Tim Franklin's Stand-up Set: Sprees

So-called "hack comedian" Tim Franklin has been working as a stand-up comedian for 15 years. He was a writer for Last Call with Carson Daly from 2006-2007 before being fired for missing too much work. Tim studied improv with the Improvsarios, the defunct Pasadena-based comedy troupe and bronze winners of the 1998 San Diego Hawlympics. Tim prefers to focus on his stand-up these days. He considers himself an "honest comedian" and draws all of his material from his life experiences to be more relatable to the audience. What follows is a notebook of jokes and sketches Tim has put together based around a single theme.

Hey everybody! Good to be here.

Any of you ever get fed up?

I do. Yesterday I got fired from my job at the Great Steak and Potato Company. GS&PC. One guess on what's wrong with the name of that dump.

My boss is this big, fat lesbian named Sue. Which is probably what I should have done instead of getting so mad. So Sue comes up to me and she says, "Tim, you're late to work every day, some of the girls have complained about your smell, and you brought a box cutter in to work today, so we're going to have to let you go." That ever happen to any of you? Yeah, it was just a mall job, but when I heard that something inside me snapped. Luckily I carry a .303 rifle and 8 extra magazines in the trunk of my car. I live in a rough neighborhood. Have you ever seen Mad Max? That's the rich part of town.

Did you hear about this? It was on all the channels.

I went back into the mall and started shooting. Any of you ever do that? I didn't just fire indiscriminately, I had a few rules. Number one, no hot chicks. Why would I shoot a hot chick?

Number two, no kids, unless they were identical twins, in which case I could kill one, because genetically identical twins are just creepy. I used to make my mom turn off the TV during the Doublemint commercials. I don't even like looking in mirrors. Also I read on a website that twins share one soul and it is therefore not actually murder to kill one of them.

Third rule is aim for the fatties. Sorry fat people, but you're like walking sand bag bunkers. When you start blasting away at a mob of people running around you need to take down the big ones first so you can aim for your real targets: employees of the Great Steak and Potato Company.

Do any of you guys use Twitter?

I am addicted to Twitter. One time I shot up a mall and then barricaded myself in the management office of a shopping mall, rigged the doors with homemade pipebombs, and took hostages. The SWAT team had arrived and so I was under a lot of pressure, which is when I work best on my tweets. Lot of solid Paul Blart tweets. A good tweet is sort of like a haiku or a koan. You can get a lot of meaning and humor in those 140 characters. Let me read you a couple of mine:

Wounded fat lady stuck on escalator. Rolling around at the bottom and crying. Where's Yakety Sax when you need it? #wooddale #sprees #tcot

Gun jams in Verizon store. No Verizon signal in my buried school bus full of guns. Symmetry? #wooddale #sprees #tcot

SWAT negotiator offers pizza to let wounded hostages go. Pizza Hut promotions getting desperate. #wooddale #sprees #tcot

I know, right? Pizza Hut would be lucky if I accepted a Meat Lovers for letting a doctor come in and take a look at the injuries. Not that I ever would. I've seen the movies.

Have you ever got yourself into a situation that you couldn't get out of?

I don't mean like an appointment you don't want to keep or something, I mean, like shooting 19 people with a semi-auto rifle and barricading yourself into an isolated part of the mall with hostages and only one entrance or exit. After a certain point your options are more limited than the Donnie Darko director after the weekend returns for the Box showed up in the trades.

Anybody ever commit suicide by cop?

I'm talking full on run at the cops shooting and screaming type of deal. Anybody? The thing about committing suicide by cop is it's way harder than you think. At least that's my experience as a white guy, I don't know about you brothers out there. Yeah, this guy knows what I'm talking about. Don't try this if you're black. The cops will shoot a white guy and then, as soon as they shoot you a bunch of times, they start giving you first aid. It's like, hey, make up your minds.

So I was at the emergency room last night. Any of you been to the emergency room since Obama's health care thing? It's wild. There were babies crying, old ladies, and about 500 cops. I was shot four times in the chest and they still made me fill out paperwork. I didn't have any insurance through GS&PC, but it turns out if you are shot by police the hospital is required to treat you. So the next time you have cancer my advice is get yourself shot by a cop and then knock out a doctor and steal his doctor coat and do your gigs. It will totally work.

If you're white.

Thank you! I'm Tim Franklin! Thanks for coming out!

Heckler Wreckers:

Buddy, close your mouth. I haven't smelled something that bad since I took a shit in the fry basket at GS&PC.

Very funny. Very funny, sir. Where were you when I was done reloading yesterday?

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my side act: the amazing drunk idiot. Are you a mall cop?

– Tim "Franklinstein" Franklin