What I Learned From The Twilight Zone Marathon

• If you are dysfunctional enough, you can escape into the object of your dysfunction (doll house, 16-mm film, etc)
• Gold will be worth nothing in 100 years.
• Martians have 3 arms and primitive zoos.
• If you're a passenger on an airplane and you see a guy dressed in a bear suit made out of carpet trying to rip off the wing, just ignore it. It's probably just your nerves, or a bad case of intestinal gas.
• If you open the window of a plane in flight and started shooting a purloined pistol, that won't disqualify you from commanding a starship a few years down the road.
• I'm bummed out that Inger Stevens died in 1970. But she was really a robot anyway.
• People, by and large, have a real hard time knowing when they're dead.
• If you really like to read, an extra pair of safety glasses is a good investment.
• Martians and Venusians cross paths more than we Earthlings think.
• The year 1974 will be 10 years after World War III.
• By 1997 there will be a big population crisis.
• The human race was started by people fleeing an Atomic War on another planet.
• Deals with the Devil never turn out well.
• Never wear masks during Mardi Gras.
• If you're in posession of a stopwatch that stops time, be sure to take extra special care with it.
• On some planets Ellie Mae Clampett is considered ugly.
• If people keep staring at that 3rd eye in the middle of your forehead, consider working in a diner.
• Residents of New York City should try to escape upstate if the Earth starts moving toward the Sun, but should fly to Miami if the Earth starts moving away from the Sun.
• Trying to colonize a planet with two suns and no night is always a bad idea.
• Refusing a spaceship rescue ride back to Earth is always a bad idea.
• Time travel back to The Good Old Days will always prove to be a disappointment.
• And unfortunately, nobody ever told Rod Serling (1924 - 1975) to put out that damn cigarette.

Comments

[Woody]

People become obsolete, especially librarians, under totalitarian rule.

Don't share a room with someone committing suicide via a bomb.

[Dave Munger]

It is morally wrong to resist Soviet aggression, or even suspect infiltration or try to survive in a bomb-shelter.

The hoariest cliches still seem like a pretty cool story in b&w with the proper incidental music and eerie narration.

More TZ episodes have an unsold pilot feel to them than I remembered.

Death is good.

The surface of all asteroids and alien planets is identical to parts of southern California, and any humanoid inhabitants speak English.

Rod Serling wrote "To Serve Man", not Damon Knight.

Irony is deadlier than a rabid baboon with a machine gun.

[grumps]

The scariest part of the post is the number of episodes that I can remember without having seen the marathon.