Interview · moment 10 of 26
Comics Fleeing New York During the Pandemic and Facing Mortality
from #261 - Please, Die Alone | The Tim Dillon Show · #261
6 min
Guest
Tim and Canal discuss comedians leaving NYC during the pandemic to reconnect with family, thinking about death and comorbidities, and Tim's dark joke that his father and stepmother would rather he die anywhere but at their house.
- Tim stayed in New York during the entire pandemic while many comics fled home.
- Comics who left to reconnect with family and their original psychiatrists needed that self-esteem hit.
- The pandemic forced a reckoning with mortality in a way people had never considered before.
- Tim remembers the anxiety of hearing about comorbidities and realizing he was at risk—smoker, overweight, 36 years old.
- Kenny Ortega, a big funny comic who could kill in any room, died from COVID.
- Tim has no home to go back to, unlike many others, and couldn't have relocated anyway.
- His father and stepmother would have explicitly told him not to come home to die—to die alone instead.
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