01.30.05

Damn You, Dunham

Tagged as Humor, TV

My TiVo nabbed a bunch of episodes of Comedy Central Presents for me this weekend, which was good—sure, they’re hit and miss in terms of quality, but every once in a while you get a Lewis Black or or a Dom Irrera or maybe an Arj Barker, and that makes up for the dreck you get the rest of the time. Anyway, one of the comedians I saw today was Jeff Dunham. The Joneses and Smiths among you might not understand this, but I get kind of excited when I see someone with my surname. It doesn’t happen often—in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone in person who had my last name and wasn’t related to me.

Anyway, I was prepared to laugh, but as it turned out Jeff Dunham is a spectacularly bad ventriloquist. He had several puppets, with different voices and mannerisms for each, but not a funny or original joke the whole show. He actually thought it would be a good idea to steal the dentist bit from Bill Cosby, Himself, cut out all the funniest punchlines, and put it in the mouth of a purple muppet-like creature with no teeth. And he wasn’t any good at the technical aspect of ventriloquism, either.

All I can hope for at this point is that he doesn’t become famous and create a stain on a perfectly good family name—the way I assume Carrot Top has done for all the Tops of the world. I don’t want to have to change my name just to avoid the uncomfortable “are you related to…” moments.

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