What We're Following: Welcome to Night Vale

         Dinner conversation wandered from the weather to traffic to the Faceless Old Woman to the Sheriff’s Secret Police. That is how I discovered Welcome to Night Vale, a bi-weekly podcast and series of novels written by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor. It turned out that “The Weather” and “Traffic” are regular segments on the show.
        The show’s premise is as a community-radio program reporting to a small fictional town. While this is a similar conceit to A Prairie Home Companion, Night Vale has more in common with Stephen King’s Derry or Lovecraft’s Arkham than Lake Wobegon. Our host Cecil (played by Cecil Baldwin) reports on mundane goings-on like the opening of the New Old Opera House, a plot to steal the Registry of Middle-School Crushes, or the escape of Antiques.
        Each episode is a self-contained story, so I was glad I didn’t have to catch up on years of backstory to jump into Night Vale. Despite Cecil and guest-stars like Wil Wheaton and Jackson Publick taking us through story arcs (Carlos does eventually return from the Desert Otherworld inside the Dog Park), it seems sometimes as if Night Vale - where screen actor Lee Marvin just turned 30 - will never change.
        Welcome to Night Vale is an absurd and surreal kind of comedy. It has occasionally raised the hair on my arms, to be sure, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to replay a segment I missed thanks to my own laughter. I’m glad to have its weirdness in my ears twice a month. If deadpan humor like The Addams Family or A Season of Unfortunate Events is something you enjoy, I suggest you take a trip to Night Vale as soon as you can.