50 ("Where Is Everybody?")

So the fiftieth anniversary of The Twilight Zone's premiere has come and gone. I watched the pilot episode ("Where Is Everybody?") at exactly 7:00 p.m. last night as planned. I watched the American Masters documentary on Rod Serling. I watched the alternate version of the pilot episode. I listened to the DVD commentary tracks by Earl Holliman and William Self. I read both Serling's teleplay and short story adaptation. Oh, and I greatly enjoyed the musical score by Bernard Herrmann, my favorite film music composer of all time (might be a good time to mention that Herrmann composed the TZ theme for the first season of the series).

And I got drunk. Oh, and in true Rod Serling style, I smoked almost an entire pack of cigarettes. So yeah, I definitely celebrated.

So what's my problem? Why do I feel... I don't know....left behind, as if I've missed something?

Perhaps it's because I celebrated alone. Perhaps I needed to be in the company of other Zone-obsessed fans. Perhaps I needed to feel like part of a group, an extended family, a collective. Christ, maybe I needed to live in New York or Ithaca. That's where all the action was yesterday. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there was a whole lot of NOTHING going on.

*No, before you ask, I don't normally smoke.