December 3, 2024 • 52 mins
A video of two Canadian men screaming at each other about whether Glinda the Good Witch was a witch or a princess has been going viral every six months since 2018... but no one knows who they are. UNTIL NOW. Jamie sits down with living legend Matt Passero to talk about his moment of infinite virality, why he's the rare character of the day who wants nothing to do with the spotlight, and why Glinda is a princess, actually. WE GOT THE EXCLUSIVE, BABY!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. So there's a movie that just came out.
Maybe you've heard about it, Sicky. No, not that one.
What am I five years old?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is an art choosing gladiators. They're usually prisoners of war.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
No, not that one. What am I five thousand years old?
Although at least I hear Ridley Scott allowed men's thighs
to be in this one. No, the movie, the movie
that anyone who's ever been a ten year old theater
kid has been looking forward to for twenty years. Are
(00:45):
people born wicked.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Or should they have wickedness thrust upon them?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yes? Wicked Part one is in theaters and it's good
and everyone likes it. And if you're like Jamie, I
thought you were a guys girl. Why have you seen
Wicked more than once? Well, guess what, I've seen it
three times. And being a musical theater fan is not
a gendered experience, Okay. And also I am a huge
(01:15):
Wizard of Oz fan in general, always have been. It's
my favorite movie, and in middle school I made that
my entire personality in the way that middle schoolers do.
I thought, Hey, if I know every single thing that
happens in the Wizard of Oz, expanded universe. Maybe no
one will notice that I have a backbrace. Teeth braces
(01:36):
and hand me down glasses with frames from the eighties
didn't work, but I retained a lot. I love the
nineteen thirty nine classic movie starring Judy Garland. I love
the L. Frank Bomb books, which were far more complicated
and weird than the movie is. I loved learning about
the other adaptations The Wiz returned to Oz and most
(01:59):
famous an entire novel I wrote in eighth grade called
Rosalie of Oz that I sometimes kind of want to
record an audiobook for like for fun. I am not
a fake fan. I know my shit. And just as
I was getting really into oz Lare during those middle
school years, I learned that there was another piece of
(02:20):
lore on Broadway called Wicked, the true story of the
Wicked Witch of the West, who in the adaptation is
named Elpha but Throp in her college Frenemie Glinda formerly
Glinda upland based on the books Wicked and Son of
a Witch by Gregory Maguire, which we won't get into
in this episode. They're pornographic, They're really fucked up. Anyways,
(02:43):
there's a lot of lore surrounding Oz and Glinda specifically,
so when the Wicked movie was finally supposed to be
coming out, and at this point, this is a movie
based on a musical based on a book based on
a movie based on a book series from over one
hundred years ago. Babe, I was ready. But let's be honest,
(03:03):
not everyone knows as much about Wizard of ozlore as
I do, and particularly the subject of today's episode of
sixteen minute. So before we begin and get into our story,
I need to give a quick lesson who is Glinda
the good Witch? Well, it's a bit of a complicated question,
(03:24):
and I am going to spare you all of the
pornographic details of Gregoriya Maguire's novel Wicked. Let me tell
you about miss Glinda because many of you are not educated,
and by many of you, I do mean the eleven
year old sitting next to me at the last time
I saw Wicked, who turned to their older sibling and
asked if Wicked was based on something? Okay, bitch. Glinda
(03:46):
is a character that most people were introduced to in
the Victor Fleming directed Judy Garland starring nineteen thirty nine
movie adaptation Classic and in that movie, she is a
beautiful blonde woman in a big pink ball gown who
(04:07):
comes down to meet our protagonist Dorothy in a big
pink bubble, introducing herself as the good Witch of the North. However,
she is of course introduced first in L. Frank Baum's
classic children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, all the
way back in nineteen hundred and While this is the
version of Glinda that most people are familiar with prior
(04:29):
to the release of Wicked, in this source material, Glinda
is not the good Witch of the North. She is
the good Witch of the South. The nineteen thirty nine
adaptation composites both of these parts into a single character,
but in the book, Glinda doesn't appear at the beginning
and the end as in the movie, but only at
(04:51):
the end. In the book, the Witch of the North
is a completely different person. She is an older looking
woman with far less magical powers than Glinda, who is
called either Lacasta or Taddy Pooh, depending on which book
in the series you're reading. And it's this witch La
Costa who is the one that gives Dorothy what we
(05:11):
know as the Ruby Slippers. If you're a movie fan,
or are the silver slippers in both the source material
and in Wicked these are the shoes that are taken
from the Wicked Witch of the East after she's crushed
by Dorothy's house, and the Wicked Witch of the North,
La Costa, enchants these shoes with a protection charm for
Dorothy's journey to the Emerald City. And it's not that
(05:33):
she doesn't want to do more for Dorothy, that's just
all her magic can accomplish. That's the limits of her power. Then,
at the end of the story, Glinda, the Good Witch
of the South appears for the first time. Dorothy has
now met the Scarecrow, the tin Man, and the Lion.
They've gone to see the Wizard at the Emerald City.
They've killed the Wicked Witch of the West in exchange
(05:55):
for their heart's desires from the Wizard, only to find
out that he is a total fraud from Nebraska. And
then Glinda arrives and is a far more powerful witch
than her foot free colleague in the North. Dorothy and
company traveled to the South of oz to meet Glinda,
who then tells Dorothy how to get home using her
(06:16):
silver shoes. Glinda, the Good Witch of the South looks
far closer to the movie adaptation we're used to seeing
with Billy Burke. She's young and beautiful, with long, red,
flowing hair and blue eyes, and she's suggested to be immortal.
And while she only appears at the end of the
first book, she later becomes a far more important and
(06:37):
active character. L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen oz books in
his lifetime, and other authors picked up the series where
he left off, and Glinda becomes a huge part of
finding the rightful ruler of oz the child Princess Ozma Princess.
Remember that? And I know you're thinking, does Glinda have
(06:57):
an all women's militia? Yes, she does amazing. But in
the nineteen thirty nine movie, which I'm assuming you are
far more familiar with, Glinda is a composite of these
two characters, as played by iconic vaudeville actress Billy Burke.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Let the joyous news be spread the wickedo which.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It lovest his name. This Glinda appears twice in the story,
appearing first to give Dorothy the ruby slippers, not the
silver as in the book, and then returns at the
end to finally tell her how to use them. Hmmm,
that doesn't always sit well with viewers as they get older,
because nineteen thirty nine, Glinda lets Dorothy languish in the
(07:40):
trenches almost dying for most of the movie and then
just kind of pops back up at the end, and
it's like, oh, yeah, you actually could have gone home
the whole time. I just thought if I told you,
you wouldn't believe me. You've always had the power to
go back to Kanson.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
But why didn't you tell her before?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Because you wouldn't have believe me.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
She had to learn it for herself, and.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
She would have believed you, And so over the years,
if you're over analyzing this movie, which is a whole
cottage industry, it could seem like Glinda is kind of
messing with Dorothy this whole time in order to ostensibly
teach her a lesson about appreciating never moving out of Kansas,
begging the question, if Glinda's so good, why did she
(08:29):
let this child almost die so many times? That's a
bit of an oversimplification. And there's a million other versions
of this character, but those two are the primary versions
of Glinda being referenced in Wicked and in Today's Story.
Glinda Glinda Taddy Pooh. Whichever version of this character was
(08:51):
introduced to you earliest is probably the one that you
hold most dear. She is pink, she is hyper feminine,
she's powerful, she's kind alone. But if you haven't encountered
this character in a couple of decades, maybe your memory
of her is a little hazy. Maybe you're not like
me and tempted to bully every eleven year old you
(09:11):
meet at an amc Which brings us to today's subject,
a viral clip where two grown men are intensely fighting
about this very character, Glinda the Good in twenty eighteen.
You've maybe seen this video if you have spent any
time online in the last ten years. But my god, congratulations,
if this is the first time you're hearing it, it's
(09:31):
a classic.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Her sister was a witch?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Right?
Speaker 5 (09:39):
And what was her sister?
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Princess matt Piesero, the wicked witch of the East Row.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Your sixteenth minute starts now.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Six six.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
a look at the most notorious Internet characters of the day,
see how their moment affected them and what it says
about us and the Internet. And I could not be
more excited for this week's episode. It is truly my
dream episode. So let's just get right into it. Q
I Dina Menzel, thank you so much. Cue Cynthia Arrivo,
(11:12):
thank you so much. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus. And
by the time this episode comes out, I will have
seen Wicked Part one three times in theaters and have
tickets to see the touring production with my mom in January.
And while I have not personally been blessed with any
musical talent outside of being extremely good at the OBO
in high school, yes, thank you so much. That was
(11:43):
me variations on the Korean Folks song early twenty tens.
That's called talent. So after making you wait a whole week,
we're back with an exclusive interview, the first this man
has done in years, with Matt Piso, the Wicked Witch
of the East Bro. Now it's possible you haven't seen
this video at all, and it's possible that you saw
(12:05):
it almost six years ago when it first went viral,
And now it's quite possible you saw it go viral
in the last two weeks as the Wicked movie and
its super fans began using the audio from that clip
as lip synctracks everywhere, from TikTokers dressed up like Glinda
to and I'm not kidding Ariana Grande herself lip syncing
to the clip with famed William hung impersonator Jimmy Fallon.
(12:29):
But in case this is your point of entry, we're
going to take a full look at how this clip,
which goes viral multiple times a year, regardless of whether
there is a new OZ property making a billion dollars
at the box office a little closer. So here, I'm
going to tell you what we knew when I began
working on this episode, and in our exclusive interview with
(12:49):
you wiki Bitch of the eastbro himself, Matt Pacero, you'll
learn a lot more about some of the most commonly
asked questions about this moment in Internet history. But first
we got to break this thing down. Come with me
if you dare to Spring twenty eighteen, there's a salmonella
outbreak in the Midwest. A beautiful woman named Jamie Loftus
(13:13):
performs her show I Lost My Virginity on August fifteenth,
twenty ten, and somewhere in Canada, Matt Pacero is caught
on camera having a very spirited argument with another man
possibly named Doug, about whether Glinda is a witch or
a princess. And look now that you graduated from my
(13:34):
Glinda one oh one, course you've arrived armed with knowledge,
and Matt does not have that benefit. So let's hear
him out. I'm gonna break down this clip because a
lot happens in the twenty three seconds that it lasts.
The energy immediately is at an eleven Matt, who is
a white guy in a black hoodie and jeans with
(13:55):
blonde hair that is very intentionally flopping as he expresses
his opinion, gesturing with these intense prayer hands. He is,
as you will hear, screaming at another white guy with
a shaved head wearing a blaid shirt who seems sort
of annoyed but also kind of entertained. It's important to
(14:16):
note that there is nothing within the frame of the
video that indicates how or why this argument started, only
that it seems to have been going on for a
while at this point. So, knowing what we now do
about Glinda, let's fact check Matt's argument. He starts like this,
(14:36):
her sister was a witch, right, Okay, okay, So we're
not absolutely sure who's being talked about at the very
beginning when Matt says her. But I'm going to assume
he means the Wicked Witch of the West here, and
that is correct. Technically, the Wicked Witch of the West
does have a sister, the Wicked Witch of the East,
who in Wicked is the character nessa Rose and in
(14:58):
the movie is crushed by doors these houses.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Who killed the Witch of the East.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You okay, Matt, you can continue.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Right, And what was her sister, princess?
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Mm hmm. So at this point in the video, Matt
is walking away kind of like mic Drop style, while
the other guy is still frustrated but laughing, and the
person holding the camera is like laughing their ass off.
So fact check everything he says here is wrong. He's
talking as if all witches are sisters. I guess that's
(15:35):
not true. Furthermore, none of them are princesses. As we learned,
there is a princess of oz named Ozma, but she
doesn't appear in the nineteen thirty nine adaptation that they
seem to be talking about. So he's wrong, and the
guy in the plaid shirt is getting really aggravated. Let's
see if Matt can stick the landing.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Here we're gonna you're gonna tell me that I am
I wrong?
Speaker 1 (16:02):
So much happens in this four seconds. So the guy
in the plaid shirt who Matt's yelling at, smiles at
the camera and says, quote, I'm gonna stab him, unquote,
before taking a switchblade out of what appears to be
thin fucking air. He walks towards Matt, who is walking away,
still yelling at volume a million. And I think a
(16:23):
lot of people have had this experience with this video,
but I like, never noticed that there is a knife
in this video until I had watched it over twenty times,
not only because it's just in frame for a second,
but because Matt sees and doesn't react to it, and
the other guy doesn't seem serious about actually using it,
which begs the question who are these men to each other?
(16:44):
But okay, let's let Matt finish.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Am I wrong?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Wore a crown and she came.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Down in a bull.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
This is the most famous part of the video. She
wore a crown and came down in a bubble dug, which, again,
that does not make you a princess. And assuming they're
talking about the movie, which they definitely are. I'm tempted
to cut Matt some slack here if it weren't for
the fact that one of Glinda the Good Witch's most
famous lines addresses this explicitly.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I am a witch, I'm Linda, you are.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
I beg your pardon, but I've never heard of a
beautiful witch before, only bed which is ugly.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And once more, Matt at this point is clearly calling
Glinda the wicked Witch of the East, which isn't true.
She was killed by a house who killed He incorrectly
assumes that she's a princess and a sister with any
other witch, and then confidently defends the most wrong anyone
has ever been saying. The following and scene this argument
(17:54):
is so intense and petty and weird you can almost
forget that the guy implaid possible. Doug is holding an
unsheathed knife while saying that The Wizard of Oz is
his favorite movie, which is a fascinating display of masculinity.
This is a viral video that everyone has their favorite
line of, their favorite moment of and most importantly, for
my purposes, your favorite question about My favorite question about
(18:18):
this has always been does that guy have a knife?
But Others have questions like, how do these men know
each other? What happened before the video started, what happened
after the video ends? Is he saying dog or is
he saying Doug. It is art in the form of
a twenty three second video, and you might not be
surprised to hear that it was catnip for the algorithm
(18:41):
of the time, and something that has continued to be
successful in the algorithm since for a lot of reasons.
But it's a white man yelling about something incorrectly. Empires
have fallen over lass. That's said. The origins of this
clip are a little bit hard to trace, but there's
no doubt that its most successful iteration to date was
(19:03):
uploaded by a YouTube user named Austin Parish on April third,
twenty eighteen. But this is definitely a re upload of
a clip from somewhere else, and at first I couldn't
figure out from where or which person in the original
group of three, either Matt, Doug, question Mark or the
person recording the video had uploaded it in the first place.
(19:26):
And as of this recording, there are eleven million views
on this re uploaded YouTube clip, and it quickly spread
across platforms. We're talking Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. It's one of
those rare clips that basically anyone can enjoy because it
was a weird argument about an intellectual property that everyone
(19:46):
knows about in some shape or form. It's a clip
that's highly shareable for my auntie on Facebook, and it's
a very popular clip to lip sync two on TikTok,
and it's since joined in ashelon viral clip that tends
to go viral around once a year for one reason
or another. It's just there's something very pleasing about seeing
(20:07):
someone aggressively double down about something that they're both wrong
about and isn't important because so many people double down
about things that are so At the time of publication
in twenty eighteen, here's a taste of the response on
the original YouTube post. The delivery of It's my Favorite
Movie remains the most slept on part of this I
(20:31):
love how his hair was fully engaged in the argument.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
I'm so glad my dad's condom broke, or else I
wouldn't be able to experience this masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
But what I find most interesting about this story is that,
in the immediate sense, no one ever really comes forward
to claim this clip as their own in a public sense,
and by twenty eighteen, that is super unusual. This is
a post Ken Bone world where everyday people can be
he launched from nowhere and have a whole second life
(21:03):
as an influencer if they choose to. That doesn't happen
with this clip, and it's never really been clear to
me why that is. The vast majority of people have
no idea who these men are to each other, or
what their names even are to this day. Lucky for you,
I'm a freak of nature and a pervert with a
lot of time, and so I pathetically begged for his
(21:24):
identity on Twitter dot com. Someone thankfully sent me Matt's
name and I was able to find out a little
bit more about how he is engaged with not just
this story but the Internet in general. And before I
spoke with him, his Internet presence was still extremely limited.
I would describe Matt Pasero as terminally Canadian. Here's Matt
and his brother applying to The Amazing Race Canada in
(21:46):
twenty thirteen. Sorry that I found this, Matt.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
I'm Matt Pasero, I'm John Pasicero. This is our audition
tape for The Amazing race Canada. I know you're thinking,
why are these two buffoons wearing American hockey jersey? But
this is what bons us together, our.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Love for the Bruins.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Okay, go Bruins. But after this clip goes viral, Matt
never displays a desire to capitalize it, or at least
never says so publicly. And there's never been an indication
of who the other people are involved in the video.
The clip is said to have been featured on a
lot of daily shows like Ellen, but without anyone from
the videos participation. And I couldn't help, but wonder if
(22:26):
Ellen wasn't able to get this guy? There's only one
other person who could so did Daniel Tosh? Yes he did.
Around a month after this video first went viral in
May twenty eighteen, Matt Basero made his only public appearance
until now on Tosh point zero and Matt is really
game for it.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Please welcome Matt. We'll be going. Man.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You are brawngro I.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Am wrong, but I'm also right. I need you to
look at a picture of a princess, just a standard princess,
and tell me to the untrained eye that that's not
a princess.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Glenna the good Witch is the protective princess Oz was
the rightful air to Oz.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
You git it?
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Who think they would hire a princess to protect another princess?
Me and Daniel Tosh on the same page, imagine. But
in terms of further appearances on camera as himself, that's
about it for Matt. Not that it stops the clip
from going viral, as it always does, but it's just
(23:33):
that he's not really engaging with it. To date, there's
only one small indication that Matt might have an interest
in extending this moment of fame, but even that is
still done mainly in the hobby sense, meaning Matt had
a podcast with his friends called The Grocery Stick that
(23:55):
ran from late twenty nineteen to mid twenty twenty two.
It seems to be, and I say this with love,
a podcast where three friends who are men shoot the
shit about their lives and sports. But unfortunately I cannot
confirm that for you because every instance of this podcast
is now unstreamable on all platforms. However, the list of
(24:16):
episode titles is still available, and one of the earliest,
from January twenty twenty is titled Wizard of Oz Viral
Video Breakdown. So at some point Matt was willing to
share the full story, but again on a small podcast
that Matt tells me really just their friends were listening
to without Matt's participation. Time marched on, and a few
(24:38):
viral cycles later, the Wicked movie press tour began, and
I thought at the time this clip will not be
far behind. I'm going to show some restraint here and
not subject to you to a protracted conversation about the
Wicked press tour, but suffice it to say it has
been very chaotic.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
People are taking the lyrics of define Gravit and really
holding space with that and feeling power in that.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I didn't know that that was happening. Oh sure, two
of the cast members left their respective spouses for each other,
but has any good theater production not prompted dramatic betrayals
between two people under five eight? And all of this aside,
there was other stuff in the marketing as well.
Speaker 6 (25:22):
If Sanna brings them a Wicked doll, Apparently Mattel put
the url of a porn site on all the packaging
for the Wicked dolls and then the instruction manuals, and
I don't know if they'd caught on or not the
Internet's caught on I.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Want the Wicked porn doll. But as a fan, I
was waiting for the Wicked Witch of the Eastbro moment
to enter this media cycle until mid November of this year,
when one Ariana Grande appeared on Jimmy Fallon as she
often does, and the official show account posted a clip
of the two of them lip syncing too the Wicked
(26:01):
Witch of the East Brough and with that the clip
had officially passed into the mainstream again. So where's Matt
when we come back? My conversation with the Matt Pisero.
Imagine me pulling out a knife. Here, welcome back to
(26:31):
sixteenth minute. In spite of my best efforts, I have
achieved a new level of depression where I'm playing Neopets
and dressing them up like the characters from Wicked. Because
Neopets is exactly as I left it in middle school,
except you can buy them wigs. Now they finally perfected it,
and without further ado, here is my interview with the
Wicked Witch of the East Bro, Matt Pisero.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
My name is Matt Pasero. I am the Wicked Witch
of the East Bro and as as much as there's
many imitators out there. There is only myself. There's a
lot of people now since the movie's coming out, there's
a lot of people saying it's their video, and it's
it's really, it's my video. It's my video, even though
(27:16):
I haven't done anything with it. It is my video.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
That's craven. Wait, who has are people? Do people believe
it's someone else?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Will you? Well, you know Jimmy Fallon and Ariana Grande
a yeah video, And there's there's a lot of comments
underneath saying tag this person or that person in the video.
And I had my cousin actually was the one. I'm
very I take a back seat on a lot of this.
(27:46):
I take a back seat on a lot of this stuff.
But she she made sure to comment on every single
comment to be like, no, this is the person that
you should be tagging in this video. Good.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
You need someone like charging into the comments on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
They're shut. Absolutely, I'm surprised.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I'm honestly, I was like, with the movie coming up,
I'm surprised we got you. Thank you, thank you for
telling me.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
It's a perfect perfect timing, right, It's fantastic timing. Every
year it seems to have a yea of some kind.
Somebody posts it in relation to something and it just
and my my my Instagram or my my Facebook. People
find me. I don't know how they find me. I'm
not I'm not somebody that says, hey, look for me.
(28:32):
I want to be right viral.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So I have a lot of questions for you about that,
because that's like fairly unusual. Most people are like, yes,
let's do this. But before we get there, I want
to know a little bit more about you. Where are
you from? Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I I live in Canada, so Ontario. Yeah, I grew
up here. The video was shot in Peterborough, Peterborough. I
was living in Peterborough at the time. If you want
a little backdrop, we were. The backdrop of the story
is we were. We were out day drinking at at
(29:07):
a bar at a brock Street I'll do a shout
out for brock Street Brewery in Peterborough.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
There should be a plaque there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, yeah, we were there day drinking and then we
went home and back to Peterborough where I was living
at the time, and that's what happened. But yeah, I
uh yeah living. I'm thirty five. I'm a much older
gentleman than I look. A lot of people think I'm
in my early twenties, which I take the compliment. Yeah,
thirty five, livin in Oshua, one kid, a wife, little
(29:39):
little house, just just small, small time eleven. No, I
don't want to have that uber fame, I think. Anyways,
I'm now at the point with the all my friends
and family that I know is like, what are you doing?
Like you're you're down with like this video blows off
all the time. Why are you here out of your
mind to not do.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Something right when this video came out? And just in general,
what is your relationship to the internet like.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Bait zero? Like I said, I'm thirty five, so I'm
assuming we're similar.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Age ish Yeah, I'm thirty one.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, so we grew up in the pre internet time
and I got Facebook when I was in grade ten.
I got Instagram in twenty twenty one, so two years
after that video and viral. I never had Instagram before that.
I got Instagram for whatever reason I don't know. I
now have Instagram and I'm addicted to scrolling reels now.
(30:37):
It's a blessing and a curse all in one, right,
So I got Facebook, I got Instagram. Keep me off
of everything else.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You're on the Zuckerberg products.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Beat me away from it. I don't want nothing to
do with it. You start them young, now, I think
that's how it works, right. I'm pretty sure there's parents
out there that make the Facebook account for they're two
month old, and then they write on it like CALLI
loves you and she says hello.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Okay, So your relationship to the Internet, you're You're a
pretty offline guy.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Basically nothing. Well, I'm in car sales. My job for
the last long while has been car sales, So I
guess I have a little bit of a little bit
of a relationship to the Internet because I do post
videos for stuff like that. But oh, okay, I guess
I don't know. I've never I've never bridged the gap
between the internet thing that is that video and what
(31:29):
I do for my job. I'm sure there is some
sort of balance that could be made there that I've
never capitalized on.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
But and of course, your relationship to the Wizard of
Oz prior to this this big moment.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
That's that's that's that's the question everyone asked, and that's
the question that everyone said they go. You know, everyone says,
this guy knows he's wrong. Right, he's not right, this
is wrong.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
What he's that is not the feeling I got from you, of.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Course, right. I've lived my entire life with the conviction
of whether you're right or wrong. If you're the loudest
in the room, you're the asshole, and you're probably going
to be taken seriously. So I'm well aware that my
argument was wrong. It's not right. Right. So people have
(32:20):
told me multiple times that that you are very wrong
in what you say. And I will stand by my
conviction to this point that I am right. She came
down in a bubble sock, she's princess right.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
You do deliver it with a lot of confidence. It's
and and if you do realize that you're wrong within
the space of the video, then the volume just increases. Right,
which is it's a good system to be fair.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
That is that if you ask anybody in my life,
that is what they say, they say, Matt will not
even if he's wrong, he will argue until his last
breath that he's right.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
So you should run for office or something.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
That's another thing. Keep you out of it, keep you
off the internet, keep me out of office.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
It's trouble all to yourself. Yeah, when was the last
time you had seen The Wizard of Oz prior to
the argument?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Like the main the first ever movie? Jesus, I don't.
I actually don't know, probably when I was fourteen, twenty
years ago. Problem. Yeah, and the other guy, So, the
other guy in the video, he says it's his favorite video, right,
or a favorite video or movie. Sorry, it's his favorite
movie right right, and he watches it constantly. So I
(33:40):
had no right. I had no right argument with that
type of conduction. I haven't seen the movie in twenty years.
Who do I think I am right?
Speaker 1 (33:47):
So walk me through this day you were day drinking?
Who are you with? Who is this man to you?
And who is filming?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So I'll give you so I'll spill the tea. I'll
spill the tea here. Please. This is this is some
heavy TV, to be honest with you. The Internet, from
what I've read, loves loves this kind of stuff. So
the person filming the video is a very old friend.
I don't speak with her anymore. But the other guy
in the video is my cousin. Obviously grew up with him.
(34:18):
He's a couple of years younger than me. But how
the day started, Like I said, rockouse brewery, having some drinks,
going out, going back to our house, and we were
playing a game of headbands. You know, headbands?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Okay, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Headbands on yet something in the headbands? So what was
on the headbands? Was Oz? Right? So I don't know
how it came about the argument. The argument just it
organically grew. So I'm whether I'm wrong or I'm right,
my conviction will be there. That's their way. And I also,
I'm an instigator. I like to stir the pod a
(34:56):
little bit. Knowing this guy, I know I could stirre
the pod pretty easily, so instigate him a little bit.
I think it turned into I don't I don't really
know how the argument itself started with Oz. I don't know.
He couldn't get it, he couldn't get the clue of
Oz of the headman right, And yeah it was it
(35:17):
was probably that was probably halfway through an argument that
we were already having.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
So I can only image starts.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I couldn't imagine what the video itself would have turned into.
If the recording would have started at the beginning of
the it would have been a twelve minute video and.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Then okay, so this is the peak of the argument.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
The peak you caught. Yeah you got you cut the
head bob and the hair foil, which is which turned
it into whatever it is today. Right, So yeah, but
he we we actually so the TA itself is me
and him don't speak anymore. We haven't talked actually since
that video. So he he didn't want any sort of
(36:03):
quote unquote fane from that video, and we actually he
told us to delete the original video. And so when
it started blowing up, so after it was taken, it
blew up immensely.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
So was it originally posted? And who posted it?
Speaker 2 (36:21):
The girl who took the video posted it on one
of her Facebook pages, okay, something that she followed. It
was some sort of I don't think I had anything
to do with the Wizard of Bodds. What she posted
it on. She posted on some Facebook group and overnight
it had one hundred and seventy five thousand views. When
I woke up, it was literally like in the blink
(36:42):
of an eye like that, and I went, well, holy shit,
that's that's great. That's why, right, And the other guy
in the video said take it down now. After twenty
four hours he said, I don't want that. Take it
down now. The problem with the internet is when it's
on the internet. Yeah, if you remove that video from
(37:02):
whatever page you posted it, somebody already has it, right,
somebody has the video. So it ended up turning into
what it is today from us?
Speaker 7 (37:11):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (37:12):
He just didn't want that level of visibility.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Well, there's I guess there's more to it. He worked for,
he worked for the city that he worked in, Okay,
and he didn't want to lose his job. For whatever reason,
he thought he would lose his job if it went viral.
And I wasn't in the position to argue with him
to say, hey man, we might make a couple of
dollars off this if you if you sign on to
kind of turn it into something. It's good. It's already something.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
So he's in the right in the video. Ultimately he
does does he have a knife in the video?
Speaker 2 (37:42):
He's not in the right. See this is where were
you were about to.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Get into an Okay, Okay, why have I wrong?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
He's in the wrong on this one. It may be
his favorite video, but I had this, I don't know.
I was on I was on Tosh point zero when
the video was one and all that kind of stuff. Right, Yeah,
I challenge anybody, anyone in the world to take a
look at this woman and say, no, that's a witch
and not a princess. That's not plausible. In my mind,
it's not a witch. I don't agree that it's a witch.
(38:14):
And you may write it into your script to tell
me it's a witch. I disagree with you, and I
will argue until my last breath.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
There's so many realities that we can live. I mean,
it's you, she is. Here's what I'll concede. She is
like what we've been conditioned to think of as a princess.
So you you hold your ground.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I will hold my ground on that. I will hold you.
Tell me what you look like, and I will call
you by that that's okay, I look at you okay
by judgment, but I will.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Look at you like princess.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You're a princess. You are you can call yourself a witch.
You're a princess of my eyes.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
And when we come back more with Matt Pisero, welcome
back to sixteenth minute. I controversially find it weird how
(39:15):
Jeff gold Bloom poses with very young women in pictures.
And here's the rest of my interview with the Wicked
Witch of the eastbro Matt Piserro. And then so I
do does your cousin have a knife in that video?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
He does, Yes, he does, he does have a Yeah, okay,
he did threaten to stab me like in all that
unity and we're talking about it. If I probably hold
the case here, I could probably sue him for some
sort of He might have tried to kill me. I
don't know. I don't know. He may we don't.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
We don't know what happened after Well that that is
a question. I have what happened after the.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
After the video? So I so I walk around the corner.
So the end of the video, I walk around the corner. Yeah, right,
he had a switchblade. He came with the switchblade. I
dodged it. He came my neck, dodged it, hit him
with a left jab right left job, knocked him down. Yes, no,
that's all I am. I'm it. He put the pocket
(40:10):
knife away. It was all right. Yeah, Like I said,
I'm genuinely I'm known for being in my family that
person that instigates a little bit maybe a little bit
too much, right to be a borderline, obnoxiously arrogant and
overly confident in a way when you're wrong.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Right, the video gets uploaded, everyone feels a different way
about it. It goes. You know, it seems like the
algorithm just like caught onto it, liked it. Your cousin
wants it down. Is it taken down and it's too late?
Is that what happened?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Okay, yeah, it was taken down. Gone, it was off
of the site we originally posted it on, and then
it was probably less it had to win less than
twenty four hours later after the video was taken down,
this person on Instagram I don't know, or on sorry,
on YouTube, I don't know who this person is. He
uploaded it on YouTube again. Immediately blew up. Immediately blew up.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
The algorithm loves men screaming, is what I've learned.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
What's that about. I don't get it. I don't understand.
My wife hates it. She despises it. I'm obnoxiously loud
all the time, and I don't know how to control it.
It's like I have a broken low volume knob and
it's always high. I don't know how to tone it down.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
What is the experience of these first couple of days.
Do people find you quickly? How are you feeling about
like this level of.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I was never I was never private, I wasn't private.
I never had Like I said, I didn't have Instagram
at this time, right, I only had Facebook and I
wasn't private on anything. So all it took was one
person saying is this is who it is? And then
they tagged me in it, and I think in the
span of twenty four hours, I had eight hundred friend requests.
(41:55):
As I woke up in the morning, I had to
put my phone on silent going to bed because there
was ding ding ding ding ding dingman over and over
and over again. I wanted to mess I wanted to
say something to be like, you're not you will not
be entertained by what you're adding right now. You're not
like you're adding me for whatever reason. But you're going
to get a picture of my nephew at this point,
because I live with my nephew. That's what you'll get.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
So I've talked to a lot of people who when
after that first wave of attention, there's like sort of
this moment where you have to decide, like do I
want to do anything with this? Do I want to
just let it pass. How did you sort of approach that?
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah, I think that's the main thing when you said,
what would it even look like? Right? I don't know.
I grew up idolizing comedians in my younger years. I've
always been in that way, but I've never looked at
myself as somebody that would be internet famous, like to
do something on the internet. I don't know how that
would work. I don't know how I would do it.
I've had family members and friends be like, you're near
(42:53):
I have to launch? What the fuck do you do it?
Speaker 6 (42:55):
Why?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Maybe it account and start back? I'm like, what for? What?
What am I doing? What am I saying? Do I
sit down now in front of in front of a
camera and tell a story? I don't know. I never
had the desire to do it, To be honest, I
just I like I like my small life. I like
my little life. I like my family life. I've never
never wanted to branch out that way.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
But there's always going to be people that are like,
you're crazy, like, how how could you you know you're
leaving money?
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Well, to be honest with you, the thought of the
thought of the money makes me feel sick to my
stomach that could be there. Right, But I was never
even able to monetize the video, right, I wasn't able
to make any money off the video because of the
other guy in the video wouldn't sign off on any
sort of monetization of the video. So to not have
(43:46):
him in the video made it made it difficult, right,
So obviously I will leave his name ahead of.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
This, so you don't need to answer this. But do
you not talk anymore because of like the fallout of
this video.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
No, there's there's a little bit more to it. But okay,
family drama, everyone has it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I mean, this is I really do think that this
is like one of the only stories I've ever heard about,
like day drinking changing your life for perhaps the better.
The better this whole wave of attentions happening. You're not
able to monetize it. You don't want to like pivot
to become an influencer or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, yeah, the whole the bubble itself, no pun intended
around being an influencer to being like I need to
come up with creations of doing so, and so I
just I don't I don't get it. Well, we did,
I did do a podcast. I did start a podcast
with two of my things. Yeah, we did. We did
a podcast for about a year and a half with
(44:41):
two of my friends called The Grocery Stick, and we
talked about we actually before I've done this now with you,
we talked about the creation of the video and we
it was more sports related and shooting the ship and
stuff like that, just joking around. Everybody and their cousins
started a podcast in the span of like between twenty
eighteen and now, Everyone's like, let's do a pod gas.
(45:04):
So we did that and then life gotten away and
we just kind of stopped. But we had seven people
listen to us at certain points.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Oh yeah, it's fun. Were you like marketing that is,
like and I'm the guy from this video or you're.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Wait, yeah at the beginning, at the beginning, we were,
but it just it never it never really took off,
and I didn't really expect it to. It was a
pastime really, honestly. We we just a reason to get together.
We thought we were funny. You know, when you get
a bunch of guys together that think they're funny, that's
that's the meme on the internet now, right, A bunch
(45:39):
of together and starting.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
In a room. Sure hurt it a millionaire.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
A millionaire and you're going to say something off the cusp.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
That's going to get because I've seen that you've you've
done a couple of appearances. How did you sort of
choose like what to engage with versus not?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
I love Daniel Tosh. Daniel Tosh was my my one
of my comedic idols growing up, him and Dave Chapelle,
and there are certain people that I absolutely loved. And
then they that was they actually reached out to me.
I think it was a month and a half after
that video went viral. That was a no brainer for me.
(46:14):
That was like, yeah, I would love to talk to
you about the video, and that was that was my
first endeavor in anything like that. I couldn't have been
more nervous all the other stuff though, like with Ellen
in Ridiculousness. They just reached out to me to ask
to you the video And obviously I had the person
who recorded the video signed it on to me, like
(46:35):
they gave me the rights.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
So I just said, I said, yeah, how do you
do that for like a video from someone's phone.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
They were just like yeah, they signed the rights over
and it was my basically my video from their phone.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
If this all happened again, and I guess it kind
of does? You're in like this kind of groundhog day loop? Yeah?
Would you do it any differently? Would you want to
do it any differently? The next time it happens? Will
you want to do it differently?
Speaker 2 (47:01):
I kind of I to be honest with you as
much as I say I don't, I don't want any
when it pops up, the amount of engagement that I
get from people around me, it's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Right, So rel just like people in your day to day.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, day to day like I have. I have a
very like massive large group of friends, different circles and everything.
Like I'm actually on Sunday, there's a very good friend
of mine who's a tattoo artist. Her name is Day
and Day day read is her on Instagram, And we're
going to do a I'm going to do a huge
piece on my leg, wicked which of the east piece
(47:35):
on my leg? No way, I'm going to get my
whole leg done. I'm going to try and help her
grow her brand as I sit here and I live
in my small bungalow that I live in. But yeah,
I'm going to help her, but there's nothing more that
I would, I would do or want to do in
that situation. I would, I have I have no desire
to go viral. Ever.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Again, my last question maybe an obvious question, and are
you going to see Wicked?
Speaker 2 (48:03):
So I don't think you're gonna like my answer here,
I don't. I don't think so I will I. You
won't catch me in the theater. It's not about learning,
it's not about anything like that. You will not catch
the came. It's more about to be honest. I don't
want to get into it. But you won't catch me
(48:23):
supporting anything to do with the Hollywood elites about that.
I will not give them any of my money. I don't.
I don't see movies. I don't have subscriptions. I have
nothing like that. I have nothing. I will not. I
will not step foot into a movie. I appreciate Ariana
Grande Age and I appreciate Jimmy fal John's. I appreciate
both of them. I like them. I like them both.
(48:45):
They did a great job with the video. But I
will not. I will not, and I might make you
know what. I take that back. Maybe I will see
the video or the movie. I might see the movie, okay,
but I will not pay money to go down in
the theater to see them.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Okay, Okay, I mean I feel like they should probably
just send you a screener. Anyways.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
I actually the funny thing is I got I got
reached out to somebody that works for Universal months wow. Yeah,
before the movie came out. It was probably three months ago.
They reached out to me and they sent me a
bunch of stuff and they asked me to come out
to LA to do this, and I sent them a
bunch of information and then I never heard back from them,
(49:26):
So I said, what do we do now?
Speaker 1 (49:28):
They wouldn't see the movie either if they did that.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah, they've reached out to me like, hey, we have
promotional things that we want to do. Your video is
super viral and we would love to have you do this.
And I said, yeah, I would I would love to
do a bunch of people. Sure. Yeah, And then they
said they said nothing. They said nothing back to me.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Are there like weird offers or things you've turned down
over the years that your life?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, I thought a couple of people reach out. I've
had a couple. I had somebody that worked for Google,
Texels and multiple other like streaming services that were like, hey,
we'll give you money to do this, and then that
I had I had two bad experiences of people not
either getting back to me or me doing something for them,
(50:11):
and they didn't do anything for me, and I said,
I'm not not doing that. Like I said, I have
no desire to do this. This is fun. I enjoy this.
You can get the background on the stener. This is fun.
You're you're very sweet yourself, and this is a fun conversation.
But I have no I have no desire to set
up a uh uh an Instagram account and me being like, well,
(50:35):
let me tell you what I think about this. Who
gives a shit about my opinion?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
And again, I've just I wish more people thought that way.
I think that you're you're you're You're an inspiration to society.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
From now on. Take a back seat. You're not important.
You don't matter. I don't matter. Right If I make
a video telling you how I feel about Wicked after
I watched movie and you take that with any sort
of conviction whatsoever, I think you have more of an
issue than I do.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
You're cooked, You're good, Thank you so much. To Matt
for his time and his gameness, and you are welcome
for the exclusive You can follow Matt and I think
this is a first nowhere. He does not want to
be famous, but you can check out that tattoo he
mentions from his tattoo artist day Bond, which is linked
(51:29):
in the description of this episode. With that listeners, I
ask you the following, what maketh the Princess? What maketh
a witch? The answer is in the eye of the beholder, unless,
of course, the character explicitly self identifies as a witch.
(51:50):
Sixteenth minute as a production of fool Zone Media and
iHeart Radio. It is written, posted, and produced by me
Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 7 (51:57):
Our executive producers are Sophieli Driven and Robert Evans. Lenaising
Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Our theme song.
Speaker 7 (52:06):
Is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater
and pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my
cat's flee and Casper and my pet Rockberd, who will
outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Bye.
Cool Zone Media. So there's a movie that just came out.
Maybe you've heard about it, Sicky. No, not that one.
What am I five years old?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is an art choosing gladiators. They're usually prisoners of war.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
No, not that one. What am I five thousand years old?
Although at least I hear Ridley Scott allowed men's thighs
to be in this one. No, the movie, the movie
that anyone who's ever been a ten year old theater
kid has been looking forward to for twenty years. Are
(00:45):
people born wicked.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Or should they have wickedness thrust upon them?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yes? Wicked Part one is in theaters and it's good
and everyone likes it. And if you're like Jamie, I
thought you were a guys girl. Why have you seen
Wicked more than once? Well, guess what, I've seen it
three times. And being a musical theater fan is not
a gendered experience, Okay. And also I am a huge
(01:15):
Wizard of Oz fan in general, always have been. It's
my favorite movie, and in middle school I made that
my entire personality in the way that middle schoolers do.
I thought, Hey, if I know every single thing that
happens in the Wizard of Oz, expanded universe. Maybe no
one will notice that I have a backbrace. Teeth braces
(01:36):
and hand me down glasses with frames from the eighties
didn't work, but I retained a lot. I love the
nineteen thirty nine classic movie starring Judy Garland. I love
the L. Frank Bomb books, which were far more complicated
and weird than the movie is. I loved learning about
the other adaptations The Wiz returned to Oz and most
(01:59):
famous an entire novel I wrote in eighth grade called
Rosalie of Oz that I sometimes kind of want to
record an audiobook for like for fun. I am not
a fake fan. I know my shit. And just as
I was getting really into oz Lare during those middle
school years, I learned that there was another piece of
(02:20):
lore on Broadway called Wicked, the true story of the
Wicked Witch of the West, who in the adaptation is
named Elpha but Throp in her college Frenemie Glinda formerly
Glinda upland based on the books Wicked and Son of
a Witch by Gregory Maguire, which we won't get into
in this episode. They're pornographic, They're really fucked up. Anyways,
(02:43):
there's a lot of lore surrounding Oz and Glinda specifically,
so when the Wicked movie was finally supposed to be
coming out, and at this point, this is a movie
based on a musical based on a book based on
a movie based on a book series from over one
hundred years ago. Babe, I was ready. But let's be honest,
(03:03):
not everyone knows as much about Wizard of ozlore as
I do, and particularly the subject of today's episode of
sixteen minute. So before we begin and get into our story,
I need to give a quick lesson who is Glinda
the good Witch? Well, it's a bit of a complicated question,
(03:24):
and I am going to spare you all of the
pornographic details of Gregoriya Maguire's novel Wicked. Let me tell
you about miss Glinda because many of you are not educated,
and by many of you, I do mean the eleven
year old sitting next to me at the last time
I saw Wicked, who turned to their older sibling and
asked if Wicked was based on something? Okay, bitch. Glinda
(03:46):
is a character that most people were introduced to in
the Victor Fleming directed Judy Garland starring nineteen thirty nine
movie adaptation Classic and in that movie, she is a
beautiful blonde woman in a big pink ball gown who
(04:07):
comes down to meet our protagonist Dorothy in a big
pink bubble, introducing herself as the good Witch of the North. However,
she is of course introduced first in L. Frank Baum's
classic children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, all the
way back in nineteen hundred and While this is the
version of Glinda that most people are familiar with prior
(04:29):
to the release of Wicked, in this source material, Glinda
is not the good Witch of the North. She is
the good Witch of the South. The nineteen thirty nine
adaptation composites both of these parts into a single character,
but in the book, Glinda doesn't appear at the beginning
and the end as in the movie, but only at
(04:51):
the end. In the book, the Witch of the North
is a completely different person. She is an older looking
woman with far less magical powers than Glinda, who is
called either Lacasta or Taddy Pooh, depending on which book
in the series you're reading. And it's this witch La
Costa who is the one that gives Dorothy what we
(05:11):
know as the Ruby Slippers. If you're a movie fan,
or are the silver slippers in both the source material
and in Wicked these are the shoes that are taken
from the Wicked Witch of the East after she's crushed
by Dorothy's house, and the Wicked Witch of the North,
La Costa, enchants these shoes with a protection charm for
Dorothy's journey to the Emerald City. And it's not that
(05:33):
she doesn't want to do more for Dorothy, that's just
all her magic can accomplish. That's the limits of her power. Then,
at the end of the story, Glinda, the Good Witch
of the South appears for the first time. Dorothy has
now met the Scarecrow, the tin Man, and the Lion.
They've gone to see the Wizard at the Emerald City.
They've killed the Wicked Witch of the West in exchange
(05:55):
for their heart's desires from the Wizard, only to find
out that he is a total fraud from Nebraska. And
then Glinda arrives and is a far more powerful witch
than her foot free colleague in the North. Dorothy and
company traveled to the South of oz to meet Glinda,
who then tells Dorothy how to get home using her
(06:16):
silver shoes. Glinda, the Good Witch of the South looks
far closer to the movie adaptation we're used to seeing
with Billy Burke. She's young and beautiful, with long, red,
flowing hair and blue eyes, and she's suggested to be immortal.
And while she only appears at the end of the
first book, she later becomes a far more important and
(06:37):
active character. L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen oz books in
his lifetime, and other authors picked up the series where
he left off, and Glinda becomes a huge part of
finding the rightful ruler of oz the child Princess Ozma Princess.
Remember that? And I know you're thinking, does Glinda have
(06:57):
an all women's militia? Yes, she does amazing. But in
the nineteen thirty nine movie, which I'm assuming you are
far more familiar with, Glinda is a composite of these
two characters, as played by iconic vaudeville actress Billy Burke.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Let the joyous news be spread the wickedo which.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It lovest his name. This Glinda appears twice in the story,
appearing first to give Dorothy the ruby slippers, not the
silver as in the book, and then returns at the
end to finally tell her how to use them. Hmmm,
that doesn't always sit well with viewers as they get older,
because nineteen thirty nine, Glinda lets Dorothy languish in the
(07:40):
trenches almost dying for most of the movie and then
just kind of pops back up at the end, and
it's like, oh, yeah, you actually could have gone home
the whole time. I just thought if I told you,
you wouldn't believe me. You've always had the power to
go back to Kanson.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
But why didn't you tell her before?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Because you wouldn't have believe me.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
She had to learn it for herself, and.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
She would have believed you, And so over the years,
if you're over analyzing this movie, which is a whole
cottage industry, it could seem like Glinda is kind of
messing with Dorothy this whole time in order to ostensibly
teach her a lesson about appreciating never moving out of Kansas,
begging the question, if Glinda's so good, why did she
(08:29):
let this child almost die so many times? That's a
bit of an oversimplification. And there's a million other versions
of this character, but those two are the primary versions
of Glinda being referenced in Wicked and in Today's Story.
Glinda Glinda Taddy Pooh. Whichever version of this character was
(08:51):
introduced to you earliest is probably the one that you
hold most dear. She is pink, she is hyper feminine,
she's powerful, she's kind alone. But if you haven't encountered
this character in a couple of decades, maybe your memory
of her is a little hazy. Maybe you're not like
me and tempted to bully every eleven year old you
(09:11):
meet at an amc Which brings us to today's subject,
a viral clip where two grown men are intensely fighting
about this very character, Glinda the Good in twenty eighteen.
You've maybe seen this video if you have spent any
time online in the last ten years. But my god, congratulations,
if this is the first time you're hearing it, it's
(09:31):
a classic.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Her sister was a witch?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Right?
Speaker 5 (09:39):
And what was her sister?
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Princess matt Piesero, the wicked witch of the East Row.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Your sixteenth minute starts now.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Six six.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
a look at the most notorious Internet characters of the day,
see how their moment affected them and what it says
about us and the Internet. And I could not be
more excited for this week's episode. It is truly my
dream episode. So let's just get right into it. Q
I Dina Menzel, thank you so much. Cue Cynthia Arrivo,
(11:12):
thank you so much. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus. And
by the time this episode comes out, I will have
seen Wicked Part one three times in theaters and have
tickets to see the touring production with my mom in January.
And while I have not personally been blessed with any
musical talent outside of being extremely good at the OBO
in high school, yes, thank you so much. That was
(11:43):
me variations on the Korean Folks song early twenty tens.
That's called talent. So after making you wait a whole week,
we're back with an exclusive interview, the first this man
has done in years, with Matt Piso, the Wicked Witch
of the East Bro. Now it's possible you haven't seen
this video at all, and it's possible that you saw
(12:05):
it almost six years ago when it first went viral,
And now it's quite possible you saw it go viral
in the last two weeks as the Wicked movie and
its super fans began using the audio from that clip
as lip synctracks everywhere, from TikTokers dressed up like Glinda
to and I'm not kidding Ariana Grande herself lip syncing
to the clip with famed William hung impersonator Jimmy Fallon.
(12:29):
But in case this is your point of entry, we're
going to take a full look at how this clip,
which goes viral multiple times a year, regardless of whether
there is a new OZ property making a billion dollars
at the box office a little closer. So here, I'm
going to tell you what we knew when I began
working on this episode, and in our exclusive interview with
(12:49):
you wiki Bitch of the eastbro himself, Matt Pacero, you'll
learn a lot more about some of the most commonly
asked questions about this moment in Internet history. But first
we got to break this thing down. Come with me
if you dare to Spring twenty eighteen, there's a salmonella
outbreak in the Midwest. A beautiful woman named Jamie Loftus
(13:13):
performs her show I Lost My Virginity on August fifteenth,
twenty ten, and somewhere in Canada, Matt Pacero is caught
on camera having a very spirited argument with another man
possibly named Doug, about whether Glinda is a witch or
a princess. And look now that you graduated from my
(13:34):
Glinda one oh one, course you've arrived armed with knowledge,
and Matt does not have that benefit. So let's hear
him out. I'm gonna break down this clip because a
lot happens in the twenty three seconds that it lasts.
The energy immediately is at an eleven Matt, who is
a white guy in a black hoodie and jeans with
(13:55):
blonde hair that is very intentionally flopping as he expresses
his opinion, gesturing with these intense prayer hands. He is,
as you will hear, screaming at another white guy with
a shaved head wearing a blaid shirt who seems sort
of annoyed but also kind of entertained. It's important to
(14:16):
note that there is nothing within the frame of the
video that indicates how or why this argument started, only
that it seems to have been going on for a
while at this point. So, knowing what we now do
about Glinda, let's fact check Matt's argument. He starts like this,
(14:36):
her sister was a witch, right, Okay, okay, So we're
not absolutely sure who's being talked about at the very
beginning when Matt says her. But I'm going to assume
he means the Wicked Witch of the West here, and
that is correct. Technically, the Wicked Witch of the West
does have a sister, the Wicked Witch of the East,
who in Wicked is the character nessa Rose and in
(14:58):
the movie is crushed by doors these houses.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Who killed the Witch of the East.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You okay, Matt, you can continue.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Right, And what was her sister, princess?
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Mm hmm. So at this point in the video, Matt
is walking away kind of like mic Drop style, while
the other guy is still frustrated but laughing, and the
person holding the camera is like laughing their ass off.
So fact check everything he says here is wrong. He's
talking as if all witches are sisters. I guess that's
(15:35):
not true. Furthermore, none of them are princesses. As we learned,
there is a princess of oz named Ozma, but she
doesn't appear in the nineteen thirty nine adaptation that they
seem to be talking about. So he's wrong, and the
guy in the plaid shirt is getting really aggravated. Let's
see if Matt can stick the landing.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Here we're gonna you're gonna tell me that I am
I wrong?
Speaker 1 (16:02):
So much happens in this four seconds. So the guy
in the plaid shirt who Matt's yelling at, smiles at
the camera and says, quote, I'm gonna stab him, unquote,
before taking a switchblade out of what appears to be
thin fucking air. He walks towards Matt, who is walking away,
still yelling at volume a million. And I think a
(16:23):
lot of people have had this experience with this video,
but I like, never noticed that there is a knife
in this video until I had watched it over twenty times,
not only because it's just in frame for a second,
but because Matt sees and doesn't react to it, and
the other guy doesn't seem serious about actually using it,
which begs the question who are these men to each other?
(16:44):
But okay, let's let Matt finish.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Am I wrong?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Wore a crown and she came.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Down in a bull.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
This is the most famous part of the video. She
wore a crown and came down in a bubble dug, which, again,
that does not make you a princess. And assuming they're
talking about the movie, which they definitely are. I'm tempted
to cut Matt some slack here if it weren't for
the fact that one of Glinda the Good Witch's most
famous lines addresses this explicitly.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I am a witch, I'm Linda, you are.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
I beg your pardon, but I've never heard of a
beautiful witch before, only bed which is ugly.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And once more, Matt at this point is clearly calling
Glinda the wicked Witch of the East, which isn't true.
She was killed by a house who killed He incorrectly
assumes that she's a princess and a sister with any
other witch, and then confidently defends the most wrong anyone
has ever been saying. The following and scene this argument
(17:54):
is so intense and petty and weird you can almost
forget that the guy implaid possible. Doug is holding an
unsheathed knife while saying that The Wizard of Oz is
his favorite movie, which is a fascinating display of masculinity.
This is a viral video that everyone has their favorite
line of, their favorite moment of and most importantly, for
my purposes, your favorite question about My favorite question about
(18:18):
this has always been does that guy have a knife?
But Others have questions like, how do these men know
each other? What happened before the video started, what happened
after the video ends? Is he saying dog or is
he saying Doug. It is art in the form of
a twenty three second video, and you might not be
surprised to hear that it was catnip for the algorithm
(18:41):
of the time, and something that has continued to be
successful in the algorithm since for a lot of reasons.
But it's a white man yelling about something incorrectly. Empires
have fallen over lass. That's said. The origins of this
clip are a little bit hard to trace, but there's
no doubt that its most successful iteration to date was
(19:03):
uploaded by a YouTube user named Austin Parish on April third,
twenty eighteen. But this is definitely a re upload of
a clip from somewhere else, and at first I couldn't
figure out from where or which person in the original
group of three, either Matt, Doug, question Mark or the
person recording the video had uploaded it in the first place.
(19:26):
And as of this recording, there are eleven million views
on this re uploaded YouTube clip, and it quickly spread
across platforms. We're talking Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. It's one of
those rare clips that basically anyone can enjoy because it
was a weird argument about an intellectual property that everyone
(19:46):
knows about in some shape or form. It's a clip
that's highly shareable for my auntie on Facebook, and it's
a very popular clip to lip sync two on TikTok,
and it's since joined in ashelon viral clip that tends
to go viral around once a year for one reason
or another. It's just there's something very pleasing about seeing
(20:07):
someone aggressively double down about something that they're both wrong
about and isn't important because so many people double down
about things that are so At the time of publication
in twenty eighteen, here's a taste of the response on
the original YouTube post. The delivery of It's my Favorite
Movie remains the most slept on part of this I
(20:31):
love how his hair was fully engaged in the argument.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
I'm so glad my dad's condom broke, or else I
wouldn't be able to experience this masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
But what I find most interesting about this story is that,
in the immediate sense, no one ever really comes forward
to claim this clip as their own in a public sense,
and by twenty eighteen, that is super unusual. This is
a post Ken Bone world where everyday people can be
he launched from nowhere and have a whole second life
(21:03):
as an influencer if they choose to. That doesn't happen
with this clip, and it's never really been clear to
me why that is. The vast majority of people have
no idea who these men are to each other, or
what their names even are to this day. Lucky for you,
I'm a freak of nature and a pervert with a
lot of time, and so I pathetically begged for his
(21:24):
identity on Twitter dot com. Someone thankfully sent me Matt's
name and I was able to find out a little
bit more about how he is engaged with not just
this story but the Internet in general. And before I
spoke with him, his Internet presence was still extremely limited.
I would describe Matt Pasero as terminally Canadian. Here's Matt
and his brother applying to The Amazing Race Canada in
(21:46):
twenty thirteen. Sorry that I found this, Matt.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
I'm Matt Pasero, I'm John Pasicero. This is our audition
tape for The Amazing race Canada. I know you're thinking,
why are these two buffoons wearing American hockey jersey? But
this is what bons us together, our.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Love for the Bruins.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Okay, go Bruins. But after this clip goes viral, Matt
never displays a desire to capitalize it, or at least
never says so publicly. And there's never been an indication
of who the other people are involved in the video.
The clip is said to have been featured on a
lot of daily shows like Ellen, but without anyone from
the videos participation. And I couldn't help, but wonder if
(22:26):
Ellen wasn't able to get this guy? There's only one
other person who could so did Daniel Tosh? Yes he did.
Around a month after this video first went viral in
May twenty eighteen, Matt Basero made his only public appearance
until now on Tosh point zero and Matt is really
game for it.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Please welcome Matt. We'll be going. Man.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You are brawngro I.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Am wrong, but I'm also right. I need you to
look at a picture of a princess, just a standard princess,
and tell me to the untrained eye that that's not
a princess.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Glenna the good Witch is the protective princess Oz was
the rightful air to Oz.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
You git it?
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Who think they would hire a princess to protect another princess?
Me and Daniel Tosh on the same page, imagine. But
in terms of further appearances on camera as himself, that's
about it for Matt. Not that it stops the clip
from going viral, as it always does, but it's just
(23:33):
that he's not really engaging with it. To date, there's
only one small indication that Matt might have an interest
in extending this moment of fame, but even that is
still done mainly in the hobby sense, meaning Matt had
a podcast with his friends called The Grocery Stick that
(23:55):
ran from late twenty nineteen to mid twenty twenty two.
It seems to be, and I say this with love,
a podcast where three friends who are men shoot the
shit about their lives and sports. But unfortunately I cannot
confirm that for you because every instance of this podcast
is now unstreamable on all platforms. However, the list of
(24:16):
episode titles is still available, and one of the earliest,
from January twenty twenty is titled Wizard of Oz Viral
Video Breakdown. So at some point Matt was willing to
share the full story, but again on a small podcast
that Matt tells me really just their friends were listening
to without Matt's participation. Time marched on, and a few
(24:38):
viral cycles later, the Wicked movie press tour began, and
I thought at the time this clip will not be
far behind. I'm going to show some restraint here and
not subject to you to a protracted conversation about the
Wicked press tour, but suffice it to say it has
been very chaotic.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
People are taking the lyrics of define Gravit and really
holding space with that and feeling power in that.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I didn't know that that was happening. Oh sure, two
of the cast members left their respective spouses for each other,
but has any good theater production not prompted dramatic betrayals
between two people under five eight? And all of this aside,
there was other stuff in the marketing as well.
Speaker 6 (25:22):
If Sanna brings them a Wicked doll, Apparently Mattel put
the url of a porn site on all the packaging
for the Wicked dolls and then the instruction manuals, and
I don't know if they'd caught on or not the
Internet's caught on I.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Want the Wicked porn doll. But as a fan, I
was waiting for the Wicked Witch of the Eastbro moment
to enter this media cycle until mid November of this year,
when one Ariana Grande appeared on Jimmy Fallon as she
often does, and the official show account posted a clip
of the two of them lip syncing too the Wicked
(26:01):
Witch of the East Brough and with that the clip
had officially passed into the mainstream again. So where's Matt
when we come back? My conversation with the Matt Pisero.
Imagine me pulling out a knife. Here, welcome back to
(26:31):
sixteenth minute. In spite of my best efforts, I have
achieved a new level of depression where I'm playing Neopets
and dressing them up like the characters from Wicked. Because
Neopets is exactly as I left it in middle school,
except you can buy them wigs. Now they finally perfected it,
and without further ado, here is my interview with the
Wicked Witch of the East Bro, Matt Pisero.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
My name is Matt Pasero. I am the Wicked Witch
of the East Bro and as as much as there's
many imitators out there. There is only myself. There's a
lot of people now since the movie's coming out, there's
a lot of people saying it's their video, and it's
it's really, it's my video. It's my video, even though
(27:16):
I haven't done anything with it. It is my video.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
That's craven. Wait, who has are people? Do people believe
it's someone else?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Will you? Well, you know Jimmy Fallon and Ariana Grande
a yeah video, And there's there's a lot of comments
underneath saying tag this person or that person in the video.
And I had my cousin actually was the one. I'm
very I take a back seat on a lot of this.
(27:46):
I take a back seat on a lot of this stuff.
But she she made sure to comment on every single
comment to be like, no, this is the person that
you should be tagging in this video. Good.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
You need someone like charging into the comments on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
They're shut. Absolutely, I'm surprised.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I'm honestly, I was like, with the movie coming up,
I'm surprised we got you. Thank you, thank you for
telling me.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
It's a perfect perfect timing, right, It's fantastic timing. Every
year it seems to have a yea of some kind.
Somebody posts it in relation to something and it just
and my my my Instagram or my my Facebook. People
find me. I don't know how they find me. I'm
not I'm not somebody that says, hey, look for me.
(28:32):
I want to be right viral.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So I have a lot of questions for you about that,
because that's like fairly unusual. Most people are like, yes,
let's do this. But before we get there, I want
to know a little bit more about you. Where are
you from? Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I I live in Canada, so Ontario. Yeah, I grew
up here. The video was shot in Peterborough, Peterborough. I
was living in Peterborough at the time. If you want
a little backdrop, we were. The backdrop of the story
is we were. We were out day drinking at at
(29:07):
a bar at a brock Street I'll do a shout
out for brock Street Brewery in Peterborough.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
There should be a plaque there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, yeah, we were there day drinking and then we
went home and back to Peterborough where I was living
at the time, and that's what happened. But yeah, I
uh yeah living. I'm thirty five. I'm a much older
gentleman than I look. A lot of people think I'm
in my early twenties, which I take the compliment. Yeah,
thirty five, livin in Oshua, one kid, a wife, little
(29:39):
little house, just just small, small time eleven. No, I
don't want to have that uber fame, I think. Anyways,
I'm now at the point with the all my friends
and family that I know is like, what are you doing?
Like you're you're down with like this video blows off
all the time. Why are you here out of your
mind to not do.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Something right when this video came out? And just in general,
what is your relationship to the internet like.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Bait zero? Like I said, I'm thirty five, so I'm
assuming we're similar.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Age ish Yeah, I'm thirty one.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, so we grew up in the pre internet time
and I got Facebook when I was in grade ten.
I got Instagram in twenty twenty one, so two years
after that video and viral. I never had Instagram before that.
I got Instagram for whatever reason I don't know. I
now have Instagram and I'm addicted to scrolling reels now.
(30:37):
It's a blessing and a curse all in one, right,
So I got Facebook, I got Instagram. Keep me off
of everything else.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You're on the Zuckerberg products.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Beat me away from it. I don't want nothing to
do with it. You start them young, now, I think
that's how it works, right. I'm pretty sure there's parents
out there that make the Facebook account for they're two
month old, and then they write on it like CALLI
loves you and she says hello.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Okay, So your relationship to the Internet, you're You're a
pretty offline guy.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Basically nothing. Well, I'm in car sales. My job for
the last long while has been car sales, So I
guess I have a little bit of a little bit
of a relationship to the Internet because I do post
videos for stuff like that. But oh, okay, I guess
I don't know. I've never I've never bridged the gap
between the internet thing that is that video and what
(31:29):
I do for my job. I'm sure there is some
sort of balance that could be made there that I've
never capitalized on.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
But and of course, your relationship to the Wizard of
Oz prior to this this big moment.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
That's that's that's that's the question everyone asked, and that's
the question that everyone said they go. You know, everyone says,
this guy knows he's wrong. Right, he's not right, this
is wrong.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
What he's that is not the feeling I got from you, of.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Course, right. I've lived my entire life with the conviction
of whether you're right or wrong. If you're the loudest
in the room, you're the asshole, and you're probably going
to be taken seriously. So I'm well aware that my
argument was wrong. It's not right. Right. So people have
(32:20):
told me multiple times that that you are very wrong
in what you say. And I will stand by my
conviction to this point that I am right. She came
down in a bubble sock, she's princess right.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
You do deliver it with a lot of confidence. It's
and and if you do realize that you're wrong within
the space of the video, then the volume just increases. Right,
which is it's a good system to be fair.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
That is that if you ask anybody in my life,
that is what they say, they say, Matt will not
even if he's wrong, he will argue until his last
breath that he's right.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
So you should run for office or something.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
That's another thing. Keep you out of it, keep you
off the internet, keep me out of office.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
It's trouble all to yourself. Yeah, when was the last
time you had seen The Wizard of Oz prior to
the argument?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Like the main the first ever movie? Jesus, I don't.
I actually don't know, probably when I was fourteen, twenty
years ago. Problem. Yeah, and the other guy, So, the
other guy in the video, he says it's his favorite video, right,
or a favorite video or movie. Sorry, it's his favorite
movie right right, and he watches it constantly. So I
(33:40):
had no right. I had no right argument with that
type of conduction. I haven't seen the movie in twenty years.
Who do I think I am right?
Speaker 1 (33:47):
So walk me through this day you were day drinking?
Who are you with? Who is this man to you?
And who is filming?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So I'll give you so I'll spill the tea. I'll
spill the tea here. Please. This is this is some
heavy TV, to be honest with you. The Internet, from
what I've read, loves loves this kind of stuff. So
the person filming the video is a very old friend.
I don't speak with her anymore. But the other guy
in the video is my cousin. Obviously grew up with him.
(34:18):
He's a couple of years younger than me. But how
the day started, Like I said, rockouse brewery, having some drinks,
going out, going back to our house, and we were
playing a game of headbands. You know, headbands?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Okay, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Headbands on yet something in the headbands? So what was
on the headbands? Was Oz? Right? So I don't know
how it came about the argument. The argument just it
organically grew. So I'm whether I'm wrong or I'm right,
my conviction will be there. That's their way. And I also,
I'm an instigator. I like to stir the pod a
(34:56):
little bit. Knowing this guy, I know I could stirre
the pod pretty easily, so instigate him a little bit.
I think it turned into I don't I don't really
know how the argument itself started with Oz. I don't know.
He couldn't get it, he couldn't get the clue of
Oz of the headman right, And yeah it was it
(35:17):
was probably that was probably halfway through an argument that
we were already having.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
So I can only image starts.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I couldn't imagine what the video itself would have turned into.
If the recording would have started at the beginning of
the it would have been a twelve minute video and.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Then okay, so this is the peak of the argument.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
The peak you caught. Yeah you got you cut the
head bob and the hair foil, which is which turned
it into whatever it is today. Right, So yeah, but
he we we actually so the TA itself is me
and him don't speak anymore. We haven't talked actually since
that video. So he he didn't want any sort of
(36:03):
quote unquote fane from that video, and we actually he
told us to delete the original video. And so when
it started blowing up, so after it was taken, it
blew up immensely.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
So was it originally posted? And who posted it?
Speaker 2 (36:21):
The girl who took the video posted it on one
of her Facebook pages, okay, something that she followed. It
was some sort of I don't think I had anything
to do with the Wizard of Bodds. What she posted
it on. She posted on some Facebook group and overnight
it had one hundred and seventy five thousand views. When
I woke up, it was literally like in the blink
(36:42):
of an eye like that, and I went, well, holy shit,
that's that's great. That's why, right, And the other guy
in the video said take it down now. After twenty
four hours he said, I don't want that. Take it
down now. The problem with the internet is when it's
on the internet. Yeah, if you remove that video from
(37:02):
whatever page you posted it, somebody already has it, right,
somebody has the video. So it ended up turning into
what it is today from us?
Speaker 7 (37:11):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (37:12):
He just didn't want that level of visibility.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Well, there's I guess there's more to it. He worked for,
he worked for the city that he worked in, Okay,
and he didn't want to lose his job. For whatever reason,
he thought he would lose his job if it went viral.
And I wasn't in the position to argue with him
to say, hey man, we might make a couple of
dollars off this if you if you sign on to
kind of turn it into something. It's good. It's already something.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
So he's in the right in the video. Ultimately he
does does he have a knife in the video?
Speaker 2 (37:42):
He's not in the right. See this is where were
you were about to.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Get into an Okay, Okay, why have I wrong?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
He's in the wrong on this one. It may be
his favorite video, but I had this, I don't know.
I was on I was on Tosh point zero when
the video was one and all that kind of stuff. Right, Yeah,
I challenge anybody, anyone in the world to take a
look at this woman and say, no, that's a witch
and not a princess. That's not plausible. In my mind,
it's not a witch. I don't agree that it's a witch.
(38:14):
And you may write it into your script to tell
me it's a witch. I disagree with you, and I
will argue until my last breath.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
There's so many realities that we can live. I mean,
it's you, she is. Here's what I'll concede. She is
like what we've been conditioned to think of as a princess.
So you you hold your ground.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I will hold my ground on that. I will hold you.
Tell me what you look like, and I will call
you by that that's okay, I look at you okay
by judgment, but I will.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Look at you like princess.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You're a princess. You are you can call yourself a witch.
You're a princess of my eyes.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
And when we come back more with Matt Pisero, welcome
back to sixteenth minute. I controversially find it weird how
(39:15):
Jeff gold Bloom poses with very young women in pictures.
And here's the rest of my interview with the Wicked
Witch of the eastbro Matt Piserro. And then so I
do does your cousin have a knife in that video?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
He does, Yes, he does, he does have a Yeah, okay,
he did threaten to stab me like in all that
unity and we're talking about it. If I probably hold
the case here, I could probably sue him for some
sort of He might have tried to kill me. I
don't know. I don't know. He may we don't.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
We don't know what happened after Well that that is
a question. I have what happened after the.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
After the video? So I so I walk around the corner.
So the end of the video, I walk around the corner. Yeah, right,
he had a switchblade. He came with the switchblade. I
dodged it. He came my neck, dodged it, hit him
with a left jab right left job, knocked him down. Yes, no,
that's all I am. I'm it. He put the pocket
(40:10):
knife away. It was all right. Yeah, Like I said,
I'm genuinely I'm known for being in my family that
person that instigates a little bit maybe a little bit
too much, right to be a borderline, obnoxiously arrogant and
overly confident in a way when you're wrong.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Right, the video gets uploaded, everyone feels a different way
about it. It goes. You know, it seems like the
algorithm just like caught onto it, liked it. Your cousin
wants it down. Is it taken down and it's too late?
Is that what happened?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Okay, yeah, it was taken down. Gone, it was off
of the site we originally posted it on, and then
it was probably less it had to win less than
twenty four hours later after the video was taken down,
this person on Instagram I don't know, or on sorry,
on YouTube, I don't know who this person is. He
uploaded it on YouTube again. Immediately blew up. Immediately blew up.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
The algorithm loves men screaming, is what I've learned.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
What's that about. I don't get it. I don't understand.
My wife hates it. She despises it. I'm obnoxiously loud
all the time, and I don't know how to control it.
It's like I have a broken low volume knob and
it's always high. I don't know how to tone it down.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
What is the experience of these first couple of days.
Do people find you quickly? How are you feeling about
like this level of.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I was never I was never private, I wasn't private.
I never had Like I said, I didn't have Instagram
at this time, right, I only had Facebook and I
wasn't private on anything. So all it took was one
person saying is this is who it is? And then
they tagged me in it, and I think in the
span of twenty four hours, I had eight hundred friend requests.
(41:55):
As I woke up in the morning, I had to
put my phone on silent going to bed because there
was ding ding ding ding ding dingman over and over
and over again. I wanted to mess I wanted to
say something to be like, you're not you will not
be entertained by what you're adding right now. You're not
like you're adding me for whatever reason. But you're going
to get a picture of my nephew at this point,
because I live with my nephew. That's what you'll get.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
So I've talked to a lot of people who when
after that first wave of attention, there's like sort of
this moment where you have to decide, like do I
want to do anything with this? Do I want to
just let it pass. How did you sort of approach that?
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah, I think that's the main thing when you said,
what would it even look like? Right? I don't know.
I grew up idolizing comedians in my younger years. I've
always been in that way, but I've never looked at
myself as somebody that would be internet famous, like to
do something on the internet. I don't know how that
would work. I don't know how I would do it.
I've had family members and friends be like, you're near
(42:53):
I have to launch? What the fuck do you do it?
Speaker 6 (42:55):
Why?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Maybe it account and start back? I'm like, what for? What?
What am I doing? What am I saying? Do I
sit down now in front of in front of a
camera and tell a story? I don't know. I never
had the desire to do it, To be honest, I
just I like I like my small life. I like
my little life. I like my family life. I've never
never wanted to branch out that way.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
But there's always going to be people that are like,
you're crazy, like, how how could you you know you're
leaving money?
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Well, to be honest with you, the thought of the
thought of the money makes me feel sick to my
stomach that could be there. Right, But I was never
even able to monetize the video, right, I wasn't able
to make any money off the video because of the
other guy in the video wouldn't sign off on any
sort of monetization of the video. So to not have
(43:46):
him in the video made it made it difficult, right,
So obviously I will leave his name ahead of.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
This, so you don't need to answer this. But do
you not talk anymore because of like the fallout of
this video.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
No, there's there's a little bit more to it. But okay,
family drama, everyone has it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I mean, this is I really do think that this
is like one of the only stories I've ever heard about,
like day drinking changing your life for perhaps the better.
The better this whole wave of attentions happening. You're not
able to monetize it. You don't want to like pivot
to become an influencer or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, yeah, the whole the bubble itself, no pun intended
around being an influencer to being like I need to
come up with creations of doing so, and so I
just I don't I don't get it. Well, we did,
I did do a podcast. I did start a podcast
with two of my things. Yeah, we did. We did
a podcast for about a year and a half with
(44:41):
two of my friends called The Grocery Stick, and we
talked about we actually before I've done this now with you,
we talked about the creation of the video and we
it was more sports related and shooting the ship and
stuff like that, just joking around. Everybody and their cousins
started a podcast in the span of like between twenty
eighteen and now, Everyone's like, let's do a pod gas.
(45:04):
So we did that and then life gotten away and
we just kind of stopped. But we had seven people
listen to us at certain points.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Oh yeah, it's fun. Were you like marketing that is,
like and I'm the guy from this video or you're.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Wait, yeah at the beginning, at the beginning, we were,
but it just it never it never really took off,
and I didn't really expect it to. It was a
pastime really, honestly. We we just a reason to get together.
We thought we were funny. You know, when you get
a bunch of guys together that think they're funny, that's
that's the meme on the internet now, right, A bunch
(45:39):
of together and starting.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
In a room. Sure hurt it a millionaire.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
A millionaire and you're going to say something off the cusp.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
That's going to get because I've seen that you've you've
done a couple of appearances. How did you sort of
choose like what to engage with versus not?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
I love Daniel Tosh. Daniel Tosh was my my one
of my comedic idols growing up, him and Dave Chapelle,
and there are certain people that I absolutely loved. And
then they that was they actually reached out to me.
I think it was a month and a half after
that video went viral. That was a no brainer for me.
(46:14):
That was like, yeah, I would love to talk to
you about the video, and that was that was my
first endeavor in anything like that. I couldn't have been
more nervous all the other stuff though, like with Ellen
in Ridiculousness. They just reached out to me to ask
to you the video And obviously I had the person
who recorded the video signed it on to me, like
(46:35):
they gave me the rights.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
So I just said, I said, yeah, how do you
do that for like a video from someone's phone.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
They were just like yeah, they signed the rights over
and it was my basically my video from their phone.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
If this all happened again, and I guess it kind
of does? You're in like this kind of groundhog day loop? Yeah?
Would you do it any differently? Would you want to
do it any differently? The next time it happens? Will
you want to do it differently?
Speaker 2 (47:01):
I kind of I to be honest with you as
much as I say I don't, I don't want any
when it pops up, the amount of engagement that I
get from people around me, it's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Right, So rel just like people in your day to day.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, day to day like I have. I have a
very like massive large group of friends, different circles and everything.
Like I'm actually on Sunday, there's a very good friend
of mine who's a tattoo artist. Her name is Day
and Day day read is her on Instagram, And we're
going to do a I'm going to do a huge
piece on my leg, wicked which of the east piece
(47:35):
on my leg? No way, I'm going to get my
whole leg done. I'm going to try and help her
grow her brand as I sit here and I live
in my small bungalow that I live in. But yeah,
I'm going to help her, but there's nothing more that
I would, I would do or want to do in
that situation. I would, I have I have no desire
to go viral. Ever.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Again, my last question maybe an obvious question, and are
you going to see Wicked?
Speaker 2 (48:03):
So I don't think you're gonna like my answer here,
I don't. I don't think so I will I. You
won't catch me in the theater. It's not about learning,
it's not about anything like that. You will not catch
the came. It's more about to be honest. I don't
want to get into it. But you won't catch me
(48:23):
supporting anything to do with the Hollywood elites about that.
I will not give them any of my money. I don't.
I don't see movies. I don't have subscriptions. I have
nothing like that. I have nothing. I will not. I
will not step foot into a movie. I appreciate Ariana
Grande Age and I appreciate Jimmy fal John's. I appreciate
both of them. I like them. I like them both.
(48:45):
They did a great job with the video. But I
will not. I will not, and I might make you
know what. I take that back. Maybe I will see
the video or the movie. I might see the movie, okay,
but I will not pay money to go down in
the theater to see them.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Okay, Okay, I mean I feel like they should probably
just send you a screener. Anyways.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
I actually the funny thing is I got I got
reached out to somebody that works for Universal months wow. Yeah,
before the movie came out. It was probably three months ago.
They reached out to me and they sent me a
bunch of stuff and they asked me to come out
to LA to do this, and I sent them a
bunch of information and then I never heard back from them,
(49:26):
So I said, what do we do now?
Speaker 1 (49:28):
They wouldn't see the movie either if they did that.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah, they've reached out to me like, hey, we have
promotional things that we want to do. Your video is
super viral and we would love to have you do this.
And I said, yeah, I would I would love to
do a bunch of people. Sure. Yeah, And then they
said they said nothing. They said nothing back to me.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Are there like weird offers or things you've turned down
over the years that your life?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, I thought a couple of people reach out. I've
had a couple. I had somebody that worked for Google,
Texels and multiple other like streaming services that were like, hey,
we'll give you money to do this, and then that
I had I had two bad experiences of people not
either getting back to me or me doing something for them,
(50:11):
and they didn't do anything for me, and I said,
I'm not not doing that. Like I said, I have
no desire to do this. This is fun. I enjoy this.
You can get the background on the stener. This is fun.
You're you're very sweet yourself, and this is a fun conversation.
But I have no I have no desire to set
up a uh uh an Instagram account and me being like, well,
(50:35):
let me tell you what I think about this. Who
gives a shit about my opinion?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
And again, I've just I wish more people thought that way.
I think that you're you're you're You're an inspiration to society.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
From now on. Take a back seat. You're not important.
You don't matter. I don't matter. Right If I make
a video telling you how I feel about Wicked after
I watched movie and you take that with any sort
of conviction whatsoever, I think you have more of an
issue than I do.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
You're cooked, You're good, Thank you so much. To Matt
for his time and his gameness, and you are welcome
for the exclusive You can follow Matt and I think
this is a first nowhere. He does not want to
be famous, but you can check out that tattoo he
mentions from his tattoo artist day Bond, which is linked
(51:29):
in the description of this episode. With that listeners, I
ask you the following, what maketh the Princess? What maketh
a witch? The answer is in the eye of the beholder, unless,
of course, the character explicitly self identifies as a witch.
(51:50):
Sixteenth minute as a production of fool Zone Media and
iHeart Radio. It is written, posted, and produced by me
Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 7 (51:57):
Our executive producers are Sophieli Driven and Robert Evans. Lenaising
Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Our theme song.
Speaker 7 (52:06):
Is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater
and pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my
cat's flee and Casper and my pet Rockberd, who will
outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Bye.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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