Episode 15 · The GaS Digital / Ray Kump Era
The Pilot!
Oct 18, 2016 · 1:01:41 · 21 segments, 147 moments indexed
- 2 min
Cold Open: Meet Ray Kump and Dana
#Tim opens the show, introduces co-host Ray Kump (former morgue and jail worker turned comedian) and producer Dana, setting up the loose, joking tone of the episode.
3moments
- 0:10Tim introduces the show and his podcast.
- 0:55Ray Kump joins as co-host; Tim notes he's a funny comedian with unusual background experience.
- 1:20Tim claims he's a comedian, though admitting no one can prove it either way.
- 3 min
The Anunnaki, Ancient Aliens, and Why He's Not Going to Hell
#Tim and Ray riff on Ancient Aliens lore about the Anunnaki mixing DNA with early humans to mine atomic gold, spiraling into Tim's take that there's no heaven or hell and his own nature as a huckster who can't commit to any belief system.
7moments
- 1:46Anunnaki were a race of god-like beings that came to Earth and mixed alien DNA with animals to create a slave race.
- 2:20They needed monatomic gold because their planet got too hot and the gold would repel the Sun in their atmosphere.
- 2:50Tim questions whether his co-host is a psychopath for immediately pulling out the crazy card and making him look stupid.
- 3:06The Anunnaki mixed their eight-foot alien DNA with Australopithecine DNA to create modern humans.
- 3:35These documentaries are especially convincing at 3 a.m. when you don't want to live and you look around realizing everyone is just slaves.
- 3:53If humans are slaves created by the Anunnaki, then Tim isn't going to hell because there is no hell, heaven, or God.
- 4:09He admits he's a huckster and loves hucksters, and everything he's done—selling subprime mortgages and stand-up comedy—reflects that.
- 2 min
A Family of Hucksters: Tin Men, Con Artists, and His Dad's Photocopier Hustle
#Tim explains his love of con-artist movies like Tin Men, traces his family's lineage of salesmen (his dad sold photocopiers and wine, his grandfather ran a construction company), and frames the baby boomer generation as reckless hucksters.
5moments
- 4:20Tim's favorite character in The Wizard of Oz is the wizard himself, a complete huckster.
- 4:35Con artists and scam artists are underrepresented in movies and should be exalted more.
- 4:52Tin Men, starring Danny DeVito and Richard Dreyfus as aluminum siding salesmen, is one of Tim's favorite films.
- 5:07Tim's father was a huge fan of Tin Men and also sold photocopiers as a hustle.
- 5:31Baby boomers made great music and had great drugs, but you didn't want to leave them in charge of anything.
con artistsTin MenThe Wizard of OzDanny DeVitoRichard Dreyfus
- 3 min
Dad's Wine Sales Accent Routine
#Tim describes in detail how his father mimics the accent/ethnicity of whichever customer he's selling wine to, especially an Indian shop owner named Vishy, comparing it to a hacky comedian's bit that somehow works on customers.
8moments
- 5:45Tim's father is a wine salesman who mimics the accent of whoever he's selling to.
- 6:01The routine: his dad does a broken Irish accent as his baseline, then shifts into an Indian accent when talking to a customer named Vishny.
- 6:28Tim demonstrates how his father starts laughing for no reason in the middle of the sale, like a demented Santa Claus.
- 7:03The customers have no idea what's happening but they love it and think it's great.
- 7:30Tim compares his father's routine to a bad comic doing a hacky impression in a Chinese restaurant, yet somehow the audience breaks up.
- 8:01His father keeps repeating "You want that shot in the head?" as part of the sales pitch.
- 8:24Tim hopes his father doesn't actually use accent mimicry as a deliberate sales strategy and that it's just natural empathy.
- 8:40The whole thing is apparently driven by his father's gregarious personality rather than any conscious technique.
Tim Dillon's FatherVishne
- 2 min
Dad's Full-of-Shit Behavior at Grandma's Wake
#Tim recounts his father showing strangers photos of his new dog at his own mother's wake, deflecting attention from grief, and reflects on his dad's failed music career and lukewarm support of Tim's comedy.
7moments
- 8:49Tim's dad shows strangers pictures of his new dog at grandmother's wake instead of discussing the deceased.
- 9:05The dog pitch: dead old dog Lucy, new dog Ruthie won't wake up without stomach rubs, people in tears.
- 9:17Grandmother was beloved in her community, held in highest regard by everyone who knew her.
- 9:30Tim diagnoses his father as a psychopath because no one's focusing on him at the wake.
- 9:49Father's response to Tim's comedy career: supportive but dismissive, framing it as trying rather than actual success.
- 10:08Tim's dad was a talented musician and singer who people said could have gone much further professionally.
- 10:23He had me, you know, life is what it is — Tim acknowledges his father's sacrifices for family.
- 2 min
Long Island Bar Culture and the Underground Economy of the 90s
#Tim and Ray reminisce about the cash-based, credit-free underground economy and mob-adjacent bar culture of Long Island in the 90s, contrasting it with Giuliani/Bloomberg-era gentrification, then traces his hustler grandfather's rise from pool shark and bricklayer to construction company owner.
7moments
- 10:36Tim's father had a band and made a living playing music for about a decade in a weird Scottish accent that nobody understood.
- 11:04In the 90s and early 2000s, people in bars were getting fucked up, doing drugs, smoking cigarettes, living on couches and renting rooms, spending cash with no credit checks.
- 11:19Now landlords in Williamsburg demand six months of bank statements just to sleep on someone's couch for $900 a month, whereas in the 90s nobody gave a shit.
- 11:34The underground economy back then was partly run by the mob, and Giuliani ruined the city when he came in and started cleaning it up.
- 11:48Tim's grandfather came over from Ireland at four years old and worked his way up from construction to owning his own general contracting company.
- 12:23His grandfather grew up so poor in Rockaway Beach, Queens during the Depression that his family would move every time the rent was due.
- 12:35His grandfather had stories about stealing soda and bread off trucks and running around with mobs of kids.
BloombergGiulianiRockaway Beach, QueensWilliamsburgLong Island
- 3 min
Grandpa the Pool Hustler and Being 'The Street Guy'
#Tim details his grandfather's pool-hustling past and shame about it, contrasts it with his own comfort embracing hustler/scumbag energy, and connects it to his dad's recent jab calling him a 'street person' during a tax conversation, plus warnings from childhood about ending up like blue-collar workers.
8moments
- 12:52Tim's grandfather worked his way from bricklayer to company owner by asking who did less work at each level.
- 13:14Tim's father was embarrassed about the grandfather being a pool hustler, which Tim sees as shameful given how cool that actually is.
- 13:37Tim's father tweeted for Gawker, a celebrity gossip site, while the grandfather hushed and made money as a pool player—so Tim comes from a line of hustlers.
- 14:18Tim's father flipped out over a tax return question and told Tim he's a street person and a hustler, the opposite of everything the father tried to teach him.
- 14:44Tim's grandmother used to point at construction workers and tell him not to end up like that, not realizing they made $100 an hour.
- 15:13Tim's parents had no idea how far down their family could fall from the middle class, imagining a much higher bottom than reality.
- 15:31Some LA comics are hucksters who don't care about comedy, just want TV fame, and know there's no foundation to their act.
- 15:57Tim respects the hustle of those LA comics even if he doesn't respect them as comedians, because he loves slime.
- 3 min
Ray's Speech Impediment and the DWI Stop from an Open Mic
#Tim needles Ray about his mild speech impediment before Ray tells the story of getting pulled over driving home from a Long Island open mic on a suspended license, expecting to go to jail, and getting let off after mentioning he works in a morgue.
7moments
- 16:18Ray has a slight speech impediment he never learned to speak properly.
- 16:50Ray thinks he doesn't pronounce his R's properly and attributes it to having a small tongue.
- 17:16Tim says Ray always sounds a little buzzed, like he's had one beer and is slurring.
- 17:30Ray got pulled over by a cop after leaving an open mic on Long Island and swerved out of his lane.
- 17:53When the cop asked where he was coming from, Ray's slurred speech made Tim think they were going to jail.
- 18:16Ray invokes white privilege as the only reason they weren't arrested during the DWI stop.
- 18:26Ray told the cop he worked at the morgue, and the officer let him off with a warning instead of arresting him.
- 2 min
In the Fox News Red Eye Green Room
#Tim describes appearing on Fox's Red Eye at 3am, the surreal panel mix of pundits and 'info babes,' and needling gay conservative pundit Guy Benson about a Hugh Hewitt conservative cruise for elderly Fox fans.
7moments
- 19:06Tim's doctor, a conservative Filipino man watching Red Eye at 3 a.m., thinks it's news rather than comedy because it's not actually funny.
- 19:26Red Eye panels pair Tim with incongruous guests—ambassadors to the U.S. next to hot Fox contributors who shouldn't be on the same stage together.
- 19:42Fox women are always attractive but lack real expertise; they talk fast and stick to talking points even in private green room conversations.
- 20:12Female Fox contributors need to hit screen-time quotas each month, so they clock in for shows like Red Eye that nobody actually watches.
- 20:26Tim describes his actual green room lineups: Dennis Prager, a legendary conservative torture host, alongside Guy Benson, a gay conservative.
- 20:42Tim distinguishes himself from conservative labels—he's not ashamed like some liberals, but rather a gay criminal whose values occasionally align with conservative ones.
- 20:54While in the Fox News green room, Tim remarked that he likes Hillary Clinton because she's a big crook.
- 3 min
Trolling the Green Room: 'Hillary's a Crook' and 'I Kind of Like ISIS'
#Tim recounts bombing in the green room with Guy Benson, riffing on Peggy Noonan, and deliberately provoking Dennis Prager and others by praising Hillary as a lovable crook and joking he thinks ISIS is 'kind of cool,' all while manically eating brownies.
8moments
- 20:59Guy Benson is a gay conservative with the personality of driftwood.
- 21:28Tim jokes with Benson about his experience on Hugh Hewitt's conservative cruise full of elderly people and pundits.
- 22:08Benson doesn't laugh when Tim asks if he hooked up with anyone on the cruise or 'got any geriatric dick.'
- 22:49Dennis Prager's wife finds Tim hilarious while he rants about deer destroying cars on Long Island.
- 23:19Tim says 'I love Hillary, she's an old crook' and the room goes silent.
- 23:33Tim admits he eats a full meal of brownies and coffee in the green room before taping.
- 23:46His family inherited eating fast from his grandfather; combined with his manic nature, he eats like a psychopath while talking.
- 24:03Tim repeats the Hillary line while shoving brownies in his face, saying he loves crooks because they know where the bodies are buried.
Guy BensonHillary ClintonHugh Hewitttownhall.comPeggy NoonanDennis PragerRonald Reagan
- 4 min
Fox News Boredom, the Bush/Saudi Hypocrisy, and Selling Subprime Mortgages
#Tim complains that political partisans on both teams have no sense of humor about their own hypocrisy (attacking Hillary while cozying up to the Saudis), then pivots to his own subprime mortgage sales past and watching The Big Short with Ray.
7moments
- 24:18Tim jokes about finding ISIS compelling as a multimedia operation, like a 1980s action movie villain.
- 24:53Fox News crowds can't have fun with politics—everyone's locked into their red-team versus blue-team narrative.
- 25:16Bush family treated as boy scouts while Hillary's a crook, but they're all crime families and gangsters.
- 26:26Conservatives attack Hillary but then crawl into bed with the Saudis—the hypocrisy is fun to point out.
- 27:00Watching The Big Short made Tim want to go back into mortgage sales because it looked like so much fun.
- 27:21Selling subprime mortgages—Tim took one himself, house foreclosed, no debtors prison, everyone thought it would work out.
- 27:34Tim borrowed an extra hundred grand on his mortgage, used it to fix up the house and party in Vegas.
Bush familyISISHillary ClintonFoxDennis PragerSaudi ArabiaThe Big Short
- 4 min
Eye in the Sky Trailer Breakdown: Drone Warfare as Hollywood Propaganda
#Tim and Ray dissect the trailer for the film Eye in the Sky, mocking its premise that the military agonizes over collateral damage from drone strikes, and riff on how casually real-world drone strikes actually happen versus how the public perceives drones as toys.
7moments
- 28:01Tim says movie trailers reveal what Hollywood thinks Americans will accept as meaningful plots.
- 28:23Eye in the Sky is a drone-strike thriller where the moral crux is whether to kill innocent civilians and a goat to hit a terrorist target.
- 30:26The entire film depends on viewers believing there's genuine national security debate about killing a couple of kids playing soccer—something the U.S. does routinely anyway.
- 30:42Tim imagines what the real movie would sound like: military operators casually deciding to drop the drone and clean up a mistake later.
- 31:07Tim watches the theater audience buying the premise as real ethical dilemma and notes how people only recently became aware of drones.
- 31:24Most people think military drones are toy-sized devices like the ones people fly in parks, because consumer drones are small and fun.
- 31:49Nobody understands that actual military drones carry full missiles and can decimate entire ecosystems, while consumer drones have made the technology seem playful and harmless.
Eye in the SkyHelen MirrendronesThe Big ShortOutbreak
- 5 min
Dirty Wars, Drone Strikes as Propaganda, and Hollywood's Moral Dilemma Formula
#Referencing the documentary Dirty Wars and Jeremy Scahill, Tim argues real drone warfare radicalizes victims' families, connects it to a shift in conservative foreign policy from Bush-era interventionism toward Trump-style isolationism, and mocks Hollywood's habit of giving 'good guys' just one bad decision instead of showing sustained monstrous behavior.
12moments
- 32:05Movies about drone strikes become people's primary source of understanding the subject, shaping their beliefs about civilian casualty minimization.
- 32:25Tim questions whether the CIA is literally writing these films.
- 32:37Collateral murder footage showed civilians being blown up while operators said to blow it up anyway, then the Pentagon covered it up completely.
- 32:53Tim and Ray found it absurd that military decision-making is portrayed as complex deliberation when in reality it's just one person saying blow it up.
- 33:29Most people build their worldview based on movies without realizing it's happening.
- 33:40Eye in the Sky is an Orwellian title that frames surveillance and killing as benevolent oversight.
- 34:29Dirty Wars documents Afghan families whose children were playing soccer when they got blown up, then those people hate America—and why wouldn't they?
- 34:50Conservatives will blame madrasas for poisoning minds against America while ignoring torture on TV and drone strikes killing civilians.
- 35:17Pat Buchanan's isolationist conservatism of the 90s is being resuscitated by Donald Trump, offering an alternative to neoconservative interventionism.
- 36:16Hollywood uses a formula where a good person has to do one shady thing as a moral dilemma, when the reality is years of exploitation every single day.
- 36:30Tim criticizes the moral dilemma framing of Hollywood success stories, using crude hyperbole about the actual sustained degradation required.
- 36:44Tim emphasizes that exploitation isn't a one-time choice but continuous abuse that damages people permanently.
Dirty WarsDonald Trumpdrone strikesEye in the SkyGeorge W. BushPat BuchananPaul WolfowitzJeremy Scahill+3 more
- 4 min
Grandmother's Botched Hospital Procedure and Institutional Trust
#Tim tells the story of doctors puncturing his grandmother's esophagus during a routine test at a top hospital and downplaying it, using it to argue institutions like hospitals and Fox News are a mix of good and bad, and laments that nobody in politics or public life has any fun or personality anymore.
9moments
- 37:30Tim's grandmother had her esophagus punctured during a routine test at St. Francis hospital, and doctors initially tried to hide it.
- 38:02When confronted about the puncture, doctors casually admitted they usually make this mistake in the lower right area.
- 38:24Fox News serves an important function in the media balance against MSNBC, presenting a necessary point of view.
- 38:37Nobody's fun during election season—everyone posts seven-paragraph status updates trying to change minds instead of having real conversations.
- 38:54Tim would be impressed if Bernie Sanders and his supporters coalesced into an actual movement instead of just dropping out quietly.
- 39:11Public figures used to get drunk in public all the time, like Hitchens and William Buckley, but now we're trying to eliminate characters.
- 39:27Popular culture is now populated by bland, homogenous people afraid of saying the wrong word, worried everyone disagrees is sexist or racist.
- 39:58Tim grew up around characters—drunks, drug addicts, thieves, liars, degenerates—great people you learned a lot from and had to watch your wallet around.
- 41:00Tim used to hang out in crack houses and spent a decade doing acid, ecstasy, LSD, shrooms, morphine, ketamine, and snorting cocaine.
Fox NewsBushwick, BrooklynWilliamsburgMSNBCSt. FrancisBernie SandersChristopher HitchensWilliam F Buckley
- 5 min
Growing Up Around Drug Dealers Renting Rooms in His House
#Tim describes his mother renting rooms to drug dealers in their middle-class Long Island home after his parents' divorce, treating it as a formative, community-building experience, and recounts hanging out in a neighborhood crack house doing various drugs as a young teenager.
10moments
- 41:18Tim learned about life and parenting from living around a crack house.
- 41:44Tim and his friend Shay had the nickname 'the two fat boys' given by drug dealers in the Bronx.
- 42:21A dealer told them: 'I don't hang out with anyone lower than me or anyone who can't do nothing for me.'
- 42:56At 13, Tim went to New Year's parties with big lines of cocaine while telling his parents he was at a friend's house.
- 43:24Kids with overprotective parents who know their whereabouts end up boring, but those good kids later go wild in high school and college.
- 43:41Tim came home coked out at 3 a.m. at age 14, and his mother caught him repeating 'drug addicts, alcoholics' over and over.
- 44:24Tim's mother didn't know initially what the dealers were about, but once they moved in and paid rent, it was hard to get them out.
- 44:58She didn't care about morality once the drug dealers started paying her rent instead of her living on the street.
- 45:37Tim says listening to other people's stories now feels bland compared to the real living and nightmares he experienced.
- 45:51He knew older people who had given up on life—people like Bud and Claire Munster, who became like second parents to him.
- 3 min
Nicknames, Getting Caught High by His Mom, and Bud the Boat-Wrecking Family Friend
#Tim recounts childhood nicknames, getting busted coked-out at 3am by his schizophrenic mother repeating 'drug addicts, alcoholics,' and pays tribute to family friend Bud Munster, who crashed two boats with Tim aboard and told him he didn't care if he lived or died.
9moments
- 45:56Bud Munster was an import-export guy who never worked a traditional job.
- 46:08Tim survived two boating accidents with Bud, the first throwing them onto a marsh.
- 46:21After crashing into a bridge piling, Bud told Tim he should stop hanging out with him because Bud doesn't care if he lives or dies.
- 46:44Long Island gin mills on the water represented a dying culture of guys who learned one way to live in the 70s and 80s.
- 46:57Those guys lived on drinking, partying, and cash—never had more than 500 dollars in their account.
- 47:48Tim argues that a guy carved out from belief in that lifestyle is very profitable but fragile in modern times.
- 48:05Such men live in fear that one mistake will destroy everything, pushing them into the woods running around.
- 48:40Tim claims successful people in comedy succeed because they can look at things many different ways, unlike people who need tunnel vision.
- 49:14A good friend of Tim and Ray's is James Baker's granddaughter.
- 3 min
Watching the Eye in the Sky Trailer Together
#Tim has Dana pull up the actual Eye in the Sky movie trailer so they can react live to its drone-strike moral dilemma plot, mocking its overwrought hand-wringing over collateral damage.
5moments
- 49:28Tim wants to watch the Eye in the Sky trailer because it's funny in a dark way.
- 50:26The level of confirmation military officials supposedly need before striking is absurd—they'll blow things up on a whim.
- 50:53A general came to witness a capture, not a targeted assassination, but the military pushes to fire a Hellfire missile immediately.
- 51:12The conflict escalates: officials argue the mission is at risk because of one collateral damage concern.
- 52:17Tim jokes that the drone could just as easily be over a street in Detroit and the response would be the same—blow it up, blow it up.
Dr. StrangeloveAisha Alhadi
- 1 min
Reacting to the Trailer: Dr. Strangelove Comparisons and Alan Rickman's Death
#Tim mocks a reviewer comparing Eye in the Sky to Dr. Strangelove, jokes darkly about Alan Rickman's death, and connects the drone movie's sanitized violence to real-world propaganda cover-ups like Abu Ghraib.
4moments
- 52:48Tim argues the movie's propaganda war logic: killing one kid while blowing up an entire country, then Alan Rickman dying as divine punishment for making the film.
- 53:06References Abu Ghraib and Seymour Hersh's allegations about US soldiers and unreleased vault video footage.
- 53:27Tim observes the absurdity of focusing collateral damage messaging around one girl doing a hula hoop.
- 53:40Tim calls the movie horrible, saying it represents what Americans are willing to buy as propaganda.
Abu GhraibGeorge ClooneySeymour HirschAlan Rickman
- 4 min
Money Monster and Hollywood's Fake Working-Class Sob Stories
#Tim tears into the George Clooney film Money Monster for its lazy 'noble janitor duped by Wall Street' narrative, contrasts it with the real complexity of financial crises like Iceland's, and rants about Clooney lecturing Americans about Trump from the Cannes Film Festival.
8moments
- 53:52Money Monster trailer depicts hardworking janitors duped by Wall Street villains who bought houses they shouldn't have, but janitors already have pensions and don't invest in the market.
- 54:32The movie shows a working-class guy with a bomb confronting George Clooney's finance guru character, with the girlfriend saying on the phone that the money was all they had.
- 55:19Hollywood sells these stupid narratives because it's the laziest writing—the girlfriend's line is exactly what they think working people will buy.
- 55:46Real issues like financial crises exist, but Hollywood filters them into oversimplified stories instead of letting people seek out their own answers and do research.
- 56:18Tim compares the 2008 crisis to Iceland's collapse, where everyone got free college and became bankers instead of factory workers, accelerating the same greed in three years.
- 57:01Greed isn't exclusive to Americans or rich people—it's human nature, and Iceland proved that when given the opportunity.
- 57:12Tim says he's sick of George Clooney making political pronouncements like his Trump prediction, telling him to shut up at the Cannes Film Festival.
- 57:48He wants Trump to win so celebrities making thirty million dollars a movie will finally leave the country after lecturing people, though they never actually do.
George ClooneyMoney MonsterWall StreetIcelandfinancial crisis
- 2 min
Watching the Money Monster Trailer
#They play and mock the Money Monster trailer itself, riffing on its clichéd hostage-bomb plot and Julia Roberts/George Clooney dialogue.
5moments
- 58:55Tim criticizes the Money Monster trailer for not committing to a real Jim Cramer type character.
- 59:26Tim questions whether anyone actually sounds like the antagonist in the film.
- 1:00:03Tim shuts down the trailer, calling it disgusting and stupid.
- 1:00:13Tim points out the security flaw: the bomber accidentally shoots his own foot.
- 1:00:24Tim criticizes the narrative as a stupid story about a blue-collar schmuck.
- 1 min
Closing Riff: Rubes, Hucksters, and Sign Off
#Tim wraps with a riff on New Yorkers being rubes who deserve to get ripped off, thanks Dana and Ray, and signs off encouraging listeners to embrace hucksters like his father.
4moments
- 1:00:35George Clooney putting it all on red because some guy said you're an idiot — you're a rube, basically watching The Price Is Right.
- 1:00:51New York takeaway Chinese food is bad, but complaining about it makes you a rube — there's a lot of stuff in the city designed to rip off and beat over the head the naive.
- 1:01:05Tim identifies what he's describing as egoism, which is what liberals hate because they hate nature and the ecosystem.
- 1:01:19If you see a huckster, go buy something from him and listen to his story — that's all he's got, and he's probably Tim's father.