she came back and found herself confused as hell about where her friends were, he really lit into her. It was pretty goddamn funny.

The guy's not an all-timer, but he definitely has his moments. I'd say most people who hate him these days are mostly only familiar with his Deal or No Deal overexposure. He's got a lot more talent than probably 80 percent of the people on TV.

That said, I have no intention of ever watching "Howie Do It."

 

I remember watching him do stand-up in Bobby's voice (from "Bobby's World"), and it was pretty freaking funny. Not so much the material, mind you, just the foul language coming from cute little Bobby.

 

Quickest and most thorough thread-jack in SportsJournalists.com history.

 

Apparently Mandel has such bad OCD and is such a germaphobe (sp?) that when he stays in hotels he makes them cover every square inch on floor with brand new towels before he will set foot in the room.

Howie used to be very, very funny... That was a long time ago.

 

Always loved the Algonquin roundtable wit of Mandel's surgical-glove-over-his-head-and-blown-up-like-a-balloon trick.

 

And he takes something like a dozen showers a day

 

From what I saw of the Howie show, he is in the pranks wearing glasses and a wig (looking eerily like Tommy Lee) and speaking, and yet NO ONE recognized him. Holy Lois Lane!

 

howie mandel and will ferrell.
what folks see in them that's funny is beyond me.
but hey, everybody to his own thing.
maybe for a couple of minutes and then, let's move on to other things. like putting a "Blazing Saddles" DVD in for viewing. now that's funny.