Director's Notes: 180 - U-View (Patreon)

In the recent episode by our wonderful guest writer Brie Williams, she wrote the following passage:

And in a large crypt at the back, shrouded by a grove of whispering elms, lies the Mahalla family. The Mahalla family owned a very important video store annex inside the Ralph's back in the 1990s.

This sparked my curiosity about the Mahalla family, and I decided to learn what their story is. I decided quickly that this would revolve around a VHS copy of Heat, because in my mind Heat is the most VHS movie, only surpassed perhaps by Cliffhanger. Much of the details of the video annex itself are based on the video store in the Vons shopping center in Camarillo that was eventually put out of business by a Blockbuster which moved in next door in the late 90s. I loved that little video store, and their small rack of laser discs, and their mysterious curtained section, and their posters for the movie Heavy Metal, and their nearly inedible free popcorn. I don't remember what their name was, and no trace of them appears to have ever made it to the internet.

Speaking of Heat, I went to a writing retreat in 2016, where every single other person there was a tenured professor in their 50s. This meant I didn’t have a great deal in common with them, so I usually skipped their movie nights, which consisted of watching whatever the retreat happened to have in the common room. One night that was Heat, and the next day everyone told me that it was the single most boring movie any of them had ever seen. So that’s my entire knowledge of Heat, a movie I’ve never seen myself.

(This morning, someone on twitter pointed out that in actuality Heat was long enough that it was a double VHS release, so my episode is inaccurate. However, my wife pointed out to me that “actually in Night Vale it was only one VHS, because in Night Vale the tapes are thicker” so there you go.)

All I had to go on with the Mahalla family was their name, and so I started by googling that, and it turned out to be a pretty tricky mystery. The name is definitely Arabic in origin. However, most people with the last name seemed to be Indians with Hindu first names. That confused me, so I emailed Brie to see if she had any insight, and she told me that it was the last name of her great grandmother, who was from Poland. However, she knew it was not a Polish name, and her efforts to research it had ended up with similar results to mine. Given all that, I decided to give the Mahallas Hindu names and go that direction. If anyone has more insight on this, please do let me know.

Some other notes on today’s episode:

- The news bulletin about the rodeo mentions the old gas station on Oxford Street. This was a reference to one of our more beloved episodes. (Which one? Check out our new transcript page which features a full series search!)

- Speaking of references to old episodes, of course the word from our sponsors is a direct sequel to the very first word from our sponsors we ever did. Why? I don’t know. I just felt inspired and decided to go for it.

- The Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner contains something that could be taken as a dig about the recent Sqirl scandal. It was not written with that in mind, but that place seems to suck, so I’m happy to retroactively make it about that.

- There seems to be something up with that Frank Chen storyline right? Probably one to watch.

- The weather today was by David Wirsig, who also did the weather for episode 75. He was a fan submission from one of our open submission periods, but I really enjoy his stuff, so when he released his first full album recently, I offered to feature him again.

That’s about it for the Mahalla family. For now, at least. Will they come back? Probably. There rarely is a loose thread in Night Vale that we don’t start plucking at eventually.

-Joseph Fink