Welcome to Night Vale
The day has been long, but at last you rest your weary bones in your favorite chair, that chair that smells of comfort and shows the stains of a thousand spilled meals and fond memories. That chair that conforms to your contours so well because you have grown together through the years until sitting in it is a return to the sanctified darkness that birthed you. You sit in your chair and put on your headphones after your arduous day and you close your eyes and listen to your favorite podcast. You sit in your chair and listen and discover that your chair really isn’t a chair at all. It is a dead baboon. Welcome to Night Vale.
To say that Welcome to Night Vale is bizarre would be an understatement, and we all know that understatements come with a municipal tax equal to the balance of upgrading the understatement to a statement. Which, you know, is significantly better than the criminal prosecution one is subject to for overstatements. In fact, I should probably just stick with statements. Welcome to Night Vale is a strange podcast that I find hilarious and well-written. It is a podcast that is exceptionally difficult to describe, like a color that there is no word for. I can only try to show you the cloth of it and hope that you can paint the tapestry. Like those 3d pictures that you used to see in shopping malls. Listening to Welcome to Night Vale is looking at one of those patterns of color and swirls, waiting for the shape to manifest.
The show is a simulated radio broadcast from a small desert town called Night Vale. At least we assume it’s simulated. It could be that Night Vale is real, and we live in the simulation. That’s still better than living in some place that might or might not be called Desert Bluffs. That place is just downright terrible. Night Vale seems to be a cross between the X-Files, Twin Peaks, and Arkham. Angels wander the streets and help people change light bulbs, residents are regularly vaporized by strange lights from the sky, the town council seems to be immortal, and absolutely no one goes to, looks at, or thinks about the new dog park. Each show also features a segment for the weather, where “newscaster” Cecil plays a lesser known musician. These vary from stunning to stunning, if you know what I mean.
It takes a certain sense of dark whimsy to enjoy the podcast. If that’s not something you possess, you might find it kind of pointless, and maybe even depressing – sort of like when you realize that life is simply the process of toiling away on this prison of a plane of existence designed to create anguish and pain to feed the dark beings below and keep them placid. Yeah, it’s a lot like that, really. That’s not to say that there are no real storylines. There are stories, like Old Woman Josie and her angels, or Carlos. Beautiful, perfect Carlos, and his short perfect locks, cut by that . . . Telly. Yes, there are definitely stories. In fact, if you think about it, everything is a story. Even you, reading this short review. You are a story, and so is the hooded figure watching you from just beyond the corner of your eye, waiting for you to turn and see the true horror that lies beneath its faded yellow cowl. Oh yes, that is definitely a story, if only a short story.
Strange things happen in Night Vale, and strange things happen when you think about Night Vale. Things so strange that strange would seem normal after visiting. I hope you listen. I really, really do. .meht gniees pots ll’I taht tsael ta rO .gninetsil trats uoy fi em gniees pots lliw sgniht krad eht epoh dna ,ti tuoba etirw ot evah I won dnA .laer oot lla saw tI .t’nsaw tI .t’nsaw tI .t’nsaw ti tub ,rettel niahc yllis dna diputs a tsuj saw ti thguoht I .trats ot elpoep rehto net ecnivnoc I ecno gninetsil pots ylno nac I ,ees uoY
I like Welcome to Night Vale. You should give it a try!
