Counting Down to the New Year’s Eve TZ Marathon

Getting ready for a two-day Twilight Zone marathon takes planning. Even in the characters in the fifth dimension got in on the act this year.

So my friend Wendy Brydge and I decided to chronicle them throughout December, with our daily #TZMarathonCountdown tweets. I took the “odd” days, while Wendy took the “even” days. Here’s what we came up with:

Day 1: The “What You Need” guy is stocking up on popcorn, chips, and caffeine pills.

Day 2: Gregory West uses his dictation machine to program the marathon with all of Mary’s favourite episodes.

Day 3: Jason Foster orders the favors for his New Year’s Eve TZ Marathon party: TZ character masks for each guest.

A “Christmas Present” For The World

Imagine spending Christmas Day at the hospital. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Unless you were Sam and Esther Serling, and you were there on December 25, 1924, to welcome a baby boy into the world. A boy who would someday welcome the rest of us … to the Twilight Zone.

The Serlings already had one son, Robert, born in 1918. But a bout of yellow fever prior to that had almost killed Esther. Anne Serling, author of “As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling”, picks up the story:

After Bob is born, the doctor gives them the crushing news: this will be their only child. He says it is impossible for her to carry another, and true to his warning, a baby girl is stillborn a few years later. Seven years later, however, the doctor is proven wrong.

Making a “Grave” Mistake

“I dare you.”

Even after we become adults, the old school-yard taunt never quite loses its power.

Oh, we find more sophisticated ways of expressing it, if only to reassure ourselves that we’ve grown up. We’re not kids anymore. But the sting of being thought a coward is still so abhorrent that shaking off a dare isn’t easy at any age.

Just ask Conny Miller. I wouldn’t expect a quick answer, though, now that he’s buried in the old cemetery near Pinto Sykes. Dead … because of a dare.