The Viktor Wilt Show

Monday has arrived once again, apparently against everyone’s wishes, and Victor Wilt begins the show with the unmistakable energy of a man who has survived an entire weekend but has absolutely no idea what he did with it. The weekend was supposedly fun, but Friday has apparently been erased from the historical record, while Saturday becomes increasingly difficult to explain to future archaeologists. Victor spent part of the weekend hanging out at Alibi while Becca worked, helping prepare for a black-light party, decorating the place with neon streamers and discovering that his tattoos become approximately 700% more suspicious under black light. Then, in what can only be described as a catastrophic lapse in adult supervision, Becca and the kids decided Victor needed a full face of makeup. Victor agreed. This was his first mistake. By the time the children were finished, he looked less like a normal human being and more like Arthur Morgan after spending three consecutive days fighting ghosts in a truck stop bathroom. Rather than simply going home and removing the evidence, Victor went to WinCo looking like an absolute lunatic and began greeting strangers with Arthur Morgan's signature “Howdy” routine from Red Dead Redemption 2. He wandered through the grocery store attempting to increase his honor level while random shoppers laughed, stared, or quietly reconsidered every decision that had brought them into that particular aisle. One child apparently looked at him as though they had just witnessed the physical manifestation of a nightmare. 

The real horror began the next morning when Victor discovered that makeup apparently possesses the durability of industrial concrete. He assumed ordinary soap and aggressive eye scrubbing would solve the problem, because apparently nobody had informed him that eyeliner is a tiny black demon that must be exorcised with oil-based makeup remover. He emerged from the shower looking like he had spent the night crying mascara directly into his own soul. The thought of arriving at the Monday morning company meeting with full eyeliner and mascara became a genuine workplace emergency. Victor eventually found the correct makeup remover, but only after rubbing his eyes so violently that the skin around them became red and irritated. The situation was eventually under control, but the lesson was clear: if someone puts makeup on you as a joke, Google how to remove it BEFORE you start attacking your eyeballs with a towel. 

Then we arrive at what may be the most important paranormal investigation of the entire year: the haunted blanket. Victor recounts how his cat Lucy crawled underneath a particular blanket and instantly transformed from a sweet, quiet kitty into an apparently demonically possessed beast making noises Victor had never heard before. He tried another cat. Same result. The second cat also became a tiny furry hellspawn underneath the blanket. A third cat apparently took one look at the situation and refused to participate, which honestly may have been the most scientifically sound decision anyone made all weekend. Victor subsequently called Zak Bagans' Haunted Museum in Las Vegas and left a voicemail explaining the situation, offering to personally transport the allegedly haunted blanket to Vegas for paranormal examination. Unfortunately, he forgot to leave a phone number, meaning the entire investigation now hinges on whether the Haunted Museum possesses the technological capability to identify who called them based entirely on caller ID. The blanket itself remains in active service because, despite potentially housing an interdimensional demon, it is apparently a really comfortable summer blanket. 

The paranormal theory receives a devastating scientific counterargument when a caller suggests the cats may simply be reacting to “toxic gases” underneath the blanket. Victor reluctantly admits this is possible, meaning the great haunted blanket mystery has now become a battle between supernatural possession and extremely concentrated cat farts. Meanwhile, the weather forecast reveals that East Idaho is preparing for more heat, with temperatures pushing toward the mid-to-high 90s later in the week, while Victor is preparing for a trip to Park City to see Ian Munsick. So essentially the region is being asked to choose between climate misery, possible thunderstorms, and a blanket that may or may not be inhabited by Satan. 

Rock news then detonates onto the show with the confirmation that Sid Wilson is officially out of Slipknot after weeks of speculation. Victor discusses Wilson's departure and the increasingly revolving-door nature of a band that has somehow managed to keep nine members moving around inside the same musical death machine for roughly three decades. He also notes the recent breakup of Wilson's engagement to Kelly Osbourne and speculates that there may be far more happening behind the scenes than anyone on social media knows. The segment ultimately becomes a reminder that keeping a nine-person band together for 30 years is basically a miracle comparable to keeping nine raccoons inside a moving washing machine without anyone escaping. 

Freak News arrives next, and the internet once again demonstrates that human beings cannot see a blurry photograph without immediately deciding it contains an extraterrestrial. A NASA rover photograph circulating online supposedly shows a jellyfish-like object roaming around on the surface of Mars. Victor observes that the object is blurry, distant, vaguely biological-looking, and therefore apparently perfect internet fuel. His prediction is that NASA will eventually provide a completely boring geological explanation, destroying everyone's dreams of discovering a giant terrestrial jellyfish wandering around Mars. From there, the show plunges into a Louisiana convenience-store theft involving roughly $20 worth of donuts, honey buns, pound cake and a fountain drink. The suspect allegedly wandered back into the same store after the theft, making the police investigation almost insultingly easy. Victor also comments on the man's badly injured face and wonders whether the injuries were caused by a bicycle accident or perhaps the same demonic blanket that has been terrorizing his cats. 

The art world is also dragged into the morning's nonsense when Victor discusses a shipping-container sculpture in the Hamptons called Meditating Figure. The sculpture apparently consists of colorful shipping containers arranged to resemble a person sitting in meditation, which Victor thinks looks pretty cool. Some wealthy neighbors, however, apparently want it removed. This leads Victor into a full defense of weird public art, color, and the general concept of making the world slightly less aggressively beige. He argues that East Idaho already spends enough of the winter looking like a gray, dirty snow-covered wasteland, so perhaps people should be allowed to put some bizarre colorful objects around. His position is essentially: if you're going to stare at a depressing winter landscape for six months, you might as well have a giant multicolored shipping-container person meditating nearby. 

Then comes the great discovery that somehow escaped the attention of the station's entire rock-radio ecosystem: Green Day has a movie called Nimrods. Victor's musician friend Sammy called him up and invited him to see it, forcing Victor to confront the horrifying possibility that he had somehow missed an entire Green Day movie despite supposedly reading music news every day. Victor, Becca, Sammy and Sammy's girlfriend went to see it, and the movie apparently delivered exactly what a rock fan could want: nostalgia, jokes, Green Day music and the general feeling of being transported back to the era when being in a teenage band seemed like a reasonable career plan. Victor compares the movie to Detroit Rock City and gives it a strong recommendation. The truly bizarre part, however, is the theater attendance: there were only six people in the entire showing. The show collectively concludes that the movie's marketing must have been absolutely catastrophic because even the radio station hadn't received information about it or been offered tickets to give away. 

The show then veers back into the makeup apocalypse as Peaches learns that Victor went grocery shopping dressed like a human warning label. Peaches compares the look to GG Allin, while Victor explains that he was simply trying to raise his honor level by walking around WinCo saying “Howdy” to everyone. The image of unsuspecting shoppers encountering a fully made-up Victor cheerfully greeting them in an Arthur Morgan voice may be one of the most unnecessary public performances ever committed to an Idaho grocery store. Even worse, Victor later returned to WinCo after failing to fully remove the eyeliner, meaning the same establishment received multiple sightings of this strange creature before the situation was finally resolved. 

Victor then gets distracted by one of the most aggressively nerdy radio-system problems imaginable: whether bands that are commonly referred to with “The” actually have “The” in their official names. Eagles, Deftones, Beatles, Bee Gees, Carpenters and other artists become subjects of an impromptu RDS database audit. Victor is visibly bothered by the possibility that the station's system might incorrectly list artists without or with the wrong article, because apparently there are two kinds of people in this world: people who hear “The Beatles” and move on with their lives, and people who are prepared to personally investigate the station's database because “The” has been improperly omitted. 

Then someone apparently discovered a way to purchase a house that used to be a jail. The house has been renovated into what appears to be a reasonably nice residence, except the old concrete jail cells remain and have been repurposed as closets. Victor finds this deeply unsettling, because no matter how much white paint you slap on an 1800s jail cell, it remains an 1800s jail cell. He imagines the historical horrors that may have occurred there and concludes that if there is a place on Earth practically begging to become haunted, it is a former jail that has been turned into a family home. The resulting parenting strategy is also conveniently terrible: misbehaving children can apparently be locked in the basement jail cell. Welcome home, kids. 

The conversation then shifts into the aftermath of Maddie's figure-eight race, which apparently involved screaming fans, a spectacular Doberman-themed sign and enough automotive violence to make the Geneva Convention nervous. Maddie explains that she initially drove too politely, received a pep talk, and then returned to the track with a newfound commitment to vehicular destruction. She started hitting other cars until another driver bent her tie rod, leaving her vehicle difficult to steer. Instead of being defeated, the group immediately began discussing how to reinforce the car for the next race and transform it into a Mad Max-style war machine. Ideas included mohawks, silver spray paint, a guitar mounted on top of the car, fire effects and potentially putting Victor on top of the vehicle dressed like the legendary flame-throwing guitarist from Fury Road. This is perhaps the closest the show has come to developing an actual military vehicle. 

Naturally, the figure-eight race also managed to become political for absolutely no reason. Someone apparently commented that “liberals” were taking over the crazy figure-eight races because competitors weren't hitting each other hard enough. The show spends several minutes wondering whether the commenter was genuinely upset or simply trolling, before eventually deciding that the entire thing is hilarious either way. This escalates into jokes about putting a rainbow flag on Maddie's race car and the startling political revelation that BYU-Idaho's logo is blue, meaning—according to the show's increasingly deranged logic—the university has apparently been infiltrated by the international liberal conspiracy. 

The mood suddenly becomes considerably more serious when Victor turns toward the Super El Niño situation and the potential consequences for the American West. He discusses forecasts calling for above-average temperatures and below-average moisture, the worsening water situation around Lake Powell and Lake Mead, ongoing fights over water allocations among western states, and concerns about what another warm, dry winter could mean for Idaho's water supply and fire season. Victor's preferred climate solution is extremely specific: dump an enormous amount of snow directly onto the mountains, leave the valleys alone, and somehow ensure he never has to drive through winter weather again. It is simultaneously an ecological proposal and a personal snowblower avoidance strategy. 

The show then dives into Germany's drinking laws, with Victor reacting to changes involving alcohol consumption by 14- and 15-year-olds when accompanied by parents. He strongly argues against normalizing alcohol consumption among teenagers, discussing the addictive nature of alcohol and the dangers associated with drinking. The segment becomes surprisingly earnest compared with the rest of the morning, as Victor acknowledges his own history with alcohol and emphasizes that people dealing with alcohol problems should seek help. Then, because this is still the Victor Wilt Show, he immediately gets distracted by a mysterious wound on his leg and wonders whether a cat attacked him.
 

Finally, the morning degenerates into a discussion of sleep, motivation, health, summer heat and the ongoing human tragedy of not owning adequate air conditioning. Victor and Peaches discuss how badly they sleep when they don't maintain consistent schedules, how naps can turn into six-hour hibernation events, and how proper sleep could potentially improve motivation to exercise and generally take better care of themselves. Peaches talks about wanting to shock his sleep doctor with future progress, while Victor admits that he has gained a couple pounds and could probably use more consistent sleep. Then comes the real crisis: Peaches' apartment is apparently hot enough to prevent civilized sleep because he doesn't have air conditioning. Victor recommends a floor unit and reminisces about finding one through discounted/open-box deals. The two ultimately conclude that the heat itself may be making people angrier, which explains why social media has become a radioactive landfill of arguments. Their proposed solution to the internet's psychological collapse is beautifully simple: get an air conditioner and chill out. 

And so the Monday morning Victor Wilt Show ends exactly where it began: with no real sense that anyone accomplished anything, but with a haunted blanket, demonic cats, a Green Day movie nobody knew existed, a Slipknot member leaving the band, a potential jellyfish wandering around Mars, a man stealing $20 worth of pastries and then returning to the crime scene, an old jail becoming a house, a figure-eight race turning into Mad Max, political warfare breaking out over a demolition derby, Western water shortages, German drinking laws, sleep deprivation, questionable eyeliner removal techniques and a potential future career for Victor as a pest-control technician. Somewhere along the way, he also managed to recommend a four-day work week, investigate the weather, conduct an audit of the word “The” in band names and contemplate the possibility that his blanket is possessed by an ancient supernatural entity. Monday has officially been defeated, but civilization has not survived intact.