rant · moment 12 of 23
From Mortgage Broker to Comedian via Unemployment Insurance
from Underground Economy · #34
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
4 minTim explains riding 99 weeks of unemployment insurance while taking classes and starting stand-up at night after leaving the mortgage industry, contrasting his path with typical Long Island trajectories.
- 30:19Tim attended school for a couple years while collecting 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, then did comedy at night.
- 30:31Early comedy was exciting and fun but nothing was really going well.
- 30:49Tim asks about the gay scene at NASA and gets told it didn't have one, though they had a gay-straight alliance.
- 31:11The gay-straight alliance people were also a mess, nobody doing good there either.
- 31:21Tim was from a different generation—they were talking about coming out during a christening while he referenced the Broadway show Rent.
- 31:53One older classmate in his 30s had been in jail and was trying to get an education, but they never found out what he was in for.
- 32:30The really bad guys were just idiots—guys stealing credit cards and getting caught by the FBI for 10 years.
- 32:53Long Island breeds a specific type of dumb person, so dumb they could be doing a bit—completely unaware about elections.
- 33:20Long Islanders maintain their layer of dumb even when surrounded by information; they'll die before getting smarter.
- 33:40Long Island people eat Stromboli on a lawn chair in their backyard, going to see Good Rats or Billy Joel cover bands while doing coke with divorced gym teachers.