Welcome to Night Vale - 139 - The Birthday of Lee Marvin

Episode Date: December 1, 2018

Night Vale's most local and legendary local legend celebrates his 30th birthday. The voice of Lee Marvin was TL Thompson. Weather: “Impasse” by Juliana Finch https://music.julianafinch.com Dane Terry is joining our world tour of A Spy In The Desert as “the Weather” in the U.S., and will be opening the show with a special live performance of his new podcast, Dreamboy! Tickets available now. http://welcometonightvale.com/live/ Get weird and beautiful gifts for the weird and beautiful people in your life on the Welcome to Night Vale store! https://topatoco.com/collections/wtnv Music: Disparition http://disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin.  http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter @NightValeRadio or Facebook. Produced by Night Vale Presents.  http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy y'all. It is Jeffrey Craneer. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Nightville you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026. And I'm here to tell you we're going to be in Europe. If you want to see Nightville live and you're going to be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're going to be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is. our newest Nightville live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Dysperition and starring Jacique and Nicole. So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you want to hear us talk about other things? things. We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Nightvale

for all of your Nightvale needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single episode in order of Welcome to Nightvale. Also, we have Random Horror Number Nine. That is me and Nightville star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do best, worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDB, the worst rated on IMDB, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middleest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at nightfallpresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. To air is human. To forgive is also human. The possibilities of human action are multitude. Welcome to Nightveen. Today is a very

Special day listeners, yes, for once your calendars are not deceiving you. Today is the 30th birthday of longtime Nightfall resident and Hollywood legend Lee Marvin. Mr. Marvin is on break from the filming of The Rise of the Hobbits part four, the anticipated next chapter in Peter Jackson's eight-part film series based on the copyright page of The Hobbit. The town has declared the birthday a civic holiday and are holding a fair in honor of Mr. Marvin in Grove Park. The man himself is set to speak later today, but head over now to play fun carnival games and eat local snacks. John Peters, you know, the farmer, will be there selling boiled imaginary corn dipped in theoretical butter, a tasty and extremely healthy snack, containing practically no

calories at all. More on these birthday celebrations. as there continues to be a birthday to celebrate. I'm just so excited! I'm sorry, I really get into birthdays. Always have. I just, I wish I could remember when mine is. But first, some important facts about the moon from local moon scientist or moonologist, Ross Sutherland.

The moon is a weak egg set to crack at a glance. The moon is a milder. maniacal scent sniffed out by tidal waters. The moon is a barbarous necklace upon the neck of our barbarous world. The moon is a ritsy cloak, too gaudy for daywear. The moon is an accidental height, one that may someday be catastrophically adjusted. Thank you, Ross, for those fascinating facts. The birthday celebration is in full swing.

This is a town that loves our local legends, and no one is more local, or legendary, than movie star Lee Marvin. And not only a movie star, he has also been doing work in the theater. Just this year, he staged a one-man version of Angels in America at the community theater, playing every single character over seven and a half hours, except the Angels. Angels have a strong union, and it turns out that no one is allowed to play in angel unless they are themselves an angel. The angels who participated in the production also found the play offensive, saying that it stereotyped angels as flying beings, shouting prophecies, and wrestling with divinely chosen

humans. Yes, said an angel who once was the town's richest man, I have shouted a prophecy or two in my life. And yes, I wrestled a human over a divine message, but that's a time. any part of my lived experience, and I want this work better represent my whole being. As such, the play was drastically rewritten and was mostly about angels attending school board meetings, throwing dinner parties, and hanging out in the parking lot of the Ralph's. I was deeply moved.

Anyway, come on down to Grove Park. You don't want to miss this birthday party. The Angels brought sheetcake. And now a public service announcement. Trish Hidge and Simone Rigido are seeking volunteers for their new community service organization that puts cute paper hats on dogs. Sure, said Trish Hage from within her darkened house, speaking through a narrow gap she had pulled in her blinds. Dogs are cute.

But have you ever seen a dog in a paper pirate hat? Or a chef's hat? What about a paper hat shaped like another dog? perch on top of the first dog's head. It is these kinds of experiences we wish to bring to the world with our new organization. What was that? She finished, suddenly snapping the blind shut and disappearing. There was a series of loud thuds and a slow dragging sound from inside.

And then the whites of her eyes against the blinds. Again, as she hissed. Did you see that? What did you see? You saw it, didn't you? Until your friendly reporter decided it would be. best to back away from her house, and then, having reached the sidewalk, turn and run, his breath rattling in and out of his chest. Simone Riggedo only commented that she is happy to devote her time

to such a good cause, and that also the world ended a long time ago. This isn't the world, she said. I don't know what this is, but I know dogs are in it, and so that's what I'll focus on. Anyone wishing to sign up with the organization should just tell the next dog you see and they'll take care of the rest. And now, traffic. A scattering of roads in the desert far from human habitation. These roads are only roads in the most theoretical of senses. They are merely packed down dirt, cleared of plants, and no vehicle has passed over them in years. Is a road that is never used still a road?

Or is it something else? A marking? A monument to movement that never came to be. One of these not roads meanders its way over a rise and back down through Chaparral. From high up in a plane or sitting in the clean white interior of a flying saucer, it would appear as though someone had taken a pen. and let it trail loosely over the earth. Eventually, it meets up with another scattering of dirt roads.

These have a few farms and businesses along them. Not many, but these roads are sometimes fused. Maybe the people here are aware that one of their roads drifts off far into the desert ending at an abandoned crosshatching of lanes. But more likely, they only know that one of their roads goes nowhere, and they ignore that road. From this barely populated area, one of the dirt roads heads out, becomes paved,

goes its two-lane way into a small town with a high school and a Walmart. This small town has a road that ends at the highway. The highway merges eventually onto the interstate, an eight-lane river of cars pouring into and out of a city, a vast pool of life. Some of that life is only there for the day. Others will live and die never having left their neighborhoods. And you could, if you wanted, get in your car at the heart of this metropolis

and take the interstate to the highway, to the two-lane road, through the small town, to the sparsely populated dirt roads, and follow that one meandering road over the rise. and come to an intersection of markings that are only roads in the most theoretical of ways. And you could, these roads, the first human to touch them since their creation and perhaps even then travel.

The party is still rolling along down at Grove Park. Martin McCaffrey, local representative of the TSA, has set up an art sale of some of his works, all of which contains strange, dark, hunched figures. It seems wildly inappropriate that he has chosen to set up a private art sale at a public birthday party for someone else, but you go, Martin, I guess. Oh, the crowd is buzzing. Lee Marvin has arrived. Everyone stop buzzing.

I'm trying to hear what Lee is saying. He must be so happy about this celebration. He is approaching the mic. It appears he has prepared his speech to thank us for this party. We will return with that speech in just a moment. But first, we absolutely must check in on the weather. Wondering where the end. Am I wasting all?

I can't move from this play. I can't remember. We're both just broken. In this struggle, no one went. Same old lovers and new. We won't move. Thank you for coming to my birthday party. It has been my 30th birthday for a long time.

Hundreds of years. Maybe thousands of years. Continuously, my 30th birthday. I never grow a day older. I don't know why this of all the days that are my birthday is the one for which you chose to throw a party, but I'm sure nice of you to think of me. That cake looks fine.

How is a person? supposed to track time outside of the context of the world. If it was my 30th birthday when George Washington declared himself God King of America, and it was my 30th birthday when Stanley Kubrick staged the moon landing, and my 30th birthday today, then how old am I? It is impossible for me to have a sense of time. I am not on a ship sailing to some great destination. I am floating on my back in the sea of time staring up at cruel and alien stars. I will never wash up on any golden shore. Perhaps I will someday sink.

Without the context of history, my memories are flat, each holding equal weight, each with the possibility of having taken place the same amount of time ago. I remember standing on this land when no one else was here. Even the land wasn't quite here. Still part of a larger land mass that would shiver out all over the earth holding in the contour of its coastlines,

the memory of its schism. And breathing felt like drinking. It was my 30th birthday that day. I sat under a few branches to protect myself from the rain. Oh, this was thick forest then. The sea lapped up against it, and all of this, all of that has dried up.

It hardly ever rains. On my 30th birthday, I stood with the town elders as they declared the formation of this community. I signed on the original charter. Go see for yourself in the... Civic History Museum, in the lobby of City Hall, admission is free, and anyone with secret or top secret clearance with any major government agency is welcome to take a look. There you will see that

tattered bit of paper and on it, among the scrawls of men whose names have decayed along with their bones is a signature that remains as clean and clear as the day I wrote it. It says Lee Marvin, And in parentheses, it says 30, with several exclamation points. Perhaps we were wrong. Even in the moment of signing, we were avoiding each other's eyes. There was much we didn't understand about this place that we were naming and giving boundaries to, but we felt in debt to something much larger than us. And the town of Night Vale was one of its demands.

Later, on my 30th birthday, I watched. I watched missiles streak across the sky and knew we were all doomed. And then we weren't doomed. And it was still my 30th birthday. I don't know what happened. I only know what it smelled like. A smell like clothes on the wind. And a smell like plastic wrap that has gotten warm in the sun.

And a smell like an elevator just after it's been cleaned. I stood outside and I took great whiffs of air, understanding that by all rights, I shouldn't have been able to do that anymore. In that moment, I shouldn't have existed, but I did. I breathed. It had smelled like maybe it always had, and I just never truly noticed until that moment. I love Night Vale. I'm afraid. I think many of us feel that way, although we don't speak of it.

We announce our love of civic leadership and of our town pride, but sometimes we find that we are standing in front of a shed in our garden, and the door is cracked open a little, and in that darkness of the shed there is a depth of terror, so great that no one world grass made sharp by drought, and we gape at the shadows within the shade. shed without knowing what we are seeing. And by the time we realize what we are doing, the sun has long gone down and the stars have infested the sky and we are still standing in front of that garden shed with a door jar. Certainly that has happened to me on many of my 30th birthdays, but but no more. I seek for my unchanging life to change. I seek context. I seek one moment. I seek one moment and which I understand what time it is. Thank you for coming to my birthday. I believe it'll be my birthday much longer.

Looks like the cake is all gone. What is there to say about someone on the day of their birth? I suppose the same things to say about them on any other day, although too often we don't. He is a kind man, a good friend. He helps sometimes and thinks about helping often. He tries. It doesn't always work, but he tries, or he doesn't.

But he thinks about trying. He is, in other words, like any of us. And today is his birthday. And so, for today we say about him the warm things That we perhaps should be saying about each other all of the time. Why wait for a single day to say a kind word? Lee Marvin. Happy 30th birthday.

Here's to many, many more. Stay to next for this one weird click that your elbow makes if you turn it just so. Did you hear that, that click? What do you think that is? is. Better search online and read the most frightening answers and sit in your bed for long waking hours of dark, moving your elbow and listening. Click. Click. Good night. Nightvale. Good night. Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Dissor. The voice of Nightvail is Cecil Baldwin. The voice of Lee Marvin was T.L. Thompson. Original music by Dysperition. All of it can be found at disparition. info or at disparition.com.

This episode's weather was Impass by Juliana Finch. Find out more at Juliana Finch.com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com. Or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio. Or eat a plant. It might taste good. Check out Welcome to Nightvale for more information on this show and the selection of Welcome to Nightvale and Alice Isn't Dead books, perfect for the readers in your life.

Today's proverb, every example of irony in the song ironic is completely correct, because that song single-handedly changed the common parlance definition of irony. Hey, it's Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from spring of 26, and did you know we are on tour in Europe? Welcome to Nightville. We'll be live on stage in Edinburgh on May 27th, Manchester on May 28th, London on May 29th. and Amsterdam on May 30th. This brand new live show is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, starring Cecil Baldwin, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by disparition.

These tours are so much fun, and they're for the diehard fan and the Nightvale new kid alike. So bring your family, your partner, your co-workers, your cat, whatever. They don't got to know what Nightville is to like the show. Tickets to these shows are on sale now at welcome to nightvail.com slash live. Don't let time slip away. Get your tickets.

Don't miss us when we're in your town, because otherwise we'll all be sad. Get your tickets to our Europe Live tour right now at Welcome to Nightville.com slash live. And hey, thanks.