i realized there was really no alternative. if i wanted to live, i had to do this. they re going to put him on a gurney, roll him into the o.r. room, and bust him open like a lobster! stop the heart, work on it, restart it, good luck, you re back. these people are all so full of vitality. i forget that robin williams had that operation. are these typical recoveries, or are they unusual? well, each one is a little different. and by the way, we re talking about open heart surgery, and we show it. but if i say that this is also a funny special, because we have robin williams and david letterman and regis on. what they had in common well, what robin and i had in common was that we had a valve, a cow valve. robin williams says he gives good milk now. others had arteries. i had a choice. i could have waited a little bit, and i said to my doctor, can i postpone this? you have a busy schedule. a lot of things you d have to cancel. it was may. i had stuff to do. and he said you
know, everyone s speaking arabic, and i speak pidgin arabic from the time i ve spent in the middle east. but i wasn t at first clear what was going on. and it wasn t until we started driving into this crowd and the people started surrounding our car and i realized that there was no way out of this area where they were bringing us, that something was wrong, and me and my, you know, teammates looked at each other and thought, this is not good. and how did you get out of that jam? well, you know, the situation started to escalate. and you know, things got very, very angry. there was a large banner, hosni mubarak banner hanging over this whole thing, which tells you that these are people who are upset about the media coverage, which is why they were so angry with us. but the situation started to get more and more tense. they became more and more angry at us. they became when they learned we were journalists, they started screaming. they were making gestures, putting their fingers, cu