√ SANTE

Beloved Comedian
Diagnosed with Melanoma 

“Thrilled to do cancer jokes now…” 

UNCASVILLE, Connecticut - The Mohegan Sun resort and casino house comedian, Paulie ‘Punchline’ Maakuah, announced yesterday to the audience of his early-bird supper act that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of melanoma, thus launching a three-month cancer joke free-for-all.

Critics, along with cancer survivors, say what Maakuah is doing is no laughing matter.

Punchline thinks otherwise.

“If Louie Anderson can build a career off of fat jokes than I can do a few dozen about a metastatic cell spreading to my lymph nodes,” said Maakauh.

Maakauh, a native of Hawaii, has played Indian casinos ever since his parents abandoned him at the Hopi Holiday Inn in Arizona when he was thirteen.

“There I was standing in the middle of a the [hotel] lobby, filled with slot machines, knowing full well that my folks had left without me,” said Maakauh. “So I cracked a joke,” he added.

And that is all which was needed for history to be written.

Clive Shrewsberry, former manager of the Hopi Holiday Inn, heard the him say “toe nail clippers” and hired him on the spot.

“I can’t recall the set-up but that punch [punchline] told me not to abandon this kid, too,” recalls Shrewsberry.

Other punchlines which have made Maakauh famous for the past forty-years include, “Book’em, Danno!,” “Lake Titicaca” and “Ah, so,” the latter of which is a pay-off to his most famous joke where the fictional detective Charlie Chan learns that prostitutes charge money.

“I’ve always wanted to be edgy,” said Maakauh. “Having cancer allows me to go there.”