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Hey everybody.

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Welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few

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things, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown.

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I'm your host Dave and today I'm joined once again by the creator and CEO of Metazoo, Mike

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Waddell.

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What's going on man?

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Not much, not much.

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I appreciate you willing to do this so late, especially since you're sick.

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Yeah dude, it's fine.

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I got to take the day off and just kind of sweat it out on my couch, but you know, it

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is what it is.

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This is the life of a podcaster, you know, you got to work through the ups and downs.

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But how you doing man?

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You doing good?

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How's life in New York treating you?

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Yeah, you know, it's supposed to be winter, but it is 60 degrees and rainy outside.

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Yeah, I live in Philly and that's what it was like all weekend, it was just super warm

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and super rainy.

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I personally love the cold and I like when it snows.

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So I grew up in Brazil and we never got snow.

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So I love the four seasons and so it only snowed once last year and it was barely any

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snow.

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You know, when I moved to New York, I was promised, false prophets, that it would be

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like a snowy winter wonderland and magical, but it's just gross here.

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So anyway, it's what all the Hallmark movies promise that every winter is just snows and

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Christmas trees, but it's not.

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You know, I'm originally from New Hampshire, so we got all four seasons and then we moved

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to Philly and I was like, oh, we're not that far from the Northeast.

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Like it should, but no, it's been, I think it snowed once last year and it was like half

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an inch of snow.

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Yeah.

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So my disappointment is immeasurable and I'm very upset, but you know, I'm going down to

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Florida for Christmas at the end of the week and I suspect that of course it will snow

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when I leave.

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Oh, a hundred percent.

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That's the curse.

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That's always how it goes.

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So before we begin, I have a story to tell you real quick.

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Yeah.

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I don't know if you remember the last time you were on, it was like the sixth episode

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we ever did.

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It was like in March, I think.

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Yeah.

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Geez.

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So I think it was more just like discussing the story of Metazoo and it was chill.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But you want to hear a fun story.

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So after that video, that interview concluded, I was like super stoked.

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Like, hell yeah, I'm going to wake up in the morning.

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I'm going to edit it, going to put it out.

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And then that morning I go outside to get ready to go to work and my car is where I

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parked it.

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And I was like, oh shit.

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Maybe I got towed because I do park it in the back of a grocery store parking lot.

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So I called the number.

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They're like, we have no idea what we're talking about.

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Like you're talking about that car.

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Never even get calls for back there.

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And so I called the police.

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Turns out my car was stolen either during our interview or directly after we got talking.

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I'm not saying that I was involved.

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And, you know, but I'm just, you know, if I were to be involved, I was just there for

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distraction and I'm not liable for anything.

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Well, that's what I was like.

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He made me get my car down and he's the reason why my car is stolen now.

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But yeah, so it was like one of the best days of my life.

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Just followed up by like the most stressful two months of my life after that.

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But were you able to find it or did you file police?

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Oh yeah, I know.

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They found it two days later and it was completely totaled.

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They, whoever drove it, like was driving it over like fucking fire hydrants and shit.

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And they like they racked up, I think, like almost a thousand dollars in like red light

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camera bills that went to my house and I had to fight them.

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It was all bad.

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Geez.

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Yeah.

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I had a similar thing with my car, but it was my friends driving and my brother and

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racking up, you know, red light fines and stuff.

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So that was fun.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Geez.

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The price you pay for living in the big city, you know?

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Yeah.

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Right.

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Do you hear what they're doing with New York with the, I think it's like $17 every time

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you pass over or something like that.

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Yeah.

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The congestion lights or whatever the fuck.

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Yeah.

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Good Lord.

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That's gnarly, dude.

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That's fucked up.

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I don't know.

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Yeah.

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And so I'm never driving my car again.

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And yeah.

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Oh, hey, you know.

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All right.

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Michael, do you like Mike or Michael?

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I don't even know.

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Either or.

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All right.

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Michael, today I have an episode for you.

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Now I gave you two options before we started recording and you chose the first option for

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now.

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We'll see if it leads into the second one.

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But today I'm going to tell you, since it's Christmas time, one of my favorite Christmas

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cryptid folkloric tales.

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Do you know, are you familiar with any like, besides like Krampus, are there any other

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ones that you're familiar with?

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So I know some Brazilian ones.

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Okay.

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But I don't think there are too many here in the U.S.

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Are there?

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No, there's pretty much none.

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Yeah.

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I mean, other than like maybe the Dutch brought some over or something like that, but or maybe

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some down in Louisiana.

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But I'm pretty sure our Christmas folklorist is pretty much Santa and Coca-Cola.

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Pretty much.

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Yes.

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Well, today, Michael, we're going to be going to Iceland.

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Okay.

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So Christmas time, it's a magical time of year where we gather with our loved ones, celebrate

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the birthday of a demigod, get absolutely ripped on like spiked eggnog at the Christmas

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office party and partake in rampant capitalism just to, you know, end up disappointing your

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friends and family with a gift of like 7-Eleven scratch tickets you put in a car because you're

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too lazy to wait in line at Target.

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That's what Christmas is for me anyways.

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I don't know about you.

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But for the most part, Christmas time isn't supposed to be like a nightmare fueled murder

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fest caused by hideous monsters that want nothing more to do than like torment your children,

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at least not here in the States, like like we said.

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We've all heard of Krampus, the humanoid horned goat demon of Central and Eastern European

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folklore that likes to beat children with a switch and then put them in a wicker basket

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as he should.

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And then saving them for a late night Christmas snack or belchnickel of German and Pennsylvania

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Dutch folklore.

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So this one kind of is in the area and it was most famously played by Dwight on the

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office and that seems to be like a running theme in the stories.

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He also likes to beat children with a stick for misbehaving.

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But as far as I know, he doesn't eat them.

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So that's pretty good.

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That we know of.

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That we know of.

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But there is one folkloric Christmas entity that I think has been wildly underrepresented.

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And as far as I'm concerned, would have made a better horror movie than like Krampus did

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because that movie was hot trash.

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And that is the Icelandic ogres known as Gria and her 13 nightmarish children known as the

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Yule Lads.

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Are you familiar with them at all?

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Like the Skygramor?

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Like the...

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I think so.

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I've heard of the ogres, but not the 13 nightmarish.

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The Yule Lads?

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Oh man, we're going to get into it.

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All right, so Gria in Icelandic folklore was first mentioned in the 13th century in the

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Prósíða.

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But in this telling, she wasn't associated with winter or the holiday season at all.

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She was just like a big ugly troll lady that lived in a cave.

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It wasn't until around the 1800s that she was first associated with Christmas in the

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poem titled Poem of Gria, which got into the details of her and like her 13 children who

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were just the fucking worst.

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So Gria.

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Ugly descriptions of her and there are many descriptions of her throughout the years.

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Some say she has like two heads, 15 tails.

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She has like two eyes on the back of her head.

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I don't know.

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But this one source described her as an ugly, wretched giantess who lived in a small hut

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on the edge of town who would basically just mosey around the village and beg, trick or

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trade parents for their children so she could boil them alive and eat them.

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And the more that those children were basically just like little shits, the better they tasted

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to her.

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So.

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Oh, not much Christmas cheer in that.

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No, none of this.

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There's no we'll get into it.

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But most of these like monsterish Christmas creatures, there's like a reward and punishment

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system.

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With this, there's none of that.

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It's just all bad.

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So like we we get coal and Iceland gets a giant test, an ogress that eats your children.

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Yeah.

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You can barely get a Santa.

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But we'll get into that.

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Now it's said that she would be pleased with offerings of other food gifts.

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But for the most part, the townsfolk just didn't like the idea of a giant cannibalistic

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woman trying to eat their kids.

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So they banished her to the Dimur Borgir lava fields in Iceland's northern region.

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And just like Santa or Krampus or Belsknigl, Gria also has the ability to tell if kids

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are being good or bad throughout the year.

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And when the winter months come, she comes down from her lava cave to wander the villages

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that surround it to just straight up kidnap small children from their homes.

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So she can bring them back to the cave where she then boils them alive in her cauldron

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to make children stew.

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And like I was just saying, the thing about like Krampus, Belsknigl, those kind of things

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is that there's a punishment reward system in place.

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Like Krampus is Santa's right hand man.

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And then Santa rewards Krampus punishes Belsknigl is both.

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He goes, he does like both the rewarding and the punishing.

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Gria, no rewards.

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Just wants to straight up eat your kids and boil them into a stew.

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So where are we at so far, Mike?

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How you feeling about Gria?

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I'm glad that I'm not Icelandic for various reasons.

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But you know, I kind of like the cool system.

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I mean, it's good to have like a reward punishment system, but I feel like the murder of children

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is a little like.

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Yeah.

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I was I was terrified of getting cool as a kid.

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I can't imagine the existential of potentially being eaten in gory detail.

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Oh, geez.

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Oh, yeah.

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And we'll get into how fucked up it really is later on because there was a law put in

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place at one point.

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Well, I mean, like pretty metal that she lives in, like lives in the lava fields rather than

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like the forest.

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She's like, oh, yeah, no, my hut's in the lava fields.

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And the name of the lava field is Demi Borgir, which is actually the name of like a really

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like brutal satanic black metal band, which makes it even better.

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All right.

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So I think I need to clarify something.

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And I know I said that the more they misbehave, the better the kids tasted to her.

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But that doesn't mean she only took the worst of the worst.

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If your kid, for example, let's say just one time out of the year, someone sneezed near

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your kid and they didn't say, like, God bless you, fucking he's getting scooped.

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And she will take any kid who wasn't pretty much like a saint.

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And her goal is to get enough kids to make a stew big enough so that it lasts her the

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whole year until it's time to do it again.

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So she's basically this is like her meal prep phase of the year is just the Christmas time.

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She likes canning.

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She likes to can.

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Yeah, pretty much.

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She's a pickler.

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She's a jammer.

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You know, that kind of stuff.

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So where are the lads coming in?

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The Yule ads.

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Oh, man, we're getting there.

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So a fun fact about Gria is that for as hideous a monster she is, she did end up finding love

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a few times, actually, because according to legend, she and her no good lazy bones third

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husband named and I'm going to butcher this lapalootie.

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And he is the father to their 13 children known as the Yule lads.

247
00:12:14,560 --> 00:12:20,000
Now the Yule ads are basically 13 mischievous Santa Claus's that visit the home of children

248
00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:22,660
during the 13 days leading up to the Yule.

249
00:12:22,660 --> 00:12:25,040
So and each one gets their own day.

250
00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:28,540
So what happens is the children will place their shoes upon their windows.

251
00:12:28,540 --> 00:12:32,960
And for the good boys and girls, the Yule lad of the day like of today will leave candy

252
00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:35,480
or a small gift if they decide your kid kind of sucks.

253
00:12:35,480 --> 00:12:38,240
They'll stuff the shoe with rotting potatoes.

254
00:12:38,240 --> 00:12:40,120
So it's kind of kind of like coal.

255
00:12:40,120 --> 00:12:41,120
Right.

256
00:12:41,120 --> 00:12:44,800
But like most horrible things over time, they've been kind of toned down over the years from

257
00:12:44,800 --> 00:12:48,840
their origins, unlike Gria, who is still just like a straight up nightmare.

258
00:12:48,840 --> 00:12:52,160
Were the like were the Yule lads mischievous back in the day?

259
00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:53,160
Sure.

260
00:12:53,160 --> 00:12:57,480
Were they also unhinged, terrifying, hag looking monsters capable of theft, lewd acts and maybe

261
00:12:57,480 --> 00:12:58,480
murder?

262
00:12:58,480 --> 00:12:59,480
Also, sure.

263
00:12:59,480 --> 00:13:01,320
At least to the first two.

264
00:13:01,320 --> 00:13:06,160
And here's what sucks is I couldn't really find anything on how creepy they used to be.

265
00:13:06,160 --> 00:13:10,160
Just a bunch of like articles saying that they used to be nightmare fuel.

266
00:13:10,160 --> 00:13:15,840
But apparently that's because the stories were so frightening that in 1746, parents

267
00:13:15,840 --> 00:13:21,000
were officially banned by Icelandic law from, quote, tormenting their kids with monster

268
00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:24,160
stories about these particular creatures, end quote.

269
00:13:24,160 --> 00:13:28,640
So if anyone listening knows where I can find these stories, please email me because I need

270
00:13:28,640 --> 00:13:29,640
to know.

271
00:13:29,640 --> 00:13:35,820
It kind of goes to show like the the psychological terror probably had like a lasting impact

272
00:13:35,820 --> 00:13:37,480
on society.

273
00:13:37,480 --> 00:13:40,320
But what's wild is that that's in 1746.

274
00:13:40,320 --> 00:13:44,440
There's probably so much worse things fucking up your kids back then.

275
00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:50,440
Yeah, I mean, these stories and from like a I guess you could say like an anthropological

276
00:13:50,440 --> 00:13:58,160
or like a societal viewpoint, it probably gave parents an excuse to use their kids to

277
00:13:58,160 --> 00:13:59,160
probably.

278
00:13:59,160 --> 00:14:00,160
Yeah.

279
00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:06,360
And so I would imagine that that was kind of the reality of it, which is like some parents

280
00:14:06,360 --> 00:14:12,140
are taking this way too far and then using the sort of it being, you know, Christmas

281
00:14:12,140 --> 00:14:14,440
time and you lads say it's all good fun.

282
00:14:14,440 --> 00:14:16,640
Well, they probably did some pretty horrible things.

283
00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:17,840
Oh, 100 percent.

284
00:14:17,840 --> 00:14:19,640
But also at the same time, it's 1746.

285
00:14:19,640 --> 00:14:21,640
There was kids fighting in wars back.

286
00:14:21,640 --> 00:14:22,640
You know what I mean?

287
00:14:22,640 --> 00:14:27,240
Like I feel like people just not give a fuck about kids back then.

288
00:14:27,240 --> 00:14:28,240
Yeah.

289
00:14:28,240 --> 00:14:31,000
Being a kid, you know, one of my favorite.

290
00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:37,360
I've ever seen an interview with a vampire with it, like one of the my favorite quotes

291
00:14:37,360 --> 00:14:43,960
from it is like opening scene and Lestat is like I was 17 at the time and by then I was

292
00:14:43,960 --> 00:14:44,960
a grown man.

293
00:14:44,960 --> 00:14:50,480
And it's like, yeah, kind of, you know, back in the day, you were even before puberty.

294
00:14:50,480 --> 00:14:51,480
Yeah.

295
00:14:51,480 --> 00:14:56,560
Like depending on the household, you had adults duties even back then.

296
00:14:56,560 --> 00:15:02,000
Like you if you might have been a man at 17, but you were like a full grown woman at 13

297
00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:05,840
and like as soon as you could produce a child, you were like it was super fucked up back

298
00:15:05,840 --> 00:15:06,840
then.

299
00:15:06,840 --> 00:15:07,840
Yeah, I was.

300
00:15:07,840 --> 00:15:14,960
And you see like videos and photos of one and four kids like on the streets.

301
00:15:14,960 --> 00:15:15,960
Haggard.

302
00:15:15,960 --> 00:15:16,960
They looked so old.

303
00:15:16,960 --> 00:15:17,960
It's all right.

304
00:15:17,960 --> 00:15:21,960
Well, let's let you know, dive into something a little less sad.

305
00:15:21,960 --> 00:15:22,960
Sure.

306
00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:23,960
OK.

307
00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:24,960
All right.

308
00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:29,760
Well, today, the you lads, they're basically just like Snow White Seven Dwarves.

309
00:15:29,760 --> 00:15:33,040
And by that, I mean they have all the very distinct they have all the very distinct and

310
00:15:33,040 --> 00:15:38,240
very specific personality and a pretty on the nose name that kind of accompanies that personality

311
00:15:38,240 --> 00:15:40,720
like they like sleepy dopey, that kind of stuff.

312
00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:41,720
Right.

313
00:15:41,720 --> 00:15:43,160
So you want to find out what these dudes are all about?

314
00:15:43,160 --> 00:15:44,160
Yes, sir.

315
00:15:44,160 --> 00:15:45,160
All right.

316
00:15:45,160 --> 00:15:47,120
So we've got sheep coat Claude.

317
00:15:47,120 --> 00:15:51,640
His whole thing is that he likes to sneak into farmer sheep sheds and then suck on sheep's

318
00:15:51,640 --> 00:15:55,960
nipples and he also has a peg leg.

319
00:15:55,960 --> 00:16:01,560
Next up, we got Gulli Hawk and he enjoys stealing the foam from the buckets of cow milk.

320
00:16:01,560 --> 00:16:05,160
Now we got we got we got stubby.

321
00:16:05,160 --> 00:16:08,920
He's a short king that likes to steal food from frying pans.

322
00:16:08,920 --> 00:16:09,920
Spoon liquor.

323
00:16:09,920 --> 00:16:10,920
Pretty self-explanatory.

324
00:16:10,920 --> 00:16:14,520
He's a thief and likes to lick spoons.

325
00:16:14,520 --> 00:16:17,040
Pot scraper, a.k.a. pot liquor.

326
00:16:17,040 --> 00:16:20,600
Again, he'll steal your unwashed pots and lick them clean.

327
00:16:20,600 --> 00:16:21,800
And then we have a lot of these involved.

328
00:16:21,800 --> 00:16:22,800
Licking.

329
00:16:22,800 --> 00:16:23,800
We have bowl liquor.

330
00:16:23,800 --> 00:16:27,160
His whole thing is that he will steal bowls of food from out from under your bed, because

331
00:16:27,160 --> 00:16:31,640
I guess back in the day, Icelanders used to store foods like bowls of food under their

332
00:16:31,640 --> 00:16:32,640
bed.

333
00:16:32,640 --> 00:16:34,400
I don't know.

334
00:16:34,400 --> 00:16:36,480
We got a door slammer.

335
00:16:36,480 --> 00:16:38,200
This is the most annoying one, in my opinion.

336
00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:42,000
All he does is stomp around and slam doors all through the night like a bad roommate,

337
00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:45,120
just like keeping you up all night.

338
00:16:45,120 --> 00:16:46,120
Skier gobbler.

339
00:16:46,120 --> 00:16:48,160
He likes to eat your yogurt.

340
00:16:48,160 --> 00:16:49,920
Sausage swiper.

341
00:16:49,920 --> 00:16:52,720
Likes to eat sausage, especially stolen sausage.

342
00:16:52,720 --> 00:16:54,400
So he steals and eats your sausage.

343
00:16:54,400 --> 00:16:57,520
And then, fuck, we got window peeper.

344
00:16:57,520 --> 00:16:59,520
He likes to creep around the outside of your house.

345
00:16:59,520 --> 00:17:03,040
He's a leas popular one.

346
00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:04,040
Yeah.

347
00:17:04,040 --> 00:17:09,800
Then we got door sniffer.

348
00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:15,440
He's got a big nose that he will use to sniff out bread from under doors.

349
00:17:15,440 --> 00:17:16,440
Meat hook.

350
00:17:16,440 --> 00:17:19,640
He carries a hook and steals any meat you got hanging around.

351
00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:22,280
And then we got candle beggar.

352
00:17:22,280 --> 00:17:27,160
He steals your candles, which apparently were super rare and sought after during the time.

353
00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:32,060
But yes, those are the Yule ads.

354
00:17:32,060 --> 00:17:35,680
And they're all kind of fucked up.

355
00:17:35,680 --> 00:17:40,000
The window peeper.

356
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:47,640
The sausage stealer is annoying, but the window peeper, I think, is a menace.

357
00:17:47,640 --> 00:17:49,160
Needs to be stopped.

358
00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:52,840
He's definitely not an ideal character to have around, especially around your children.

359
00:17:52,840 --> 00:17:53,840
Fuck, man.

360
00:17:53,840 --> 00:17:56,560
This is technically a children's story.

361
00:17:56,560 --> 00:17:59,160
It's like one's like, I steal the foam from milk.

362
00:17:59,160 --> 00:18:01,280
I lick your bowls at night.

363
00:18:01,280 --> 00:18:05,760
And then the guy's like, I peek into your house through your windows and stare at you

364
00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:07,480
while you sleep in chain clothes.

365
00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:09,880
It's like, jeez, I'm blind, dude.

366
00:18:09,880 --> 00:18:12,560
Yeah, he's a deviant and must be stopped at all costs.

367
00:18:12,560 --> 00:18:16,720
Now, there's another thing that I forgot to mention.

368
00:18:16,720 --> 00:18:22,100
We talked about Mama Gria, the deadbeat dad, and the 13 nightmare children.

369
00:18:22,100 --> 00:18:27,800
But to close out this segment, we have to talk about the family pet known as the Yule

370
00:18:27,800 --> 00:18:28,800
cat.

371
00:18:28,800 --> 00:18:32,880
Now, the Yule cat is the house pet of Gria and her sons.

372
00:18:32,880 --> 00:18:37,160
And honestly, I think the Yule cat is the most fucked up part about this whole story.

373
00:18:37,160 --> 00:18:43,600
So the Yule cat is a monstrously huge cat that appears on Christmas Eve and silently

374
00:18:43,600 --> 00:18:49,680
stalks the villages while everyone is asleep, assumably dreaming about sugar plums or something.

375
00:18:49,680 --> 00:18:55,880
Now, this massive black feline does not care whether you are young or old, good or bad.

376
00:18:55,880 --> 00:18:57,520
It will just straight up fucking eat you.

377
00:18:57,520 --> 00:19:02,200
Like this thing ventures out once a year and just chooses violence every time.

378
00:19:02,200 --> 00:19:06,280
And the only thing that can assure you won't be getting disemboweled by a demon cat, and

379
00:19:06,280 --> 00:19:11,000
I don't know, but somehow it knows this, is that if you receive at least one article of

380
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:15,200
new clothing for Christmas, he will not eat you.

381
00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:21,840
So you know, I guess don't complain if you get socks for Christmas.

382
00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:25,560
That seems to be the propaganda.

383
00:19:25,560 --> 00:19:28,600
Because everyone complains about socks.

384
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:35,000
I love socks now that I'm older, obviously, but I can imagine if you're a kid in Iceland,

385
00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:37,560
what kind of toys would they be getting?

386
00:19:37,560 --> 00:19:43,800
It's like, here's a walrus tusk, or like, here's some socks.

387
00:19:43,800 --> 00:19:46,880
I mean, socks have to rank pretty high up, right?

388
00:19:46,880 --> 00:19:50,000
Like in terms of riveting gifts that you can get.

389
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:56,360
I feel like in like 13th century Iceland, I feel like any sort of survival, like basically

390
00:19:56,360 --> 00:20:01,040
basic necessities would be like a godsend to anyone back then.

391
00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:02,040
Yeah.

392
00:20:02,040 --> 00:20:08,160
Maybe not so much now, but I mean, back then that was probably a huge get.

393
00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:09,160
Yeah.

394
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:14,800
All right, Mike, well, that is the story of Gria and the Yule Lads and their fucking nightmarish

395
00:20:14,800 --> 00:20:16,000
cat.

396
00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:17,480
How you feeling about it?

397
00:20:17,480 --> 00:20:19,400
I'm surprised I've ever heard of it.

398
00:20:19,400 --> 00:20:26,800
You know, in the recesses of my mind, Yule Lads sounds familiar, but I'm sure that there

399
00:20:26,800 --> 00:20:28,360
are other Yule Lads out there.

400
00:20:28,360 --> 00:20:34,480
You know, it's just one of those names that is very Christmassy and describes elven like

401
00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:35,480
creatures.

402
00:20:35,480 --> 00:20:40,080
Yeah, they do look like, I don't know if you like the Icelandic gnomes, like they just kind

403
00:20:40,080 --> 00:20:42,040
of look like that, but there's 13 of them.

404
00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:43,840
So they do kind of look like little elves.

405
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:46,760
But also with the name Yule Lads, you think they'd be way more chill.

406
00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:47,760
Yeah.

407
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:51,120
Like Yule Lads is such like, that's what you call your boys when you go out like for an

408
00:20:51,120 --> 00:20:52,600
ugly Christmas sweater party.

409
00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:53,600
You know what I mean?

410
00:20:53,600 --> 00:21:00,280
Yeah, it's like a band that makes fun of Christmas songs or something like that.

411
00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:01,280
Shit.

412
00:21:01,280 --> 00:21:02,280
I bet that has to exist.

413
00:21:02,280 --> 00:21:06,560
There's no way that doesn't exist.

414
00:21:06,560 --> 00:21:12,280
The or like in OnlyFans, you know.

415
00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:15,240
So no, I've never heard of that.

416
00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:18,400
We definitely gotta be making that into a Christmas card.

417
00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:21,040
That'd be cool little series.

418
00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:24,920
And they have all 13 Yule Lads put on separate cards and have them somehow work in tandem

419
00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:26,840
together if they're all in the field together.

420
00:21:26,840 --> 00:21:32,040
Yeah, like go lick somebody's bowl or seal their socks.

421
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:34,040
Why do you have to make them so creepy?

422
00:21:34,040 --> 00:21:35,040
That's my question.

423
00:21:35,040 --> 00:21:36,040
I don't know.

424
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:37,240
I mean, it kind of goes hand in hand.

425
00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:41,520
I feel like all of, because my grandparents used to live in Iceland and for some reason,

426
00:21:41,520 --> 00:21:47,960
every year for Christmas, they would get my older sister these like Icelandic gnome troll

427
00:21:47,960 --> 00:21:49,600
like carving statues and stuff like that.

428
00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:53,400
And they were all fucking nightmarish and she's like 12 at the time.

429
00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:55,360
Like nothing about it seems fun.

430
00:21:55,360 --> 00:22:03,320
Well, I guess if you look at it, like Elf on the Shelf is kind of terrifying, right?

431
00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:05,120
Like it moves like, what is it?

432
00:22:05,120 --> 00:22:16,420
It moves if you, I see, I see TikToks of kids screaming in terror when like when parents

433
00:22:16,420 --> 00:22:22,520
show them videos of like of them like off camera moving the Elf on the Shelf and like

434
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:25,000
the Elf is like stealing like cereal and stuff.

435
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:27,240
So like Elf on the Shelf is terrifying.

436
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:29,360
My dog's barking one second.

437
00:22:29,360 --> 00:22:30,360
It's all good.

438
00:22:30,360 --> 00:22:34,320
My dogs are doing that downstairs right now.

439
00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:36,960
What is the, like there's a creepy aspect to it though.

440
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:39,960
What is it?

441
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:43,720
The only thing I know about Elf on the Shelf is that I think they're meant to cause trouble.

442
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:46,280
Yeah, yeah.

443
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:51,000
I think the point of Elf on the Shelf was that it was supposed to be like a baby cam

444
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:52,000
for Santa.

445
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:55,840
Like he's always watching you to make sure you're doing good.

446
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:58,040
But then he also gets up to mischief himself.

447
00:22:58,040 --> 00:22:59,240
So I don't understand the point of it.

448
00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:00,240
All right.

449
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:06,080
So I'm like once everyone goes to bed, the scout Elf, the Elf on the Shelf flies back

450
00:23:06,080 --> 00:23:09,680
to the North Pole to report to Santa the activity is good and bad.

451
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:12,960
So he's basically Santa's eyes.

452
00:23:12,960 --> 00:23:15,280
He's a fucking snitch is what he is.

453
00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:22,120
And by hiding in a new spot around the house each morning, the scout play, the Elf plays

454
00:23:22,120 --> 00:23:26,120
an envoy game of hide and seek with the family.

455
00:23:26,120 --> 00:23:29,480
Guys, relax.

456
00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:31,080
And gotcha.

457
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:33,320
So it's like he's a snitch.

458
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:34,320
Yeah.

459
00:23:34,320 --> 00:23:35,320
Yeah.

460
00:23:35,320 --> 00:23:40,480
He's the Christian version of this fucking window peeper you will add.

461
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:41,480
Oh, wait.

462
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:42,480
Well, so the magic.

463
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:43,480
Oh, he's magic now too?

464
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:47,920
There's only one rule that you have to follow.

465
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:50,280
So I will come back and be here tomorrow.

466
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:51,440
Please don't touch me.

467
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:56,360
My magic might go and Santa won't hear all I've seen or I know.

468
00:23:56,360 --> 00:23:57,360
Yeah, that's terrifying.

469
00:23:57,360 --> 00:23:58,360
If I were a kid.

470
00:23:58,360 --> 00:24:01,360
Wait, so the kids aren't allowed to touch it or else it's not going to report back to

471
00:24:01,360 --> 00:24:02,880
Santa if you've been good?

472
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:03,880
Yeah.

473
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:07,800
So that's kind of like that's like gaslighty shit.

474
00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:12,000
And that thing is like living in your house and moving around the house as a kid.

475
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:15,560
So like if I were like six years old, I'd be terrified of it.

476
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:17,080
Yeah, that's not ideal.

477
00:24:17,080 --> 00:24:18,080
Yeah.

478
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:24,520
So, so where we go in American tradition right there, something that's creepy and a nanny

479
00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:28,040
state like and a little messed up.

480
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:29,640
And that's like relatively new, right?

481
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:31,440
Like that wasn't always a thing.

482
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:33,520
They didn't have that when I was a kid.

483
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,240
It's a 2005 book.

484
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:38,440
It's like a children's book from 2005.

485
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:39,440
Think about that.

486
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:42,640
It's not even 20 years old.

487
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:45,880
Do you think in like 200 years there's going to be a podcast like mine where they're going

488
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:50,360
to be going over the fucking creepiness of the elf on the shelf?

489
00:24:50,360 --> 00:24:56,800
Elf on the shelf sniffing panties and and stealing Santa's cookies.

490
00:24:56,800 --> 00:24:59,960
So Santa doesn't leave gifts and yeah, it's all messed up.

491
00:24:59,960 --> 00:25:00,960
It's all bad.

492
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:02,440
But yeah, I mean that's.

493
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:03,840
It'll be creepy.

494
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:05,440
Oh, 100 percent.

495
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:06,440
Give it.

496
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:09,920
I mean, it's at least like 100 years and we'll all look back on it like, wow, that was a

497
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:14,640
really fucked up era in our in our society.

498
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:17,360
But yeah, man, that's the that's the story.

499
00:25:17,360 --> 00:25:18,960
I don't know how much time you got.

500
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:25,040
But if you want to, we can either end it here or we can go into some questions from from

501
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:26,040
some followers.

502
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:28,560
We can do like 10 minutes questions here.

503
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:30,080
You want to do a couple of questions?

504
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:31,080
All right.

505
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:39,440
So the idea came from one of my followers on Instagram and I think it was Castor Crew

506
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:40,640
H.T.X. came with it.

507
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:44,200
So what I did is I asked some followers if they had any questions for you.

508
00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:46,060
What I did is I put them on a big wheel.

509
00:25:46,060 --> 00:25:50,280
So we're just going to spin the wheel, see what question comes up and then you can either

510
00:25:50,280 --> 00:25:52,680
answer it or we can move on to the next one.

511
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:54,040
I know.

512
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:55,040
OK.

513
00:25:55,040 --> 00:26:00,520
After a night out on the town, let's say you went out a couple of beers.

514
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:03,280
What's your what's your go to like?

515
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:06,480
I need to sober up drunk meal.

516
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:09,480
It's usually pizza.

517
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:11,800
Pizza is your go to one.

518
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:14,000
I guess that's just pizza everywhere in New York.

519
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:16,720
You can just walk up to any window and just get right.

520
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:17,720
Yeah.

521
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,200
There's a place right next to me that's like great.

522
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:22,200
Raise pizza.

523
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:24,000
Hey, Rocky, relax.

524
00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:26,560
Raise pizza.

525
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:32,120
And it's decent drunk pizza food.

526
00:26:32,120 --> 00:26:38,160
Or if I'm if I'm too lazy to do even that, I'll I'll just order like a bunch of stuff

527
00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:39,160
from 7-Eleven.

528
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:40,160
Hell yeah.

529
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:41,160
There you go.

530
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:47,280
And, you know, and just make bad decisions with that food.

531
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:48,280
Oh, yeah.

532
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,520
That usually ends with like the worst gut rot you ever had in your entire life.

533
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:52,680
But usually that's the next morning.

534
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:54,240
So you don't have to worry about it immediately.

535
00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:55,240
In the moment.

536
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:56,240
It feels great.

537
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:57,240
Yeah.

538
00:26:57,240 --> 00:26:58,240
Yeah.

539
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:03,120
So, so, so sober you versus, you know, you in that moment.

540
00:27:03,120 --> 00:27:04,120
They're separate people.

541
00:27:04,120 --> 00:27:07,280
So really, you're not you're not undermining yourself.

542
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:09,960
You're undermining the person that wakes up in the morning.

543
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:10,960
Drunk me.

544
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:11,960
Drunk me is a completely different part.

545
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:13,560
We were not related at all.

546
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:14,560
Yeah.

547
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:15,560
Yeah, exactly.

548
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:16,560
All right.

549
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:21,080
The next question is, is you've been to your fair share of cons, cryptic festivals and

550
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:22,080
like trade shows.

551
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:26,160
What's what's like the wildest thing you've ever experienced while attending one of those?

552
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:28,000
It's a good question.

553
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:31,240
So this happened at CryptidCon 2021.

554
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:36,120
There was a, you know, speaks to the kind of the the power of what Metazoo is doing.

555
00:27:36,120 --> 00:27:42,060
But there's a woman there and we were handing out Nightfall cards there and booster packs.

556
00:27:42,060 --> 00:27:46,120
There is a woman there with no connection.

557
00:27:46,120 --> 00:27:53,520
I believe I think she was British to any of the underlying folklore that's associated

558
00:27:53,520 --> 00:28:04,800
with the Wendigo who is very, very, very upset that we had Wendigo on our booster packs.

559
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:11,320
And she was like, you know, the power of it, like you're you're basically like satanic,

560
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:15,760
you know, it's not it's not a Satan thing, though.

561
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:21,400
But that but that level of like superstition, right, where it's like, yeah, where it's like,

562
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:26,760
you know, hey, you know, so the so that was pretty crazy, understandable, right?

563
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:29,320
Like a lot of people do take this stuff seriously.

564
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:35,160
And yeah, you know, we're tapping into that and trying to make it more accessible and

565
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:39,280
normalized because I think it's awesome to be able to do that.

566
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:43,440
And I think we are seeing a boom in the cryptid community.

567
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:45,960
Like Mothman Festival this year, I'd like twenty thousand people at it.

568
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:48,520
And the years before that, it was like a couple thousand.

569
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:52,520
Oh, yeah. So so, you know, but you're going to you're going to hit those awkward moments

570
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:57,480
where you come across somebody that truly, truly, truly believes this stuff and all the

571
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:02,000
associated mythologies. And they're mad that you're that you're invoking it and not like

572
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,560
treating it with the proper respect. Yeah. Right.

573
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:12,240
There's no way around that. You know, I'm sure that Pokemon had activists against and

574
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,080
I mean, I know they had people, they had PETA. Yeah.

575
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:18,880
Now I think about it. So so you're going to be able to please everybody.

576
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:23,840
But but to see that encounter in person was interesting, you know, because you hear about

577
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:26,240
it online. But I remember that.

578
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:29,360
I remember the whole thing. And they came out with some really fucked up like comic

579
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:31,920
book or like Webtoon or something like that.

580
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:36,720
And it was like super fucked up. And they were like marketing towards children.

581
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:40,040
Like it was like really bad. Yeah.

582
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:47,560
And they repeated. Interesting. And, you know, anyway, so I'm trying to think of other other

583
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:51,440
crazy experiences. I just thought that she was British.

584
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,360
She had nothing to do with like Native American, like if anything.

585
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:57,960
Yeah, no, she she's the reason why some of those mythologies don't exist.

586
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:01,040
I'm not sure. But like, yeah, the British are the reason why a lot of those things are

587
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:02,760
wiped out now. True.

588
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,040
And yeah, that survivor's guilt. That's what it is.

589
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:11,880
And this is so delicate. I mean, think about this, like fearsome critters, you know, tens

590
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:15,680
of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people know what fearsome critters are because of

591
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:16,920
medicine. Yeah.

592
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:21,240
Where before it was a dying folklore. There were only a few books published about it in

593
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:27,120
the early nineteen hundreds. And they probably they were disappearing like a lot of the lumberjack

594
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:32,520
war. So with how delicate these things are, it's almost like a forgotten language, right?

595
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:36,320
Like their languages are out because nobody speaks, speaks of anymore.

596
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:38,920
Right. Are you ever this isn't the next question,

597
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:42,120
but I do have a follow. Like, are you ever worried that the lore of Medezu is going to

598
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:47,200
get people confused with the actual lore of the actual cryptids in the game?

599
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,400
So I'm going to give that a lot of thought. All right.

600
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,560
It's good that you're it's good that you're bringing the cryptids to the forefront of

601
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:57,240
everything. But the lore of Medezu isn't quite what you.

602
00:30:57,240 --> 00:30:59,240
Yeah, you continue. You know what I'm trying to say?

603
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:03,120
Yeah, no, it's it's a really good question, right? Because so there are a few ways of

604
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:12,360
handling that. One is by trying to stay true to the core of the mythology behind each cryptid.

605
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:17,320
So you know, representing it in a group like, you know, no, but nobody knows this. But like

606
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:24,280
in the manga, for instance, when we encounter Piazza Bird, he's still embedded in the or

607
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:28,400
recently escaped from the rock face that he is in Illinois. Right.

608
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:34,400
Like and so so you you touch on that and you kind of bring that story to life because a

609
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:41,640
lot of the stories for I would say 95 percent of these cryptids, they're not well fleshed

610
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:43,720
out. Yeah, there's not a lot there.

611
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:50,120
There's not a lot there. Right. Yeah. There was like an incident one night in like 1953

612
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:56,560
of a bunch of drunk dudes, you know, firing at empty cans. And they saw, you know, a little

613
00:31:56,560 --> 00:32:02,680
critter fly across them and they're like, it's a cryptid. And that's the sense the story.

614
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:06,440
Right. That's pretty much the story of like the Enfield monster.

615
00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:12,480
Exactly. Right. You know, so but then I also look at like, all right, where has this historically

616
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:18,640
happened in the past? Right. So you have something like Lord of the Rings, which has a lot of

617
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:26,040
ancient folklore in it from, you know, everything from elves to goblins and dragons, these things

618
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:33,040
predate Lord of the Rings by a considerable amount. Right. And they have mythologies and

619
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:38,320
history that predate, you know, the Lord of the Rings being written. Now, when people

620
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:44,560
think of orcs, do they think about Lord of the Rings? I would say, yeah, they already

621
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:51,600
do. Right. But they also might go Warhammer 40K. They might think of World of Warcraft.

622
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:57,840
They might think of any number of things that orcs have shown up in. But I think it all

623
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:04,360
just depends on what level of nerd you're at. But the understanding is that these things

624
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:11,000
are public domain and they're public domain because these are parts of the mythology of

625
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:16,120
Europe. Right. Yeah. Like no one's going to think that the concept of genie comes from

626
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:24,480
Aladdin. Right. Like the Disney movie. They, they, they, they probably most know like,

627
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:31,920
hey, the, the concept of the genie came from some mythology out of, you know, certain Arabic

628
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:42,120
countries. Right. Yeah. And so they, their mind goes to a well-written, well-known story

629
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:47,760
that is fictional first, but the underlying understanding is that there's something real

630
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:55,680
that backs it. So in order to facilitate that in the story, you know, the cryptids are all

631
00:33:55,680 --> 00:34:02,400
named. We're thinking about adding things that are like, you know, the actual backstory

632
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:09,240
behind the cryptid, you know, newspaper clippings and stuff like that to the back of the manga.

633
00:34:09,240 --> 00:34:13,360
But you know, what, what a lot of this stuff is going to be is, is they'll, they'll read

634
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:19,240
about it in the manga. They'll research the character and they'll see, oh shit, like the

635
00:34:19,240 --> 00:34:27,440
Loveland Fogman is not just a, you know, wise mentor in this story. Like there's actually

636
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:32,960
a true story behind all this stuff. And there's even, you know, a museum and there's a castle

637
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:39,080
and the castle is real. Oh my gosh. And so Medazoo has that power where it's like, you

638
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:42,360
can actually look up the characters that you fall in love with in the, in the manga and

639
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:48,800
the story and the lore and, and realize that it's actually happening right now. Like it's

640
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:50,040
folklore in action.

641
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:56,600
That's a good, that's a great answer. I do, I do like that you're trying to weave in the

642
00:34:56,600 --> 00:35:03,400
truth, like the actual story with the lore of Medazoo. Cause it is, I mean, I guess Medazoo

643
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:06,640
is a good, if you don't know anything about cryptids, you'd want to look, if you know

644
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:10,720
that they're already based off real things, if you're interested enough, you will seek

645
00:35:10,720 --> 00:35:13,560
out the actual story.

646
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:20,440
Right. And, and just by virtue of the Google search, you know, Loveland Fogman might end

647
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:27,880
up being the first Google results or Moffat, you know, but when you, but when you search

648
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:35,000
for it, like the second, third, fourth, hell, even the first result might be, you know,

649
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:42,120
the actual story and links to all these different things. And that would, that's, that's again,

650
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:47,840
the kind of, so, so by connecting the dots or connecting it back to its actual backstory,

651
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:56,320
it actually helps us build a world that is much more like interconnected and deeply,

652
00:35:56,320 --> 00:36:02,400
you know, emotionally like relatable because these things actually exist in the real world.

653
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:04,920
It's almost like if Pokemon were real, it's like,

654
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:09,360
if I search for Charizard or if I search for Bulbasaur and it's like, oh shit, like people

655
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:13,360
think that in Japan, this little Bulbasaur creature is actually running around and their

656
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,720
museum is dedicated to it. Like that would, that would have added so much more depth to,

657
00:36:17,720 --> 00:36:18,720
you know?

658
00:36:18,720 --> 00:36:24,560
Yeah. No, I get you. All right. Perfect answer. Now I have, and I do have a question about

659
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:30,400
Metazoo for real. Not that it wasn't, that wasn't about Metazoo for real, but, but as

660
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:37,040
sets are being developed, do some like cryptids, spells, et cetera, not make the final cut?

661
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:40,800
And if so, what were some of the ones that you liked that maybe didn't make it into a

662
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:45,880
set or maybe you ended up using them for like a different set instead?

663
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:51,680
So I think the sample cards are a good example of this, where you look at the sample cards

664
00:36:51,680 --> 00:37:00,040
and I think it was up until UFO maybe, and maybe even Seance where some of the sample

665
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:03,320
cards didn't show up until then. Right?

666
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:04,320
Yeah.

667
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:14,880
So there's, with the base set, it was, there's no dominant aura, right? Where like it was

668
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:20,880
a base set, like what a base set should be was all the waras equally represented introducing

669
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:26,880
the game. And the game that I had to play on my part was like, all right, do I put all

670
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:35,240
the coolest cryptids and stories in this first set and leave, leave everything else, you

671
00:37:35,240 --> 00:37:42,000
know, all the other sets that, that succeeded without either big bangers, right? But then

672
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:49,280
the flip side of that is you potentially neuter the base set by not making it cool. And then

673
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:53,360
no future sets exists because the first set wasn't cool enough, right?

674
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:56,680
Yeah. So you found like a good balance.

675
00:37:56,680 --> 00:38:01,280
And then also want people like wanting more or else they wouldn't return kind of thing.

676
00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:07,400
Exactly. Like, you know, what would, what would a nightfall be without, you know, the

677
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:13,320
Wendigo, right? Yeah. And yeah, Mothman made a second appearance, but like, you know, the,

678
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:17,640
or the headless horseman, imagine if those two showed up in base set and we took that

679
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:25,920
stopping power out of, out of nightfall, right? Yeah. And the same thing goes for, you know,

680
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:30,960
Wilderness and UFO. We had to, UFO, we had to essentially reprint like the Flatwoods

681
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:38,480
monster, right? And, but that Flatwoods monster is significantly less popular than the base

682
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:46,320
set one. Right. So I see. I love, I love the UFO Flatwoods monster, but it's not the classic

683
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:50,960
design though. That's the issue. Right. No. And I love it too, but, and also there's a

684
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:58,960
typo on the UFO one. Yeah. This is Washington instead of West Virginia. Yeah. We were notorious

685
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:06,800
for our, our geo info being, but you got it right on all the other Flatwoods monsters.

686
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:12,880
So I mean, you get a pass on that one. Yeah. But you know, it's so it's interesting, right?

687
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:18,320
Like the, every crypto that I wanted to show up, showed up. I mean, you think that we have

688
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:29,680
war and that's the final set of the, of the block. Yeah. And then are there cryptos that

689
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:35,080
were left out that would have been really cool? Absolutely. Did I discover them after

690
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:40,680
my initial research? Most, most of the, most of the cool ones I discovered happened after

691
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:46,160
actual research, right? And after this- That's not to say that you can't go back at some

692
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:50,840
point. You know what I mean? Well, the final block that we have planned, right? So we have

693
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:56,720
Crypto Nation, Yokai Island, Grimms Kingdom, and then we have Cryptid World, right? Which

694
00:39:56,720 --> 00:40:04,440
is an amalgamation of everything. We're going to have all sorts of, of cryptids that are

695
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:09,600
North American based that didn't show up in the first block that show up in that. Right?

696
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:16,400
So there's always, there's always time, right? To do those kinds of things. But the reality

697
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:23,840
is is that the, the cryptid lore is, is continuously evolving. Like when we get to the world, I

698
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:28,200
mean, it might take us 10 years to get there. 10, 15 years, right? You're telling me that

699
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:32,200
there won't be new cryptids that show up in the mean? Of course there will be. That's

700
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:39,200
valid. There's always something weird happening. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, just look at the,

701
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:44,800
the Mexican government, I believe it was Mexican government and their little aliens that they

702
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:49,360
had like a congressional meeting about. Oh, the mummy thing. You know what I found out

703
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:53,220
about that? I found out that that wasn't actually a congressional hearing. It was basically

704
00:40:53,220 --> 00:40:59,400
a town hall where anyone could go to. And that dude who presented those mummies, this

705
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:03,800
is like the third time he's tried to present quote alien mummies. And the two times before

706
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:10,360
that he was found out as a fraud and they were fake. So I do not trust that guy. But,

707
00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:15,600
but it went viral and, and, and, you know, became a cryptid, right? Essentially functionally

708
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:24,200
became encrypted. So it's a living and breathing foot. Right. And so, you know, it's our job

709
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:29,280
over the years to keep track of these things and, and make sure that the coolest ones are

710
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:34,960
represented and the most important ones are represented. But, you know, the, um, moving

711
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:39,200
region to region allows us to kind of, to open it up a bit, open it up a bit, have a

712
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:44,120
base set. That's like, you know, the base set of Yokai Island will have to have that

713
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:50,460
same balance because the history of Yokai and, and, and Japan is as rich, if not richer

714
00:41:50,460 --> 00:41:54,840
than cryptids in the U S right. So, cause those have been going back for centuries.

715
00:41:54,840 --> 00:42:02,720
Yeah. Um, and, and, and, and so, you know, it's, it's, and people always ask like, are

716
00:42:02,720 --> 00:42:08,240
we going to run out of cryptids? And the answer is absolutely not because it's a, you can,

717
00:42:08,240 --> 00:42:12,720
the good thing about Metazoo too is that you don't focus solely on cryptids. You got ghosts,

718
00:42:12,720 --> 00:42:16,160
you got, like you got the paranormal beings, you even got hat man who like is just like

719
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:23,640
a fucking dream demon. Like it's not just cryptids. I mean, there's the paranormal

720
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:30,000
world is so fucking vast and massive that, and everyone like, yeah, you'll never not

721
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:34,600
have something like, I remember, I don't know if you guys ever finished them, but there

722
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:41,120
was the, like the beastie ambassador thing where you had like, uh, Leona, the drop bear,

723
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:46,840
uh, Loch Ness, I think was another one. And the, did you, was there a gin one? Yeah, there

724
00:42:46,840 --> 00:42:50,960
was. I can't remember, but like those were cool. And like, at least you, at least that

725
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:56,240
shows that, you know, that almost every region of the world has their own, you can't run

726
00:42:56,240 --> 00:43:03,240
out. There's no way like it's impossible. Right. And, and, and if it ever gets to that

727
00:43:03,240 --> 00:43:07,920
point where we're really, really scripting, scraping bottom barrel, that's not going to

728
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:13,240
happen for decades and decades and decades. Right? Yeah. There's too much out there. Yeah.

729
00:43:13,240 --> 00:43:19,240
I mean, I mean we could do an entire set of blocks just on Brazil's folklore. Right. Like,

730
00:43:19,240 --> 00:43:25,680
and I think that assumption that people have that we're going to run out, it comes from

731
00:43:25,680 --> 00:43:34,320
a place of not knowing how complex other countries are and how rich their histories are. And,

732
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:38,060
you know, these, the underlying assumption where it's like, Oh, there couldn't possibly

733
00:43:38,060 --> 00:43:45,920
be as rich a cryptid folklore in Brazil as there is in the U S. And it's like, like,

734
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:50,200
why do you say that? Well, Brazil is just, you know, beaches and coconuts. And it's like,

735
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:55,880
no, Brazil is an ignorant, right? But, but, but, but because the percent, they don't know

736
00:43:55,880 --> 00:43:59,440
enough about these countries. Yeah. But if you sit back and you're like, Hey, these countries

737
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:05,280
are just as complex. Um, a lot of them been around for a lot longer than the U S has.

738
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:12,760
So it stands to reason that they have folklore mythologies just as rich and robust and extensive,

739
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:18,600
if not more than the U S has. And then once you realize that it really opens up the, the

740
00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:23,720
world's for better, for lack of a better term, like we're never going to run out of cryptids.

741
00:44:23,720 --> 00:44:28,120
It's never, it's never a possibility. And what's, what's wild about like other countries,

742
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:34,160
like America's cryptids and like paranormal stuff is relatively tame compared to a lot

743
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:39,280
of other countries, like folklore and stuff. Like we did an episode on like a Filipino

744
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:44,320
folklore called the Mononoke, which is like a nightmarish lady who rips herself in half

745
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:48,600
at night and just lets her entrails trail behind her while she sits outside your window

746
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:54,220
and uses a straw like tongue to suck out your brains and stuff. Oh, like American folklore,

747
00:44:54,220 --> 00:45:00,740
as far as like cryptids and stuff goes is the most tame. So if they want like banger

748
00:45:00,740 --> 00:45:05,920
folklore from other countries, you can easily, easily provide that forum. You know what I

749
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:13,080
mean? Like it's wild. Yeah. And so, you know, I think if people broaden their horizons about

750
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:20,080
what constitutes a cryptid, like in terms of its function in society, right. An unexplained

751
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:26,920
phenomenon that people believe to exist and to be real and usually with a creature associated

752
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:34,800
with it, be it a ghost, an alien, demon, or something that crawled out of the forest or

753
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:41,760
crawled out under the earth or fell from the clouds. All those are cryptids, right? I mean,

754
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:46,760
technically, kind of, I guess. Technically, right? Like in terms of their function in

755
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:54,640
society and society, right? That's fair. Like no one's going to say that, you know, a Yokai

756
00:45:54,640 --> 00:46:01,600
that's a living sandal is the same as, you know, as as mothman, right. But if you step

757
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:08,120
back and you say, well, I mean, the sandal is a story that somebody told about a sandal

758
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:14,880
coming to life because it was really old and it did a bunch of high jinx around the house.

759
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:19,840
Not that different than people reporting that they saw, you know, the Enfield monster in

760
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:26,800
a rose bush, right? Like it's it's technically the same. And if people believe it and propagate

761
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:32,440
the story, it becomes part of the culture and then its function is the same. Yeah. So

762
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:36,640
I tried to do an episode on one of the Yokai's and it's my worst performing episode because

763
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:40,680
I've either people just it's so old that people don't they're like, well, no one believes

764
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:44,400
this now. But like the stories are so good. Like, why would you not want to learn about

765
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:51,360
it? Well, and that's the people in Japan, because it's so entrenched in their culture,

766
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:56,420
a lot of them actively do believe this stuff. Like the level of belief that people have

767
00:46:56,420 --> 00:47:01,780
for something like Bigfoot. Yeah. That level of belief applies to so many more creatures

768
00:47:01,780 --> 00:47:07,440
in places like Japan. Like you were talking about Iceland before. In a lot of those countries,

769
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:12,880
the active belief that these things are out and about, like fairies and stuff like that

770
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:16,960
in a lot of places in the world, they actually like it's collectively believe that these

771
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:22,240
things exist. And it's not like some kooky guy on the Discovery Channel or the History

772
00:47:22,240 --> 00:47:27,000
Channel chasing Bigfoot. It's like you talk to any normal person and they might have a

773
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:32,800
story about a fairy that they encountered in the woods or their grandmother did or something

774
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:40,160
like that. Like, so it's much more normalized. Yeah, it's more it's more ingrained in their

775
00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:44,520
culture and their cultures have been around so much longer than America. Like, you mean,

776
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:49,000
like we didn't grow up with Bigfoot. You mean that that didn't become a thing until like

777
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:54,760
the 60s. It wasn't a ingrained in our culture the same way it is like it was not in our

778
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:59,440
belief system. Other countries, these things are so embedded in their belief systems as

779
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:04,920
far as other religion or just like culturally that of course they're going to have put more

780
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:11,320
faith into it than we do say like a Bigfoot or a Mothman. And it's odd and with that age

781
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:18,700
comes with how that belief manifests, right? It shows up more in art. It shows up in more

782
00:48:18,700 --> 00:48:27,800
in literature. It shows up in more in cultural festivals. And in all that perpetuates, like

783
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:33,840
imagine like we all learned about Bigfoot as a kid, but maybe like even the Chupacabra

784
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:38,600
wasn't around until like what, 2005? Well, that one's kind of iffy because there was

785
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:43,280
a story before that, like before the 90s with like a bat thing. I don't know. It's like

786
00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:48,200
a vampire thing. It was a whole thing. But yeah, it was popularized, right? It was pretty

787
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:54,720
much late 90s, early 2000s. Yeah. And just now we're seeing it show up in beers. We're

788
00:48:54,720 --> 00:49:00,320
seeing it show up in shows. You know, one of the first shows that very early on adopted

789
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:06,920
the idea of the Chupacabra was Venture Bros. And you know, on Adult Swim they had a Chupacabra.

790
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:13,360
It jumped out of the hangar or the landing gear of one of their planes. You know, it's

791
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:19,840
killed and then Brock Sampson's like, goddamn Chupacabras. Every time I go to Mexico, they

792
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:24,800
stow away, right? So now you have kids that grew up watching that and they know what the

793
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:33,760
Chupacabra is, right? And so with enough time, the stuff gets more ingrained. But just like,

794
00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:39,280
what I do in my free time is I search for books that mention like the oldest books that

795
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:45,520
I can find in the US that mention cryptids and you know, cryptozoology is actually a

796
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:49,920
relatively new term, right? It's only been around decades. So what do you search for,

797
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:54,040
if not cryptids, if you want to find these old books? Well, yeah, Fearsome Critters,

798
00:49:54,040 --> 00:50:02,760
that are part of the lumberjack lore. But then like, what about like before that? Well,

799
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:08,600
you could search like for folklore in the US, but those books only really started showing

800
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:18,560
up like in 1865 plus. And they're mostly like old wives sales. Like they're like, you know,

801
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:24,760
and some of them are outright just like racist. Like I have one book. I'm not surprised by

802
00:50:24,760 --> 00:50:29,080
that one bit. I have one book, very, very popular book. I think it was published in

803
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:36,320
1873. And it's one of the first books on American folklore published. And they have an entire

804
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:45,760
chapter dedicated to the wandering Jew. And it's like, all right, okay. But you know,

805
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:50,920
and so that book is very much a product of its time. Let's just say. Oh, no, of course.

806
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:58,200
Yeah. And so it's interesting to, but it goes to show you that like it's stories like that,

807
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:05,480
that are like have vague undertones, if not outright overtones of racism, you know, involving

808
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:11,440
slaves involving indigenous populations. And think about it in the hundred, seven hundreds,

809
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:16,600
the most quote unquote, mystical stories you could find around were probably coming from

810
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:21,720
the local indigenous populations. Right. Yeah. I mean, even now though, like the legend of

811
00:51:21,720 --> 00:51:26,800
the goat man, I think didn't he, wasn't he like a freed black man who had a goat farm

812
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,520
and then he was murdered just for being black. And now he just kills people on a bridge,

813
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:35,360
like his ventral spirit. Oh, the public. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's like, there's like, there's

814
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:40,920
like four different goat man bridges stories and they, they all pretty much have the same

815
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:49,360
store. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, so like this stuff is, is it's so new and people,

816
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:56,320
um, and it hasn't been popularized. I mean, like the, until recent, um, again, you look

817
00:51:56,320 --> 00:52:01,680
at mock man festival and 20,000 people this year versus, you know, a couple of thousand

818
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:07,120
in the past tours. So I think that we're really, um, at the precipice of, of like a critical

819
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:15,760
mass movement, you know, um, like moist critical is starting his own cryptid podcast. Um, yeah.

820
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:19,360
And like, he's trying to steal my thunder, man. He saw your show, dude. He saw your show

821
00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:25,400
and he's like, it's gotta be it. But, but, but, you know, it's becoming normalized in

822
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:31,440
a way where, and I mentioned this, um, a few times through the past, but like it's no longer

823
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:36,560
just a nerdy pursuit or shows watch on the history channel when you're traveling in a

824
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:41,480
hotel. Right. Um, has anything to do like, like, I know like for a while there's a huge

825
00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:47,520
true crime boom when it comes to like content being like absorbed and like over the past

826
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:51,600
few years, it's slowly been declining. I wonder if people are tired of hearing about murder.

827
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:54,720
They just want more mystery in their life. I wonder if that has anything to do. It could

828
00:52:54,720 --> 00:53:00,560
be, it could be, um, it could also just be the mass adoption of what people are starting

829
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:07,480
to receive as folklore that they feel kinship and ownership of because they're here in the

830
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:12,880
U S right. I don't know. I think we have an interesting decade ahead of us as these things

831
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:18,240
become more normalized and, um, it becomes less of a nerdy pursuit to, to actively like

832
00:53:18,240 --> 00:53:22,840
them. Yeah. And, and there's, there's a, so many more like cryptid festivals popping up

833
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:28,160
just like, you get like squonk a Palooza, like one of, like, I know it's like a, like

834
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:33,960
a favorite, but like for the most part of that is the most not known cryptid to ever

835
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:38,840
exist. And it's, they're doing their second year now, like, and then, but there's also

836
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:44,120
like, it did, it took a while for a Loveland frogman to even get his own festival. Yeah.

837
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:48,760
And it's going to happen more and more. I mean, there's a, a lizard escape or swamp

838
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:54,520
museum that's popping up. And so, you know, it's, it's, you're going to see more and more

839
00:53:54,520 --> 00:53:58,320
of these things popping up. And my hope is that, you know, Metazoo again, it'll be like

840
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:02,560
a lightning rod to that movement, which is why we're focusing so much more on cryptid

841
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:08,360
related conventions next year. But I'm telling you, man, like the past three years were just

842
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:14,480
the spark and like we're about to see like a raging fire when it comes to this stuff.

843
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:20,160
Full ignition pretty much. Yeah. I mean, think about like your, your, your podcast is at

844
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:26,400
the forefront of like you had your podcast a year before voice critical had his, right?

845
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:33,240
And so you're really one of those first movers. I wouldn't go that far. No, I mean, but you

846
00:54:33,240 --> 00:54:38,160
are, I mean, cause the thing about like this, like it doesn't have critical mass appeal

847
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:44,800
yet. Right. Yeah. But it's voice critical mass appeal, but it's getting there because

848
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:49,520
of people like most critical because it was like Metazoo. And, and so I really just view

849
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:55,280
Metazoo now that I'm seeing this larger movement, I actually view Metazoo and my inclination

850
00:54:55,280 --> 00:55:01,200
to use cryptids as the center of my game as more of a symptom of a larger movement that

851
00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:06,440
I was seeing rather than a cause of it. If that makes sense. Yeah. No, that totally tracks.

852
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:12,280
Yeah. So, but when you recognize that you recognize that it's not Metazoo, like it's

853
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:18,040
not Metazoo's, I wouldn't say responsibility, but like this movement would happen regardless

854
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:23,280
of whether or not Metazoo existed. Metazoo is a byproduct of that larger movement that's

855
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:31,800
happening, which is interesting to think about. And if Metazoo didn't come up with the TCG,

856
00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:35,400
like if we weren't the first ones to do it in 2020, somebody else, yeah, someone would

857
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:40,920
have done it. Yeah. But do you, do you, do you think that since there's more of a appreciation

858
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:45,700
and understanding for cryptids and folklore, like does that weigh more on your decision

859
00:55:45,700 --> 00:55:50,400
to try and make the lore of the actual cryptids and folklore more on the forefront of the

860
00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:53,800
lore of Metazoo just so that people don't come into it thinking they're going to get

861
00:55:53,800 --> 00:56:01,960
the full story? It's certainly something that is top of mind for me, but you know, just

862
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:08,360
by virtue of the fact that all these stories are disjointed, right? I mean, Amorica is

863
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:14,960
a massive hunk of land, right? Yeah. People don't realize that. It's deceivingly big.

864
00:56:14,960 --> 00:56:19,440
It's huge. And as that you have all these disjointed stories. And so in order to write

865
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:23,960
anything that's cohesive, I have to connect them in ways that, you know, what I call fiction

866
00:56:23,960 --> 00:56:30,880
glue. And so they're kind of like Lord of the Rings. I'm going to be taking certain

867
00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:37,520
liberties, but I'm also going to be expanding the story. And, you know, people might conflate

868
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:42,600
the story of Metazoo with Squonk, for instance, and what we tell with the actual story of

869
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:48,120
Squonk. There isn't much of with the actual story of Squonk. Exactly. Right. It's like

870
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:52,640
it was like one page in a book and there's barely any information on it. It's a paragraph

871
00:56:52,640 --> 00:57:00,080
on it. Like it's. Yeah. You look at the original Fearsome Critter books, right? By I think

872
00:57:00,080 --> 00:57:06,560
Henry Tyson or anyway. So yeah, it was William T. Cox and yeah, Henry T. Cox, Henry T. Cox

873
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:16,720
and William. William T. Cox. Published in like what 1911 in 1908 or something like that.

874
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:22,880
But they're each year, some critter gets half a page and then a really cool illustration

875
00:57:22,880 --> 00:57:29,620
and a really cool illustration. Right. And so, you know, if if I can keep those stories

876
00:57:29,620 --> 00:57:34,120
alive by expanding on them a little bit, but always point back to the original stories

877
00:57:34,120 --> 00:57:40,280
that I'm thinking about a few different ways of doing that. Right. Like I want to put out

878
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:48,160
an atlas. So like a book of maps that have the original crypt of locations on them. It's

879
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:55,280
not connected to Metazoo lore. That would be fucking dope. But it'll be in Metazoo.

880
00:57:55,280 --> 00:58:01,040
It'll be the Metazoo atlas. Right. Yeah. But you know, but it'll have so you can reinforce

881
00:58:01,040 --> 00:58:10,000
the actual history and use the fictional history as a way of trumpeting, of championing that

882
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:15,160
that original story. Yeah. That's amazing. We're coming up on an hour. I don't know if

883
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:20,320
you want to do one more question or one more question to close it out. All right. So I

884
00:58:20,320 --> 00:58:23,840
don't know if it's true or not, but I think I read it somewhere that when you were in

885
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:27,160
college, you used to go into the bunny man tunnel to try and hunt for the bunny man.

886
00:58:27,160 --> 00:58:32,880
I went out there a few times with my friends. So my that wasn't the question. That was just

887
00:58:32,880 --> 00:58:37,520
me making sure that it so that did actually happen. Right. Yeah. All right. Have you have

888
00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:42,200
you ever personally had like a paranormal UFO or like cryptic encounter yourself? I've

889
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:50,440
had a few paranormal experiences. The most recent one being I was. It's gonna be funny.

890
00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:57,840
I was I was cooking. I was cooking pasta for a friend of mine. We were drinking wine and

891
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:07,120
cooking pasta in my my apartment is in a building that was built in 1903. So it's old as all

892
00:59:07,120 --> 00:59:12,040
hell. Right. Like, yeah. As far as like old buildings in New York City that are so up

893
00:59:12,040 --> 00:59:16,680
and functional and that kind of stuff. It's it's it's one of the few. Right. So we're

894
00:59:16,680 --> 00:59:22,480
cooking pasta and I I was like, you know, the the friend was Italian and I said, I'm

895
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:26,480
going to don't don't tell your mother this, but I'm going to break the pasta, the dry

896
00:59:26,480 --> 00:59:33,640
pasta and so it fits in the bowl in the in the pan. My friend laughed. And then after

897
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:38,480
in the midst of that, right in between us, we heard a woman's voice say, no, that's not

898
00:59:38,480 --> 00:59:45,440
how you do it. And at first and at first I thought that she said that. And I was like,

899
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:49,480
do you just say that? And she's like, no, but I just heard that. And then she repeated

900
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:58,080
what the the voice said in between. And we're sufficiently creeped out. Let's just say that.

901
00:59:58,080 --> 01:00:03,320
I would have bailed out of it like, fuck this. I'm going to leave all my stuff and I'm just

902
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:08,520
going to move. The other thing that has happened in this apartment is I used to see it, but

903
01:00:08,520 --> 01:00:13,440
I don't see any more is I used to see out of the corner of my eye whenever I was in

904
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:20,800
the kitchen a what I could only describe as like a black cat running out of the kitchen

905
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:26,880
into like the dark hallway that's like leads to my laundry room. And but I haven't seen

906
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:33,360
that in like over a year. So you have a ghost cat. You know, but it's funny because I got

907
01:00:33,360 --> 01:00:42,160
my my new dog, Raven, is a pitch black, long haired, made dachshund. Yeah. And she does

908
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:48,720
exactly that. So I don't know. I don't know if 80 percent of the time I'm seeing Raven

909
01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:53,440
or another 20 percent. I'm actually seeing the little ghost cat and I'm just like, oh,

910
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:59,600
it must be Raven. But you know, there's a chance now that it could still be happening.

911
01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:10,600
You're just unsure. Exactly. I had another friend who who said when we had a slumber

912
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:17,960
party, the friend was very in tune with things and the friend said, you have four spirits

913
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:24,280
that live in your apartment. Oh, no. I'm like and my friend was like in there in the bedroom

914
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:31,560
like right now. And I was like, oh, dope. I'm going to ask him to leave, though. I'm like,

915
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:35,840
thank you. Yes, please. Don't worry. They're all friendly. They're just checking in on

916
01:01:35,840 --> 01:01:43,480
us. I'm like, oh, great. I still don't want that. Yeah. Privacy, please. So. So, yeah,

917
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:48,240
there are a few instances in this apartment, but I've never gotten the bad feeling about

918
01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:54,600
anything. Really. That's the extent of paranormal experiences I've had have all been in this

919
01:01:54,600 --> 01:02:00,400
apartment, but none of them have been like malicious or or outright scary. Interesting

920
01:02:00,400 --> 01:02:07,760
that the voice, though, that would have fucking sent me. I explained the way. I think it's

921
01:02:07,760 --> 01:02:14,200
funny that like I'm imagining this like small Italian grandma ghost being like, oh, yeah,

922
01:02:14,200 --> 01:02:19,060
that's not how you do the pasta. 100 percent what I was just kind of like hunched over

923
01:02:19,060 --> 01:02:27,160
a little bit, just like a full on Nana. Basically, you never break the pasta. And you know, that

924
01:02:27,160 --> 01:02:34,680
made me crack up. Right. But then also another explanation is the building has a bunch of

925
01:02:34,680 --> 01:02:42,120
old intercom systems like I hear. Just listening into you or something like that. But like

926
01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:51,560
I hear no joke. I hear like a 1920s phone that rings somewhere in the building. And

927
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:58,280
it's like an old, old type of ring. And so like these things are all still set up. Like

928
01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:04,720
in my kitchen, there is an old intercom system from like the 40s that, you know, I mean,

929
01:03:04,720 --> 01:03:08,880
there might even be like communication tubes. I forgot what they're called. But like, oh,

930
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:13,440
like the old like like for like servants and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Either

931
01:03:13,440 --> 01:03:21,320
way, that's still a nightmare, man. So creepy. So yeah, no. So so yeah, that's that's kind

932
01:03:21,320 --> 01:03:26,440
of my experience. I have a few other ones, but they're not nearly as cool as that. And

933
01:03:26,440 --> 01:03:29,840
they took place when I was younger. But we'll leave it at that. We'll leave that for another

934
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:34,440
interview with you. Yeah, no, those were good. Shit. All right, man. Well, I appreciate you

935
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:39,920
coming on. I really do. And I appreciate you putting up with my super horse disgusting

936
01:03:39,920 --> 01:03:44,840
voice. I'm sure I'm not pleasant to look at right now. Hey, man, I have my camera off

937
01:03:44,840 --> 01:03:49,440
for a reason. All right. Well, is there is there anything you want to plug or say before

938
01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:55,480
we end this? No, I think I think we got it all. I appreciate you taking the time. And

939
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:59,680
let's let's do this more often. Let's do this. Like every time a set comes out, we'll we'll

940
01:03:59,680 --> 01:04:04,000
do something like this and talk about the war and have a good time. Sounds good to me,

941
01:04:04,000 --> 01:04:09,560
man. All right. Thank you so much for coming on. You want to say bye to everyone? All right.

942
01:04:09,560 --> 01:04:14,200
Bye everybody. Thanks for loving Metazoo and hope to see the the Cryptid conventions next

943
01:04:14,200 --> 01:04:29,440
year. It's going to be a really cool convention circuit. Hell yeah.