Jeff Dunham was downright giddy Sunday night. Someone gave him poop — a squarish block of petrified "Dino Crap," according to the gift givers, a ragtag group of die-hard Tucson fans.
After a lively meet-and-greet/Q&A session with the group's representative, Don — the highlight was when Dunham misheard Don and thought he said he was "retarded" instead of "retired" — Dunham begged the real question:
"Don, is this really dinosaur poop?" he asked, squinting into the sold-out Fox Theatre.
"Yes," Don insisted.
"It's my favorite present ever," Dunham said, putting the dung — or whatever it was — into one of several boxes on the spacious stage.
The gift became the running gag throughout the 90-minute concert that featured the comic ventriloquist and his whacked-out cast of politically incorrect, irreverent and very funny characters.
Anyone expecting a blow-by-blow of Dunham's new Comedy Central special "Spark of Insanity" was treated instead to a sometimes off-the-cuff and wonderfully funny exchange about poop between Dunham and his five puppets.
First came Walter, the balding, grimaced curmudgeon:
"So the comedian comes to town and a group of people get together and say, 'What can we get the comedian we like so much? Let's get him some s---,' " Walter summed up the situation. "That's fantastic! You should hit someone in the head with it. They could call you a s---head."
"Walter, the last few months I've been trying to keep the show clean," Dunham reminded him.
But Walter wouldn't stop: "Somebody will come to me and say, 'They stole that present they gave Jeff.' 'Really? No s---?'"
Walter set the tone for the night, and the characters that followed added their two cents on Dunham's best present ever. And each used that word, the one that Dunham pleaded with them not to use just in case there were kids among the 1,164 fans.
Dunham, long a favorite at the Tucson comedy club Laffs, also complained about Tucson's freeway construction that has closed all the Downtown exit ramps.
"I'm so surprised you got here," he told the audience during a 20-minute stand-up before bringing out the puppets. "We were driving from Phoenix and we said we'll exit when it says Downtown."
The audience burst into a raucous "we-know-the-punch-line" laughter.
"We did a U-turn at El Paso," Dunham quipped. "Your highways suck. Who were the morons: 'Hey, you know what? We gotta fix this highway one end to the other. We don't need exits.' "
"That's one way to get people to never live here. . . . 'Oh, look. There's a nice hotel and restaurant. Can't stop there,' '' added Walter, who then muttered another curse word, this one a substitute for a person's behind, which is how he described the folks who thought closing the exits was a good idea.
Dunham also hauled out the popular purple woozle Peanut, who pronounced the comic's last name as "Dun-Ham."
"You're the other white meat," Peanut told Dunham, who didn't look too pleased to be the butt of Peanut's jokes.
"The funny thing is, I'm pissing him off and he'd like to kill me, but that would be a form of suicide," Peanut said in an ironic statement not lost on the audience.
It is hard not to be misled into thinking there are six people on stage instead of one and some inanimate puppets. Dunham has created such rich personalities that you sometimes are tricked into believing they are more than just sticks and cloth.
So when Dunham reminds José Jalapeño On-a-Stick not to say that word, Peanut reminds Dunham that cursing is taboo.
"I didn't say it," Dunham shot back.
"OK, Jeff," Peanut said, rolling his eyes and eliciting a roar from the crowd.
The concert also introduced Tucson to Achmed the Dead Terrorist, a skeleton with a towel wrapped around his head and whose eyes bulged when he spoke, and reintroduced the hugely popular Bubba J., a NASCAR-loving hillbilly who, judging by the crowd's applause and the echo from folks speaking the lines with him, is sorely missed.
review
Jeff Dunham's "Spark of Insanity," Sunday night at the Fox Theatre. The Comedy Central special of the same title airs tonight at 10 and midnight.
