Friday night, Jen, Brandon, Kim, Katie, Yao, Sheena and myself went down to The Pageant to catch Jeff Dunham and his puppets for the comedy show. This is the third time Jen and I have see him, and he has been hilarious each time. He started the set out puppet free, throwing out some jokes that would be revisited each time, riffing most notably on the different between his two cars: a Hummer H1 and a Toyota Prius. Then he brought out the real star of the show: Walter the cranky curmudgeon. The expressiveness of Walter’s eyebrows is incredible. While his mouth is always turned down in a disapproving frown, the range of expression is impressive, rendering his personality anything but wooden.
Next, out came a new (to us) character named Achmed The Dead Terrorist. It sounds a little discomforting, and it is, but no one can do suicide bomber jokes like Jeff Dunham. Probably the most fun thing about the whole act is that he has the puppets say the shocking, transgressive, politically incorrect things, and he reacts with shock and scorn. It’s really a funny dynamic.
After that came Peanut, who is always funny. He did some impressive singing and rapid fire back and forth with Jose, The Jalepeno On A Stick. For an encore, he brought out Bubba, and older puppet he doesn’t use in his act much anymore. We had seen Bubba when Dunham played parent’s weekend up at Truman, so it was fun to see the gap toothed NASCAR enthusiast again. Probably the funniest part of that act was the fact that since Bubba isn’t in the act very much anymore, Jeff forgot a lot of the jokes and was reading them off notes. Incredibly, there were many, many people in the audience who knew the Bubba jokes and were saying them along with Bubba. It was a unique comedy experience, and I think it even surprised the comedian.
After the show, we came back to the house to play some Wii and chat about the show. Good times had by all. If you get the chance to see Jeff Dunham, definitely do it.