Transcript (For SAIO/SEO)

This is not a fully accurate transcript, and was machine generated. It’s here for helping search engines find the episode but not intended to be a faithful transcript of the episode. (But it’s not AWFUL.) Some of the material in this transcript only exists in the Patreon/Premium edition of the show and was excised for the commercial version.

———————-
Blake: Well, this’ll probably be pretty conversational anyway, right?
Karen Stollznow: I think so, because, yeah, I don’t know what the hell we’re really talking about.
Blake: Yeah, so…
Karl Mamer: Yeah, that’s… that’s why I was like, Karen, you… I kind of made, like, you know, a little map, like, kind of 8 things to progress through, too, and I’m like.
Karl Mamer: Karen, you just gotta keep us… keep us on track, keep us moving, because we will get, like, oh yeah, second edition, well, you know, and then there’ll be, you know…
Blake: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Karl Mamer: Yeah.
Blake: Not any of that basic stuff.
Karen Stollznow: Certainly do my best if I can understand anything that you’re talking about.
Karl Mamer: Yeah.
Karen Stollznow: Well…
Blake: As long as we steer clear of religion, I think.
Karl Mamer: I know, yeah, we’ll be cool.
Karen Stollznow: Well, I was going to ask a question about that, but I guess we can…
Blake: No, no, it’s okay.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, can you do.
Blake: You’re wondering what… if they have stats for Satan and Jesus. That’s a great question, Karen. Thanks for bringing that up. Actually, Karen…
Karl Mamer: if…
Karen Stollznow: They should be included if, you know, fictional creatures and all.
Karl Mamer: If you could ask that question, I have an interesting little story about that.
Karen Stollznow: Oh, okay, the way that… Blake asked it, or just her?
Karl Mamer: Yeah, yeah, do they have?
Blake: We could do it in, like, when it’s natural in the flow somewhat.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
Karen Stollznow: Maybe after question, like.
Karl Mamer: Jesus and Mary, and, you know, John the Baptist.
Karen Stollznow: Totally natural, yeah.
Blake: 5 and 6. There you go.
Karl Mamer: Yeah.
Blake: I think.
Karl Mamer: Yeah.
Blake: a good place.
Karen Stollznow: We should probably get started, then.
Blake: Actually, we should get started, but it’s funny, because you said from the start we should go back and look at,
Blake: Episode 220.
Karl Mamer: I did re-listen to it myself.
Blake: And I was like, that’s a great idea. Oh, it’s the Monster Manual episode, okay, okay.
Karl Mamer: Damn.
Karen Stollznow: Okay, please tell me that’s not the first question.
Karen Stollznow: That’s very confusing.
Karen Stollznow: Yes. All of this is confusing.
Blake: We had on John Peterson to talk about the history of the Monster Manual, and so, that’s more of a, hey.
Blake: We’re gonna be talking about Dungeons & Dragons, and if you’d like to know a little bit of a deeper dive on some of this stuff, you can go check out episode 220.
Blake: Yes. Which was an interview with John Peterson, who wrote a book called Playing at the World, A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games.
Blake: There you go. That’s a nice title.
Karen Stollznow: Very nice, yeah. Well, welcome to the show, Carl.
Karl Mamer: Kid, thank you.
Karen Stollznow: Good to have you back, as always.
Blake: Yeah, who is Carl Nehmer, for people who don’t know?
Karl Mamer: Appreciate it.
Blake: Are we rolling?
Blake: Well, oh yeah, we’re totally rolling, I’ve been recording already.
Karen Stollznow: We have… The last 5 minutes, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Okay.
Blake: I’ll, I’ll quickly just…
Karen Stollznow: Sneaks it up on us.
Blake: shrink a lot of that for Patreon people, but yeah, we’re rolling now. So, yeah, we’re welcoming back Carl Mamer, who is the host of the Conspiracy Podcast.
Karl Mamer: Conspiracy Skeptic Podcast.
Blake: Sorry, that’s not the real title. That’s the title that they want you to believe.
Karl Mamer: Depends which month my Soros checks are coming.
Blake: Exactly. The Conspiracy Skeptic Podcast. So, you don’t believe you have a podcast? That you’re skeptical of it? Is that the idea?
Karl Mamer: I am… I do it so infrequently these days that, yes, people would… I’d be skeptical about it. Fair enough.
Karen Stollznow: Yeah, yeah.
Blake: No, no, no. I’ll fix all that in post, Carl, don’t worry.
Karl Mamer: No worries.
Blake: So, I’ve known Carl online for a long time. I mean, I… we’ve met in person at TAM,
Blake: And you’re delightfully Canadian, Carl.
Karen Stollznow: TM2, and he gave me a chocolate bar.
Blake: That’s it.
Karl Mamer: I did, didn’t I?
Karen Stollznow: I’ll never forget that, it was delicious.
Karl Mamer: I miss him.
Blake: Hanging out with you, Carl.
Blake: So, yeah.
Karl Mamer: If I had met you at a TAM overseas, I would have given you a bottle of maple syrup, but .
Karen Stollznow: Next time.
Karl Mamer: Yeah. I don’t know, as… when I… when I travel abroad, outside of North America, I always bring little bottles of maple syrup, and then give them to, kind of.
Blake: I thought all Canadians did that, is that just you?
Karl Mamer: Just carry it on you in hip flasks. Pretty much, pretty much.
Karen Stollznow: Never know when you need…
Blake: For bartering.
Karen Stollznow: Yes, yes.
Blake: And yeah, so you…
Blake: You were actually inspired to sort of dive back into your research on monsters, or at least the monster manual because of that episode? Is that right?
Karl Mamer: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I, I mean, I’ve written two books so far, like, there’s.
Blake: Yeah, we should have mentioned the books, yeah, that may be… the Skeptic’s Book of Lists.
Karl Mamer: Correct, yeah. Okay, good. And, yeah, and then the Conspiracy Skeptics Book of Lists. Nice. And, yeah. And, so I’m doing a third one, so this one is now the Skeptics Book of Lists 2. I kind of had a plan to do
Karl Mamer: a general, and then, like, Conspiracy Skeptics book a list, skeptics book a list 2, UFO Skeptics book a list, something like… I don’t know, I don’t know, who knows how much longer I’m gonna live, but we’ll see. But.
Karen Stollznow: Lots of material there.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, exactly. So, so one of my lists, I was inspired by the, episode 220, where you kind of delved into the Monster Manual, because it was quite fascinating, where your guest talked a lot about, like, the origin of the monsters. Like, where did Gary Gygax…
Karl Mamer: get those monsters. Because, I mean, today, if you’re gonna do a…
Karl Mamer: If you’re gonna do a role-playing game and you wanted monsters, you just…
Karl Mamer: Google it, and get a list of monsters, and then…
Karl Mamer: You know, that would be your basis, but, you know.
Blake: Google was notoriously slow in the 1970s.
Karl Mamer: It was called a library, yeah. It was called a card file.
Karen Stollznow: Oh, I remember those, yeah.
Blake: For listeners, Carl is miming. Mamer is miming. Yeah.
Blake: Going through a card file.
Karen Stollznow: I want to note, too, that he looks like Corn Julio, because he’s kind of blending into his chair there.
Karl Mamer: No.
Karen Stollznow: You are really blending, it’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Karl Mamer: T, black chair, yeah. T for my bug hole.
Karl Mamer: So, so yeah, so, well, so it inspired me to, to do one of the lists, one of my lists, both the, Devils and Demons in the Monster Manual. So where did, where did Gary Gygax… what was his inspiration?
Karl Mamer: For, for those. And, so that’s one of the lists, and that kind of prompted me to say, hey, did you want to…
Karl Mamer: Talk about, you know, something more specific
Karl Mamer: Where, you know, the monster… the demons and devils in the Monster Manual. Where did they come from? What was Gary Gygax’s inspiration in the background on them?
Karen Stollznow: Well, I’d like to ask, are these real monsters in the sense that they’re coming from folklore, or of someone else’s creation?
Karl Mamer: Well, I mean, most of them are… most, but not all are…
Karl Mamer: I don’t want to say real devils.
Karl Mamer: But, our, our, our,
Karl Mamer: really come from, you know, various sources, like the Bible, sort of like the Talmud, and then a lot of, like, what do you call it? Grimoires.
Karen Stollznow: Grimoires, yep. Grimoires, yes. Which…
Karl Mamer: If you played Dungeons & Dragons, you encountered this grimoire word.
Karl Mamer: And if you’ve never heard anyone pronounce it before, you had no idea how to pronounce that.
Karen Stollznow: Grimoire, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Until you had Jerry Drake on to talk about Grimoires, I always called it Grimars. Grimars.
Karen Stollznow: Wow, wow, okay. Yeah, Paradigm.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, I had no idea, yeah, but yeah.
Blake: Chasm, we needn’t talk about chasms.
Karl Mamer: Grimoire.
Blake: So many words.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, so it is quite as… yeah, so, as I kind of researched into that, we can get eventually into the… some of the more popular demons and devils in the first edition of the Monster Manual, but… but yeah, in general, Gygax
Karl Mamer: pulled them… really, Gygax pulled them from…
Karl Mamer: Really wear, you know, like, you know.
Karl Mamer: you know, Dante’s Inferno, and, Milton’s Paradise Lost, like, you know, because they had to kind of populate out their stories with devils, so, he basically went to, like, same source, or maybe went to, went to
Karl Mamer: Paradise Lost, and you know, Dante’s Inferno, and pulled names out of there, but… But, yeah.
Blake: There was a… there was a big swath of,
Blake: Metaphysical and magical texts published from the late 1800s to the early 1900s,
Blake: That sort of esoteric, revival.
Blake: Especially coming out of France. So, I’ve got some really great books up here. There’s, like, the Compendium Maleficarum, there’s the False Hierarchy of Demons, and I got a bunch of other little grimoires. And of course, one of the things after talking with Jerry and picking up some of these volumes and looking at them, you… you see
Blake: they’re not the sort of satanic devil books that you would expect based on… especially the way I was raised, you know, evangelical Christian.
Karen Stollznow: I knew it.
Blake: expect these books to be about sacrificing people, or goats, or whatever, and they’re not. They’re… they’re…
Karen Stollznow: disappointed.
Blake: They’re basically Christian texts about using the power of Christ to control demons to accomplish your personal goals, is what they really are.
Karl Mamer: Exactly, which is almost like… It’s a bit of a…
Karl Mamer: it’s a bit of a game, right? So instead of… instead of conjuring a devil to, you know, make a woman love you, or improve the crops in your field.
Karl Mamer: you, you know, in the name of Jesus, you bind and control that demon, and then make him do work for you. But, in the name of Jesus, and then dispel him.
Blake: Right.
Karl Mamer: It was a bit of a dodge, I think, for, you know, people in, like, you know, the 15th and 16th and 17th century.
Karen Stollznow: Well, speaking of Jesus Christ, and…
Karen Stollznow: other religious figures, do you have these figures, in… in the Monster Manual?
Karl Mamer: Well, yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. Well, no, because as it sort of turned out, the… including, you know, names, you know, real devils like Asmodeus and Belzebub and things like that in the Monster Manual, that kind of…
Karl Mamer: during the Satanic Panic, Blake, I don’t know, when you were young, if you ever encountered any aspect of the Satanic Panic, but…
Blake: Yeah, a little, a little.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, a little. But, but that kind of, you know, that,
Karl Mamer: there’s a lot of, a lot of attention and religious and political sort of pressure on TSR to, you know, to do something about all of the, you know, the demons and devils and things in the Monster Manual. And, eventually.
Karl Mamer: TSR kind of bowed to it, and got rid of them when they kind of released a new version, which is known to players as 2nd Edition.
Karl Mamer: And, they re- ended up renaming the Monster Manual.
Karl Mamer: monstrous manual.
Karl Mamer: I don’t know. I’m sure, Blake, if they had talked to you, you could have come up with a better name for them, but…
Blake: I… yeah, why mess with a classic, is my thought, but…
Karl Mamer: Exactly.
Blake: Speaking of the Satanic Panic, though, I should mention, although this is not a paid endorsement, but
Blake: The CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is running a podcast hosted by Sarah Marshall.
Blake: And it’s called The Devil You Know, which is a look back at the satanic Panic. And what she’s doing that’s really interesting to me, I mean, I mean…
Blake: and this is a topic I feel like I know pretty well, but she’s going back and interviewing people whose lives were completely hosed by the Sutan panic, and it is fascinating. So, check that out, the devil you know. Yeah, yeah, we may… I’m gonna see if we can get her on.
Blake: shot now, and maybe too big for us, but I’d like to try to stagger, because it’s…
Karen Stollznow: If nothing else, we can watch it and then talk about it.
Blake: No, it’s good, it’s real good, so, yeah.
Karl Mamer: I mean.
Blake: It’s called You’re Wrong About, which is very popular.
Karl Mamer: I was gonna say, the interesting thing about the Satanic Panic, while it did ruin a lot of lives.
Karl Mamer: arguably, it drove sales like crazy for Dungeons & Dragons, because suddenly it was just this little game almost nobody heard of, just…
Karl Mamer: you know, little 14-year-old nerds like me, suddenly it’s, you know, in Time Magazine, and on the Geraldo Show, and all these kinds of things. And so, it really drove sales, like, crazy. But of course.
Karl Mamer: you know, a lot of pressure was being applied, and like I say, they…
Karl Mamer: They did this really skeevy thing, where they pulled the Demons and Devils out of the second edition.
Blake: Yeah.
Karl Mamer: and reintroduce them, completely rename them the, I think they called it… It’s a rebranding, the kids are calling it. Yes.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, so the Devils, they renamed the Tanari.
Karl Mamer: And the, the, the, the devils, sorry, the demons, like, right, Tanari, and then the devil’s the Betazoo, which… I, I just think they, you know, like, Gary, or,
Karl Mamer: George Lucas is gonna have a, you know, a trash can where all the Star Wars names he doesn’t like, he throws into the trash can. I think TSI went to there, grabbed those out, and like, that’s the devil, those are the demons, you know, yeah.
Karl Mamer: So, they, yeah, they just renamed it. Nobody was pleased by that, but then, eventually, when Wizards of the Coast took over, like, they… they had money up the wazoo, and they did not care, so they just kind of basically brought…
Karl Mamer: The devils and demons we all know and love back into the.
Blake: They also, they, they famously, they, in the original Monster Manual, they had,
Blake: the, Lovecraft, monsters, a lot of the Lovecraft creatures.
Karl Mamer: There was a deities and demigods.
Blake: It was in Daisy Democrat, you’re right, you’re right. Yeah, and then they later removed them. I guess Chaos seem to complained, but Chaos seem didn’t really have the copyright on it. So it was one of those, they capitulated without… they could have fought back and kept them in, but yeah.
Karl Mamer: There’s a lot of stories floating around about that, and people kind of…
Karl Mamer: shorten it down, because it is a complicated story. Yeah, but in essence,
Karl Mamer: chaosism had the, you know, the, the, the, the H.B. Lovecraft
Karl Mamer: call it Cthulhu role-playing game, but they told TSR
Karl Mamer: Don’t worry, you can use the monsters and the, you know, the deities and demigods. Just give us a little credit on, like, you know, on page 1. And,
Karl Mamer: fine, they… so they ran another edition with the credit, but then, by this time, TSR had gone completely corporate, and they were like, you know, the hell we’re gonna put our con… you know.
Blake: Competition in the book, right, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Exactly, and then the next edition, they just pulled all that crap out, so… yeah, very disappointing. But…
Karl Mamer: What was really missed in all of this was, you know, these devils and demons were not there to be worshipped, they were there to be…
Karl Mamer: Fought by player characters, right?
Blake: You know what? That’s a really good point, Carl.
Karl Mamer: Yes, yes, which is weird, because, I mean, hypothetically, you know, the, you know, if you’re truly a devout Christian, you should, you know, and Beelzebub appears, you know, at your,
Karl Mamer: you know, at your Christmas social or whatever, you know, it’s your duty, you know, to pull out your plus-five, you know, Vorpal Bible and just slay!
Karl Mamer: slay that guy, right? So, I don’t know what they’re… but… yeah.
Karl Mamer: So yeah, so, it, it…
Karl Mamer: But like I say, it really kind of, all the controversy really, really pushed sales.
Karl Mamer: Second edition came out, then there’s a bunch of other editions, and then, you know, it kind of just…
Karl Mamer: tailed off, and people still played, but it was no longer the cultural sensation until…
Karl Mamer: What TV show am I talking about, Blake?
Blake: Wow.
Karen Stollznow: Stranger Things, it was.
Karl Mamer: Thank you, Karen, yeah.
Karen Stollznow: Yikes. Yeah.
Karl Mamer: Stranger Things. Stranger Things!
Blake: My family’s very excited, like, I… did you notice my shirt?
Blake: I’m wearing my Hellfire shirt, yeah, and I’m also wearing a, Tony Tony Chopper.
Karen Stollznow: Oh, I thought that was Hello Kitty.
Blake: Yeah, yeah. No, no, it’s, it’s…
Blake: Everybody who doesn’t watch One Piece will know who Tony Tony Chopper is in just a few months, so…
Karl Mamer: Dude.
Blake: he’s a One Piece character, he’s… he’s beloved. Anyway, I shouldn’t rant.
Karen Stollznow: invigorated interest alone.
Blake: Yes. Yeah, it did! D&D got a real big infusion of both interest and cash because of Stranger Things. It really…
Karl Mamer: Huge.
Blake: It is a nostalgia… cha-ching!
Karl Mamer: Oh, yeah. And I don’t know if you have any kind of, like, first edition stuff, but, I…
Blake: I’ve sold off everything I own to keep my bills paid.
Karl Mamer: Yes, I, I, I did, I did…
Karl Mamer: put a few choice items up on eBay and sold a few things off. Like, I did have long… I did have the original deities and demigods with the Cthulhu
Karl Mamer: Pantheon, and…
Blake: I have a friend, like, I imagine we all do in the game, you’ve got that one friend who’s got everything, and I’ve got a friend who’s got that stuff.
Karl Mamer: Well, I had it, but then…
Karl Mamer: But I loaned it, to this guy named Ralph.
Karl Mamer: Still remember his name, and never got it back, and…
Blake: Wow.
Karl Mamer: My only consolation is, while it’s valuable, it’s not pay off your mortgage valuable, so…
Blake: No, no, right. There’s that, right, yeah. It’s not Action Comics number one or whatever, right? Yeah, so, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Exactly, yeah. But, yeah, but, so, Stranger Things, you know, there’s a bunch of scenes, at least a couple scenes of them playing original Dungeons & Dragons, and… and I have to laugh, because, you know, the climactic thing is, like,
Karl Mamer: You know, it’s like, you know, what’s behind the door? And it’s like, oh, it’s the Demogorgon! Oh, it’s the Demogorgon! And they’re all terrified, and that’s when their gaming session ends. Now.
Karl Mamer: If you’re unfamiliar with, you know, the devils and demons, Debbie Gorgon is, like… this might not mean anything to anybody, it’s like he… he… 200 hit points, that the… so that is a very…
Karl Mamer: You know, he’s…
Blake: Beefy.
Karl Mamer: That is a high-level monster, like, you gotta be running around, like, 14th, 15th level to be taking on…
Blake: Aaron, just so you know, that in the original game, I believe 20th was about as high as you could go.
Karen Stollznow: Okay, yeah, my eyes were glazing over.
Karl Mamer: Yes, we care, yeah.
Blake: So the point being, you, as you go up levels, you gain hit points, like, and you also gain the ability to do more damage, all those things are really important.
Blake: But the idea of these books is that your character could eventually become powerful enough to compete with these supernatural deities that are far more powerful than, you know, the sort of average monsters, the orc, the goblin, the troll, that sort of thing. So, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, exactly.
Karen Stollznow: Okay, and is this the kind of thing that people are playing nowadays online, or is it in person, or both?
Blake: Oh, now? Yeah, people are doing it every way you can think of, like, it’s super popular right now, so…
Blake: Really, a lot of this blew up, not only did stranger things happen, but also COVID happened. Yes.
Karl Mamer: That changed the nature of playing.
Blake: Yeah, like, suddenly the tools for playing online became,
Blake: way more acceptable. There were a lot of people who were old-school gamers who wanted… if you didn’t come person in person, face-to-face, you weren’t really a gamer. And now, I think the norm is your friends… you may have never met your friends who play… Right. It’s like… it’s like, your whole gaming group can be all over the world, but everybody gets together and plays, so…
Karen Stollznow: We’ve got to track down Ralph somehow.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, I know, I would, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Personally, I think he’s in jail. Still in jail.
Karen Stollznow: You can check.
Karl Mamer: He’s that… he’s that kind of guy, you know what I’m saying?
Karl Mamer: Oh, yeah.
Karen Stollznow: Yeah, but the, but the, the…
Karl Mamer: Demi… Demi Gorgon, I think, is a very good example of how…
Karl Mamer: how Gary Gygax kind of borrowed
Karl Mamer: existing demons and devils and brought them into the system. So,
Karl Mamer: I, I, I believe the… so, so there…
Karl Mamer: the Demogorgon… there is no actual Demigorgon in the Bible.
Blake: Right.
Karl Mamer: Right, right. But… there was kind of a,
Karl Mamer: demonic creature, that was sort of adopted by the Greeks called, you know, Demi Corregon, which I guess was sort of then based on… it was kind of a… you’re the language expert, Karen, but it was sort of the,
Karen Stollznow: Oh, not with Ancient Greece.
Karl Mamer: Oh, okay. Okay. Well, there was this Platonic thing called the Demiurge, which is sort of the creative force, you know… Right, that…
Blake: It’s from Gnosticism, right? So, the demiurge is the creative force of Gnosticism, but…
Blake: It is insane. It’s a little bit… it reminds me very much of a sort of Lovecraftian world, where the thing that creates us is also a really bad guy, you don’t want to meet it. So, it’s sort of, luckily for us, obscured from the real world.
Blake: And then there’s this intelligence and agency called the Sophia, who represents a sort of divine wisdom, as she sort of protects us from the madness of the… of this demiurge. Yeah, that… it’s a really interesting sort of cosmology, and one that’s,
Blake: Pretty readily understandable to anybody with a sort of poetic view of the world, yeah, so…
Karl Mamer: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so this demiurge kind of eventually got transmongrified in
Karl Mamer: you know, almost, you know, game a telephone into Demogorgon, which was then interpreted by medieval writers as some kind of demon. And then Milton, Milton in Paradise Lost, actually.
Karl Mamer: talks about, borrowed a Demigorgon, and includes, Demogorgon. So, so Gygax, you know, likely pulled Demogorgon from Paradise Lost, but in a lot of things, some of the demons and devils
Karl Mamer: The… the way they’re depicted are…
Karl Mamer: Fairly close to how, how, the, you know, people…
Karl Mamer: thought about them, but… but the Demogorgon is completely… it’s,
Karl Mamer: It’s like two baboon heads, this creature with two baboon heads.
Blake: Very strange illustration.
Karl Mamer: Yes.
Blake: Probably make that the, show picture, is that illustration, because it’s really quite, striking.
Blake: Excuse me.
Karl Mamer: Exactly, yeah.
Blake: That, along with their picture of a succubus, is one of those really burned-in-my-head memories of.
Karl Mamer: Yeah.
Karen Stollznow: Oh, my vote’s for the succubus.
Blake: Well, she’s a hottie, that’s the whole thing. She’s got a little… if my memory is right, she has sort of a Betty Page feel.
Karl Mamer: Yes.
Karen Stollznow: To agree that…
Karl Mamer: Confusion. Yeah, kind of, yeah, yeah, more… or a Russ Myers kind of a… Yeah.
Karen Stollznow: Yeah, well, this all sounds like a.
Karl Mamer: of…
Karen Stollznow: Sorry, it just all sounds like a very eclectic mix of folklore and mythology, and just invented creatures, and… is that part of the game? That you…
Karen Stollznow: Aid in the evolution of these characters?
Karl Mamer: Well, I mean, that’s kind of the interesting thing, because these… the demons and devils are so… what we would call high-level. So, you know.
Blake: Very overpowerful.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, it’s very powerful, very high level. I mean, the game’s called Dungeons & Dragons, but you, generally speaking, do not want to encounter dragons. Yes, exactly. That, like, you know, I’m sure, you know, Blake and I have
Karl Mamer: played Dungeons & Dragons for years, if not decades, and I… I don’t… I’ve never been in a game where even one of these… like, you know, even some of the lesser demons and devils have ever been, you know, you ever encounter them, so…
Blake: To that point.
Blake: I’ve never been in a combat against a dragon in a traditional tabletop, you know, Pen and paper game.
Karl Mamer: Right.
Blake: where we use combat to defeat a dragon successfully. Now, in video games, yes, absolutely, you know, for sure. But in tabletop.
Blake: we’ve always approached dragons as a thing that you better out with them, otherwise you’re going to be dead, right? So, it’s always a… use the fact that they can speak.
Blake: you know, use the fact that they think they’re very proud, you know, that sort of thing. So, like, it’s always been more of a battle of wills and wit than combat, so…
Karl Mamer: Yes.
Blake: Or we died, one of those two things.
Blake: Yes.
Blake: Exactly.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, but I mean, but very few of the devils and demons… I should explain devils and demons. We might…
Karl Mamer: conventionally use those synonymously, you know, a devil and demon, but in Dungeons & Dragons, they’re two very different things. So, devils are kind of a line called lawful evil.
Karl Mamer: And then demons are what we call chaotic evil. So, can you think of a good metaphor for Karen? This kind of was a trend for a while, you know, if, you know, you know.
Blake: Well, Lawful Evil might be, like, a billionaire executive who works within the rules of the law, but is.
Karl Mamer: UK.
Blake: only for himself.
Blake: But chaotic evil might be more like a serial killer or a, like, just a shooter, like a crazy shooter type person. Someone who is… is… generally, we can all agree they’re evil, but they’re… we can’t…
Blake: Kind of, their motivations are inscrutable.
Karl Mamer: So, a Facebook versus a Tesla, kind of, almost.
Karen Stollznow: And some…
Karl Mamer: He got a keyboard.
Karen Stollznow: metaphors that we…
Blake: Like, a lawful, evil character…
Blake: can exist in the world without ruining the world, right? They’re working within the constraints of whatever the system is of their code, or whatever.
Karen Stollznow: The loopholes, and yeah.
Blake: Yeah, right, right. So they may be terrible, but generally speaking, they’re not illegal, right? They need to be terrible. So, yeah. So, again, billionaires.
Karen Stollznow: Got it. Right? So, yeah.
Karen Stollznow: Yeah, exactly. Mark their distinction, yep.
Karl Mamer: But, you know, actually, one of the more interesting things that… I mean…
Karl Mamer: the… the satanic panic, you know, quasi-got TSR in trouble with their demons and devils, but what really actually got TSR in trouble was they… they, they went up against the token estate.
Karl Mamer: Very, very early into Dungeons & Dragons, they had, one of the…
Karl Mamer: one of the demons, I think it was one of the demons, was, it was a Type 4… Type 6 demon. They… I don’t know, they had.
Blake: Was it the bell?
Karl Mamer: The Balrog, yes, exactly. And they called it the Balrog, right? Which, you know, was straight out of Lord of the Rings, you know, you shall not pass. And, and then the token estates started to kind of look over these things and were like, Balrog? No, no, no, no, no.
Karl Mamer: So, I think they rename it, like, the…
Blake: Right, because that’s not, like, a piece of folklore, that’s a thing Tolkien made up himself, right?
Karl Mamer: Exactly, exactly. They went from… you know, when you’re just small, you’re like.
Karl Mamer: this is never gonna get on anybody’s… at the token estates desk, then suddenly, yeah. And then the, they did have Hobbits, which they eventually, you know, renamed Halflings, not to get sued.
Blake: Yep.
Karen Stollznow: Yeah, tree… they had Ents, which are, you know, the big walking trees, which they…
Karl Mamer: called Treants, yeah. So they did have to kind of, like…
Karl Mamer: tweak some names and stuff like that, but…
Blake: I probably will get in trouble for saying this out loud, but there is…
Blake: There’s something really fascinating of sort of…
Blake: I don’t know what you would call it, poetic echo.
Blake: in the way that the people who were promoting the Satanic Panic we’re essentially LARPing
Blake: their version of the, sort of, apocalyptic Christianity.
Blake: At the same time, the people they were saying were real…
Blake: satanic enemies were playing a game that was very explicitly just a game. A game created by a guy who was very explicitly Christian.
Karl Mamer: Yes, yes.
Blake: And so, they wanted so badly to live in a world where they could be in The Exorcist, or they could be fighting demonic evil.
Blake: That they had to, like…
Blake: make that world real through moral panic. Like, they really wanted it to be… they wanted to be those guys. Like, there’s so many cases where, like, the police force had satanic and demonic experts. Like, that’s not even a thing.
Blake: But, like, it was… anyway, there’s sort of this loop of who’s pretending and who’s being serious here, and the irony is that the people who were absolutely, knowingly playing.
Karen Stollznow: In a play space of the imagination.
Blake: were being personified as evil incarnate by the people who were also playing, but couldn’t realize they were playing, so…
Karl Mamer: Yes, exactly. Thankfully, that’s over, we’ll never have to deal with it again. I know. That’s not coming back, the satanic panic.
Karl Mamer: Yeah! Yeah.
Karl Mamer: But I mean, you know, when I was a kid and I played Dungeons & Dragons, when I think of myself today, I mean, other than you…
Karl Mamer: Learned cool words, like…
Karl Mamer: Grimoire and, you know, Puissant, Manual of Arms. You know, you learned a lot of big words that you would not have normally learned anyplace else, but it really propelled you to learn, you know, history and art, and statistics, and chemistry, and those sorts of things, and .
Blake: A lot of times, just to get smarter than the Game Master, right?
Karl Mamer: Exactly.
Blake: For real. Like, yeah, because you wanted your character to get ahead, so you personally got ahead, right? It matters. I mean, that… you’re not wrong. And absolutely, I know friends who spent academic levels of research
Blake: on a thing for a game, just to, like, find out about how to do X, Y, or Z, and it’s like…
Blake: They never would have done that outside of that context. They never would have done that work if it had been at their day job, like, you know, but when it helps their character get some more XP or some cool item, yes, they will absolutely spend the time to learn the real-world material. Yeah, it’s amazing.
Karl Mamer: Exactly. Like, how, how.
Blake: Karen, I sent you a copy of the succubus image from Dungeons & Dragons, so you can see what I’m talking about.
Karen Stollznow: Where did you send it to?
Blake: I said it’s your email, so…
Karl Mamer: Okay, yeah, not, not work safe.
Karen Stollznow: Yeah, yeah, not so fortunate.
Blake: She’s not quite as Betty Page as I thought. She doesn’t… I remembered her having bangs, but it’s more of a part down the middle, so…
Karen Stollznow: Well, she’s, yeah, she’s got horns.
Blake: She… she… she’s… she’s…
Karl Mamer: Definitely horny, that’s true, that’s true. Zing!
Karen Stollznow: Nice, nice bat wings, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Bye.
Karen Stollznow: Very interesting.
Blake: Oh, I didn’t even notice those!
Blake: Just kidding.
Karen Stollznow: Oh, dear, so…
Blake: It’s…
Karl Mamer: Did not…
Blake: I have to say, when I was, like, 14, this was like porn, right? Oh my god! You can publish that in a book? I can imagine. That’s amazing.
Karen Stollznow: Yeah.
Karl Mamer: It was, it was, it was a little racy back in the time.
Blake: I mean, to overshare, I also recall, like, in the backs of, like, Better Homes and Gardens, they would have advertisement for… you could order a catalog of Fredericks of Hollywood.
Blake: Like, in the picture they had for the order form was, like, some little…
Blake: drawing of a woman in a, you know, it’s just a pen and ink drawing, right? And it was like…
Blake: Yes!
Blake: basically porn for me, in my world, right? So, yeah, it’s very sad. Sethetic, yeah. Yes, yes it is, but that was the world.
Karen Stollznow: That was the best you could get, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Yep. Fair enough. Also, I’m gonna ask you, Blake, I would ask you, Karen, but, maybe you did review the material I sent, but so what was your favorite demon, and what was your favorite devil?
Blake: You know, truthfully, okay, Carl, this is… so here’s how this all played out, right? So…
Blake: When I was in high school.
Blake: none of my friends played Dungeons & Dragons, right? But my friend Mike, lifelong friend, we’ve been friends since we were 5 years old.
Blake: He… his mom would get him whatever he wanted, so he had all the books.
Karl Mamer: Right.
Blake: And I would read the Monster Manual, like, over and over again at his house on the weekends. So, I just loved that book, and I would just sit there and read it. And he was… he would calmly explain to me, you know there’s a game that this could be played with.
Blake: But nobody played the game. Nobody ran the game. I don’t think there were any gamers in my high school. The first time
Blake: ran into this, like, actually being played?
Blake: was at a debate team conference. I went into… there were some other kids from another school that were playing, and they were playing specific… it’s weird that I remember this, but they were specifically playing… there’s a module that’s based on, Through the Looking Glass.
Karl Mamer: Okay.
Blake: Or Alice in Wonderland, I don’t remember, but it has, like, mushroom people and other stuff in it. But that was the first time I saw people actually playing the game, and I tried to sort of understand what was going on, but it wasn’t really clicking. So it wasn’t until I got to college.
Blake: And then by the time I met my college friends, who are still my friends, they’re my lifelong friends, we still play role-playing games together.
Blake: But they were all playing, Iron Crown Enterprises’ ice rollmaster system.
Karl Mamer: Mmm.
Blake: Because they had sort of outgrown Dungeons & Dragons and wanted a system that had better combat. And Rolemaster had all those great
Blake: critical hit tables, and they were so into the combat, and it had a really rich magic system, and I really liked Rolemaster a lot. So, when I finally got around to playing, that’s what I played, and we hardly ever encountered named demons. Or if we did, they were stuff that the Game Master made up.
Blake: But after all that long preamble, I still think the Balrog’s the coolest. So, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Oh, yeah.
Karen Stollznow: Well.
Karl Mamer: The… I mean, back in the day, we called them Holy Wars, right? You know, is the Starship Enterprise… could the Starship Enterprise defeat the Star Destroyer? Is it GIF or GIF? I mean, these were things that occupied our time.
Blake: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Karl Mamer: On the very early internet. And one of them was, does the Balrog have wings? Now, I don’t think in token he ever comments about that, but I believe the.
Blake: The movie’s canon.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, there was…
Blake: The real thing.
Karl Mamer: The Ralph Bashke, the Ralph Bashke cartoon does show… depict him with wings, and .
Blake: By the way, if you… for listeners, if you haven’t seen Ralph Bakshi’s, Lord of the Rings, it’s, I think it only goes through the first two books, right? So, it never finishes, right?
Karl Mamer: It ends…
Karl Mamer: the Battle of Helmsteep. They… Yeah. Spoiler alert, they win it. It is really well done, but it’s rotoscope. It’s so cool.
Blake: Like, there’s so much, rotoscoping done in there. But, yeah, very, very cool, very cool. And I, I, I think superior over, say, the Rankin-Bass Hobbit, for example, yeah, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Oh, yes, not go there. Or the Return of the King, TV.
Karl Mamer: special, but yeah. But, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But the.
Blake: With the greatest adventure! No, no, no, I hate that song.
Blake: You know who loves that song?
Blake: Peter… Peter Thiel.
Karl Mamer: Oh, no.
Blake: It says volumes, by the way, it just says volumes, so…
Karen Stollznow: Okay.
Karen Stollznow: Oh, do I get a 10? No.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, yes, yes.
Karen Stollznow: Because I, I did, yeah, I did get the, the screenshots. And so, I’m gonna go with, is it Asmodeus?
Karl Mamer: Asmodeus, oh yeah. Oh, thank you, because…
Blake: People say Asmodaius, I don’t know. I know who you’re talking about.
Karen Stollznow: Amadeus.
Karl Mamer: It can be pronounced the other way, Asmodeus or Asmodeus.
Karen Stollznow: Modius, the arch-devil, anyway, because he is very reminiscent, to me of Anton LaVey.
Karl Mamer: Do you get Anton LaVey vibes?
Karen Stollznow: From him?
Karen Stollznow: How he sees himself, or would have seen himself.
Blake: Kids, if you don’t know Anton LaVey, in the 60s and 70s, he created the Church of Satan, which wasn’t actually so much about Satan as it was about taking care of your damn self.
Karl Mamer: Well, Asmodeus, or Asmodeus, however you want to pronounce him, that’s actually one of the few demons and devils that does come out of the Bible, but not
Karl Mamer: I was raised Catholic, Blake, so…
Karl Mamer: I have this in my Bible. I don’t think you have it in your Bible. There’s the Book of Tobit, so…
Blake: Nope, yep, that’s a bonus book.
Karl Mamer: But briefly, the Book of Tobit does feature Asmodeus as sort of a main character. The idea is that the Sarah, the woman in the book, Sarah, every time she marries a man, Asmodeus kills the dude, and .
Karen Stollznow: Very possessive.
Karl Mamer: I, I know, yeah, exactly.
Blake: Deus Ex Machina, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Exactly, and then… and then, so a lot of, sort of, scholars have then tried to figure out what was… why, and they, you know, kind of conclude, well, he was this, you know, he was this Lothario, like, he just wasn’t, like.
Blake: Oh, yeah.
Karl Mamer: It wasn’t like, you know, what we may picture, you know, the devil as, like, you know.
Karl Mamer: you know, Baphomet or something with, you know, goat legs or something. Yeah, he was just this slick guy, and he really loved Sarah, and was just always sort of killing her husbands and stuff like that. So, so, so yeah, so I think that’s what kind of…
Karl Mamer: Gary Gygax, when he sort of imported Asmodeus into the Monster Manual, he…
Karl Mamer: He went to more of that.
Karl Mamer: later, character development for, for that, for that devil. I made a… yeah, made him kind of a slick guy.
Karen Stollznow: It looks a little antisocial or narcissistic.
Karl Mamer: Well…
Karen Stollznow: It depends. And he’s very rare, apparently.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, yeah, very rare. That tends to mean there’s just one of them, so… but that, yeah, the, in the Monster Manor Frequency, the, you know, the common, you know, you know.
Karl Mamer: things like that. The… that’s more like as if you’re rolling dice, what’s the chance? You just… they have… they call them random monster encounters, so, you know.
Blake: Yeah, that’s true. So, in a programming world, you might think of this procedurally generated, so you have the space of the dungeon, and then as the…
Blake: the people proceed through the dungeon, the game master might either have something prepared, or they might roll on a chart, because Gary Gygax, it turns out, in his day job, before he became a full-time game developer, was a insurance actuarial guy, so he was really in…
Blake: the percentage chance that various things would happen. And so, if you know that, the first book makes a lot more sense when you can see that he’s trying to see, well, how can we use statistics to explain what people would see in a fantasy world, which is…
Blake: Kind of funny, kind of amazing.
Karen Stollznow: Also says that he’s lawful evil, so I guess that’s what Blake was talking about.
Karl Mamer: Yes, exactly so.
Karen Stollznow: Super genius.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, I think the…
Karen Stollznow: like, Wile E. Coyote.
Blake: Like Wally Coyote. Yeah.
Karl Mamer: I don’t think the intelligence was ever really well used, like, into the game system, but, but, you know…
Karl Mamer: It was there.
Blake: I mean, that’s… like, like, this whole thing…
Blake: It’s about codifying a system wherein a group of people can collectively agree
Blake: To follow the structures of a system.
Blake: To allow their imaginations to play out with a statistical insert to handle the conclusion of various activities.
Blake: I know that was really abstract, but the point is…
Karen Stollznow: Yes.
Blake: You could… you… instead of just pretending Not an improv group.
Karen Stollznow: Ugh.
Blake: Well, there is a little alcohol involved, but the point… the point is that you’re basically having structured play with friends, you’re creating a collective narrative.
Blake: The Game Master’s not writing the story, he’s setting up a framework, and in a perfect world, everybody works together to attempt to complete a story in the most satisfactory way possible.
Blake: Whether that succeeds or not varies, but some of the greatest memories I have for roleplaying are about these ridiculous characters interacting in these ridiculous scenarios and having these amazing moments that are never in a movie, they’re never in a book, and they’re only shared between the 5 or 6 people who were there.
Blake: But then, when you get a bunch of nerds together, we all want to tell stories about, let me tell you about the time that my rogue got us past a demon to get to a treasure. You know, it’s like, it’s… it’s…
Blake: that… that… it never really happened, but to that half-dozen people, it’s absolutely canonical lore. So, yeah, it’s pretty cool. It’s a really… it’s a really neat way to interact.
Blake: story.
Blake: It’s a bit… Maybe, yeah, I mean…
Karl Mamer: when my mother would listen in to us talk about our campaigns, like, you know, she was always a little bit worried, like, like, you know, we were playing this one game called Top Secret, which is kind of a…
Karl Mamer: James Bond.
Blake: Wow.
Karl Mamer: I know this guy.
Blake: Yeah, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Yes, exactly. So, you know, when you’re talking about, you know, you know, taking out the power plant, and then, you know, and then, you know, putting claymores around the police station, and your mom’s kind of there chopping carrots, she’s a bit like, like any good mom.
Karen Stollznow: around…
Karl Mamer: like… Mmm… No, no, that’s just Carl’s game he plays, I don’t know anything about it, but… Right. Yeah.
Blake: Well, we haven’t gotten there yet, but I had always assumed that by now, and I do mean, like, right now.
Blake: We would already be living in a world where people would be using augmented reality.
Blake: And playing games in the real-world space, but interacting in a virtual level that’s a little bit higher up.
Blake: Because you can absolutely do that. You could map out a fantasy game, or a spy game, or any kind of game onto the real world using, geolocation and all kinds of stuff, so that you could put real… and sort of Pokemon Go kind of played with this space, where the idea of, like, you go to real-world locations and you get virtual encounters.
Karl Mamer: owner.
Blake: right?
Blake: So, it surprises me that that’s not being cashed in on it, because it seems like a really obvious thing, but we may just be waiting for the right interface. But sooner or later.
Karen Stollznow: Maybe you’re the one to…
Blake: be in a world where that’s gonna happen, so…
Karl Mamer: Well, they do have large.
Blake: What, Karen? Sorry, you said something, but I…
Karen Stollznow: I stepped on you, sorry. Yeah, that’s typical. Maybe you’re the one to take it on.
Blake: Sorry. Well, oh, I, I… yeah, yeah, somebody with a billion dollars, not… not a dozen.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, but as I was sort of saying, like, LARPers, live-action role-playing really kind of.
Blake: Yeah, yeah.
Karl Mamer: you know, predates… You know, the whole virtual reality, where people kind.
Blake: Well, we brought up Christianity already, Carl. We’re not listening.
Karl Mamer: Yes, exactly. Sorry! That’s gonna get edited out on the live show, the real show, so, yeah. I was never a LARPer, I find…
Karl Mamer: I find LARP, you know, there’s LARPers in terms of weirdness, and just above that are furries, but I find, like…
Blake: above, really?
Karl Mamer: Well, like, as in weirder, weirder? Well, I…
Blake: I was so excited when furry culture emerged, because it meant that the LARPer, or that the, filk people were not the bottom of the rung, right? So, like, so… filk singing used to be the bottom, and I think… I think filk got to rise up a level, and then the furries is below. That’s what I think the hierarchy.
Karl Mamer: I’m used to be.
Blake: random is…
Karen Stollznow: I was brought on to interject at times like this.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, that’s sick.
Blake: That you boys are going off track. You’ve gone too far. You’ve gone too far. You’re not wrong. You’re talking about furries, yeah.
Karen Stollznow: from the topic sufficiently that we need to wind things down, or up.
Blake: True, true, true. We’re approaching the zone of conclusion.
Blake: So… It’s time for the climax, Carl. Bring us home. Alright, alright.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, but, yeah, so, my new book, coming up, I don’t, I don’t know, it’s in the editing phase right, right now, but, it will have a big section on where did, where did Gary Gygax, find…
Karl Mamer: source all the demons and devils, and like I say, it’s interesting. Some he just made up of whole cloth, and some he…
Blake: You’re gonna have a list, because it’s a book of lists, of the monsters, and then where they came from, right?
Karl Mamer: Yeah, exactly. Where they came from. Also, too, like, kind of interesting, as I sort of said in second edition, how they kind of went away, but then they were kind of brought back very surreptitiously, so… so, you know, so the, the, you know, the Satan police would be like, hmm, you know…
Karl Mamer: you know, Baal… Belsashar?
Karl Mamer: that’s not in the Bible, that’s fine, not realizing, well, that’s really, you know, Beelzebub, you know, kind of thing, so… Thank you.
Karl Mamer: Exactly. So… So.
Blake: We’re gonna have a lot of church lady inserts, I think.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, but yeah, but it was a really, like I said, it was a really fun list to write, and again, just totally inspired by, episode 220, and and, yeah, I mean, you could do, you could spend quite a long time just trying to figure out
Karl Mamer: The one thing that blew me away…
Karl Mamer: I’m watching, Night Stalker with… what was his name, Gavin…
Blake: Darren McGavin.
Karl Mamer: Darren McCown, yes.
Karl Mamer: Go on. And there’s an episode of the Rakshasa.
Karl Mamer: Which is more…
Blake: It sure is. Wow, that’s a great episode. That’s one of the better ones. Exactly. And then, you know, the way you kill it is with a wooden crossbow bolt, and that’s exactly…
Karl Mamer: how you kill it in the Monster Manual, and…
Karl Mamer: That’s exactly where Gary Gyjax pulled the Rakshasa from, from…
Karl Mamer: the Night Stalker TV show, and like.
Blake: Great episode, too, because, Karen, for your information, because I bet you haven’t seen it, the, it’s this 1970 show, the Monster of the Week format. It inspired the X-Files, it’s a super influential.
Karen Stollznow: Sure.
Blake: But… In that episode.
Blake: they have Darren McGavin going through a neighborhood, and there’s all these old Jewish people there, and they’re freaking out because all over the walls, there’s these graffiti of…
Blake: swastikas, but they’re…
Karl Mamer: Yes.
Blake: counterclockwise swastikas, and I think at first it’s anti-Semitic.
Karen Stollznow: symbol.
Blake: Right, it’s actually some people who are trying to stop the rickshasha, which we probably should cover on an episode, because that’s a great monster, and we haven’t actually covered it, but it’s very, sort of, djinn-adjacent.
Karl Mamer: Yeah. But it’s like my dream.
Blake: drink, which is vodka-based, but it’s shit-advantages.
Karl Mamer: It’s all centered around, like, a South Asian guy running an Indian restaurant.
Blake: It really is. It’s so cool.
Karl Mamer: For the 1970s, it was just…
Karl Mamer: Not stereotypical, he was just this guy running a restaurant, who knew a lot about Rakshasas, and…
Blake: It’s a neat episode.
Karl Mamer: It’s probably one of the better ones, I really do like it a lot, so… Nothing stereotypical, the guy, he’s not…
Karl Mamer: played as a creepy bad guy, he’s not, you know, he’s not there for a comic relief or anything like that. Yeah, it’s…
Blake: He’s just a guy running… he’s just a guy doing business in America.
Karl Mamer: Exactly, exactly.
Karen Stollznow: I think I have to bang my gavel again now.
Karl Mamer: Okay.
Karen Stollznow: Get you on track.
Blake: Okay, fine.
Karl Mamer: Alright, sorry.
Blake: Alright, we’ll wind down. So, Carl, when can people expect to see this out in the real world?
Karl Mamer: Yeah, so the Skeptic’s Book of Lists, too, probably not gonna be
Karl Mamer: in time for Christmas, that’s for sure, because, usually I do kind of 3 edits, and I’m really only a third of the way through my first edit, so it’s gonna be… it’s going to be a while, but,
Karl Mamer: Okay.
Blake: But they can, in the meantime, they can whet their appetite by looking at the original Skeptics Book of Lists and the Skeptic… Conspiracy Skeptics Book of Lists, right?
Karl Mamer: Available on Amazon? Yes, exactly.
Blake: There you go, we’ll put a link in the show notes, so…
Karl Mamer: Exactly, exactly. Exactly.
Blake: Alright, well, currently…
Karl Mamer: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, did you want?
Blake: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, stand up.
Karl Mamer: Wait, wait, wait, don’t tell me.
Karen Stollznow: My favorite, my favorite monsters… update on my favorite monsters.
Karen Stollznow: There’s an update.
Blake: Hey, Carl, we’ve never cared about favorite monsters, but sure, we’ll start some new thing with you. What? Well, if you remember all…
Blake: It’s 2026, isn’t it? No, it’s 2025. What year is it, Carl? First of all, what year is it? And second of all, what’s your favorite monster?
Karen Stollznow: I know.
Blake: May, eventually.
Karen Stollznow: Miss you.
Blake: vodka, so…
Karl Mamer: I see you. Okay, alright. Well, when I was first on your show, you had me on to talk about
Karl Mamer: the, Tartarian Empire and giants.
Blake: That’s right, that’s right, the mud flood, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Yes, exactly, right? Medfoot, yes. And I… my favorite monsters, they divide into three, three ages of Carl, so there’s the young Carl.
Karen Stollznow: Three ages of…
Blake: Yes. That was the… that was when you.
Karen Stollznow: Every Seinfeld.
Blake: Four legs, right?
Karl Mamer: Exactly. So, young Carl.
Blake: And then you’re walking on two legs, but now you’re on three legs, so what do you got?
Karl Mamer: You’re right. Riddle, riddle, yeah, Riddle of the, Riddle of the Sphinx. But, yeah, so, young, young Carlett was the space octopus from Space 1999, and then.
Blake: Fantastic.
Blake: Potassium.
Karl Mamer: you know, and then sort of, age 2 of Carl, it was Bigfoot, not that original, and age 3, and, you know, my old age Carl. It’s, it’s people, you know, who have, like, you know, 20 items in the, you know, the 16 or less items grocery store aisle.
Karen Stollznow: me.
Karl Mamer: That one is That one is slightly cheaper.
Blake: I’ve seen that monster many times.
Karl Mamer: Yes.
Blake: And if you complain, they want to talk to a manager. It’s like…
Karen Stollznow: Oh, nice dig there, like…
Karl Mamer: I was gonna say that was… Do you know his name?
Karen Stollznow: Not cut my hair.
Karl Mamer: That one has slightly changed now, that’s the one I want to update, so…
Blake: So, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah. So, I mean.
Karen Stollznow: You’re not that old, Carl.
Karl Mamer: I know, but, you know, I am… if you follow my Facebook, I am rocking a cane these days, so, and because of that, I’ve got the, I’ve got… I don’t know what you call them there, but we call them accessibility passes. You put it on your car, and you can…
Blake: Down here, they’re handicap stickers, but yeah, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Exactly, so I got one of those. So, those are fantastic. So my new…
Karl Mamer: You know, Old Carl, Favorite Monster are, Uber drivers who use those spaces as pickup and drop-off spaces.
Blake: Oh, wow.
Karl Mamer: Well, I won…
Karen Stollznow: there, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Yeah, I want.
Blake: More like… Uber drivers, am I right?
Karl Mamer: Exactly, yeah. Gurr. Monsters. Yes. I’m not saying put.
Karen Stollznow: Monstrous.
Karl Mamer: through their heart, not saying that all, and you’re not seeing me tapping my nose while I’m saying that, Blake. Karen?
Karen Stollznow: On that note.
Blake: I’m out of my way.
Blake: Carl, as always, good to see you, man. Alright, thank you. Glad you’re still around.
Karen Stollznow: Good to chat with you, yeah.
Karl Mamer: Alright, it’s always fun, and I hope I didn’t embarrass myself this time.
Blake: No, no, you’re fine! I took the vodka hit for.
Karen Stollznow: Like.
Blake: You’re all set.
Karen Stollznow: He embarrassed himself, so…
Blake: That’s right, that’s… that’s… when I go back to edit this later this week, I’ll be like, what the f**k was I saying?
Karl Mamer: What was I saying? I sent her a picture of what?
Blake: Exactly, exactly. What! Okay, yeah, that is probably not wrong. That’s probably not wrong.
Karen Stollznow: Yes, yes.
Blake: So…
Karen Stollznow: For sure.
Blake: Anyway, you know, keep that syrup warm for us, I’m sure we’ll.
Karen Stollznow: Yep.
Blake: Each other again soon, so…
Karl Mamer: Alright, well, have a good night. Have a great night.
Blake: Guys.
Karen Stollznow: Bye.
Blake: This was a fun chat, I appreciate it.
Karen Stollznow: Have a good one.
Karen Stollznow: Good night. Bye-bye.
Blake: If I can figure out how to end it. Alright, but… There it is, sorry, I…