Episode 193 · The Ben Avery Era
#193 - Fun Easter Foods | The Tim Dillon Show
Mar 29, 2020 · 1:19:51 · 272,000 views · 23 segments, 163 moments indexed
Tim describes a perfect Easter lunch on this warm, uplifting episode of The Tim Dillon Show. Enjoy your Sunday!
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- 2 min
Wishing It Was 9/11 Instead of This
#Tim opens by nostalgically comparing the pandemic unfavorably to 9/11, arguing 9/11 allowed people to grieve together while COVID isolates everyone, and riffs on the misery of hitting a crisis in your mid-30s versus as a teenager.
4moments
- Tim wishes the current crisis was 9/11 instead, since at least then people could be together and hug each other despite the tragedy.
- The post-9/11 fall felt simple and purposeful—eating pumpkin muffins while discussing which towers to bomb next.
- A crisis hits differently when you're 35 and realize you're screwed, versus experiencing it at 17 when you still have time to learn and grow.
- Tim's friend group splits into two camps: those claiming the virus is fake propaganda and those desperate to catch it for Instagram attention.
- 3 min
Thomas Friedman, Church, and the Uselessness of Everything
#He recalls reading Thomas Friedman as a naive teen, then spirals into a nihilistic riff that nothing makes sense, everyone should do whatever keeps them sane (church, communes, Portland), and that statistics and people are equally insane, before mocking how terrible March weather always is.
7moments
- Tim read Thomas Friedman at seventeen and thought his vague platitudes about global connectivity meant something.
- Growing up he realized nobody understands anything about the world and life is just a waste of time.
- Articles, tweet threads, all of it are just something to do — nothing makes sense anymore.
- If you need the church or an anarchist vegan compound in Portland to stay sane, Tim won't judge you.
- People are genuinely insane — rubber room dangerous — and you share a country where they get to vote.
- The wealthy took the last flight out with all the money and left regular people standing on the tarmac with nothing.
- March is the worst month of the year — a rainy, allergy-filled hellscape of false hope and sickness.
- 2 min
You Need a Rich Friend to Enjoy Summer
#Tim jokes that summer only belongs to people with pools and beach houses, that public pools are disgusting, and that he'll shamelessly befriend rich people (even ones who profited off the pandemic) just to get pool access.
5moments
- You need to befriend someone with money to enjoy summer—go to their beach club or find a friend with a boat.
- Summer isn't for poor people; creeks are sewage now and public pools are disease-ridden.
- Tim will perform, tell jokes, and make anecdotes just for access to a rich friend's pool and cheeseburgers.
- You have to trade up in summer and ditch the losers in the sun.
- Public beaches and middle-class beach clubs are refuges for cops, firefighters, Italians, Irish, Jews, and WASPs—not for him.
- 3 min
Wanting a Photo Op for Charity
#He admits he wants to donate to coronavirus relief but can't find anything 'sexy' enough — he wants a glossy photo of himself comforting doctors and nurses rather than anonymously giving to a food bank.
5moments
- Tim explains why donating to coronavirus relief is difficult—they need supplies like masks and ventilators, not money, and he can't manufacture those in his West Hollywood apartment.
- He questions how sexy it is to donate to a food bank, admitting he wants to do something where he can show the world and inspire them.
- Tim describes his ideal charity photo op: standing outside Cedars-Sinai with two doctors and a nurse crouched on the floor, his hand on their backs, creating a glossy, sexy image.
- He acknowledges that wanting to be photographed while helping might make him a bad person, but he doesn't care—he wants pictures of himself helping in whatever capacity.
- Tim asks if there's a way for him to help that's a little sexy, with a photo op involved, and says he appreciates first responders messaging him on Instagram.
- 3 min
Boomers Are Unkillable and Will Never Let This Go
#Tim jokes that boomers have survived every disaster (9/11, financial crisis, cancer) and will treat COVID like a personal Holocaust story to lord over everyone forever, then mocks the death-toll predictions and complains about the glut of bad quarantine podcast collaborations.
8moments
- Boomers have survived every major disaster—9/11, the financial crisis, every kind of cancer—they're unbeatable.
- Tim dismisses the idea that COVID is the 'boomer remover'—some will die but the survivors will be insufferable about it.
- Boomers will talk about COVID the way people talk about the Holocaust, never letting it go and constantly bringing it up.
- They'll confront nurses saying they were on the 'front lines' of being racist in their own homes instead of at restaurants.
- Tim acknowledges the death toll projections may be revised down but respects people dealing with the crisis on the ground.
- His contribution to the pandemic effort: tweets, Instagram stories, maybe a TikTok dance, since he can't legally leave the house.
- Most shows right now are garbage with people on Zoom doing unfunny collaborations; his show is actually providing entertainment.
- Enough with guest interviews—comedians need to have an actual thought and articulate it instead of saving thirty colleagues from obscurity.
BoomersKrystal Nacht
- 3 min
Pandemic Friendships and Fake Relationships
#He warns against trusting new 'pandemic friendships' and relationships formed purely out of desperation and proximity, saying they won't survive once travel and freedom return.
8moments
- Tim refuses to collaborate during a pandemic, advising guests to retreat to their corners instead.
- Pandemic friendships are inevitable but temporary—relationships forged only in crisis often evaporate once normal life resumes.
- Real friendships require free association and the ability to walk away; desperation-based relationships don't count.
- Tim warns against getting upset when pandemic friends disappear after travel restrictions lift.
- Use both your head and heart when evaluating relationships formed during lockdown.
- Tim runs the weekly COVID totals: global cases, US cases, and deaths as of Thursday.
- He expresses concern about New Orleans being hit hard by the virus, calling it one of his favorite cities.
- Current figures: 532,224 cases worldwide, 85,594 in the US, with 24,087 deaths nationally and 13,000 globally.
- 3 min
Tim reads out global and US case/death totals, muses about morgue capacity and Italy's funeral crisis, and jokes about missing travel and being jealous that nurses and doctors get to leave the house.
6moments
- Tim questions why cities need frozen morgues ready if death tolals are only around 1,300 so far.
- The real expectation is this becomes so brutal and widespread that places like Italy won't even be able to hold funerals.
- Tim admits he's frustrated with social distancing and wants to leave his apartment.
- He spent the last decade traveling for stand-up comedy and complaining about how miserable travel was.
- Now locked down, he's fallen into the internet abyss and lost the real human connection he had after shows.
- Tim expresses envy of nurses and doctors who get to leave their houses every day during lockdown.
- 3 min
Should People on Ventilators Go Back to Work?
#In a dark joke about prioritizing the economy, Tim asks whether it's inappropriate to expect intubated patients to work, riffs on Chick-fil-A and Lee Greenwood patriotism, and needles Trump's 'churches full by Easter' comment.
8moments
- Tim asks whether it's inappropriate to suggest jobs for people on ventilators, arguing the economy is paramount.
- If someone is intubated and medically sedated, he questions whether there's genuinely nothing they could do to work.
- Trump's claim that churches will be full by Easter gets framed as potentially the start of an Easter Massacre.
- Doctors don't truly understand how the virus affects different people—it's unpredictable across healthy, unhealthy, old, and young alike.
- Joe Rogan sent Tim an article showing China lost 21 million cell phone users, which in a surveillance state is a major indicator.
- Chinese mobile subscriptions fell by millions across major carriers in January and February combined.
- Tim speculates whether the missing cell phone users mean China's actual death toll is far higher and they're running 24-hour crematoriums.
- Spain is now reporting more deaths than China, which doesn't make sense if China's official numbers are accurate.
Donald TrumpChinaLee GreenwoodJoe Rogan
- 2 min
Citing a Joe Rogan-shared article about tens of millions of missing Chinese cell phone subscriptions, Tim speculates that China is hiding a much higher real death toll and joking about crematoriums and being silenced for reporting symptoms.
4moments
- Tim calls bluff on China's COVID case numbers being lower than Spain's.
- China is disposing of COVID cases by throwing people in furnaces.
- In Chinese hospitals, report COVID symptoms and the military shoots you instead of a doctor seeing you.
- China has given up on coronavirus entirely and stopped reporting cases altogether.
- 3 min
Reopening the Economy vs. Endless Lockdown
#Tim goes back and forth on whether extended lockdown is sustainable, jokes about annoying dinner conversations post-pandemic, admits his income doesn't match his talent, and reads more state-level case numbers before pivoting to advising young people to move back home.
6moments
- Tim argues people can't stay home for six months; some people are fine with lockdown while others need to get out eventually.
- Choosing between dining with annoying people after reopening versus accepting deaths from the virus — those dinner companions would be unbearably brutal to endure.
- Tim jokes he'd rather the death toll spare people he knows and hit strangers or people who haven't done enough for his career.
- His talent level doesn't match his income — he should have far more money than he does, while he knows millionaires who can't spell their own names.
- Young people under 25 should move back home for 12 to 24 months to save money during this economic reset, with no shame in it.
- Tim explains he can't move back home because his mother is in a mental institution and his father lives with his wife — he has nowhere to go at 35.
- 7 min
9/11 Nostalgia, Consumerism as Patriotism, and Long Island Thievery
#He revisits how 9/11 made getting drunk and consuming patriotic, recalls stealing money from family as a Long Island kid, and predicts people fleeing cities for the suburbs and traditional life after the pandemic, with a warning to competitive comedians listening.
10moments
- Tim on the nostalgia of 9/11 as a time when being young and alive felt genuinely fun.
- Going out and getting drunk after 9/11 was patriotic duty—if you didn't, the terrorists won.
- President Bush told Americans to go shopping because consumption is patriotism.
- Tim lists the actual advice: buy a dress, get a car, a panini press, a waffle iron—gorge yourself because otherwise the terrorists win.
- Stealing money from parents on Long Island was part of the routine, especially from purses and mantlepieces.
- Long Island is full of klepto maniacs—people stealing sober, which Tim finds hilarious and deeply wrong.
- Jobs on Long Island exist through nepotism; you sit watching people almost drown at the Rec Center while your life becomes meaningless.
- Tim doesn't expect much will change in the country; people won't get serious about moving to suburbs or having real families.
- If you're going to move to a city and pursue art, you better really want it—because you could get stabbed on the subway.
- Tim predicts the pandemic will bring back the pull of traditional life: suburbs, property, real responsibilities, and escape from New York and LA.
- 4 min
Tim transitions into an ad for Hawthorne, riffing extensively on his blotchy Irish skin and stereotypes about Irish people before describing Hawthorne's personalized skincare/cologne quiz and giving the promo code.
9moments
- Tim explains why he needs people like Luis Gomez right now—they'll give you a ladder that breaks while you're dying, but it feels nicer.
- Irish skin is grotesque—red, scaly, blotchy—and no amount of weight loss or gain fixes it.
- Tim's emotions literally bubble up on his face as red dots because of his translucent Irish skin.
- He started using Hawthorne skincare, which has cleansers, deodorant, shampoo, and body wash made without drugstore chemicals.
- Tim was never a cologne guy but now likes cologne, and Hawthorne's personalized approach appealed to him.
- Hawthorne asks about your skin type, hair, work, climate, and lifestyle to tailor products specifically to you.
- If he told Hawthorne he's a gay drug addict sober ten years who bought a foreclosed house and lives in the underground economy with a schizophrenic mother, they'd still tailor something for him.
- Store brands like Cetaphil pump billions of gallons of generic gloop at everyone—Hawthorne offers a personal relationship instead.
- After just starting Hawthorne, his skin already feels lighter, more hydrated, and moisturized.
- 1 min
Ready for Quarantine to End
#A short transitional riff where Tim says he's ready for summer and the quarantine to be over, imagining awkward family phone calls.
2moments
- Tim is ready for the quarantine to end and tired of having to call his family to talk to them.
- He acknowledges the awkwardness of forced phone calls during lockdown.
- 4 min
The Correct Way to Serve Easter Dinner
#Tim lays out strict rules for a proper Easter meal — ham or lamb, au gratin potatoes, no chocolate desserts, no pasta — mocking anyone who violates the 'holiday menu' rules, with some back-and-forth bantering about the show's format.
9moments
- Tim describes his family split between Trump supporters and opponents at Easter dinner.
- Easter was never a holiday Tim loved because you don't get anything and the food isn't good.
- Easter requires the correct sides: au gratin potatoes, not mashed, and definitely not savage mashed potatoes.
- The main protein must be pink ham, lamb, or beef—a Chateaubriand or porterhouse—never fish or pasta.
- Proper lamb preparation includes a rosemary crust with garlic and herb au gratin potatoes and string beans.
- Easter desserts must be light pastry creams and fruit, never heavy chocolate which belongs in Easter baskets.
- Milk crepe cake—crepes layered with cream from New York City—is the perfect Easter dessert.
- Tim refuses to look at his co-host and complains about the studio looking like an adult tree house.
- Tim declines to read listener mail and dismisses the request with "I don't care what you say."
- 5 min
Stop With the Choreographed Quarantine Family Dances
#He rages at people posting cheerful choreographed family TikTok dances during the pandemic, calling it tone-deaf given people dying in hospitals, and contrasts it with his own family's more honest, openly hostile relationships.
8moments
- Tim tells quarantined families to stop posting choreographed dances while healthcare workers are dying of COVID in garbage bags.
- He rants about West Hollywood apartment complexes charging high rent to people who think living there makes them less of a loser than people in Kentucky.
- The core complaint: stop treating a pandemic as a snow day vacation when hospital workers are exhausted and struggling.
- Tim reacts to a TikTok of a family dressing up for the mom's birthday during quarantine to feel special.
- He tells them they're already the most privileged people in the world—healthy, employed, fed—and have nothing to prove by putting on a dress.
- Tim's cousin said this would never happen in their family because they actually hate each other and are honest about it.
- His family won't perform fake happiness like it's a snow day with matching socks and French toast in bed while people outside are screaming and dying.
- Many people are completely alone right now—elderly and terrified—while others dance on TikTok, and he's telling them to understand their luck.
quarantine content
- 4 min
Andrew Cuomo the Meatball and Biden's Decline
#Tim criticizes Andrew Cuomo's daily press conferences as empty theater, mocks his brother Chris Cuomo at CNN, and argues Joe Biden's cognitive decline disqualifies him from the presidential nomination in favor of Bernie Sanders.
9moments
- Andrew Cuomo is a meatball, though still better than Joe Biden who cannot be nominated—he has dementia.
- Cuomo delayed shutting down the city, then reversed course and got praised for making tough choices.
- Tim dislikes both Cuomo brothers and blames Irish and Italian thuggery for destroying the country.
- Why is Cuomo on TV every day with press conferences like he's running for president?
- People praise Cuomo simply because he can enunciate words—that's the standard now.
- Biden rambles incoherently while his aides like Symone Sanders knowingly run him anyway despite his brain rot.
- America is a dysfunctional failed state where the head of government can have dementia.
- The Atlantic published a hopeful article claiming kids will want careers in science and public health after the pandemic.
- Tim strongly doubts that optimistic Atlantic prediction about post-pandemic priorities.
Andrew CuomoJoe BidenChris CuomoSymone SandersBernie Sanders
- 5 min
Vegas, Dallas, and Austin — Travel Nostalgia With Ben
#Tim and Ben (in conversation) reminisce about Vegas, Dallas, and Austin as favorite travel cities, discussing Vegas's dual nature of love/hate, a running joke about pointing out random people to homeless-looking strangers, and predicting how Vegas will recover from the pandemic.
10moments
- Tim lists his three favorite cities to travel to right now: Dallas, Austin, and Vegas.
- Vegas is a city Tim has love-hate feelings about, shaped by a bad relationship that went wrong there in high school.
- Tim describes Vegas as a place that brings you face to face with who you are and what you're willing to do.
- At a restaurant in Vegas with comic Ty Rivera, Tim felt simultaneously in love with and repulsed by the experience.
- Vegas offers endless options—money, pretense, threesomes, gambling, shows—that create a unique atmosphere.
- Tim appreciates the freaks and night people in Vegas, the kind of characters who used to inhabit cities like New York before becoming hedge fund managers.
- Ben's recurring joke involves pretending homeless people are comedians, which gets funnier the worse they look.
- Vegas will survive economic downturns because it's a tough city with tough, slightly crazy people who tolerate risk.
- Tim finds Vegas interesting because it recovered from being crushed in the 2008 financial crisis, though the road back ahead will be rough for many places.
- Tim expresses skepticism about warnings that the economy's crisis hasn't even started yet, asking when the problem will actually arrive.
- 4 min
Reacting to a Drudge Report story projecting 80,000 deaths and a University of Washington model, Tim argues these ever-changing projections are useless to the public and questions whether a 90-120 day lockdown is even feasible.
6moments
- Tim questions the usefulness of COVID projection models that predict deaths will top 80,000 in the next four months.
- Data analysis models should stay internal to hospitals rather than being released daily to the news media.
- New projection models claiming the virus will crest in 2028 exemplify useless information instead of actionable guidance.
- Tim doubts whether a 90 to 120 day quarantine is economically or socially sustainable for the country.
- Eventually the economy has to reopen in small doses once there's a handle on the outbreak.
- People will be so traumatized by quarantine that when allowed out, they'll refuse to leave their homes.
University of Washington School of Medicine
- 7 min
Government Power Grabs Disguised as Public Health
#Tim delivers an extended warning about how pandemic emergency powers could be used to permanently strip freedoms, criticizes UBI as a tool of dependency, and argues both fascism and communism converge in taking away individual choice.
10moments
- Tim distinguishes between acknowledging the virus is real and recognizing how emergency powers can be weaponized against a population.
- Suspending rights indefinitely during a crisis sets a precedent for future government overreach under the banner of public health.
- Cities ticketing people for jogging exemplify how supposed temporary measures become real restrictions on everyday life.
- Publicizing that police won't prosecute petty crimes serves primarily to terrorize the public rather than solve actual problems.
- The balance required: acknowledge the virus without denying the economic shutdown is the largest in world history, and don't ignore the return to work that must eventually happen.
- The lockdown itself could become a bigger problem than the pandemic, giving government cover to eliminate the last remaining rights people possess.
- Universal basic income sounds good in theory but becomes terrifying when you can't trust the government using it as leverage to control where you live and work.
- A young person struggling with an unresponsive unemployment system gets a preview of total dependence on government for survival.
- Tim won't embrace Marxism or Sanders-style solutions because having the government provide every need means they get to decide what those needs are.
- Without the ability to earn, choose where to live, pick your industry, and save money, you've become a slave under whatever updated terminology applies to authoritarianism.
- 6 min
Soft Totalitarianism and the Media Cartels
#He describes a coming 'soft' American totalitarianism enforced through media conglomerates, tech platforms, and travel/industry restrictions rather than overt violence, name-checking Google, Facebook, Amazon and comparing it to post-9/11 Patriot Act overreach.
11moments
- Soft totalitarianism will arrive with entertainment and consumer goods, not violence.
- Citizens consume garbage media without power or ability to resist or leave.
- Workers, independent journalists, and ordinary people have virtually no power in the current system.
- Four or five media conglomerates control all information distribution channels.
- Tech cartels like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube control all online commerce and communication.
- American fascism will come as checkpoints and approval systems for travel, housing, and industries, not as visible brutality.
- The ruling class will decide what cars people can buy and where they can live while maintaining their own privileges.
- Pay attention to what's happening; leaders in precarious positions could act unpredictably and dangerously.
- Powerful people resent the internet's exposure of their crimes and would eliminate it if they could.
- After 9/11, emergency measures that made sense in fear became permanent tools of surveillance and imprisonment.
- The government suspended constitutional rights it was founded on and later admitted those powers should never have been granted.
- 1 min
Would We Get Numb to Coronavirus Like We Did to Terrorism?
#Tim jokes that just as people stopped caring about terrorism fearmongering after 20 years, the public may eventually become numb to coronavirus warnings entirely.
3moments
- Tim wonders if we'd stop caring about terrorism the way we eventually did about 9/11, even when hearing about terrorists.
- The same numbness could apply to coronavirus — the government just has to mention it and people will reflexively panic, then stop caring entirely.
- Tim notes you really don't know where life is going to end up; it's surreal and insane.
- 3 min
Life Online Is Not a Nice Place to Be
#Reflecting on doing the show from a bunker before it was mandatory, Tim argues that existing primarily online via Twitter, Instagram, and phones is unhealthy and warns of the psychological toll of forced digital life.
9moments
- Tim and Ben were doing a show in a bunker before the pandemic forced everyone online, preparing for what was to come.
- Existing online primarily is not a nice place to be — sunshine, live performance, and real human interaction are the things that actually matter.
- Don't give up every right immediately; think about where we're going and figure it out instead of accepting a digital world forever.
- The couch potato phenomenon of the 90s — people glued to TVs — is repeating with screens, and it's not a nice place to be.
- Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok cannot be your only source of human interaction and soul development.
- Ben points out that Instagram becomes useless when people can't leave their homes — what will they even post if there's nowhere to go?
- Living in your phone is not healthy; the entire setup feels designed to lock people into their devices as their only life source.
- When people are finally let out, they might not want to leave — they could be shaking in the corner because their phone became their entire existence.
- This psychological toll and trauma from forced digital living is what Tim worries about for society going forward.
- 2 min
Tim briefly plugs merch and Instagram/Twitter, offers to help first responders who DM him, then closes with an elaborate fantasy of being publicly celebrated as a hero at Cedars-Sinai, capped with a twist punchline about the virus being fake.
6moments
- Tim plugs merch and social media accounts.
- Tim solicits DMs from struggling first responders, offering financial help if they're legitimate.
- Plans to order food for a hospital coming up soon.
- Tim admits he wants to be photographed helping people in a public, verifiable way.
- Tim fantasizes about walking into Cedars hospital to thunderous applause and being called a hero.
- In Tim's fantasy, the hospital staff confess to him that the entire virus was fake.
CedarsLos Angeles