Live! from Las Vegas

Vince Hummel stared in anger at his carpet, which was starting to unravel. "That pair of tweezers ripped my carpet!" He marched over to the phone book. "I'm going to find a cleaning lady who doesn't leave practically her whole house on my CARPET!"

The engineer turned the pages of the phone book in anger, nearly ripping it in his haste to find cleaning lady agencies.

Stanley peeked in. "You're going to get a new cleaning lady, Vince?"

Vince looked up. "Yes, Knox, I'm going to get a new cleaning lady!"

"I'm sure you'll never find another one like Consuelo."

"I don't WANT to find another one like Consuelo!!!" Vince roared. "She leaves everything on my carpet so she can come get it and then she SNOOPS!!"

Vince scanned the page. "Here's a good one, just around the corner," he announced, picking up the phone, as Stanley quietly left. When someone answered, Vince said, "Hello! I need a cleaning lady!"

"Just a minute," said a bored-sounding receptionist. She pressed a button and Vince was put through to a cleaning lady.

"Howdy!" she greeted him.

Vince, taken aback by the greeting, said, "How knowledgeable are you?" He started to add "in the field of carpet-cleaning," but the cleaning lady interrupted him.

"Why, very. I know all 26 letters of the alphie-bet, an' I can count to a hundurd and three!"

"WHY, IT'S AN OUTRAGE!!" Vince yelled.

"'Course, I can go to a hundurd and twenty in a pinch. An' I know how to catch a possum!"

Realizing this cleaning lady must be a hick from the Ozarks, Vince said, "Never mind," and hung up.

Marty happened to be passing by and peered in. "What happened, Vince?" he asked.

"I got a hick cleaning agency!" Vince replied, calling the next cleaning agency in the phone book.

"I need a cleaning lady!" he told the person who answered the phone.

"Well, how many 'taters ya got?" asked the man on the other end of the phone.

"WHAT??" Vince yelled.

"After all, that's what we do here," the man went on. "We clean 'taters and watermelons an' anything else that comes outter your garden!"

"AUGH!!" Vince shrieked. (What can I say? He has a short temper, and that was definitely not what he'd expected to hear.) Trying to control his temper, he said, "Uh, I don't think that'll be necessary," and hung up. Then he ran a hand through his hair and messed it up.

The girl at the next place he called thought he was her boyfriend.

"Hi, Tony!" she exclaimed. "Are we going out tonight?"

Vince couldn't believe what was happening. "WHAT?? I'M NOT SOME TONY!!"

The girl only laughed. "You always were a joker like that, Tony."

"I'M NOT TONY!!" Vince repeated angrily.

Tony, the egotistic engineer, peeked in Vince's office then. "Of course you're not," he agreed. "No one is me, and no one ever could be." He admired himself in a mirror.

Vince looked at the other engineer in disgust. "For heaven's sakes, you're not the only person named Tony in the world!! This girl on the phone has a boyfriend named Tony and thinks I'm him!"

Tony wasn't fazed. "Well, that must be Rose-Marie," he said. "Put her through to my office, Vince." Then Tony went to his own office down the hall.

"How outrageous!" Vince muttered.

A rough woman's voice answered. "Hello? Whatdyya want?"

Vince was taken aback by the tart voice. "I want a good cleaning lady," he said. "Do you have any?"

"Good cleaning ladies?" the woman repeated. "Whatareya drivin' at, buster? That we don't have good cleaning ladies?"

"Well, no, uh . . ." Vince had never dealt with someone like this before, and wasn't sure how to go about it.

"I'll tell ya somethin', buster! We've been in business for five years and no one's got stuck in a vacuum or had a year's work disappear in one yet! Now, how many carpets ya got?"

Vince sighed. "None," he finally said. "I think I'll look for someone more polite," he added to himself.

"No!" Vince yelled. "You wouldn't believe the places I've wound up calling! One specializes in cleaning VEGETABLES!!"

"Vegetables?" Jay repeated. "Well, that's a new one!"

"Just one more place left," Vince said, dialing the number.

In a minute, a weird voice came on and said, "Greetings!"

"Uh, do you clean carpets?" Vince asked hesitantly. He wasn't sure what to expect.

"Oh, yes. Would you like some references?"

I knew I'd forgot something, Vince muttered to himself. I should have asked for references. Aloud he said, "Yes."

"We clean Dracula's carpets every Thursday evening," the weird voice began.

"WHAT??" Vince roared. He never would've expected THAT!!

"And every Monday morning, we clean Frankenstein's house!"

"MICHAELS!!!!!" Vince yelled at the top of his lungs.

Jay was halfway down the hallway to the broadcasting booth, but when he heard Vince's monster yell (which nearly shook the Stratosphere), he turned around and headed back to the engineer's office. "What in the world is it, Vince?" he asked.

Vince held up the phone. "LISTEN TO THIS NONSENSE!!!"

Jay took the phone.

The weird voice was saying, "And every Halloween, we go to Boris Pickett's house and clean up from the Monster Mash party! And every month, when the moon is full, we head on over to the werewolf house!"

Jay turned to Vince with a strange expression on his face. "You're right, Vince. This is weird." He handed the phone back to the engineer.

Vince was fuming. "STOP THIS NONSENSE AND GIVE ME SOME REAL REFERENCES!!"

The weird voice went on as if it hadn't heard. "And, of course, we can't neglect to mention going to Samantha's house every Wednesday afternoon."

"AUGH! I GIVE UP!! GOODBYE!!" Vince slammed the phone down and ran a hand through his hair again.

"Well, Vince, what're you going to do?" Jay asked.

Vince started pacing the floor. "I'll . . . I'll . . ."

Before he could finish, Consuelo waltzed in. "Hola, seniors!" she greeted them.

"Look at my carpet!" Vince shrieked. "It's unraveling!!"

"Oh, my goodness, so it is! Never fear, senior! I will sew it up!"

Without waiting for Vince to reply, Consuelo pulled out a special needle made for sewing up carpets. With a sigh, Vince sank into his chair.

Jay was telling Marty and Stan about Vince's experience with the last cleaning agency in the phone book.

"Weird. That guy had some strange sense of humor," Stan commented.

Then Jay told about Consuelo's appearence. "Vince has decided that he'll let Consuelo continue to clean his carpet, at least for the time being."

Vince walked by, overhearing Jay's last remark. "Yes, that's true, Michaels. But I'm still on the lookout for a better cleaning lady! One that doesn't SNOOOP!"

"Oh, come on, Vince," Marty said. "Surely you don't still think that Consuelo's a ‘SNOOOP'!"

"Of course she is!" Vince yelled. "Michaels, you saw how casual she treated the news that my carpet was ripped! She already knew about it, because she ripped it on purpose! Then she'd have to come back to sew it up, and then she could SNOOOP!"

The disc jockeys looked at each other. They were all thinking the same thing: There'd be no convincing Vince. Probably for as long as he lived, he'd think that Consuelo was a ‘SNOOOP.'