A ventriloquist on CD or audio download seems a bit silly, but for the same reasons Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy were on the radio back in the '40s,
Jeff Dunham lands on an album in the 2010s. The comedian is just too successful to not land on the format, and like Bergen's characters,
Dunham's are so familiar to so many, they don't need to see the puppet moving to know what's up. In the case of
Minding the Monsters, it's Walter being the old, stick-in-the mud grandpa, Achmed being the angry, awful terrorist (opening his bit with "Good evening Savannah infidels!"), and Peanut doing the usual, wackadoo Honey Boo Boo-meets-Jar Jar Binks thing he, or it, or whatever, does. Big difference between this one and last time out -- 2011's Controlled Chaos -- is that here,
Dunham is acting like a comedy superstar, not in any cocky way, but he generally skips the setup since Achmed, Walter, and Peanut are like old, extremely popular friends to the fans. Still, it's just an audio rip of a television special, so think "souvenir" and "fans only." ~ David Jeffries