Director's Notes – Episode 125

(NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

Whenever we write about Madeleine LaFleur and the Tourism Board, I get to thinking about what tourists in Night Vale are like. 

My wife and I returned last month from a week in Hawaii, and it was - to no one's surprise - beautiful and relaxing and fun. We stayed on the island of Kauai for all 8 days, and it might be the most stunning place on earth (at least based on my limited travels). 

We did the usual: snorkeling, swimming, hiking, kayaking, a catamaran tour, drinking cocktails on the beach, etc. 

Our friends and family asked us about our trip, and we told them about it, and everyone said "That sounds nice." And they're right. Our vacation was perfectly wonderful and entirely predictable. 

Night Vale doesn't seem nearly as beautiful nor activity-filled as Hawaii, but I can't imagine a better story to tell people when you got home. "We had our minds controlled by this huge cloud. Carol got hit by a dead woodchuck that just fell out of the sky! Here's a picture."

And then you show your friends your Instagram of Carol hunching and grimacing over a red, glossy mess of fur and bones. 

Plus all the hashtag foodporn you could post from Tourniquet, Night Vale's hottest restaurant:

- Tilapia mousse with wood shavings

- Glass shard salad

- Burning Love (a postmodern entree where the chef themself comes to your table and gently kisses you while an attendant sets themselves on fire and wafts the smell of smoke toward you)

- Shale steak (it's a piece of stone in the shape of a steak)

I also think a good tourist should visit the New Old Night Vale Opera House and catch a production of Puccini's masterwork, "Die Hard With a Vengeance."

There could be some wonderful vacation stories to come from a visit to Night Vale. You'd probably drown in a sudden ocean, or get swallowed by a smiling god, or drink the wrong orange juice first, which means you'd have to tell all your friends about your vacation as a ghost, moaning and whispering from basements and attics. But I think that would make the stories even more endearing.

- Jeffrey Cranor
April 2, 2018