Episode 27 · The GaS Digital / Ray Kump Era
I Love Cons
Jan 10, 2017 · 59:35 · 11 segments, 90 moments indexed
- 5 min
Confessions of a Habitual Liar: The Ashtray Voiceover Job
#Tim opens by confessing his lifelong skill at lying, including making up fake jobs for Uber drivers, and tells the story of the most degrading voiceover job he ever took: playing a talking ashtray that roasted smokers, sponsored by the American Cancer Society.
10moments
- 0:48Tim explains his philosophy on lying: practicing constantly for 10,000 hours to become skilled at it.
- 1:23In Ubers and cabs, he always invents a different job rather than admitting he's a comedian.
- 1:45Tim claims he'll make up being a doctor despite knowing nothing about medicine, just to test if he can convincingly discuss it.
- 2:01Lying without practice is like doing sit-ups once then taking your shirt off at the beach—everyone can tell you're unprepared.
- 2:33Social media has replaced the traditional rat—girlfriends' friends spotting you at bars have been replaced by Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
- 2:59He skipped an audition today because he wasn't quite sick enough, comparing actual illness thresholds to being unable to function.
- 3:39His last voiceover role was playing an ashtray that roasted smokers with shame-based insults.
- 4:00The ashtray voice-over was sponsored by the American Cancer Society as a shaming tactic against smokers on their breaks.
- 4:23Tim describes the peace smokers felt in those brief moments—the only quiet part of their day—before his voice attacked them from the ashtray.
- 4:45He ranks the ashtray job as one of the most disgusting things he's done for money, worse even than selling subprime mortgages or copiers to nuns.
American Cancer SocietyInstagramFacebook Messenger
- 8 min
Busted by an Eggplant Rollatini Instagram Post
#Tim explains skipping an audition by claiming he had a stomach bug, then getting caught by his manager after posting an Instagram video of the elaborate Italian meal (eggplant rollatini and more) he ate that same night, forcing him into increasingly absurd cover lies.
10moments
- 5:19Tim skipped an audition claiming he had the stomach bug, which he admits he likely fabricated.
- 6:12The idea of leaving the house making you feel sick is probably a disease more serious than a physical ailment.
- 6:32Tim claims he's used the stomach bug excuse to get out of three things in a week, despite never actually getting sick.
- 7:39Once he felt well enough to leave the house, Tim went to an Italian restaurant and spent $108 on eggplant rollatini, veal dishes, and ravioli.
- 9:03Tim bombed an ABC audition and made an awkward joke about 7-Eleven brookies to other actors in the waiting room.
- 10:03His manager confronts him: if you're claiming to be sick and can't attend auditions, you can't post eggplant rollatini on Instagram.
- 10:26Tim's defense is that half his Instagram photos aren't even real—he just reposts pictures people send him to build his brand.
- 11:05The manager points out that Tim uploaded not just a photo but a video of the restaurant, making the lie even worse.
- 12:00Manager worries: what if the director following Tim on social media sees him posting restaurants when he claimed to be too sick for an audition?
- 12:24Most people get caught cheating on someone; Tim got caught eating eggplant rollatini instead of going to an audition.
- 5 min
Ray Komp arrives and Tim recounts bombing a fake ABC network audition, admits he's a terrible actor who needs heavy direction, and the two riff about neighbors overhearing them rehearsing lines like 'I am Dr. Greep,' plus a tangent about a missing wallet accusation.
8moments
- 14:11Tim got ratted out by an idiot who told Brian about a bombing audition Tim didn't want to attend.
- 15:14Ray is very good at running lines and probably a good actor, but Tim is bad in a way that shocked Ray.
- 15:38Tim constantly talks about belonging on stage, but his acting is hampered by lack of direction.
- 16:11Ray almost thought Tim was being intentionally bad when running lines, because Tim goes into another mode instead of just being himself.
- 16:28Tim bombed an ABC audition playing an alien character called Dr. Greek.
- 16:45Tim and Ray were screaming practicing lines so loud that neighbors complained, probably thinking something weird was happening.
- 17:35Tim walked into the ABC audition not knowing his lines well enough, unable to put emotion behind them.
- 18:01The ABC audition was fake—just a screen test before pilot season to consider Tim for whatever two roles they put fat people in.
- 10 min
Thomas Friedman's Word-Salad Genius
#Tim and Ray dissect clips of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, mocking his empty buzzword-laden speeches (AI into IA, the world going from 'connected' to 'hyperconnected' to 'interdependent'), his massive Wembley-style paid talks, his claim that dairy farm kids need computer science degrees, and his self-mythologizing about how 'politics worked' in his childhood.
10moments
- 19:08Tim thought Thomas Friedman was a crank, but admits he used to quote him.
- 19:35Started watching Friedman's speeches because he doesn't understand how this guy works—does an hour while others do two.
- 20:25Friedman gets to talk everywhere and Washington loves what he writes, yet he's on every side of every issue saying nothing real.
- 20:46Friedman speaks in weird riddles, like 'globalization is a process that occurs when two parties get together and love each other.'
- 21:09Tim watched Friedman clips last night and couldn't figure out if he knows he's just stringing together words.
- 21:53Friedman's realized his talent because he's not saying anything—plays UN speech where he discusses AI replacing cow milk.
- 24:21Friedman admits on stage that if he'd been more honest, his book wouldn't have sold 4.5 million copies in 42 languages.
- 25:16Friedman reads from 2004's World is Flat index to note what didn't exist: Facebook, Twitter, the cloud, 4G, LinkedIn, Big Data, Hadoop, Skype.
- 26:39Tim read Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes right after 9/11 when he was high and thought it was great.
- 28:18Tim suspects Friedman might be a con artist—a guy with a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion who says absolutely nothing but sounds profound.
Thomas FriedmanRay KurzweilDexter FilkinsMySpaceBarack Obama
- 1 min
Charlie Rose Clip Transition
#A brief transition moment cueing up another Friedman clip with Charlie Rose about the 2008 recession.
1moment
- 28:45Tim transitions to playing a Charlie Rose clip, dismissing the previous segment as complete horseshit
- 7 min
Friedman's Recession Metaphors and the Parking Attendant Story
#More Friedman mockery continues, including his moving-sidewalk recession metaphor, his story about a parking attendant's blog inspiring his book, and a detour into defending celebrities' right to speak politically (Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes) against conservative complaints.
10moments
- 28:57Tim describes the 2008 recession as a moving sidewalk at an airport suddenly accelerating from 5 mph to 35 mph, leaving people dislocated and unable to adapt.
- 29:44Political systems froze up right when that acceleration happened, and people became lost because they had to start running just to keep up.
- 31:11Friedman's book 'Thank You for Being Late' was inspired by being late to meet a parking attendant who asked him to read his blog.
- 31:52Friedman uses the parking attendant encounter to argue that systems are evolving and outpacing the need for human invention.
- 32:31Friedman claims his politics emerged from growing up in Minnesota in a time and place where politics actually worked, not from any philosopher or book.
- 33:15Tim points out Friedman grew up in the 1950s-60s when JFK was being assassinated, asking what era he's actually describing as functional.
- 33:50Tim mocks Friedman's nostalgia by listing the actual political dysfunction of that era: FBI blackmail, FBI interrogation, assassination of anyone with different ideas.
- 34:17Friedman discusses climate change resilience and propulsion, then reveals he interviewed Mother Nature, who is 3.8 billion years old.
- 35:23Tim notes that Friedman's statements are so generic they could be plugged into anything—just say people need to be adaptive and love diversity.
- 35:38The absurdity of Friedman's framework reaches peak comedy when applied to climate change: "What do you need with climate change? Hey, you need a coat."
- 7 min
David Icke's Wembley Lizard Speech
#Tim and Ray move on to mocking conspiracy theorist David Icke's rambling two-and-a-half-hour Wembley Stadium show, his inspirational-poster style truisms about the world being 'mad,' and his soccer reminiscences mixed with lizard-people theories.
11moments
- 36:16David Icke discusses robotic cow milkers replacing dairy farm workers in upstate New York, claiming they now need computer science degrees.
- 36:58Tim points out the absurdity of pitching automation to UN ambassadors from war-torn countries that don't even have cows.
- 37:30No kid in Buffalo ever dreamed of working on a dairy farm, even when that was an actual job option.
- 37:49Tim describes Icke as a folksy globalist, the Norman Rockwell of depopulation.
- 38:13Conservatives complain about celebrity politics while having a celebrity president, which makes the free speech argument incoherent.
- 38:46You can't claim to be the free speech people if you don't want Meryl Streep to say things that upset you.
- 39:19Meryl Streep's Golden Globes speech was dumb, claiming the press and actors are vilified and that immigrants make all the great films.
- 40:14Tim addresses the Trump disabled reporter impression claim, noting he does that gesture constantly to signify many things, not necessarily mockery.
- 40:55Bad comedy results when everybody's lined up on one side politically, and activists who never help anyone think tweeting is activism.
- 41:41A show fan wants to get David Icke on the show but got his number the wrong way, so Tim offers to do it for lizard defense charity.
- 42:23David Icke's Wembley speech opening features him insisting he's not crazy while everyone else is.
- 8 min
More David Icke: Cosmic Lizards and Carlin Ripoffs
#Continuing the Icke bit, they play more clips of his 'closed off from cosmic awareness' lizard theories and note he closes his show with what sounds like a stolen George Carlin quote about speaking truth.
11moments
- 43:21David Icke's stadium entrance: bowing at Wembley after a two-and-a-half-hour set despite being worth ten million dollars.
- 44:23Icke forgets his cosmic conspiracy narrative to reminisce about playing five-a-side football in 1967 and getting beaten 3-0 by Manchester City.
- 45:31Tim notes Icke's actual opener at Wembley: 'The world is mad. That's it. That's the breakthrough—you're not crazy, the world is.'
- 46:24Tim admires the grift: 'I've never loved anything more than a con, complete pandering—it's a different type of con.'
- 47:00Icke relies entirely on inspirational quotes, reading 'It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society' at Wembley Stadium.
- 47:39For ticket money, audiences get an hour of him reading what amounts to high school motivational posters about sunsets and integrity.
- 48:52Icke pivots to 'cosmic communication' research and describes 'walls of illusion' but offers no actual evidence or specifics.
- 49:43Tim: 'As a rational person, you don't go, All right, they're buying people lizards—fill in the gap.'
- 50:23Two hours of Icke at Wembley and Tim never sees a single lizard, just quotes from William Blake and George Carlin.
- 51:02Icke stops delivering the lizard material altogether—after ten years, no new subspecies or actual claims, just brief video clips of someone's eyelids changing color.
- 51:18Tim: 'Give us the lizards. That's why they're paying the money'—Icke's abandoned his own hook.
David IckeGeorge CarlinWembley StadiumWilliam BlakeManchester CityChelsea
- 4 min
Ray describes his Eagle Scout community service project, the 'Vial of Life' program handing elderly people tubes with medical info to store in their fridge, and how it scared and confused senior citizens who thought their organs were being harvested.
7moments
- 52:10Tim earned his Eagle Scout by age 17 or 18 after starting in cubs in first grade.
- 52:40His Eagle Scout project was called the Vial of Life Program—a tube containing medical information for elderly people in emergencies.
- 53:17Tim admits it was a horseshit project and that he wasn't building anything because he was a fat kid.
- 53:30He assembled the packets with other kids in a church and went door-to-door handing them to old people who didn't understand what they were.
- 53:58The pitch was confusing: kids tried to explain that old people should fill out the tubes for when they were about to die.
- 54:17One elderly person saw the cooler of water for the kids and thought Tim's group was there to harvest their organs, started screaming.
- 54:36A fire department official later told Tim's mom they had no idea what the Vial of Life program was.
Peter Luger'sWilliamsburg Savings Bank
- 2 min
Ray recalls his childhood best friend in Scouts, a genuine sociopath who carried hatchets and knives, threatened and cornered other kids, and was eventually kicked out — Ray reveals the friend is now a working comic.
6moments
- 55:11Tim befriended a literal sociopath in Boy Scouts who walked around threatening people with hatchets held to their necks.
- 55:26The kid carried hatchets and pulled them up to people's throats; nobody kicked him out immediately.
- 55:39They got Swiss Army knives together and once bought a butterfly knife in Boston that the kid constantly flicked around.
- 55:55At summer camp, they used flashlights to beat up other kids, though Tim says they got beaten up too.
- 56:35During regular school meetings, he cornered kids in bathrooms holding knives to their necks, taunting them as "rich fucks" and poking them.
- 56:47Tim reveals the hatchet-wielding Scout sociopath is now a working comic doing great.
- 3 min
Tim wraps the show teasing more Boy Scout stories to come, plugs Ray's social media, promotes his DC shows and website, jokes about a listener offering to drive them to a pizza buffet, and closes with a bit about maybe doing a dark web episode.
6moments
- 57:25Tim asks for iTunes ratings and reviews, noting that many podcasts beat them every week on the charts.
- 57:57Tim announces tour dates: the Big Hunt in Washington, DC on Friday and Saturday this weekend.
- 58:08Ray's Twitter handle is @Raycomp, and he mentions a Ray Compton Eagle Scout Facebook thing that will get you arrested.
- 58:41Someone suggested doing a dark web episode; Tim and Ray joke about it being limited to guns and drugs only.
- 59:04Tim defends a human trafficking joke, saying it's not getting any better but the audience should have laughed.
- 59:17The intro used to bother Tim, but it's growing on him now.