Welcome to Night Vale - The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air): Season One, Episode 2 (The Cricket)

Episode Date: October 26, 2016

Hear Mandy Patinkin perform an extraordinary musicological demonstration and a cricket (Tim Robbins) spin the spellbinding tale of Ladislas Koskovsky. Plus, learn the remarkable history of Julian the janitor's famous great-grandfather. (NOTE: To continue listening to The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air), subscribe now via iTunes, Libsyn, Stitcher, or via RSS on your favorite podcatcher.) Thanks to Audible and Atom Tickets for supporting the show! Get a free audiobook with a 30 day free trial at audible.com/OHC. Download the free Atom Tickets app from Google Play or the Apple App Store and use code OHC for $5 off. In November 2016, the janitor will be cleaning a venue near you! Upcoming tour dates: www.orbitinghumancircus.com Featuring John Cameron Mitchell as Mr. Cameron, Julian Koster as the Janitor, and Drew Callander as the Narrator, with Tim Robbins as the Cricket and Mandy Patinkin as Cantor Moishe Lebowitz.  Written and created by Julian Koster. Co-directed by and developed with Ellie Heyman. Produced by Christy Gressman. Featuring musical composition and arrangement by Thomas Hughes and music by The Music Tapes.  Full credits: www.orbitinghumancircus.com Part of the Night Vale Presents network: www.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. 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 Nightvail

for all of your Nightvale needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single episode in order of Welcome to Nightvail. 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 nightfield Presents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. Hi, Jeffrey Kraner here. This is episode two of the eight-episode debut season of the Orbiting

Human Circus of the Air. You're receiving this recording on the Welcome to Nightville feed because orbiting human circus is the latest podcast from Nightville Presents. But after episode three, that's it. If you want to hear the entire first season of Orbiting Human Circus, go subscribe to them on iTunes or wherever it is you get your podcasts. And hey, enjoy the show. As night begins to fall on Paris. Backstage at the broadcast ballroom, busy preparations for this evening's broadcast of the orbiting Human Circus of the Air begin.

But before we listen, there's one thing I think you ought to know. You'll remember, last week, seeking forgiveness, the janitor snuck backstage to clean, hosts John Cameron's dressing room as the last song of the evening played. And that music, and this is what I really wanted to tell you, was performed by the orbiting human circus orchestral,

a rare African bird that can mimic all 47 instruments of the orchestra at once. The orchestral is something of a Parisian bigfoot, believed only to land where, orchestras are rehearsing. Many people claim to have seen them, but one has never been filmed or recorded. Yet, there one was, perched in its cage, on the stage in full view of the entire studio audience, beautifully mimicking a waltz, with no visible strings or wires. Even the stage hands don't know how it's done. And it's that way with all the acts.

With that thought, we take you back to last week in host John Cameron's dressing room, where the janitor cleans with greater and greater enthusiasm until... Look out! In his exuberance, the janitor accidentally knocks a small crate marked, for Mr. Cameron's eyes only! exclamation point! Off the table. Out of it spills several tiny tomes of sheet music and some bird seed. Suddenly the door opens.

and in Sneak's stagehand Jacques, guiltily starting to light a cigarette. Kid, I'm supposed to throw you out on your ass. I won't tell the tissue you were smoking. You wouldn't. I won't if you let me finish cleaning. Cleaning? This place is a wreck. Look at that on the floor. Whoa, look at that crate. Is that what the bird came in?

Yeah. Hey, let me see that. Whoa, look at this. I just gotta know how this bird works. I was thinking it's gotta be a robot. It's not a robot. What's this white stuff? Oh, it's not a robot.

It's not a robot. Ah. Here's Pipertoe. All right, so what do I got here? Suddenly, a commotion out in the hall. Oh, hello, if you only getters away, this machine it is heavy. Oh, shit, I'm supposed to be out there helping her. And if she catches me in here, and I'm talking to you?

Please, you've got to let me finish cleaning. Okay, but you get me in trouble. I'm going to break your legs. Meanwhile, at home, the listeners sat back and listened to this. Hi, this is Drew Callender, and on behalf of the whole orbiting human. circus gang, we'd like to welcome you to our second episode. Good to see you again. And thank our sponsors, Adam Tickets and Audible. Use the Adam Tickets app to buy movie tickets and concessions, invite friends, and skip box office lines. When you use the code OHC at checkout, you'll get $5 off your order.

Download the free app, that's A-T-O-M tickets from the Google Play or Apple App Store. If you enjoy The Orbiting Human Circus, we're sure you'll enjoy Shirley Jackson, a rather Haunted Life, available now on Audible to our audience members for free, along with a free 30-day trial membership. Just go to audible.com slash OHC and enter Shirley Jackson in the search bar. You can also find her other books. We have always lived in the castle with the haunting of Hillhouse and the lottery and other stories.

After you're done browsing Shirley Jackson titles, you can check out Audible's gigantic library of audiobooks, short stories, and even radio plays from the 30s, just like the ones Julian listens to. Go check out Audible today. Go get your free audiobook with a 30-day trial at audible.com. slash ohc. That's audible.com slash oh-h-c for orbiting human circus. If you live in the northeastern United States, this November, the janitor will be cleaning a venue near you, giving you the chance to walk into the world of the orbiting human circus.

And you too can be there by going to orbitinghumancircus.com slash shows and finding a tour date near you. And now, please sit back and enjoy episode two. the tap dancing mouse. The series on the formative influence of Judaism on rock and roll, we give you this 1921 recording by Cantor Moisha Libowitz, clearly an influence on the song Surrender by popular singing group Cheap Trick decades later. I was men going to them

Shuster and Zoggy No, Mammyche, no, Mammyche, you can't me not fasten.

Oh, yeah, Mamma, no, mamma, ma. Come with all there, come with all

war, go to all, oh, my, ma'am, Meanwhile, outer walls of the Far from the microphones hearing, the sound of a single mop and a lonely silhouetted figure holding it.

This of Julian, janitor at the Eiffel Tower, banned from the broadcast ballroom for his on-air interruptions. Follow him as he mops the tower's outer walls and climbs higher, dangerously high, without scaling gear ropes or scaffolding to hold him. I don't need that stuff. I've been climbing my whole life. With one free hand, he scales the tower,

spilling soapy water from the bucket he holds and nearly dropping the mop. Still, he goes higher and higher, and higher, like a small animal climbing a tall tree to escape its pursuers. Much too high. My God, what's he doing? Has he no fear of heights at all?

It's for the last thing I'm afraid of. Up high, you're safe. But still he climbs higher, and higher, and the higher he climbs. The calmer he becomes. Everything looks so beautiful from up here. There's not a thing that can touch you. The janitor leans back on one of the tower's utmost girders

and gazes off as if lost in memory. When I was a kid, my stepfather used to be afraid of height. I used to climb this water tower. We had this water tower. It was the tallest structure in our town, and I'd, like, climb up it, and I'd stay up there for hours. But the first time I came to Paris,

I never saw anything like this. Yes, Eiffel really knew what he was doing. I mean, it was the tallest thing I'd ever seen in my life. All the buildings were, I mean, I was 10. I ran away. To Paris? At 10?

I knew I had this great grandpa, and he was a stage hypnotist. So I snuck on a train. I went to the train station. I went under the turnstile. I went down, and nobody saw me, and I got onto one of the trains when no one was looking, and I got under the bench seats, and I was down there.

by everyone's feet, I could see everybody's shoes. And the train started moving. Like, nobody caught me. And I didn't even know. I hadn't thought about where I was going or how I was going to eat or survive. And the next thing I knew we got in Paris. And when we got in Paris, there were posters from my great-grandfather's show everywhere. I, so I found the theater where he was playing and I snuck backstage. Well, what happened? He took me home with him. And

he lived in these wonderful apartments. There was red velvet everywhere and there was all these famous people like actors and actresses like people I knew, I mean from posters and there were always parties

and my great grandpa was just handsome and elegant and oh my god and i remember i remember some nights he even forgot to feed me like he didn't know he didn't know how to take care of kids but i i didn't care i mean he forgot that i had to go to school he never thought about that um which was amazing i i just wanted to be near him sounds like he was very special there was this one time I was in his office and I was hiding. He didn't know I was watching him. And he was sitting at his desk and he was writing. And he started, he had this cigar in his mouth and he started blowing these smoke rings, but he wasn't looking at them. And they started getting bigger and bigger and bigger and he still wasn't looking. And then they slowly, slowly started getting smaller and smaller.

and smaller. And then without looking, he just lifted up his left hand and he extended his finger and he snuck it right through the center of the ring. And he put both of his hands in front of his face and he started puffing.

And when he took his hands away, there was a perfect smoke polar bear just floating. in the middle of the room. And there was even a polar bear-shaped shadow on the carpet, and it drifted up and up until it reached the ceiling. I wanted to know how to do that. I just wanted to stay with them.

I wanted him to show me how to be a showperson. I wanted to live like those people. Did you get to? The janitor takes his bucket, looks down at the glowing, lights of the city far below and begins to mop. Meanwhile, below, in Paris, people gather around their radios. You see, there's a rumor that something unusual, something quite unprecedented, is going to happen on the orbiting human circus. It's going to happen during the feature presentation.

You know the strange story that ends each episode, which all Paris waits for, what's going to happen? Well, Paul Paris is going to have to wait to find out, but I can show you. We zoom in on a small enclosed space that looks a lot like the janitor's pocket, a dark, womb-like space, where a small figure lies curled, in a fetal position. Well, I don't know if they have fetal positions. You see, it's an insect. And what does an insect happen? to do with the feature presentation? Well, it must be something, because backstage at the broadcast ballroom,

the large tape machine which usually plays the feature presentation is still tucked away, and stagehand Jacques pays little attention to it. Hey, hey, somebody help me lift these pies onto the stage for the next act. Meanwhile, above at the tip of the Eiffel Tower, the janitor leans perilously off the side, mysteriously pauses mopping,

and puts his ear to the next door. metal girders to listen. If you put your ear up against the metal, you can hear things. The tower picks up radio signals from all over the world depending on which girder. Hear or listen. The janitor presses his ear against the girder. Or listen over here. And if you put your ear up to this girder here, listen to what you can hear.

That was Yermak, the pie-eating Cossack. Your Mac, ladies and gentlemen. You know how I live in the janitor's closet. There's no electricity, so I can't have a radio. I come up here for hours and listen. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's nearly time for our feature presentation. I gotta go! Where are you going?

Down to the show, it's almost time. And so the janitor begins a frenzied climb down to the ballroom. But they won't let you in. Look, look at this. I got it here in my pocket. It's a cricket. Come on, we gotta go. I'll explain about the cricket. Late at night.

After everybody goes, I'm allowed to clean the axe cages. An important job. I was just finishing up, and I went to the new orchestra birds. cage, and it wasn't in there. You mean the orchestral, the rare African bird that can mimic all 47 instruments in the orchestra at once? The orbiting human circus's one bird band? It looked everywhere for it, and it wasn't anywhere. It was all my fault.

And sometimes the lock doesn't lock. I was scared it ran away. Everyone was going to know I did it. But then I heard something in Mr. Cameron's office. You mean John Cameron, host of the orbiting human circus, whose dressing room you've invaded on multiple occasions? You didn't. I had to. It was dark.

I turned on the light and there it was. The orchestral was standing right over this cricket like it was going to eat it. But it didn't. It was listening. Listening? I swear to God. It looked like the cricket was telling the orchestral a story. Oh, it's through here.

It's time. Listen, he's talking about me out of the air. Last week, ladies and gentlemen, we demonstrated the cricket song Transmigrator, a machine that allows us to hear the cricket song. as the cricket hears it. After the show I discovered Julian, toying with that machine violating a great many rules. But for once we're glad he did. The machine caught a cricket backstage in mid-anadote. And for the first time a cricket story was translated into the human tongue. I realized we simply had to share it

with you. We discovered not only that crickets are the greatest storytellers in the world, but why they are. When a cricket is caught by a bird, he is always given a chance to tell a story. And if it's a good one, that bird will spare that cricket's life. So, let's bring out the cricket. Our janitor, ladies and gentlemen,

put him in my hand, Julie. Roll out the machine, Jacques. Little cricket, up on the platform, you go. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we make radio history. a cricket's own story, our feature presentation. The extraordinary tale of Lattislaw Koskowski. It is we crickets who see what no one else does,

but there is no mystery, more beloved amongst us, than that of Ladislaw, Kalskowski, promising young clockmaker, who believed due to certain incontrovertible laws of physics, accurately counter-clockwise. And he was correct, curious. in fact. Who wants to own a clock that runs a different time than all others? Nobody. He cannot afford to eat. His whole life is his shop and his shop he had to find some way to make people want his

clocks, but he finds it impossible to work. Through the ceiling of his workshop, come piercing the voices of the two children who live upstairs, as if in the room with him. The children constantly beg for dolls. He knows the parents. bring disappointment, brings himself gathering, and beginning to fashion the children two dolls. They would be a good doll for peace and quiet. When the family opened the door to review Ladislaw holding presents, they are stunned. Ladisla had never been the least a bit friendly to them, and yet here he is. Merry Christmas is all, he says.

Ask them to keep quiet for me. In avoiding all eye contact, he dumps the packages in their hands and runs away. The curiosity of even the parents cannot be content. The packages unwrapped immediately. Children loved their dolls cannot be measured in words. Then, the mothers begin coming into Ladislov's shop. As the cricket's voice rings out the cast and crew listen, and Chief Stagehand Letitia is so touched that later that night,

she tells the story to her downstairs neighbor. They are like coming into his shop. All of a sudden, where are they coming from? You know, it's not like the people who used to come. No, these people are... They are wearing stylish clothes. And more importantly, they begin buying his clock. And they smile at him when they come in.

And they are like, oh, Ladisla, you know, you are a genius and all this. Oh, and he is like, some of them, they are very beautiful women, you know, and say, See, Lattisla, you know, he is like, whoa. You know what it is like when you have not been with some. someone for a long time and then this beautiful person come in and is like looking at you. You know, he is like, oh my, like his face is on fire, you know. But he's like, I'm going to buy myself a new suit and I'm going to buy myself like a new hat and he's going to make a difference and I'm going to go talk to those people.

I'm going to go to the party because this one girl she had invited him to this party. So he's going to go. He arrived at the party. So he comes to Marie's door. He knock on the door. And the butler opened the door, and I'm Lalislavkovsky, I've come to the party. And he looked inside and there's Marie, and she's like, you know, like kind of a little bit like shocked or something. But then, oh, you know, she is very happy.

She's inviting him in. And he walked into this amazing party with the champagne, you know, on the trays. And everything is like sparkly there. Like it is all so beautiful. you know the people but also the way they love it is like crystal or something so this blush on his cheeks is just deeper and deeper you know like a bit or something but it's okay he's like going from room to room you know with marie she is like this is this room and this room and the terrace and you know the terrace it smells like a whole garden is out there blooming you know in the midnight

with the stars and the light and it is all so fragrant you know you come back inside and And every room he goes into with Marie, there is a clock of his. The people are all smiling at him and she'll see his clock is in every room. Like, I did not know this was my home. I did not know this was always where I was going. And then suddenly there is something in him. It is like coming up, like tingling. What is this feeling?

It is like rising and rising and rising, rising. What is this is in his throat and out of his mouth. mouth and it's a sob. There is something in him like coming up like a like a, like a, like a boulder, gaining speed, you know, rushing toward him and he feel it coming up through his body. And just as he come into the big grand ballroom and he see his clock on the other side of the wall, it is like, they're laughing at me. They don't like the clock. They think it is a joke. They brought me here to make fun of me. And he cannot control the pain and the rage.

It is like, pours out over him and through him, and it is rushing over, like, the whole ballroom, like, like the snow just, you know, like, he is like a doorway through which winter comes rushing. And he is crying on the carpet and making a scene and just like cannot move like frozen to the floor. They asked the butler, the butler, you know, he comes, everyone's a little bit nervous, you know,

because there is this crying clockmaker on the floor and they pick him up and they kick him out because, you know, they're going to clean up this mess on the carpet now. And stagehan Jacques tells it to his elderly aunt. So listen, that night, he smashes all the clocks. He smashes his own prize possession. He takes, you know, his little squeaker clock, the one that goes off in the morning, and he fucking hurls it across the room.

Smash. He takes his grandfather clock, he pushes it down the stairs. It tumbles, it tumbles, it tumbles, and crack at the bottom. All right? He's just chucking him everywhere. that's hitting the ceiling, you know, one of them, you know, crashes out the fucking window. It's unbelievable. Like, this guy is so pissed off, everybody's waking up in town, you know, the neighbors, the people upstairs.

He hurls one, it smacks against his fucking plumbing. You hear water coming out. It's crazy. This guy's going crazy. So then, they hear like a shuttering of the doors. Here's the thing. After all that, he never came out. And even later that night, Janitor Julian tells it to Coco,

elderly night watchman at the Eiffel Tower, who counts on the janitor's nightly telling of the radio show to help pass his lonely watchman's hours. He thought he was dead. Okay. And after a few weeks, kids started, you know, saying that it was haunted and they dare each other to go up and tap on the window or to try and get as close to the window as they could,

and then, of course, they'd all run off. And then suddenly there started to be these sounds. Late at night, there'd be these crazy sounds, like knocking, banging, really scary sounds. I mean, it would terrify the people that were living upstairs, and all the noise would happen all night, and then in daylight it would stop, and we'd get quiet again. And this went on for weeks. Wow. And then one morning, the sun was rising, and the shades on the shop window just went up.

There was a doll shop. Nobody could believe their eyes. And the window displays were amazing. And the dolls had this thing. They just makes you feel safe and happy and warm. Kids loved them. It became a sensation. I mean, kids just wanted to even be in the shop.

And they'd press their faces up against the window and their breath would fog it up. There were people lining up for blocks. And Ladis Las was there right in the middle of it. He went out. And he found all the people that were at that party, and he gave them dolls for free, just his gifts for their kids. And he found the people that used to come into his shop just to keep warm,

that he used to kick out and yell at, and he gave them dolls for their kids and their friends' kids. It got to where Ladislaus was like the most famous person in Bucharest. But Ladislaw's story does not end there. In fact, it doesn't end at all. But I'll get to that in a moment. moment, as we all heard live on the air. One morning, Ladislaw Koskowski disappeared.

Both he and his doll shop, gone without a trace. All Romania wanted to know what happened to Ladisla Kostkowski. But it is not what had happened to Ladisla Kaskowski. It is what he had done. on every doll he had created there was hidden a tiny catch this catch was protected by a thin layer of varnish

which lovingly handled would wear off in no less than a year the exact same amount of time it would take for a child to bond with their doll completely then the first time the child would drop the doll or place it down roughly and set into motion a mechanism

that faster than the eye can see, would replace the original face with another that lay hidden inside. The same face, but with a new expression. A horrific, such monstrous, mortal accusation. It would traumatize the child who loved it for the rest of their life. For their dolly turned to them now hideous with pain, Larislaw's pain, with bitterness, Larislaus' bitterness, with hatred, Larislaus, hatred to fill the dreams of the children of Bucharest with nightmares to last. And once the faces had changed, the mechanism would lock. No one would know. But the story went no further, because though Stagehan Jacques, Chief Stagehan Letitia, and our Janitor Julian all thought it was a good

story, there was one key member of our cast who did not, which will become increasingly apparent in just a moment as, look out! The orchestral escapes its cage and lunges at the cricket. Who abandoning the story skitters off with the bird in hot pursuit and the janitor dashing madly close behind. Your kestrel's gotten out of its cage! Oh my God, I didn't lock it. I didn't lock it. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm just so... Good Lord, save that cricket. Good Lord, he'll eat him alive. I've grown very fond of that cricket. Where... Make the orchestral play the end music. And the orchestral does begin to play the music while chasing the cricket while being chased by the janitor round and round in dizzying circles.

And that's it for this week. Tune in next week when our safely returned cricket will continue his story. Broadcasting from the top of the Eiffel Tower, the orbiting human circus wishes you a good night. This is Robbie Cucciar of the Orbiting Human Circus and we'd like to thank Adam Tickets app for supporting the Orbiting of the Air Podcast. Adam Tickets App is the free mobile movie ticketing app that makes going to the movie super convenient. So today I'm very excited to bring you guys along on my first adventure with the Adam Tickets app. Okay, so I'm on the Adam Tickets app.

There are a few movies I'm interested in. They have the trailers, user scores, and a Metacritic score. Now I've selected my movie and it's prompted me to invite some friends. I'm going to invite my sister Daria and and my buddy Julian. I'm not sure if they'll come, but we'll see. And now I'm at the concession window, and I'm ordering some popcorn and soda. Ooh, they have kettle corn seasoning.

Okay, now I'm at the payment window, and I've put in my info and used the Orbiting Human Circus code, OHC, and I got $5 off. That was over 30% off the ticket price. Wow. All right, I'm at the movie theater, and of course I'm running totally late, but I've got my QR code and my electronic ticket, and thank God, because there is a... long, long line here right now. All right, here I go.

Hey there, I have an Adam Tickets app. QR code. Theater 5 on the left. All right, thanks a lot, man. All right, that was super, super easy. Awesome. Download Adam, that's A-T-O-M, tickets for free from the Google Play

or Apple App Store for the ultimate movie experience. Hello again, this is Drew Callender. Remember, go to audible.com OHC to get a free audiobook with a 30-day free trial. Thanks, Audible. Hi, we're Meg Bashwinner and Joseph Fink. Of welcome to Nightvail. And on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the Golden Age of Television. To do that, we're watching the IMDB viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows.

The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost, the episode of the X-Files, where Skelly gets attacked by a vicious house cat. And also, the really good episodes, too. What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like, for example, is it really a bad episode or do people just hate women? The best worst. Available wherever you get your podcasts.