New Year's Day is for marathons...televisions marathons. And this year was no exception. I spent the first day of 2008 watching back-to-back episodes of the Twilight Zone until my eyes bled. Except for the incessant commercials, each episode is perfect...filmed in black and white, thinly veiled slightly leftist message, neat and tidy storyline. Rod Serling smoked right there on television in front of God and everyone while setting up the moral structure of the story. I had started watching the marathon on New Year's Eve when I awoke at 12:30 p.m. after having taken a nice, three hour nap. It just doesn't get any better than that...New Year's Eve or not.


I had spent the previous day watching another marathon...which in the end amounted to my watching the first movie completely and then switching back and forth on the sequels. Planet of the Apes (1968). I embarrassingly admitted this to a friend I'd called during the 17th commercial of the first hour.

"You like that, too?" she asked. "I can never resist the Apes."

We spent a couple of moments considering this and wondering why we were both so mesmerized by the film.

(Charlton Heston in a loin cloth screaming "Keep your hands off me, you damned dirty apes!" HA! - Every time the apes would gag him during the movie, I thought how effective that image would be on a gun control poster.)

It wasn't until today that I learned that screenplay for Planet of the Apes was co-written by none other than our good friend Rod Serling. Who knew?

Namaste