Jeff Dunham: Minding The Monsters

A.J:
Storm clouds gather, darkness prowls, the moon shines full as specters howl. This scary house, this lonely road, revenge is coming, and best served cold. Revenge on Jeff, who plays with dolls. Revenge on Walter, who moans and scowls. Peanut, Jose, shall know their place,

like my awful father, who scarred my face. One by one,

they'll learn they're damned to Minding the Monsters

with Jeff Dunham.

Jeff:
Thank you, Savannah! Well, this is just awesome.

Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. We are really excited. I'm really excited. The guys in the suitcases are excited. And this show is called

Minding the Monsters. Why? Well, we wanted to do a show that was different. I wanted to do something

that I'd never done before. I've done the standup shows,

I've done the specials, but I wanted something...

I wanted something scary. So I said, "Pick a scary city."

And everybody went... So, you know the answer.

You know why this place is scary. There's lots of reasons, but let me tell the rest of the world. Savannah is known

for being scary because you have haunted houses,

you have haunted cemeteries. Every night there are ghost tours going around the city. My ex-wife was born here. So, we decided what the heck, we'll do it here.

But why in the world did I want to do a monster special?

Well, growing up as a... You know, I always enjoyed

Frankenstein. I loved Dracula. I loved The Mummy.

All those monsters. I loved scaring people, and I loved being scared. I think it started about the age of five.

I was an only child. And remember the... Some of you may remember the cars back then. The American automobiles were these huge, giant things. We didn't have seat belts, there were no kid seats. I was an only kid

in the backseat. These backseats were eight feet wide,

one big, long bench. I could run back and forth on the bench. On the floor, the only thing in the way was the hump. You'd trip over the hump if you didn't see it.

The back window, you could lay in the back window.

I would do that; it was fantastic. And I would run around

back there, and when my mother was driving, she wouldn't pay any attention to me. And my mother,

still to this day, has a big, giant beehive hairdo.

Pretty much Marge Simpson hair, but not the same color,

you know what I'm saying? Looks like that. She also has

these giant curlers that she uses, and she put them

all over her hair. And I remember standing in the backseat, and I would look at her hair, this big, giant beehive of hairdo, all held together with Aqua Net. And these big, giant curlers would make these holes, what looked like caves to me. I imagined they were a maze

of caves in her hair like this. I remember standing back there, staring at the hair, a-and then I looked over

on the seat of the car, and, oh, there's a little rubber,

plastic spider, a black spider. This is all true. I took that black spider, and I put it right on the edge of one of the curls. Fantastic, looked great. I'm sitting there, looking at it, and I thought, "No, that's not good enough." I found a pencil. I took the pencil... She's not paying any attention.

This is all true, didn't know I was doing this. And I took that pencil and ever so gently pushed it back to the back of the curl, deep into the caves of curls. Gone.

Four days later... I am not kidding. Four days later...

My bedroom was right next to my parents' bathroom.

My mother would comb out her hair about once a month. It was four days later; she's in the bathroom,

combing out her hair. The blood-curdling scream

that came when that spider fell out onto her lap

was worth the beating I took later that night.

So, as I grew up, I learned to appreciate all those monster things, and then, when I had children,

I taught my children that scaring and being scared

was a great thing. My youngest daughter, Kenna,

when she was a little kid, she was a master

at scaring people. And when you're scared,

there's one of two things that happens to you.

You have one of two emotions usually. And it's usually fight or flight. And you don't know which one you're gonna do until you're actually really, really scared.

And I'd never been really, really scared until my daughter

started scaring me. This little twerp could jump

out of nowhere in the middle of the darkness and Blah! I was like Wah! And I wasn't a flight. I didn't scream like a girl and run away. I started punching. The worst was when I was upstairs in the master bathroom. I was cleaning a toilet. I had the plunger; I was plunging the toilet. I got finished, I was walking down the hall, middle of the night like this. She jumped out of nowhere. My first reaction was like, "Whoa-oh-oh!" And she's like, "Yay! Dad almost killed me with a plunger. Whoo-hoo!"

She's laughing. That little kid would hide underneath my desk in my office. I had a desk that was fully enclosed.

When you'd sit underneath it, it was a little cave under there. She learned to hide under there, and she would

sit there patiently. That's what's so evil about it. She would wait for ten minutes and then reach out

and grab my legs... I'd be, like... She eventually learned

to take a pillow with her. You'd be, like, "Aah!" What the...? Oh. Now, as they got older, I stopped scaring them, they stopped scaring me, but eventually,

my daughters and I figured out that scaring dogs

is a fun thing to do as well. And one of our

favorite dogs to scare is my little dog Roadie.

Roadie is a five-pound miniature pinscher.

And it's great scaring little dogs, because they can't

do anything to you. You know those... candy bowls at Halloween that have the... hand. .. Don't get ahead of me here. That have the little rubber hand that sticks up, when you reach in to get the candy, it goes... like this.

First couple of time, I'm, like, "Oh, oh, that's really funny!

That is not a candy bowl, that is a dog bowl. Oh, yeah.

So, I thought this up, and the girls are at the house.

I'm, like, "Girls, watch this. This is genius!" They're, like,

What are you doing now, Dad?" I'm "Just watch, this is great!" I took the candy bowl, I poured out the candy.

I put a piece of hamburger in the bottom of the bowl

right in front of the hand. I put the bowl on the ground.

Roadie comes running in. They're, like, "Dad," they're, like, "Dad." Oh, my gosh, this is hilarious!" I'm, like, "Shut up, here she comes." Roadie comes running in. She's, like, "Oh, look, there's a hamburger in the bowl!" She puts her head in the bowl. Back of the head! Roadie's looking around, like, "What the hell? Who hit me?

I'm just trying to get the hamburger." The girls are, like...

Roadie goes back. Then she figures out it's the stupid bowl. She's pissed at the bowl now, but she wants to get

the damn hamburger. Ten minutes later, she's still trying

to get the frickin hamburger. Unfortunately, dogs learn.

To this day, Roadie will not eat or drink out of a bowl that she's never met. Until she does her little Army crawl. She'll be like this. It's sad, I know. But... I let Roadie get back at people after that happened to her. This past Halloween, I got a shark outfit for Roadie. We were shooting a television show. I had a dressing room.

Outside the dressing room was the hallway where everyone would walk, and you could hear 'em coming

around the corner, and I would go, "Roadie, sic 'em!"

She'd run in the hallway... come back in. People are, like,

"Oh, that's really cute." I took the shark outfit, I put it on Roadie.Tiny little shark outfit. The great thing about this was, when the shark outfit was on the dog,

you couldn't see the dog. All you could see was this misshapen shark kind of reptilian-looking thing.

It was an odd color, a weird shape, it had a fin right here,

two fins out the back, a thing in the tail,

and teeth and eyes... it was fantastic! Now, when you're frightened, your emotions of being frightened take over,

but then your cognitive brain recognizes really quickly

what it is that's frightening you and you calm down immediately. It's like, "Aah! Oh. Ha-ha, that's really funny." When something comes around the corner at you that your brain can't recognize... especially when it looks likes some sort of odd reptilian prehistoric thing,

your lizard primordial brain kicks in. And I mean 300-pound, tough working guys that come walking

around the corner. She'd come running around the corner like this, not making any noise, and they'd be, like,

"Wh-What the ****... is that!" I had pee stains on the carpet outside my dressing room. All right. You like the dog stories, I got one more. I adopted a dog

a few months ago, and this was a surrender dog...

some family just giving up on him and giving him to the shelter. We didn't know why it was. We named him Buddy. And, uh, he's a Jack Russell terrier. It took us about a half a day to figure out why some other family

gave up on Buddy. Buddy's an idiot. He's like, bark, bark, bark, bark, run, run, run, run, bark, bark, bark, bark.

This dog would not stop barking. He's nuts. He's a sweet dog, but he's freaking nuts. So we went to the dog trainer, we said, "What do we do?" The dog trainer said, "I have two ways of taking care of a barking dog.

You have to teach... work with the dog."

I'm like, "Fantastic. What do you do? She goes, Well, one

is a spray bottle with water." I go, "I know. We've done that." She goes, No, no, not just water." She goes, You don't want to do just water "to a Jack Russell terrier,

"because they eventually like the water

and think it's just a new way of getting a drink."

She said, "You got to mix about 40% of Listerine

with the water." I'm like, "Oh, that's awful."

She goes, "No, no, it doesn't really hurt them.

"It just gets their attention, bothers them, then they realize "when they're barking, you spray them and say no, they eventually learn not to bark.

I'm like, Okay, Listerine in the water. Got it." She said, The other way, I have this electronic collar. And it's not a mean thing... it's not a shocking collar." She goes, It's a new thing. It's an electronic thing. When the dog barks,

it puffs out this puff of citronella right in their face.

So, eventually, they learn... they learn not to bark."

I'm like, Okay, send us the collar. Fantastic. We'll try that." "Okay, great." So we put the collar on Buddy,

I got the spray bottle ready, everything was great.

Buddy would bark. Spray him in the face. Like... Okay, fine. I'm not going to do that. Like that... he learned,

okay, don't like that. One day, Buddy was having

a really bad day. It was raining outside. He wouldn't stop barking. Anything that moved in the backyard, he would bark at. I'm spraying with the bottle. I'm trying to get stuff done. He's barking, he's bugging the heck out of me,

and I'm spraying, I'm spraying him. He's barking, he's barking. By the end of the day, this poor dog smelled like he was from the dentist's office. His hair was completely matted. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked like Nick Nolte's mug shot. That's what he looked like. And then the really sad part was he barked so much that day, the battery on the collar had worn down, and now the timing was completely off. But by the end of the day, he had learned. He's a smart dog, and I swear to God,

by the end of the day, this is what he was doing.

And then, when the sun came out, he was eventually running around the backyard again. He didn't care about

the collar any more. He didn't care about the Listerine.

And we could not catch this dog. He'd be running around

chasing squirrels. And we have an eight-foot fence that's about five inches wide, goes all the way around the yard,

and the squirrels just run around the top of the fence

and bug the heck out of the dog, and you can't catch him. Run, run, run, run, bark, bark, bark, bark.

But my fiance... her name is Audrey... she came up with something that was a brilliant idea. She would go out in the backyard when Buddy was barking and chasing the squirrel, and she'd stand right next to the fence and look up like she's trying to find the squirrel, too.

Buddy's smart. He would run up to her and go, "Oh,

you're trying to help me. Where's the squirrel?"

She'd reach down and go, You idiot. I got you. You're done. All right." All right. Now, I'm watching this thinking the dog's smart. He's going to learn after about four or five times that, "No, this is stupid. I can't run next to her. She's just trying to catch me." I thought, "I'll get in on the act a little more. I did the same thing, but when I picked him up, I thought, I'm going to be part of the team."

I would actually pick him up and hold him up. And I can pick him up just high enough that he could take

his little paws on the edge of the fence, and he'd pull himself up like this... honest to God... and he could look

up and down the fence like this, looking for the squirrel.

And then he'd look over and look in the other yard.

Okay, no squirrel. And then I'd slowly lower him back down. And then we'd walk down to the edge of the fence.

Like, we're still a few feet down. I'd pick him up,

he'd do it again. Look, look, look. Eventually, he thought

I was part of the team. Fantastic. It worked. Three days later, I'm sitting on the couch. I look over at Audrey, and I go, "You know, that thing, picking him up like that,

that's working pretty well." She goes, "Yeah, it's working great." I go, Wonder what that looks like from the other side of the fence." Sure enough, honest to God, couple days later, get a phone call. "Hi, uh... Jeff, this is Bob from next door. "Hey, Bob. What's going on?" Um, I... I don't know how to say this, but, um... "my wife says that your dog is spying on her in the backyard." I'm like, "What are you talking about, Bob?" He goes, Well, I-I didn't believe her, "but yesterday, I'm out in the backyard watering the lawn, and sure enough, son of a *****... your dog is peering over the fence." I don't know how he does it, but then he lowered himself back down." I go, "Yeah, Bob."

He goes, "No, really. "And then, about 30 seconds later,

he's ten feet down the fence looking at me again."

And then he lowered himself back down."

I'm like, "Okay, Bob. I'll have a talk with Buddy."

And he goes, "No, no, it's worse." I go, "What's worse, Bob?" He goes, "Well, I think your dog's trying to kill us,

but he's not good at it yet." I said, Bob, what are you

talking about?" He goes, "Well, a few hours later, he's looking at me again, "but then he barked, turned his head sideways, winced, and an explosion went off."

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