Manic Dan adds special thanks to
Kaylee Archer & Tyler Salls for all their work at GMoM!
Contact Details
- Krampus Walk – Saturday December 14th, 2024
– to join the walk – dress up and be at City Hall at 6:30PM
– the walk down Church Street starts at 7PM. - Manic Mart Facebook
- Green Mountains of Madness Facebook
- Manic Dan on Instagram
Interview Details
Date: Monday November 11th, 2024 (thank you Veterans!)
Location: Colchester
Length: 45:48
Episode Number: 48
Show Notes Link: vermonttalks.com/manic-dan-green-mountains-of-madness/
Short Link: vermonttalks.com/48
Transcript (ai magic – apologies for typos!)
Becca: What’s New 802? I’m Becca Hammond and you’re listening to Vermont Talks. Vermont Talks may include graphic or explicit content. Listener discretion is advised.
Becca: Welcome to Vermont Talks. I’m here with Manik Dan, who is a buddy of mine. Welcome Dan.
Manic Dan: Hey, thanks for having me. Your 50th interview. That’s pretty sweet.
Becca: Thank you. What an honor. Thank you. I will say my numbering’s a little out of whack. I have to disclaim my number of the 50 because I haven’t published every interview. That is some deep Vermont Talks lore that I will not discuss on the air.
Manic Dan: But I’ll take the badge nonetheless.
Becca: Yes, yes. You get the badge in this moment. I also had intro episodes. This is the 50th that is going to be posted on Buzzsprout, which is my podcast hosting company. If anyone’s wondering, they’re a pretty good podcast host. I am not sponsoring them. They’re not paying me. I pay them lots of money. Anywho, anywho, Dan, Krampus Walk. That is why we are here today is to discuss the Krampus Walk.
Manic Dan: It’s very exciting. This will be our eighth year doing it. Similar to your numbers, I’m calling it number eight. The first year wasn’t on Church Street in Burlington, but all subsequent ones that we walked were. The first one rained out and we walked in the University Mall, which was interesting and no one expected it. We had the police called on us, which is pretty cool. The second year was on site, which was really cool and actually getting to do it outside. We also got the police called on us again, but it’s fun. If you’re not being a little rowdy, you’re doing it wrong. But during COVID, we actually had to do it digitally, which wasn’t quite as hurrah cathartic screaming at people during the holidays. I think I read some excerpts from the Grinch.
Becca: Oh, there you go. Does this still exist? Is this on YouTube somewhere?
Manic Dan: It is on the Green Mouths Madness page somewhere under videos. It’s there. It’s embarrassing, but it’s there.
Becca: Oh, things I forgot to mention. It is the 11th of November. Oh yeah, 11-11. 2024. I like to say these things because Vermont Talks has been around for five years now. Sometimes fun to go way back and listen to small episodes.
I’m going to start saying when I actually recorded these things. And on top of that, Dan runs a giant Facebook group. Giant for Vermont.
Giant for Vermont. It’s a lot of, but it’s good people. It’s good people who actually come out and come to your events that you vend. Let’s list all these things that you do. You’re known as a mask maker. People have asked me about your masks before, so I think you are gaining a pretty good rep there. You make a lot of work.
Manic Dan: I’ve been called out in public as, oh, you’re the mask guy.
Becca: Mask guy, mask guy, Krampus guy. Are you wearing any other hats before I forget to list all of the different things that you do? See, I know you a little too well. We immediately want to talk about things, but I should list everything important about you because you sell all sorts of art. You make all sorts of cool things.
Manic Dan: Yeah. I think Manic Mart is my main thing and I do a lot of the Vermont gatherings events. And shout out to Jeff Fulb. He’s an amazing event organizer and I pretty much set my yearly calendar by his events. They’re always really solid and there’s a growing, not just community around those, but a lot of us vendors feel like family now. Every time we go to set up, it’s almost like a little family reunion. It’s like, oh, it’s you. Oh, how have you been?
Like that level of check in. So other than my own vending, and I do other events as well where I’ve had my art, but Green Mountains Madness ends up being one of my bigger focuses in years. And ironically enough, I started the community as realizing there wasn’t an online space on Facebook at least in Vermont where it was local target audience for my masks and art. It was that level of like, oh, there’s this group I can share to and this group I can share to, but they’re all very specific communities. And I was like, oh, well, where’s the umbrella that you could qualify under horror?
Right. And so I mean, for the most part, we’re horror, goth, dark art, music, which, you know, metal, punk, alternative, emo, you know, dark wave, new wave, like that whole umbrella of just weirdos really. And it’s coming up to be that safe space for the alternative community. And we try to make sure that we’re all inclusive, no matter who you are, and especially holding the line for the queer community. Because there’s a lot of spaces that a lot of people don’t feel safe, and we’ve always tried to make sure that if you’re at one of our events, not only are you included, but you’re celebrated. You are part of us, you are family. It’s huge.
Becca: Yeah, it’s really important. You’re keeping Vermont weird in the best of ways. Exactly, exactly. It’s cool how many people are in the group right now, because everyone’s actually pretty, like, active and just funny. It’s a fun group to be a part of. It is.
Manic Dan: We’ve been slightly over 4,000 people just recently. And I would say 75% of them are in Vermont, and then, you know, half two thirds of the news numbers are right around the Burlington area. And we’re looking at specific good folks that we know on other parts of the state to be able to be like representatives of the group so that they can start doing their own sanctioned events over there. And we’re still advertising stuff that’s happening anywhere on the other side of the state. Yeah. But really trying to bolster the community so it’s all of Vermont and not just the Valley area. Right.
Becca: Yeah, well, it’s hard. It’s definitely hard when there’s just no venues and a lot of places to do stuff. And that’s what Vermont is. It always comes down to that. People have to drive into Burlington or one of the major cities to go to a concert a lot of the time. There are some great venues, I will say, the barrage.
I cannot mention the barrage. That’s a wonderful venue in the middle of basically nowhere out in, I want to say, Derby area. I’m totally forgetting the exact name. But that’s up in the NEK, right? Right. Right. Exactly. Way up in the Northeast Kingdom. And check out the barrage. They’re out there. It’s just they’re feeling far between.
Manic Dan: One of the places I miss wholeheartedly is what was the Mead Hall in Colchester because essentially it was their warehouse, but also small restaurant and all of their mead pours. And that had that extension of feeling like family. Right. And it was always, hey, we want to do this weird thing. And they’re like, great, that sounds good.
Just do it here. And everyone loved it. Everyone felt like home.
It was great. And then post COVID, we’ve been trying to find that level of home away from home again. And that’s been a little tricky, but it just gives us the opportunity to share and embolden other people’s events. And just like, so if someone shares something to our page, it goes to the group calendar. And so that’s always something that we’re really trying to make sure that people share stuff so that it’s the community itself.
It’s not just us doing things. It’s if you know about something, please post it because one of the things in the early days, it was that level of something cool would happen. And I mean, it still happens now, but an event would happen. And you tell someone about it like, oh, I went to this show last week and it was so awesome. And this band and that band and oh, it’s so cool. And then someone would be like, I would have gone to that if I knew about it. Right. I would have.
Becca: I wasn’t doing, I was home. The eternal problem. Okay, I need to point this out. People don’t rely on Facebook to get your word out because I keep seeing events on my feed four days after they happen. Days later.
Yep. And I’m heartbroken and no one’s like did nothing. And like, why is it showing up four days after the event? And they made it two days before the event. It just don’t rely on Facebook.
Manic Dan: We need to start making flyers again. No, exactly. And we’ve done that for a lot of our things. Shout out to, can you remember his last name? Scott’s event generator?
Becca: Oh, yes. Scott.
Manic Dan: Scott, yes. He does amazing events and he posted the group and similarly, like, the engagement isn’t there, but like enough people are seeing it, but like he’s always flyering and then like, when you’re at one of his events, he’s giving you the flyer for the next one. Yeah. And I respect that so much. And they’re solid. He gets a lot of really good bands from how to state to come to these events.
Becca: Yeah. He does a huge amount. He’s the one who brought Escape from the Zoo. And I was so excited to meet Jesse from Days and Days and Escape from the Zoo. And that was it. Scott had thrown that together in like no time because they were just happening to be coming through. Oh, awesome.
And there was like a life changing event for me. I will not gush anymore than I already am. But like the big deal, like putting together local events and getting the word out and just letting people know like, please, please reach out. Please let people know. And anyway, you can’t talk about it. Don’t just post it. We want to see it.
Manic Dan: We’re in that similar vein. I mean, we’ve been talking about for a couple of years now where we want to make an actual website and get off of Facebook. So we’re not relying on Facebook, having a website and a newsletter so we can let everyone know what’s coming up this month, what’s coming up next month. Honestly, one of the things I’ve been wanting to do for, oh my gosh, five years now. I mean, more than that. But seriously, like considering every so often, and I almost got off the ground once is having a zine.
Becca: I really was just gonna say that as we should make a zine together because I have the printer to do that. And I want to make a zine, incorporate it with Vermont Talks. I’ve been wanting to. So yes. Vermont Talks and Green Mountains of Madness.
Speaker 4: Beautiful. Beautiful. The Manichin specific. We have to throw it in your name. You have to be part of it. You deserve the credit, Dan. Eddie Hale. So this should happen because I think paper, I was thinking, I’ve been thinking for a couple months. You need to get real again. That we need to start sticking zines up on bulletin boards so people can grab them with events in the zine that are happening that month with QR codes. And it has some cool art. We have so many cool artists.
Manic Dan: Like Dan. Both visual and verbal. Like there’s a lot of great writers in the group too. And being able to just get people seen again. Because there was a time, the golden age of Facebook, where it wasn’t the algorithms dictating everything. If you liked things, analogous things would show up. Or if someone liked your post about your art, their friends would see the fact that they liked your thing and then their friends would see it.
Becca: Yes, it was about people. Now Facebook openly admits that you only see 30 of your friends content. So if you have 2000 friends, you’re only seeing 30 people.
Manic Dan: Yeah. There’s times where I’m like, oh my gosh, did this person unfriend me and I didn’t know and I’ll go to their page and it’s like, oh no, we’re friends. They’re like, oh, they must just not be posting very much. And I’ll scroll down and it’s like an hour ago they posted something. It’s like, what? It’s like they got married a week ago.
Becca: It’s a horror story. Like the AI and the marketing, it really is very sad what they’ve done to social media because it should just be what my space was. Organic. Right. Your friends. Look what my friend posted. They were like, I brush my hair at 308 and you’re like, wow.
Manic Dan: Your hair looks great.
Becca: Right. Now I know this. Like it was a really funny time, but that’s all it was. It was so pure and it was just kind of goofy and you’re top friends. Like we don’t need AI algorithms selling us memes and nonsense
Manic Dan: and all these groups with AI pictures and it’s like, I found out recently, it’s like, I keep unfollowing or reporting these groups. There’s like, here’s autumn fall pictures and it’s like, that’s clearly AI and I’ll report it for fall stuff.
And then a friend of mine was like, oh, no, no, this still counts as engagement. It’ll still show you more of that because you spent more time looking at that image. So that’s why you keep getting it. It’s like, but that’s so counterintuitive.
Becca: Yeah. No, it’s really bad to program, but we could go on about that for a really long time. But your art, we should talk. So you mentioned horror. How would you describe your art to someone you could not show your art to? I mean, if someone couldn’t see
Speaker 4: you, I feel like you’re decorated in a way that you could just tell people, but people are on a podcast right now. Right, right. They can’t see you. They don’t know.
Manic Dan: What? How would you describe it? It’s the medium of radio. A lot of my art, I consider myself a dark artist. Like it’s spooky. It’s creepy. A lot of skulls, a lot of teeth, monsters, sometimes cute monsters, but usually when I try to make something cute, it turns out really creepy and that’s more unnerving where sometimes I’ll just make something that’s creepy and then it turns out cute. There’s been a lot of times where I’m like, oh, I could probably do something elegant or sweet looking and it once in a while I can do like a landscape that looks all right or like drawing from life. I can paint a flower.
Becca: Oh, you can make all sorts of art because you, some of the art that you have done for hire, I’ve seen it. Right, right. Like you’re, you can definitely make non horror style, horror style. Right.
Manic Dan: Dark art. Horrific. It’s horrific. But yeah, so a lot of my masks, I’ve been doing it for about a dozen years now. I was working as a manager at Michaels and they had these paper mache skull masks that they got in and I was like, oh, that’s a cool, fun thing. And the one nice thing about working there is being able to be inspired. See something new come in and be like, oh, I could do something with that.
Right. So I grabbed some of those and I grabbed some paper clay and I finished the masks out, smoothed them out, sanded them, painted them up and they looked great. And I had an Etsy at that time and mostly what was on it was my illustration. That’s what I went to college for. I went to college at Savannah College of Art and Design and it was for illustration. I actually didn’t do well in my sculptural classes, but that was usually because I didn’t have, I would call it like the vision.
I didn’t have the like the cerebral, this is why I’m sculpting art. I would just do something weird and spooky and they’d be like, that’s, that’s kind of not art. It’s like that’s kind of like Halloween threw up on this. And it’s like, oh, and I think so too. But it’s that level of, when you’re surrounded by that level of fine artist and you’re like, I just wanted to make it because it’s creepy and weird. And they’re like, all right, well, what does that mean? It’s like, that is, it’s creepy.
Becca: You’re like, okay, well, we’ll try again. What’s the deeper meaning? Well, then you have to talk about the death or something dark and disturbing to go with the creepy.
Manic Dan: I actually did some really fine art this past week for my day job, which is making cool sculptures and museum exhibits and kind of thing for Arkana workshop down in Berry. We were down at the New England Museum Association Conference, and someone was giving out free Play-Doh.
And there’s a little bit of a lull where everyone else was in talks. And we were just in the exhibit hall and I picked up some of the Play-Doh, and I sculpted a little skull, which is really hard because it as it as you sculpt it mushes. So it’s like trying to actually make a sculpture out of Play-Doh is very complicated. And so then I turned the upside down like mini container Play-Doh down as a pedestal and set the skull on top of it.
And I gave it to a friend vendor who makes display cases, but they forgot their main piece that they put in the display case. I was like, oh, you know, you gave me a shirt yesterday. Here’s here’s a little skull, you know, just, you know, thank you. And she was like, oh, that’s great. And I was like, so you are going to put it in the display case? And she’s like, yeah, may as well. So she puts it down in there.
And this is a tiny little thing in this huge display case. I was like, oh, it needs a title. Oh, childhood’s end. You know, Play-Doh skull, like, it’s like, that sounds very deep.
Becca: It’s very cerebral high art. Yeah. I mean, that’s the kind of thing that like, you know, someone if someone had connections and was a known artist, like that could be a million dollars right there. That was, well, that’s, that’s modern art.
Yeah, no, it is. I just saw the craziest sculpture the other day this person makes. When you look at it from one direction, it’s like a beautiful bird, but it’s actually made of trash.
Manic Dan: And it has a huge amount of depth to it. I’ve seen some of those words. Right. I’ve seen similar things, but this was like wildly intricate. And these are apparently worth like huge amounts of money. But that’s it.
Becca: They were like some poor kid who just kind of like traveled around and was disturbed by trash. And trash became their medium, which is totally a mocked art. Right.
Manic Dan: Oh, I love being able to upcycle and making stuff out of trash.
Becca: Like really any medium, right? You don’t need to judge the people.
Manic Dan: Right. I know exactly. Playdough was smart. Right. Playdough was fantastic. But before looping back to my origin story, just in the idea of modern art, one of my favorite pieces, and I know a lot of people hate Damien Hurst. He’s done a lot of things that are not great, but I don’t know, over a decade ago, maybe not 20 years, but somewhere between 15, we’ll call it. He made a piece that was for the love of God. And it was a human skull that was blinged out in actual diamonds.
And it became the most expensive to sell piece of modern art where the artist was still alive. Yeah. And it’s one of those like, I don’t know, on one hand, it’s like, oh my God, that’s some can we swear? Yes.
Okay. That’s some bullshit right there. But on the same time, like it does make you go, oh yeah, I mean, you know, the value of life, like it’s a real human skull, like it that level of it has so many questions that come with it when you look at it. It’s not just like, oh, look at that. But also some collector might not even think about the deeper meaning of it and just be like, that’s worth a lot. And it’s a human skull covered in diamonds, I’m going to pay X amount of money for it. Right. Right.
Becca: That’s so weird to think about. Right. So it’s subjective because that’s it. They just get a whiff of something, the right person with the right amount of money. And suddenly it’s worth a huge amount versus.
Manic Dan: Or like some of the stuff that I really appreciated the concept of like, Dada when that was really like, Duchamp’s signing his name on a urinal and like, boom, that’s art. What is art? And you know, a lot of people in art school got really pissed off when we had to study Dada. It’s like, that’s not art, but it’s like, but really the idea like where, what’s the line?
Becca: Right. Exactly. Like, what is art and what isn’t art and like, isn’t the entirety of human existence and the human experience art?
Manic Dan: That’s why you can look at it. Right. You look out in a moment and it can be
Becca: like, weirdly gross in the city, but like a weird moment of beauty and like just in the moment and in humanity and whatever weird things you’re saying. That’s it. You can see art in anything if you’re looking for art.
Manic Dan: Right. The combinations of like emotions and thoughts because you know, it like sounds art, words, like written words so you’re not even, you know, hearing it, but just yeah, it’s, you know, where’s the line? What does it mean? Like, there’s, when you boil it down to like fine arts, like, you know, quote unquote with, you know, fine art painting and, you know, technique based stuff. I mean, that’s easier to define and put it in a box, but yes, the boxes.
Becca: Right.
Manic Dan: But like art itself is so ineffable. Right.
Becca: It’s beautifully subjective, right? That’s the eye of the beholder and all of those cliche things that are cliche for a reason. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Okay.
Becca: So tell me about your events. I know you probably don’t know all the dates, but you, you do the rent fair. You just did the steampunk event this last weekend.
Manic Dan: Which that’s, that’s a lot of fun. There were so many really good costumes.
Becca: It looks so cool. Like I, that’s what I feel like we need to spread that word.
Manic Dan: Yeah, exactly. Makes a flyer. A lot of our mantras don’t even know what steampunk is yet. Right. And I think once that solidifies, it’s gonna, you know, blossom even further out.
Becca: It’s very cool. I find it entertaining, like Victorian aspects of it.
Manic Dan: Right. It’s just, it’s cool. I wish there was more popular media that people could relate to. It’s like the sci-fi fantasy expo is always really good, and this year we’re actually combining it with horror. So there’s going to be a whole room that will be, this is horror, this other room is sci-fi fantasy.
And that’s, Green Mounds Madness, we’re really excited to be able to do that at this event. But there’s so many examples in pop culture of science fiction, fantasy, horror. Like that, and you know, and the blending there in of all of the genres. But steampunk is so incredibly specific. It’s like, that’s Jules Verne and you know, there’s a, The Journey to the Center of the Earth movies and the recent ones were comedies. And then there was like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I hear there might be a new remake of or a show coming out.
Becca: Yeah, I haven’t seen it. I’ve read it. I had a handful of Jules Verne books, but that’s it. I honestly haven’t watched movies or anything of them. A lot of the movies were so old that I was kind of like, I want to watch them, but at the
Manic Dan: same time, I didn’t put a lot of effort in finding them. The Disney 20,000 Leagues at this point is very cheesy.
Becca: Right, exactly. A lot of them are kind of, because those books are so old, they’re not cool to remake 16 times. Right, exactly. And then all of the other books that we were up with.
Manic Dan: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which the idea was cool, the execution. Eww, that’s right. I mean, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, again, based off of some really cool content, the movie itself didn’t blossom in the popular eye.
Becca: Right, and I’m trying to think, there was that one movie that vaguely got a little Victorian that was like an adventure, sorry, superhero movie. He was a magician of some sort, and he could like throw people into another dimension.
Manic Dan: It was a new one, was that like Doctor Strange?
Becca: Doctor Strange, that was it. That’s the only thing I could think of when you’re like, oh yeah, Steampunk in, I’m like, that was vaguely Victorian era kind of touching on. Like that kind of style was really cool. That’s it, I don’t quite know who’s making Steampunky Things. Steams, hot. Steams fun to play with, but it’s actually hot, so it’s hard to make like little tiny toys that they used to make.
Manic Dan: It was like lots of clockwork and lots of, you know, just cool bobble, so it’s like Victorian and lots of accessories, and so when people do make the costumes, they’re amazing.
Becca: Right, yeah, I have a Victorian style Steampunky looking thing, but that’s it, you’re right, there’s not enough, someone should make some more movies or a show or something, but what really leans into it, because there’s definitely some cool like mechanical art type things that you could make that I could see falling into that, but people gotta know what you’re talking about before, before you can do anything else. Yeah, so there’s that one, is that usually early October, is that the plan?
Manic Dan: It’s early November, yeah. Early November, it is no longer October. So next up, less thematically is gonna be the Vermont Holiday Market, and that’s also at the Champlain Valley Exposition, and that’ll be the seventh and eighth, and then after that is our Krampus Walk on the 14th. What day of the week is that? That’s Saturday, Saturday the 14th.
Becca: So, and that starts at, that’s at night, correct?
Manic Dan: Yep, so to participate in the walk, we don’t ask people to have a full Krampus costume, because those are very expensive, and that’s another one of those things about accessibility.
We wanna make sure that there’s not a paywall in order to enjoy one of our events. It’s like, if you show up and you got a little bit of Christmas and a little bit of Halloween on you, like that’s kind of the vibe we’re going for. We call it darkly festive.
If you’re darkly festive, come walk with us. I mean, honestly, even if you’re not dressed up and you just wanna walk and yell, that’s fine too, but ultimately the closer one can get to having a Krampus costume, the better. For those listening that don’t know what Krampus is, it started off as an Austrian tradition where on the 5th of December, Krampus would come. It was called Krampusnot, and he would come punish the naughty kids before Santa came the next day to reward the good ones. And it was Santa Nicholas, so it wasn’t actually like our idea of Santa, but it was the guy who came and brought presents. But beforehand, the Christmas demon would come in and he usually had like a switch made of birch sticks that he would beat the naughty kids with and shove them in a sack and maybe he’d eat them, but he was someone in the community that everyone knew. And usually it’d be like a group of, usually like 20 to 30 year olds that would just get really drunk and make hell through the town. And it was really in.
Becca: It’s basically like Cabbage Night for Christmas, but with demons.
Manic Dan: Exactly, and the traditions have evolved. So if any of you are interested, if you Google Krampus on YouTube, there’s tons of amazing videos from Germany and Austria and other places in Europe that, they have hundreds of people in the traditional costumes and there’s fire and horns and chains and.
Becca: Ooh, fire. You should add fire to your repertoire.
Manic Dan: One of these days we’ll probably get there, but there’s a lot of safety stuff, especially on treat with the trees and the lights and all that. Right, right. But that is something many people have been like, can we have fire yet? Can we have fire in this like let’s? We’ll get there. We’ll pace it a little bit, yeah. So yeah, so this, like I said earlier, it’s gonna be our eighth year doing it.
If someone wants to walk with us, we gather around City Hall at 630, get everyone together. I give a brief speech about, you can yell at strangers, but please be respectful. You’re not touching anyone. You’re not being too rowdy, too aggressive, too obscene.
It’s still family friendly. Like if you wanna walk with your kids, I bring my twins. I use plastic chains that I get at Halloween and chain my kids up and I’m like, ah.
Speaker 4: Right, so they’re naughty kids. Right, exactly. This past year, my daughter, she handed out candy canes and she had kind of like a candy cane themed vibe with her costume and my son, he dressed up like a crampus this time. So we gave him an axe and I painted up some horns for him and drew a little nose on his face. Solid.
Yeah, yeah. So it’s family friendly. So again, going back to the rules, it’s a respectful thing. It’s about not going fast. It’s a nice saunter up the street because I mean, it’s not that long.
So enjoy it, have fun, make some noise, rattles and bells. We had a lot of people coming to watch it last year and this year I think it’ll be even more because we’re actually on the church feet marketplace page as an event. Nice. And we’ve reached out to like WCAX and we reached out to Seven Days Last Year and we’re gonna do it again this year. And it’s like trying to make it a little bit more aware that it’s happening as opposed to just us as the group getting to do it. Right. It’s now like, okay, it’s grown every year. It was big enough last year.
Manic Dan: Let’s call it as something to be a draw. It’s an event like and especially like doing it down there, it’ll bring shoppers in. It’s that level of like, hey, it’s church feet marketplace.
It’s going up and down church street. You know, here come the crampas. You know, it’s a lot of fun.
And especially the, this is my draw to, I tell people that when I’m trying to describe it to them is that level of there’s nothing like screaming at strangers during the holidays to relieve some of that stress.
Becca: Oh man. Okay, so we gotta back up a little bit because I haven’t attended this event. I plan on being there this year.
Manic Dan: You better be. I plan on being there. But that’s the thing you say, okay, dress up like crampus. Okay, I know crampus has horns, but like horns are very subjective. You could be talking about devil horns. You could be talking about, you know, like cow horns. So can you describe what a crampus is supposed to look like? Cause honestly, I kind of get the vibe, but I have not Googled the videos.
So what, if someone’s like, yes, I want to go join in this walk and be a crampus, what should they do? Number one, they tend to be very furry. Like if you have a fur coat, especially like a crappy old one, great. Or some kind of like fake fur shawl that goes on top to make your shoulders nice and puffy. That’s fantastic.
Again, not required, but that’s like number one. To the horns, the traditional ones tend to be like goat or ram horns and they actually use real ones cause supposedly they’re surprisingly light.
Becca: Are they, is it supposed to be a goat demon?
Manic Dan: Yeah, he’s kind of like a goat demon.
Becca: Okay, right. Okay. Yeah. Cause he stands vertical. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But he has hooves.
Manic Dan: Yeah. Uh, sometimes he has hooves, sometimes he has feet, and sometimes he has one of his feet is a hoof and the other one is a regular foot. Ooh. Yeah. And I haven’t figured out specifically like. Why? Why?
Becca: I mean, that one’s pretty horrifying. Right. I’ll give the one foot one hoof my vote for creepiness.
Manic Dan: It is pretty good. And two years in a row that actually happened to me, I have platform hooves that I made and.
Becca: Yes. They’re very serious about this costume.
Manic Dan: This is not. Oh yeah. No.
Becca: This is not a small thing. Like.
Manic Dan: Well, two years ago, one of my hooves broke when we were almost done. And so I had to hobble with one foot platformed and the other one not. And then last year, after repairing that first one, as not last year, the year before, sorry, after repairing that first one, as soon as we started, my other hoof broke. And I was actually lagging behind always being like, ah, there goes my parade.
Becca: Yeah. No. Don’t don’t ditch the crampus at the parade. The parade is around the crampus.
Manic Dan: Well, everyone’s crampus. But yeah, it’s that level of like, if I’m I can project rather loudly. So it’s like I’m trying to make aware of the rest of church street that this is what they’re hearing coming is like, here comes the crampus.
Speaker 4: Oh, right. And I’m bellowing. You’re very theatrical about it. So if I’m at the back, it’s hard to, you know, warn others they’ll be like, what is that?
Becca: Right. Well, you put a huge amount of effort into your costume. So it’s very obvious that you are doing something versus if I show up wearing a normal jacket and I scream at people, I might get the cops called on me because I’m acting insane.
Manic Dan: Right. But but just you just got to be with be in with the parade and you’ll be fine. Right. Exactly. So I mean, even if you can’t put together like a full costume, do some like Halloween face paint. Right. Yeah. Do your nose up like a goat’s face and, you know, some heavy eye makeup or something like that. It’s fine.
Becca: Right. Right. See, we need we need like paper, goat horns or something. So you can just hand them out to people.
Manic Dan: I thought there’s been a few years where I’ve made sets of horns to. Right.
Becca: Right. But then the hard thing to find. Right. And a lot of people are not artsy and crafty and cannot make these things. Right. A lot of us, they would try like myself and then be very disappointed in myself.
Manic Dan: Right. A lot of us upon going to one initially knowing you’re going to want to do it the next year, like when Spirit Halloween has their sale, it’s like, oh, I’m going to get some some werewolf gloves and one of their cheap pairs of horns and, you know, a fur thing here.
Becca: Did they sell the right horns there?
Manic Dan: I mean, there’s there’s no real right. But yeah, that right. OK. Like even though I make some for my own art, like Rex’s are are just store bought.
Becca: Fair enough. See, I had a hard time finding anything in that store. I was like, they must have this. And then they didn’t have that. It’s it’s it’s so upsetting when you’re looking for this.
Manic Dan: Yeah. If you can’t grow your own horns, store bought is fine.
Becca: Oh, man. OK. So that was say it again. It’s on Saturday.
Manic Dan: Saturday the 14th. If you want to participate at that six thirty, if you want to just enjoy it and watch, even like if we pass you going up, you can, you know, follow us on up the street. We go up to the big tree for photos. Yeah. And we start walking at seven. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Usually done by seven thirty. It’s like we’ll be at the big tree about quarter after and then we walk back down slowly and here we go again.
Becca: You need a zine to give out for Krampus. I do. People don’t know what Krampus is. It’s one of those things that I love so much about Europe with all of the different interesting like folklore stories. Because did you hear about the Icelandic cat? Oh, yeah, the Yule Cat. The Yule Cat, there’s a giant cat like I.
Manic Dan: Yes, it’s huge. Giant cat like there’s also the Yule lads, a bunch of troll brothers that if you don’t put out or do certain things during the holidays, they will cause a ruckus on your property. Nice. Where are they from?
Becca: Iceland. Also Iceland has some great folklore stories. Yes. Yes. Anywho. OK, so you also do other winter events. Obviously, Krampus is most important. I will have links to all of these things, everything about Dan. And it’s all going to be evermontox.com forward slash 48.
Manic Dan: So after Krampus, I think the next big thing on my radar is going to be the winter Renaissance fair. And a lot of people are like, how can you go to a ren fair in the winter? And it’s all indoors, which is like, I mean, I get that you don’t have the scenery of being outside in the grass and all this thing.
But it’s still really good. And there’s still, you know, the music and the turkey legs and the fight demos and all the other stuff that you would see outdoors. The only thing that is missing ends up being like jousting, because, you know, it is not just the indoors part, but it’s the cement floors. You don’t want to have horses clopping around on the cement. That’s not good for the animal. Right. But everything else is there. You have the atmosphere, you have the garb, you have the tents, you know, everyone’s in costumes.
Becca: Yeah, yeah. Get rid of some cabin fever.
Manic Dan: And especially, yeah, exactly. In Vermont in the winter.
Becca: Turkey leg sounds really good.
Manic Dan: Oh, they’re delicious. They’re so good. See, I need to I need to go.
Becca: So when when is the winter one? Usually you don’t have to give an exact date. We will link all of this up on the show.
Manic Dan: This one’s going to be the first weekend in February. So the first and the second.
Becca: Perfect. That’s nice, because that’s right. One cabin fever is the absolute worst. Do they also do a like sci-fi episode? Oh, yeah. So. Expo sci-fi.
Manic Dan: So, yeah, that’ll be in April this year. So that’s the Vermont sci-fi fantasy in adding this year horror. And so, yeah, that’s the the 26 and 27th of April.
Becca: Yes, I think I saw something on your events page about that, that you were going to break out the Halloween decorations for this, which is awesome. I did that. I feel like you should always have there should be a spring. Right.
Manic Dan: Like a spring. I saw something. Yes, someone shared to G-mom recently.
Becca: Which is the Great Mountains of Madness group.
Manic Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Half a ween.
Becca: So that sounds perfect. Let’s do that. It’ll be a good excuse to eat candy after Easter. Right, exactly. Is honestly kind of the vibe, what with the zombie aspect of the resurrection.
Manic Dan: Exactly. I actually went to. This, I think, yeah, it was before forming Green Mountains of Madness, a blasphemous Easter party in a church. Yep. And that was a fantastic event that was thrown by Beth Robinson of Strange Dolls, who is awesome. She used to do the Art of Horrors at the Space Gallery. It’s a really good name. Yeah.
Becca: The event now.
Manic Dan: Yeah. It was a really solid event, too. It for that. That’s actually how I found out that there was a dark, dark and spooky community in Vermont, because I had just come back from college and I didn’t actually realize that there were so many other weirdos in the state. And then going to this event and seeing, like, you know, a bunch of Goths and people who are just like, yeah, Halloween, but they’re like adults and their costumes are amazing.
And the art is all terrifying and deep and macabre. And it’s just like, oh, holy shit, there are others. And that’s one of the things after forming G-Mom that I would hear a lot, where it’s like people will find out that around the corner on the same block that they’re living on is another weirdo. And they’re like, oh, my God, I thought I was the only one in town. And so, yeah, just going back to that community aspect, or it’s like, oh, no, there’s there’s more of us.
Becca: Right. And the event you did, which I’m still sorry that I didn’t go to at the castle.
Manic Dan: Oh, yeah, that that was. So Wilson Castle has a special place in my heart and a lot of hearts of people who are in Green Mountains of Madness. We threw our own event there that was called Night of the Unliving Costume Ball, like costume like like a tomb.
Speaker 4: Which is essentially just like undead theme. So like vampires, zombies, ghosts, you name it. We had a bunch of local DJs. We had a local band. It was it was a fantastic night. And we’re actually looking to do two of them this upcoming year. So we were able to do this in July this past year. And upcoming, we’re looking at the first weekend in June. And I believe the first weekend in October.
Cool. And this past year was on a Friday, which it’s down in Rutland or Proctor, essentially Rutland. Which a lot of people from this area, you know, having to get out of work and then grab their costumes and run down. It right.
It was a little much. But we’re going to be doing Saturdays for both days this year. And it’s going to be really exciting. And I think at least one of the themes is going to be Night of the Unliving again. And I want to make that to be an annual thing and maybe have the second one each year to be a changing theme. Right.
Becca: Well, October is a good month for any of us. Right. Exactly. Especially at the castle, the pictures of this place.
Manic Dan: This is so cool. It’s amazing. It’s, you know, it’s almost like a Frankenstein mansion or the castle in like Rocky Horror Pictures. Like as you’re going up the grounds, you look at it and you’re like, I can easily see like riff-riff looking down, singing at us like that kind of like. And it’s wicked haunted. It is. It’s old. Oh, yeah.
It’s it’s trying to remember the history. I believe it was bought and then reassembled like it was bought from Europe. Then reassembled in Vermont. And the original owner wasn’t Colonel Wilson, but he’s the one who, you know, maintained it and made it famous. And like he has tons of artifacts. So it’s actually also actively a museum where like you can go during the day.
And I highly recommend it to anyone listening. If you’re looking for something cool to do in Vermont, Wilson Castle, it’s like $17 for a tour. There’s tons of history, tons of really cool artifacts from all over the world. And the building itself is magical and like anything else. My brother, who doesn’t have any spiritual beliefs, doesn’t believe in ghosts. It’s still a little shook from one of the times we had a party before the pandemic where a group of us is going through the castle after the party itself.
It’s all dark. We’re just going through the bedrooms and he halts our group. And he’s like, Hey, wait, aren’t we going to wait for our friend?
And, you know, we stop and we look back and we’re all accounted for. And he’s pointing at a closed closet door. We’re like, No, no, we’re all here. And he’s like, No, no, someone just went into that closet and shut the door behind them. And so it’s like, I’ll get them. So he walks to the door and he opens it up. And, you know, of course, no one’s in there.
Becca: Creepy. Yeah. You’re selling it. Well, OK. All right. So we are at the 43 minute mark, which I think is about time for you to read off some links or point people wherever you want. Should people Google green mountains of madness? Obviously, the Renfair kind of getting famous. I feel like the sci-fi icon is getting a little bit. Or Expo. Is it an Expo or a convention?
Manic Dan: They’re technically Expos and they’re at the exposition, which is easy to remember. Right. No, exactly. My own personal art is currently Facebook.com slash shop, Manic Mart. Or Instagram is at Manic underscore Dan, whereas Green Mountains of Madness. I’m not sure if it’ll come up under Googling, but is also.
Becca: I think it does. I think so, too. But that would be Facebook.com slash group slash G mom VT, which I always find that like G mom, like I don’t even think about it anymore because I say it so often. But the fact that it’s like grandma. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like grandma.
Manic Dan: In fact, our business cards on the back in crazy font says, no one loves you like G mom loves you.
Becca: Just hilarious. It’s like the creepy grandma. Right.
Manic Dan: No, exactly, exactly. And then our Instagram is at Green Mountains of Madness, or you could send us an email, which is green mo. So green mo madness at gmail.com.
Becca: Very cool. No, I think I think we have big ideas for for Green Mountains of Madness to combine with Vermont talks on some sort of zine.
Manic Dan: Yeah, we definitely need to stop relying just on Facebook to reach people.
Becca: Yes, 100 percent. But you came on my podcast today. Thank you so much.
Manic Dan: Oh, thank you for having me. This is fantastic. I love talking to you. Yeah, we talk a lot. We could have gone on a lot longer of a rant about a lot of more ridiculous things. But I feel like we did a good job staying on task and actually. So talking about you, which is great. Thank you, Dan. So again, December 14th. Yep. If you want to come walk,
Becca: get dressed up, have some fun, wear some fur, make it faux or whatever.
Manic Dan: Yeah, and join us at 6 30. But if you want to just watch it and, you know, we’ll be passing out candy canes and stuff like that, it’s at seven.
Becca: And Town Hall, that’s what you said.
Manic Dan: Yeah, yeah, we start at the bottom. On Church Street itself at seven. You will be there. Yep. Cool. Thank you, Dan. Excellent. Thank you so much, Becca. Have a great one, everybody.
Becca: Thanks so much for listening to the end of the show. Subscribe to Vermont Talks on your favorite podcasting platform. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all over the web. Contact Becca at VermontTalks.com if you’d like to be interviewed or if you know someone who should be. Thanks so much to Jason Baker for creating the show music. The views and opinions expressed by the guests are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Vermont Talks. Any content or statements provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, anyone or anything. And that’s what was new in the 802. Have a great day.