Last night I had the opportunity to see Jeff Dunham live in Nashville. This show was originally scheduled for Friday night, April 20th, but since some NHL Hockey team that is likely to win the Stanley Cup needed to play a game that night, the show was moved to Wednesday.
I had tickets for my son and I to go. But with the schedule change, the show now fell on a School night. And not just any school night, but a school night during State Testing. Super important for the kid to get his sleep, so no comedy show for him. That was a bummer. Although much of Dunham's comedy is adult in nature, my 10 year old has watched all of his specials and is a big fan.
The Comedy Central and Netflix specials that feature Dunham are just cuts from his full length show, just like any televised special is bound to be. You get a small taste of Dunham's stand up in the specials before he cries out "You ready for the people in the boxes?!?!" and starts the ventriloquism that has made him famous.
What the TV specials don't capture is the 45 minutes or so of pure stand up. Dunham is a funny dude, eve without his hand up some puppet's ass. His stand up revolves around current events in his family. In this particular occasion, he speaks about his two and a half year old twins James and Jack. Dunham recently (by his telling) suffered from a bout of Pink Eye. He presents the story of going to the doctor and finding out that pink eye from a bacteria found in poop. He has kids, kids touch poop, then touch him, and Boom, Pink Eye. This would be a running theme throughout the show, as each of the characters made timely barbs about Jeff's getting shit in his eye.
The Puppets
First out of the box, as I believe is usual, is Walter. Walter is that old guy that gets away with saying whatever is on his mind because he's old and doesn't know any better. Walter is also likely a foil for Dunham to get out some of his negativity toward his ex-wife. Politically incorrect, racist, and always with a jab to poke at his wife is our friend Walter.
As with all the puppets, Dunham mixes in some older classic material with a few new jokes thrown in. More on that later. Walter's most memorable new piece of material is talking about teaching one of the twins to stick his finger in the family dog's ass, inferring that this behavior is what led to Jeff's Pink Eye. He also talks about Donald Trump's Border Wall and how he is building his own wall in the box to keep Jose Jalapeno out.
Next up was a brand new character. He's only been in the last few shows, and I was unable to find any images of him to share here. His name is Bob. Bob is the Special Advisor to the President of the United States.
Dunham starts the segment with a disclaimer: He tries to keep his own political opinions out of his show. Knowing that Trump is such a lightning rod, no matter which side of the subject he takes he would alienate half of any audience. His two goals are to make you laugh till it hurts, and that at the end of the segment you have no earthly idea what political party he is affiliated with.
If you are familiar with Dunham and his characters, think of a character that looks kind of like a mix between Bubba J and Peanut in a very disastrous looking suit. Throw in Peanut's high energy changed over to anxiety and you can kind of see where this is going.
The piece is still rough, Dunham calls it "The Free Shit", but it was pretty funny even though it still needs work. Probably the most memorable line from this character was talking about Trump being the first Commander in Chief to give a State of the Union Tweet. There were Hillary jokes thrown in as well in order to be consistent with his statement of keeping you in the dark as to what party Dunham favors.
Next up is the Inbred Texas alcoholic, Bubba J. More of the material we are familiar with from previous specials is shared about Bubba J's big accomplishment in life, becoming an Alcoholic. The Trump Wall comes up again with Bubba asking how much the wall will cost. When Jeff says about 70 billion dollars, Bubba says they should wait for it to go on sale. Of course this leads into a discussion of you not being able to buy a wall just anywhere, to which Bubba comes up with the bright idea to buy the wall at Wall-Mart. Throwing in a little "There's even people in the parking lot who will help you put it together if you ask nice."
Next out of he box was everyone's favorite hyperactive purple dude, Peanut. I love the gif above, though I can't recall which special it appears in. Peanut makes fun of the interpreter by moving his mouth a bunch but no words come out. He prefaces this with "Wanna see a bunch of people get totally confused. Watch this, They're looking at me, looking at her looking at me, at her... like What the Hell?" I had been watching the interpreter at our show throughout the evening and was looking forward to this particular component of the show, but alas it was skipped over in favor of Peanut telling two stories about Jeff's previous appearances in Nashville. One of the two regarded a drunk patron the the front row who had gotten pissed off when Peanut made fun of him and he came up on the stage and hit Peanut. Not Jeff... The doll!
Somewhere in the middle of this segment, Jeff starts talking about Peanut's one shoe. About this time I looked away for a moment, and when I turned back, Peanut was on the floor. I'm not sure if this was a set part of the act, or if Jeff accidentally dropped the character, either way, he played it off well. This led in to the bit with Peanut's mouth stuck open and mouthing the words "Ma Moof is Stuk.... Aaasss Hooo".
Of course no Peanut segment is complete without bringing out Jose, who "would have been here sooner, but someone built a wall, senor". Jose, as usual, is ready to leave the show because of Peanut and Walter tormenting him. This time, he wants to chase his dream. His dream to become an Astronaut for NASA. Peanut starts a tirade about Jose being the first illegal Alien to actually be in Space. Other than that, Jose's appearance was a bit lackluster.
And of course, last but by no means least, was everyone's favorite Dead Terrorist, Achmed. Achmed starts by talking about how the entire world loves him. "Even Terrorists love me" he asserts "They watch me on television and laugh and go "look, it's us!"" Achmed's typical shtick has been refined with some updates to relate to current events. Specifically blaming Harvey Weinstein for giving his 72 virgins a sense of entitlement. Instead of his 72 Virgins they are now his 72 self empowered women who may or may not give consent.
Perhaps the best portion of the segment is when Jeff pulls out a stack of cards, ostensibly from the audience, with questions for Achmed. Jeff calls out the name of the person who submitted the question, briefly looking for where the person is seated. A few people shouted out, so these could be legit. They led to things like Achmed singing Happy Birthday to one guest, while another asked him to tell her fiance how much she couldn't wait to marry him in 28 days, to which Achmed went on a rant about the inpatient bitch running off and ditching her fiance. somewhere in the middle of the stack was a card that Jeff came to with a particular name. We never got to the question because when he called out the name, the entire arena erupted. the name in question? Hugh Jorgen.
If you don't get it, read it aloud to yourself a couple of times.
Jeff lost it. Again, I don't know if this is part of the set or if someone actually submitted that card, but the entire arena was laughing hysterically for a good 5 minutes. At one point Jeff pulled himself together enough for Achmed to say "I can't believe you fell for that", before everyone cracked up again.
Summing Up
All told, this show went for a good two and a half hours. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard or had as much fun. Dunham is a great entertainer who is constantly working on his craft.
So above I talked about how he works in some new jokes with some old classics. He took a few minutes t explain to the audience how most performers go out on the road and do a year or so of shows with the same material and then come off the road for another year to write all new material before going out on the road again. That's not how Dunham does it. He asserts that he has been touring for ten and a half years non-stop. Part of that touring time is the time spent in residency in Las Vegas, but I'll give that to him. With no time off the road, he works in new jokes as he comes up with them. In between shows he will write a bunch of new material and insert jokes here and there, keeping what works with the audience, and discarding what doesn't. He estimates doing it this way over the curse of 18 months or so he ends up with an entirely new show. That then gets taped for his television specials.
One of the things I love about his performance is that he doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. He cracks up at his own jokes sometimes. You can see him lose the script and just pull lines out of his ass from time to time, and then he has to stop because whatever he just came up with was damn funny. At one point Peanut asks "How the fuck do I know the line and you don't?!" I think it is important for performers to be grounded and have a sense of their own fallibility. It makes them more relate able to the audience, and surely helps them recover when something does go sideways.
I highly recommend checking out Jeff Dunham's show. It is a very entertaining evening with some terrific laughs. Check out his clips on YouTube for a taste of the fun, and then check out his website with the list of Tour Dates. He's headed over to Europe soon, so even if you are reading this from across the pond, there are opportunities to see Jeff and his motley crew in person.
Thanks for reading! Hope you find a chance to watch some of Jeff Dunham's comedy and have a good laugh.