OC LIVE! : COMEDY : HOWIE DUTY

Even Howie Mandel is not sure how he slipped into the Laguna Music Festival, a new series being presented to raise money for the arts in Laguna Beach. As the name implies, six of the seven acts involve music, all sorts of it.

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“When you think music, you think Howie Mandel. ‘We got folk, jazz, country. Hey, where’s Howie Mandel?’ ” he said, tongue firmly in cheek, when asked about his inclusion. “Maybe I’ll do a little country, a little bit of rock ‘n’ roll.” (For the record, event promoters say chalk it up to serendipity. Mandel was simply the right person at the right time.)

Mingling with music is actually nothing new for the Toronto native. Earlier this year he checked out the Nashville scene.

“I was very much a part of the country music world,” he said from his L.A. home. “I was prevalent in the Clint Black video, ‘Summer’s Coming.’ I played a guy on the beach looking for blondes. It was the No. 1 country video for a month.”

Mandel’s appearance Saturday night marks the premiere of this festival, a joint production of the Festival of the Arts directors and Stiletto Entertainment. Besides raising money for Laguna arts organizations, the events will use Irvine Bowl, the picturesque amphitheater nestled into the Laguna Beach hills.

“Our nine-member board of directors said we weren’t using the Irvine Bowl amphitheater to its full potential,” said Tim Wilcox, spokesman for Festival of Arts, the nonprofit group that operates the city-owned, 2,640-seat amphitheater. “It’s been there since 1941. It’s an excellent location for acoustics and aesthetics.”

The bowl is used intensively in July and August for the Pageant of the Masters but only for sporadic concerts in the off-season.

“Music came to mind because of the acoustic excellence of the bowl. Kenny Loggins was well-received, and he enjoyed the sonic environment of the bowl,” Wilcox said last week, referring to a performance a couple years back. “We’ve had extensive talks with our neighbors, who have expressed concerns. Basically, we came to an agreement that we’d stay in touch. We have a hot line here if nearby residents feel the entertainment is too loud.”

As a result, Stiletto has booked mainly adult contemporary acts, and the sound limit will be 95 decibels as measured at the sound board.

The series was also prompted by a desire to bring more entertainment to Laguna Beach and surrounding areas.

“We’d like to keep doing it every year,” Wilcox said. “This is a trial run. It seems like a good idea. We won’t have acts that play at Irvine Meadows or Universal Amphitheatre. Those are so big they’d knock the socks off our group. They’d knock the socks off our community relations too.”

Wilcox said the Festival of Arts may also work with some of the local symphonic groups such as the Pacific Symphony.

But for now, it’s the music festival.

To some observers, having the manic Mandel follow the much more passive Pageant of the Masters and its living tableaux format might seem an odd pairing. But the comic isn’t fazed.

“One time at a birthday party they had a caricature artist, and then I went on. So I’ve got the background. I’m comfortable with this.”

He’s also a roll-with-the-punches kind of guy when it comes to planning a stage routine.

“I don’t know what to expect,” he said. “I’m doing 200 dates a year, and each and every night is different. The audience is very much a part of the show. The more out of left field, the more fun it is for me.

“I know a lot of parents are fans of [Mandel’s animated Saturday morning children’s show] ‘Bobby’s World,’ but don’t bring kids. It’s not for the family.”

That seems to be a theme of Mandel’s. His current project, “Howie Mandel’s Sunny Skies Are Here Again” (Friday nights on Showtime), has a decidedly adult flavor to it--with topics from singing breasts to flatulence.

“There’s been good feedback on the show, which is going well,” Mandel said, adding that he started work on it in January and just wrapped up 13 episodes of the sketch-dominated project.

“It’s something I’ve been dreaming of doing and finally got a chance to do it. It’s an incredibly intense piece of work in the sense that [before this] I was never involved in more than one particular aspect of the production. I’m directing, co-writing, acting and producing. With ‘Bobby’s World’ and the CD-ROMs, other people take it off my hands.”

“Bobby’s World,” which Mandel created, produces and lends his voice to, is in its sixth year and was recently syndicated.

“I never dreamed it would flourish. People are relating to it. That is the success of it. Everything that has happened to Bobby has happened to me, my kids or the writers’ kids.”

Mandel, perhaps best-known through his role as Dr. Wayne Fiscus on TV’s “St. Elsewhere,” is also expecting to release an interactive musical cartoon in November, following his best-selling CD-ROM, “Tuneland.”

“It’s great for me because it’s not often that someone in this business can do something that caters to such a diverse audience. I can do a college date or Vegas and at the same time do an animated kids’ show or educational CD-ROMs.”

Or launch a music festival.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

* Who: Howie Mandel.

* When: Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

* Where: The Irvine Bowl, 650 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Laguna Canyon Road exit and head south. Irvine Bowl will be on the right.

* Wherewithal: $20.50, $26.50 and $34.50

* Where to call: (714) 376-8382 (box office), (714) 376-8589 (taped information).