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JAY CRIDLINComedian Don "Wacky" Weaver's comedy show is on hiatus, but his passion for making folks laugh is not.
A man walks into a bar.
He's having a drink or two, listening to the comedian onstage, when his date turns to him and says, "I dare you to get up there."
The man, a former Marine who had just moved into the area, had never told jokes in the spotlight before. But he walks up to club's owners and says he'd like to give it a shot.
A few weeks later, he steps onstage for the first time as a comedian.
Ba-da-boom. Get it?
All right, so it's not exactly funny ha-ha.
But here's the real punchline: Seventeen years after that dare, Don "Wacky" Weaver of Riverview is still walking into bars - both as an owner and as a headlining comedian.
Weaver is part owner of the Brandon Brew House on Lumsden Road, as well as JW's Dining and Lounge, a bar and restaurant in Lutz. For most of the past seven years, he hosted Wacky Weaver's Comedy Club, a weekly stand-up show at the Brew House.
A few months ago Weaver, a comedian nearly half his life, shut down the Brew House comedy show.
"I knew once that smoking law went into effect, it was really going to affect us," he said. "I just went ahead and said I was just going to close down and look for a bigger place."
Sometime in the next year, he says, he hopes to find a place in Brandon where he can re-open Wacky Weaver's. Until then, he's taking a break from comedy.
"It's something that's in my heart that I'm never going to get out," he says. "It's better than any drug you'll ever do in the world."
A Michigan native, Weaver says he was always a "wisecracker," in school and in the Marines, where he was stationed in Japan. In his early 20s, he moved to Florida.
He loved comedy and was convinced he could do better than the amateur comedians he saw onstage. So when someone dared him to try it himself, he gave it a whirl.
His first night onstage at McCurdy's Comedy Theater in Sarasota was one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. He admits his first act wasn't too hot. But he got one big laugh near the end. He was hooked.
"I knew that I could go back, rewrite some material, and go back up there and do it again and be very funny," he said.
His act relied on interaction with the audience, so improvisation became a specialty.
"When you do off-the-cuff comedy, you don't think about it before you say it. Nine times out of 10, it comes out real funny."
He calls himself an "adult comic," tending to focus on the innuendos of relationships and everyday life. His comedy routines are often personal. During the 19 months he and his wife were trying to conceive a child, he focused part of his act on that.
"I'm not an Andrew Dice Clay, by any means," he said. "But I'm not a Bill Cosby, either."
Weaver so impressed Les and Pam McCurdy, the owners of the Sarasota club, that they invited him on the road with their comedy troupe.
"Did comedy in every state except Alaska and Hawaii," he says.
But it was a gig in Maryland that left the greatest impression on him. He met his future wife, Becky, during a show in Baltimore.
He owned comedy clubs in Highlands and Polk counties before coming to Brandon, where he established Wacky Weaver's at a restaurant on State Road 60. When that restaurant went under, he moved his weekly show to a sports bar he had recently bought into and renamed it the Brandon Brew House.
Weaver believes a comedy club can succeed in Brandon, even though he has had a tough time drawing headlining comedians in the past. "When you write a joke and the audience applauds," he says, "it's the greatest feeling in the world. Other than being married to my wife."
- Jay Cridlin can be reached at 661-2442 or cridlin@sptimes.com
DON "WACKY" WEAVER
AGE: 37.
HOME: Riverview.
FAMILY: Wife Becky, 37; daughter Brianna, 18 months.
FAVORITE COMEDIANS: Richard Pryor and George Carlin.
COMEDIANS HE'S WORKED WITH: Jimmie Walker, Jeff Foxworthy, Tommy Chong, Jeff Dunham.
BEER OF CHOICE: Bud Light.
SUPER SUNDAY: More than 350 people, including Weaver, piled into his Brandon Brew House for last year's Bucs Super Bowl win.
PREDICTION FOR THIS YEAR: "I believe the Bucs are going to go again."