van nuys and cupertino

nobody knew where they came from. or cared where they went. their names were smith and jones. or maybe they were van nuys and cupertino. they met in a comedy club in terre haute indiana. it was fate. it was meant to be. it was kismet. where did you say you kids met? when his karma ran over my dogma. they looked at each other and said at the same time, we could do this. they were both traveling salesmen. van nuys sold paper plates. not paper cups, paper plates. i mean, what can you do with a paper plate? hey? a paper cup can be useful sometimes, you can slip a little wine or brandy into it when the occasion requires ,but what can you do with a paper plate? except put potato salad on it. potato salad. let’s talk about potato salad. who invented potato salad, anyway? nobody wants to take credit for inventing potato salad. how about that? or cold baked beans. what about cold baked beans? what did i tell you, you don’t talk about really disgusting things, things that turn people off. like cold baked beans. this is why we can’t have nice laughs. cupertino sold cigar cutters, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, and toenail clippers. you can just see it - somebody asks for a light and you hold up a cigar cutter in front of their nose - and they’ve got a nose like ( william mckinley/henny youngman/de gaulle/barbra streisand…) they teamed up, started playing open mikes wherever they went… all over the country, all over the world… new jersey, des moines, hong kong, baghdad, the moon, the ocean floor… everywhere they went they left a trail of death. forget bombs over the tokyo, hroshima, nagasaki, curtis lemay, the unabomber… these guys were the real bombers… accept no substitutes… they tried everything… they cut recipes out of the local papers… the coupons from publishers clearing house… van nuys noticed from the start that a lot of people got laughs just by saying the names of celebrities and pausing…. it worked for them. but not for our guys. the years went by… kennedy, nixon, frank sinatra and dean martin, oswald and jack ruby, jimmy carter, jackie o, johnny carson and rodney dangerfield. o j and marcia clark and kato kaelin, saddam hussein, axl rose, ted bundy, timothy leary and gordon liddy, whitney houston, britney spears, the olsen sisters, paris hilton, obama, mitt romney, taylor swift, they all came and went … still no laughs. cupertino was for trying to just be filthier than anybody else… it worked for some people… a guy in international falls minnesota did a twenty-five minute routine about nuns giving cardinals enemas and they had to call ambulances from five states and canada the customers were rolling on the floors laughing their guts out… finally, in a motel outside flagstaff arizona (where else?) they had a fight and van nuys pulled out a gun and cut cupertino down like a dirty dog. van nuys, who by this time was sixty-seven years old, got seventy-five years to life. they had open mike in the pen. this is my chance, he thought, he had always heard that convicts were a great audience because they were so bored they would laugh and cheer for anything. he died deader than ever. finally he decided if i can’t make them laugh i will make them cry. he told them a story about his grandmother’s canary , about how he loved the canary but was always afraid to show it, and then the canary died and he went up to his room and cried by himself because boys weren’t supposed to cry… did that old offender in the second row smile, or rub his eye… or shake his head… or something…? it’s raining on my grave. i know you are out there. i can hear you decomposing. and the worms… i can hear you too… you… yes you… the little white one, with a couple of molecules of my gall bladder on your ugly face… come on up here…