Welcome to Night Vale - 69 - Fashion Week

Episode Date: June 1, 2015

It's Fashion Week, Night Vale's hippest event. Who will be spared from the sphere? Plus, ongoing investigations into the disappearances at the Shambling Orphan housing development, an update on the opera house, and an important News announcement. Weather: "Evelyn" by Kim Tillman & Silent Films (thekimtillman.com & silent films) Music: Disparition, disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson, robwilsonwork.com. Produced by Night Vale Presents. Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin. More Info: welcometonightvale.com, and follow @NightValeRadio on Twitter or Facebook. 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 Nightvillepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. It's something else here now.

Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision comes at the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home.

From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. But don't you see? You never needed anything else. The weird was within you the whole time. Welcome to Night Vale. Hello, listeners. Later, news capital N. But forget about that. First, news, lowercase N. It's fashion week in Night Vale, that exciting time of year in which we all get to decide what is fashionable and what is not. To use the charming colloquialism, we decide what is in the sphere and what is spared from the sphere.

This is Nightvale's hippest event. And everyone is there because it is required by law. So everyone is there and scared, and it is hip as heck. Michelle Wynne is the only one that doesn't look scared. This is her favorite holiday, and she is wearing a vintage summoning cloak and a dog catcher's cap and has two tiny neon signs attached to her face indicating her eyes. She is the most fashionable person in town and certain to be spared from the sphere. Others are less lucky.

Town clerk Veronica Rothschild is running around saying, oh no, oh no, and adjusting her unfashionably distressed eyeglasses, casting glances backward at the sphere which is moving implacably to devour the unhip and absorb the outdated. Soon she will stumble, and then the sphere will be upon her. It's like that popular joke. Why did the hipster burn her mouth? Because she survived the sphere and was able to eat her pizza before it was cool. And sure enough, Michelle Wynn, pizza in hand is cackling madly,

watching the chaos and listening intently to headphones that are plugged into nothing at all. The sheriff's secret police are seeking any leads or witnesses in the case of the disappearances at the housing development of the shambling orphan. Over the last several weeks, at least 12 people have vanished without a trace, except for our memories of their previous existence, which, according to a roving gang of pedantic philosophers, who has been interrupting secret police press conferences, does in fact count as a time.

trace. Memories are as real as any of our constructed experiences of the world, said one philosopher, without invitation, interrupting important information about the missing persons. I bet you think reality is a thing. He continued, much to the delight of his fellow philosophers, and not a single other person in attendance. The philosophers were last seen high-fiving each other while drinking cheap but locally made canned beer. The missing persons were last seen at home, and on the street, about town, about their lives, just normally living, until suddenly and unaccountably they no longer were seen anywhere at all. Residents of the shambling orphan and the nearby development, the desert pines, expressed mild concern over their strong fears about their

abject terror. More on the story as we grasp at narrative threads that can assuage our helplessness in the face of inexplicable tragedy. Listeners, last week I had my niece Janice over while her parents were taking a romantic long weekend in the kingdom of the deros, deep within the hollow earth, which is of course easily accessed by ordering any item from the Arby's Market Fresh menu. Yeah, it was really nice to get some time alone with Janice. She's getting older, you know, and is moving from a child, which is something of an abstract concept, to a person with adult ideas and thoughts and feelings, a human being who you can relate to and with, which is also an abstract concept.

We talked and watched movies. She let me put on Cat Blue five times in a row because that was Carlos and I's movie night thing, and I had been missing that. We ate popcorn. I asked her about any girls or boys she might be interested in, and she diverted me politely but awkwardly to other subjects. I let her. It's not for me to pry.

That's the government's job. And if I'm ever curious, I can look at the public registry of middle school crushes, which is constantly being updated via mind-scanning satellite. Janice gave me a feeling of family. I rarely feel anymore. It was a good feeling. I hope I'll be able to visit Janice regularly.

In an earlier program, we brought you this week's community calendar. However, it appears that there were a few errors in our reporting. So we would like to offer some corrections to our previous calendar. Monday, we said, was free hot chocolate day at the Moonlight All Night Diner. In actuality, Monday, will be the day that a great craft crashes down from the heavens, and we all will surround the

ominous bulk of it, still glowing hot and smoking from the impact, whispering and wondering, helpless to act. Tuesday, we said, was sign-up day for the Night Vale Adult Kickball League in Mission Grove Park. We were right about an event taking place in the park, but it appears that this event will instead be a creature emerging from the craft, towering over us, and in a language we should not understand, and yet, and yet we do understand, demanding that we worship it. Wednesday, we described as being just a nice day to go outside and take a walk. Just a really nice day for it. We said, stretch those gams, we said. We said the word gams over and over, seemingly unable to say anything else.

As it turns out, Wednesday is actually the day we will stage a brief but ultimately unsuccessful resistance against the horde of slimy, many appendaged alien warriors pouring out from the landing craft. Thursday, we said, would be the day that beings from another world fully defeat us, and we will line the roads and avenues on our knees, heads bowed in recognition of our new masters, our new gods. Turns out we were 100% right on that one, so we didn't completely get the week's schedule wrong. Friday, we said would be the day that your citizen renewal packets are due. You know, the reams and reams of paperwork probing every personal detail that you have to fill out

in order to remain a citizen of Night Vale. Well, it's still the day to do that, but instead of turning it into the city council, who will at that point be locked in a hyperdimensional prison by the occupying extraterrestrials, you will instead turn it into the supervisor of your assigned human pod so that they can gauge how much energy can be extracted from your body.

Saturday we said was Catterday. We didn't mean anything by this, we just thought it would be funny. People didn't find it funny. They wrote and called the station demanding an explanation. Janice Rio, from down the street, seemed especially disturbed. What do you mean, it's Catterday? Will we be attacked by giant cats? Will the giant cats build huge black cubes all over town?

Will I be forced to enter a strained black cube that will absorb my essence until there's nothing left of me? I am allergic to cats. Janice cried. Well, no, Janice, and I'm sorry for causing a panic. Saturday will actually be the day the invading aliens start feeding on us, so don't worry, no cats that day. Catterday is just a fun word to say. Catterday!

And Sunday, well, we were right about Sunday, so we were right about Sunday, so we There you go. Just as we said, Sunday will be the day that Tamika Flynn and the beings who claim to be angels team up to lead a dramatic attack against the occupying force with the help of every Nightvale citizen, driving away our new masters and reinstating our old masters, who are brutal and awful, but who at least are a brutal and awful we know and understand. This has been corrections.

Or the community calendar. Community corrections. I don't know. This has been what it was. Fashion Week continues, and the sphere is huge and pulsing. Everyone is screaming and running and looking just as fashionable as they ever have

in their soon-to-be-ended lives. Director of Emergency Press Conferences, Pamela Winchell, is ostentatiously using decorated cigarette holders of ludicrous length, despite the fact that she does not actually smoke. She's not holding them delicately between her first two fingers, but instead gripping hundreds of cigarette holders in her fist like a quiver of arrows. See how hip, she is saying in a booming voice, levitating quite fashionably three feet off the ground.

See how absolutely of the time, I am. The sphere hums next to her for a moment, and then it rolls by, leaving her be. So it seems like this year holding a quiver of cigarette holders is very spared from the sphere indeed. Good survival tip there. Old woman Josie, speaking from the headquarters of Strex Operatic Limited, said that the new old night veil opera house is complete, and that rehearsals are under full swing for opening night on June 15th of a brand new opera written, composed, directed by, and starring,

legendary screen actor Lee Marvin, who will also form the entirety of the cast and will be selling concessions during intermission. Josie said that Nightville citizens should expect some of the usual disruptions resulting from rehearsal of any kind of live performance, namely stop and go traffic in a several block radius around the theater, a wake of buzzards circling over the city, and a slight uptick in the number of patients at the emergency room. So, it sounds like this opera. Whatever opera means and whatever it is will be a blast. And now traffic. A man came and went. He was here before and now isn't. How briefly the moment of is before the endless was.

He was not a serious man, but then this is not a serious life. We all heard him speak. Did we not? We still do. He is speaking still, even though he is not anything else at all. How comforting the continuation of communication past that point. He was our tour guide through the cosmos. He would say, and then apologize for saying it.

He was not a serious man. But then, this is not a serious life. A man came and went. He was here before, and now isn't. We miss him. This has been. Traffic. The faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home

made a public statement that she will not wait any long. She will destroy Mayor Dana Cardinal once and for all and claim the mayorship for herself. In her statement, which was stitched into the inside lining of my jacket this morning, she said, you want opera, you want grand performance. On opening night, you will see a spectacle indeed. A spectacle indeed. Meanwhile, still know where. word from Hiram McDaniels, the literal five-headed dragon, and the faceless old woman's previous

partner in crime. According to local normal citizen, Frank Chen, Hiram left town weeks ago and won't be seen around here again. Frank's other four heads agreed, except the purple head, which had a bag over it and was mumbling, please don't include me in your fault of schemes ever again. If it were up to me, things would be very different. Things are different every time it is up to me. The other heads hushed the head with the bag over it and reiterated that they are just a regular guy, like you or me or anyone else who identifies as a regular guy, with things like a pickup and pieces of denim clothing,

and enjoyment of certain types of music, and being completely wingless, despite how powerless this must feel. Oh, hear that? Uh, listeners, the time has come. The sphere has arrived. at the station. It hums, looming, it considers humming, it looms. The sphere will decide whether this station and the souls within it are hip enough to be spared. I tell you now that I did not

prepare for the sphere. It's not that I forgot. It is that I do not care. And I am not afraid. I don't know. We're leather pants and Hawaiian shes. shirt and a baseball hat made of honeycomb. I just wore the same thing I slept in last night. If I get ingested by a fashion conscious sphere for wearing comfy, casual clothes, then that'll just be what happened to me. I don't write the story of my life, I only live it. So, while the sphere does whatever it will do next, I take you all, well, all of you hip enough to still remain, to the weather. From the weather, still here. The sphere is, We're moved on and is now out in the scrub lands and sand wastes, deciding which cacti and cotton-tail rabbits are of the now, and which must be assimilated into the pulsating dark innards of the sphere.

Of course, radio is always hip. Radio is timeless. Community radio exists outside of time and space, and so is the most fashionable thing of all. Of course. We all know this. So it's good that our station was spared and that I will continue doing radio for the foreseeable future. I'm not stopping radio broadcasting. I won't be doing it here, but I'll be continuing to do it.

Right. So I guess it's time then. At the start of all this, I promised news, capital N. Here is the news. My next broadcast as host of Nightvale Community Radio will be my last in Nightvale. I am moving to the desert otherworld to spend more time with sweet, talented Carlos, and the community he has built out there in that vast, sandy, alternate dimension. There is a radio station there built by Kevin, who seems to have himself pretty undercut

control, and his studio only has a little bit of blood, so I should be able to continue doing what I'm doing just fine. I won't be doing it in a way that you will be able to hear. But that, too, is just fine. I've missed Carlos greatly, and I've also grown weary of a mayor that can't protect herself, of a town that fears outsiders, of a faceless old woman who secretly lives in my home and publicly wants to do me harm. And I think of a desert other world where it is always sunny and mountains are real. There is a helpful masked army that can build anything. And your cell phone battery never dies, even if reception is 4G at best. There is the question, is Night Vale worth it?

Is Night Vale good? Is it a good town? Well, I will, for the first time in my long life, live somewhere other than Night Vale. But, as a poet once said, no matter where you end up, you're still from your hometown. I'll be back to visit from time to time, of course. I need to see Janice and my old friend Josie and many others besides. I am not gone, but I am going. I'm going to live somewhere I can feel good about, somewhere newer and better for me.

Stay tuned next, eventually, for me reporting on the opening of the opera house and then not reporting on anything else here ever again. Penultimately, good night, Night Vale, good night. Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Commonplace Books. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer and produced by Joseph Fink. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Dysperition. All of it can be found at disparition. info, or at,

disparition.bandcamp.com. This episode's weather was Evelyn by Kim Tillman and Silent Films. Find out more at Twitter.com slash the Kim Tillman, T-I-L-L-L-M-A-N. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightfail.com or follow us on Twitter at Nightvail Radio. Check out Welcome to Nightvail.com for more information on this show, as well as all sorts of cool nightvail stuff you can own. And while you're there, consider hitting that donate link.

That'd be cool of you. Today's proverb, dress your dog for the job you want, not the job you have. Hey, Jeffrey Kraner here to tell you about another show from me and my Nightvale co-creator Joseph Fink. It's called Unlicensed, and it's an L.A. noir-style mystery set in the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles. Unlicensed follows two unlicensed private investigators who small jobs looking into insurance claims and missing property are only the tip of a conspiracy iceberg. There are already two seasons of unlicensed for you to listen to now with season three dropping on May 15th. Unlicensed is

available exclusively through Audible, free if you already have that subscription. And if you don't, Audible has a trial membership. And if I know you, and I do, you can binge all that mystery goodness in a short window. And if you like it, if you liked Unlicensed, please, please rate and review each season. Our ability to keep making this show is predicated on audience engagement. So go check out unlicensed, available now only at audible.com.