Episode 102 - Kanky Spanks

Episode Touchstones

 * Carman gives two options:
 * Our Lady's Child (Grimm)
 * Cinderstick (Georgia)
 * Initially confused for Cinder Jack (Hungary)

Featured Story
Tyler and Gordie choose "Cinderstick" after being denied "Cinder Jack" and later "the cabin in the sky," "Unanana, again" and "Iron Henry". Carman describes "Our Lady's Child" as "it involves Mother Mary" and "Cinderstick" as "it has a character named Cinderstick in it."

Cinderstick is from Fairy Tales of Eastern Europe, selected and retold by Neil Philip.

Overall Plot

 * Cinderstick lives with his wife and spends all day poking at the ashes in the fire. One day, the wife tells him that she'll leave him if he doesn't get up and do literally anything. He continues to not do anything.
 * He finally goes to church on Easter Sunday. When he comes back, his wife has locked him out of the house. He asks for a bag full of ashes, an awl, and some fresh cheese, and leaves.
 * He comes to a river where a giant Div (sp?) is sitting. Cinderstick scared, so decides to put a hole in his ash bag and swing it around his head, making a cloud of ashes.
 * The Div is shocked and challenges Cinderstick to squeeze water from a stone. Cinderstick squeezes his cheese until water comes out.
 * Cinderstick demands that the Div let him cross the river on the Div's shoulders. The Div says that Cinderstick is very light, so Cinderstick claims that he is actually heavy, but holds onto heaven with one hand. He then backs this up by boring a hole in the Div's skull with his awl to simulate heaviness until the Div begs him to stop.
 * Cinderstick follows the Div home. The Div tells him to watch some bread in the oven, but when Cinderstick tries to turn the bread over he gets stuck underneath it because giant bread. Other Divs show up and he passes it off as using it as a heating pad.
 * The Divs ask him to fill a big jug with wine from the big barrel half buried outside. The barrel is so big that all of the Divs together can barely move it, but Cinderstick digs at the base of it and pretends that he was going to take that instead of just filling the jug. The Divs are scared at his apparent super-strength and fill the jug themselves.


 * One of the Divs coughs and the force blows Cinderstick into the rafters. He says that he's going to spank the Div for his impertinence with the "stick," meaning the rafter. The Divs are scared because this means that he is much, much stronger than him. They run away.
 * One frightened Div meets a fox and tells him what happened. The fox knows that it's just Cinderstick (he has eaten many of their hens) and offers to prove it, but when Cinderstick sees them coming he pretends that he asked the fox to bring him Divs. The Div is so scared that he runs away until he's put "nine mountains" between them.
 * Cinderstick takes all of the Divs' stuff, loads it on camels (from where?) and comes home. His wife is happy and they live happily ever after the end.

Discussion Points

 * Jane Goodall, famous yeti zoologist
 * Cryptids, real or not real (due to real, extensive, diligent research):
 * Crop circles, real
 * Yetis, real
 * Thunderbirds, real but extinct
 * Black-eyed children, real and grew up to form a hip hop band
 * Champion (Lake Champlain version of nessie), real
 * Loch Ness Monster, fake
 * Jersey Devil, fake
 * Moth Man, real
 * Chupacabra, actually just regular lizards eating each other
 * Spring Heeled Jack, fictional


 * Cinderstick origins:
 * Ash sea monkey
 * Cinder womb
 * Carnival prize
 * Cinderstick is an otherworldly creature birthed from the cinder womb who grew up to be a high school chicken football star but then a fox started negging him and telling him how awful he was and then he dropped the winning pass, and now his spirit is broken and the fox is still eating all of his chickens
 * Casting:
 * Forest Whitaker as the Fox
 * Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond as Cinderstick's wife,
 * Brian Posehn as All of the Giants

Notable Quotes

 * Gordie: So any triple-humped camels are storing water, nicotine, and bells, in that order.

Carman: Can I finish this story? I have, like, one sentence left. And then we can talk about the yeti. Gordie: I never make sense.
 * Gordie: Do you want to talk about the yeti real quick?
 * Carman: We're twizzler'd up. Tell us about yetis.
 * Carman: If you look objectively at Everybody Loves Raymond...
 * Tyler: That's my secret, Captain.