Robin Williams brings the funny

Open heart surgery and a 35-city comedy tour might wear down some men, but this is Robin Williams, and nothing seems to slow this guy.

Williams thrilled a packed house Saturday night at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts with a high energy  — and definitely R-rated — show as part of his "Weapons of Self Destruction" tour.

Obviously having done some homework, Williams spent the first 5 minutes of the show focusing on Jacksonville, joking about everything from the fact that the St. Johns River runs north ("Some would say it's because Georgia sucks") to Northeast Florida's Tim Tebow fetish ("If the Vatican had a football wing, you'd make Tim Tebow a saint, wouldn't you?"). And the audience ate it up.

After that, the jokes came fast and furious, as Williams rarely seemed to take a breath. Flanked by two large video screens that occasionally showed members of the audience, he riffed on a wide variety of topics, including healthcare reform, Twitter, the recession, bailouts, Twitter, Michael Jackson and texting, to name a few.

And while political satire isn't his forte, he did have fun at the expense of the Obamas, Clintons, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush, although his Sarah Palin jokes felt a little stale ("If she can see Russia from her backyard, she must have great eyesight.")

But the best bits in this hour and a half show — the parts that kept the audience from catching its breath — were more, ahem, adult oriented, joking about the risks of Viagra and about how certain body parts must have been designed by a committee.

It was nice to see that after three decades in comedy Williams hasn't lost his edge.

This review was originally posted on October 18, 2009 on jacksonville.com - written by Jeff Reece.