Rod Serling Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

November rambling: Hatred is Not the Norm

Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game

Love thy neighbor “Hatred is Not the Norm”: For a 1964 Multi-Faith Civil Rights Rally, Rod Serling Pens “A MostNon-Political Speech” – delivered by Dick Van Dyke

A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas ERs

Lee Greenwood: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Trudeau announces sharp cuts to Canada’s immigration targets

Sorry, world. The toxic Rep. Elise Stefanik, the next UN ambassador

Landmines

What Now? with Trevor Noah: Have We Missed The Message? Bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss his new book about how the stories we tell, and the ones we don’t, shape our realities. They also unpack the jaw-dropping CBS interview that followed the book’s release, and our elusive search as a people to see the humanity in others.

CSICON: Island of Reason in a Sea of Madness

Magic Johnson’s new achievement

Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey Dancer of ‘Power and Radiance,’ Dies at 81

The Capital Region of New York State will become home to a national semiconductor research center, a major part of the federal government’s effort to boost the semiconductor industry in the United States.

I see your pawn and raise you a queen.

NAICS Changes Will Begin to Be Reflected in the Census Bureau’s Economic Surveys and Programs. Impact of Changes to the North American Industry Classification System. You may be amazed at how interested I am in this particular geeky subject.

Intimacy Coordinators Unanimously Vote to Join SAG-AFTRA

The Copyright Office frees the McFlurry machine.

Tobacco To School and Nightmare on Sesame Street and The Batman of Baltimore

I GOT NOTHING

I have written very little about the topic of the election because I have nothing fresh to say. I’ve read seemingly every single analysis of who’s to blame and what the what is the turning point, blah blah blah. It’s kind of overwhelming and, frankly, a little exhausting.

It’s also true that I’m having difficulty writing anything else, even putting together a links post. Most of the items I’ve posted of late were previously created. I have five blog posts in some form of draft, which is terrible for me because I can’t finish anything. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to write; I just can’t find the energy. I am dumfungled.

I’m sad about the passing of Nancy Frank, our church’s organist emeritus. A group of us will be honored to sing at her funeral on Saturday at 2 p.m. I’ll certainly write about her afterward; writing obit-like pieces should be limited to once a week.

Still, I will recommend Jon Stewart on djt’s win and What’s Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson | The Weekly Show, specifically: 18:14 – Comparison to Steve Bannon’s takeover of Breitbart 21:20 – Groups of voters, motives, and strategies; and 40:40 – Reactionary Movements 41:53 – Propaganda vs. Reality. “Hero is somebody who keeps trying to do the right thing, even when they know the walls are closing in… we can all do that.” Oh, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver for 11/10/2024.

BILL KENNEDY

Probably the highlight of the month thus far was participating in the 2nd Annual William Kennedy Marathon Reading on November 7, starting at 11 a.m. at the Albany Distilling Co. The reading was of the 1978 novel Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, “an odyssey through the speakeasies and pool halls of Albany’s grimy and glittering underworld.”

I got to see Mike Huber and Paul Grondahl from the New York State Writers Institute. Bill Kennedy came during the fourth speaker and sat up front. He seemed to appreciate the readings by the 5th (me) and 6th (Frank S. Robinson) readers.

MUSIC

The entirety of Stevie Wonder’s Original Musiquarium I, featuring the hits plus four then-new songs

Subways Of Your Mind – FEX. A mystery solved.

Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists: The Specials

Le Rappel des Oiseaux by Jean-Philippe Rameau

Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Tears For Fears. HQ. Ultimate 12-inch extended mix

Coverville 1508: The Yes Cover Story II and 1509: Covers of Daryl Hall, Low, and Ween and 1510: The Quincy Jones Tribute

Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run) by Billy Ocean

Spooky music

When Do We Stop Finding New Music? A Statistical Analysis

Famous people I’ve met, posthumous edition

Springboks

Oddly, I found the exercise of noting 70 people in my life who have passed therapeutic. So, I figured I’d list some famous people I’ve met who have since died.

Rod Serling: When you grew up in Binghamton, NY, in the early 1960s, Serling, born in the Syracuse area but grew up on the West Side of the Parlor City, was a big deal. The Twilight Zone television series was chockful of Binghamtonian references, from a rundown bus station to a carousel, which looked much like Recreation Park’s merry-go-round.

In 1970, I, as president of the student government, was given the honor of introducing Serling at a schoolwide assembly. Rod had been the student government leader thirty years earlier.

His favorite teacher, Helen Foley, who was namechecked in a TZ episode, wrote me a too-long introduction that mentioned him being a paratrooper in World War II.

While briefly mortified then, I understood why he came out on stage during my introduction. After the assembly, he spoke to La Foley’s last-period public speaking class, which I got permission to attend. Rod smoked incessantly in the classroom. The coffin nails killed him five years later at 50; fame doesn’t immunize one from disease.

Earl Warren: My Constitutional hero., as recently noted. I never did figure out how my SUNY New Paltz professor, Ron Steinberg, managed to arrange for his class of about 15 students to meet a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

A former Weaver

Pete Seeger: Reading my diary, I noticed I had seen Pete sing at least thrice in the autumn of 1972, including twice in one day. I estimate that I’d seen him perform at least 30 times.

When the Springboks rugby team from apartheid South Africa was scheduled to play at Bleeker Stadium in Albany in September 1981, with the approval of long-time mayor Erastus Corning II, there was a call for protests. I was at the demonstration, along with over a thousand others.

There might have been an even larger response, except it was POURING. But Pete was there, and we were standing outside the stadium getting soaked, umbrellas notwithstanding, while discussing the moral necessity to respond to racism and other evils.

Ed Dague: My favorite newsperson in the Albany market. Somewhere in the attic, I have the transcript of an April 1994 11 p.m. news broadcast on WNYT-TV, Channel 13, that I got to watch being broadcast while near the set.

Back when he had a mustache

Alex Trebek: My sense of the JEOPARDY host was that he enjoyed the show’s rhythm in the Los Angeles area—two or three shows, a meal break, then three or two more episodes.

When I saw him at the Wang Theater in Boston in September 1998, I sensed he was uncomfortable doing a series of interviews with the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and other media outlets. I got to watch him a lot because there was a lot of waiting around.

He was explicitly annoyed with not getting into our hotel, the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, quickly that first evening because of a Bill Clinton fundraiser, which followed a massive demonstration both against Clinton and against special prosecutor Ken Starr, who had put out explicit information online regarding the President and Monica Lewinsky. I don’t know if his irritation was political/cultural – he tended to be rather conservative – or merely the inconvenience.

Regardless, I’m disappointed I don’t have a photo with him because he was doing the bunny-ears thing with his fingers behind my back, which I saw on a monitor.

Movie review: The Vast of Night

Cayuga, NM

The Vast of Night made it onto Ty Burr’s 10 movies to watch. He writes: “Andrew Patterson’s first film is a crowd-sourced labor of love about two high school kids discovering strange doings in the skies over 1950s New Mexico.

“It’s an example of the most movie that can be squeezed from the least amount of resources, with beguiling performances from Jake Horowitz and Sierra McCormick in the leads.”

It “premiered at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival in January 2019. Amazon Studios acquired distribution rights to the film and released it on May 29, 2020, including drive-in theaters in the United States and via video-on-demand on Prime Video,” which is how I saw it.

This movie is clearly influenced by the TV series The Twilight Zone. The setting is Cayuga, NM. Cayuga Productions was the name of Rod Serling’s production company…

“The name was taken from Cayuga Lake, one of New York’s ‘Finger Lakes.’ The lake is about an hour drive northwest of Binghamton, and was where Rod and his family had a summer home.”

The Vast of Night is very much dialogue-driven. Initially, I found the radio DJ (Horowitz) a bit obnoxious, but I really liked the teen switchboard operator (McCormick) from the start.

As the mystery unfolded, I found myself rooting for them both. And the witnesses they spoke with were convincing. The film had the right atmospherics to keep me watching these two, who wanted to get out of town and follow their dreams.

And then…

I’m afraid the great failing for me is the conclusion. It lacked a satisfying resolution, that part in TZ where you hear Serling wrap up the story. Nevertheless, it may well be the opening salvo of Patterson’s directorial career.

The Vast of Night is on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of best films of 2020 at #97, with 92% positive reviews from the critics. The audience reviews were less favorable, at 65%.

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of TV

time well spent

I made my semiannual trek to my local comic book emporium, Earthworld Comics, this fall. On the shelf was a graphic novel The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by someone named Koren Shadmi. I perused it for about ten seconds and decided to buy.

The book, of course, is about the creator of the legendary television program the Twilight Zone. In my book collection is The Twilight Zone Companion, an episode guide. I only have two DVD sets of complete television series; one is The Twilight Zone.

And there is that time I met the Man. (I’ve mentioned that, right?)

I found The Twilight Man to be thoroughly reached. The book had about three dozen items in the bibliography. The art was quite decent. I read the 170-odd pages in a couple of hours, and it was time well spent. There were bits of Serling’s biography I did not know or had forgotten about.

Speaking ill of the dead?

From a three-star review in Amazon: “A lot of the information presented seemed very personal and came across as a bit off-putting knowing that this was written by someone after the person in question was already dead. I would hope much of this type of information came from interviews or people who knew Rod..”

Yes, there is nothing in The Twilight Man that was out of character or inconsistent with the books and articles that I had previously read. If you can find it, check out Rod Serling: The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone – a biography by Joel Engel.

About THAT book, I wrote: “The subject of the book was unable to be content with his life, believe his success, [or] be happy with his first writing critic, his wife Carol.” The Shadmi book shows Serling with those same insecurities.

I was motivated to buy The Twilight Man because 2019 is the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Twilight Zone. Christmas Day would also have been Rod’s 95th birthday, though he didn’t get anywhere near reaching it.

Videos

Tell It To Groucho with Rod Serling (April 2, 1962). Rod plugs an Italian singer, leaves, but then returns

I’ve Got A Secret – 1972

Jack Benny Program – TWILIGHT ZONE LOST EPISODE –

Serling Fest 2019: Twilight Zone at 60

appearing live via satellite, BILL MUMY

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of The Twilight Zone’s 1959 debut, the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation presents: SERLING FEST 2019: The TZ @ 60, a three-day celebration in Rod Serling’s adopted hometown of Binghamton, New York on the weekend of October 4-6, 2019.

I don’t usually do advertisements for ventures with which I’m not involved in this blog. It must be a function of hometown pride – New “BING” Getting Cooler By the Day, which is true. It’s also my close, personal relationship with the late writer/host; yup.

GUESTS

“Confirmed guests include Rod’s daughter, Anne Serling (author of AS I KNEW HIM: MY DAD, ROD SERLING); Mark Olshaker (co-author of MINDHUNTER, inspiration for the acclaimed Netflix series); Mark Dawidziak (author of EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE); Nicholas Parisi (author of ROD SERLING: HIS LIFE, WORK, AND IMAGINATION); and Martin Grams, Jr. (author of TWILIGHT ZONE: UNLOCKING THE DOOR TO A TELEVISION CLASSIC).

Also attending Serling Fest, “Arlen Schumer (author of VISIONS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE); Reba Wissner (author of A DIMENSION OF SOUND: MUSIC IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE); Amy Boyle Johnston (author of UNKNOWN SERLING); and Tony Albarella (editor of AS TIMELESS AS INFINITY: THE TWILIGHT ZONE SCRIPTS OF ROD SERLING).

“And appearing live via satellite (Saturday, October 5th), BILL MUMY (star of ‘It’s a Good Life,’ ‘In Praise of Pip,’ ‘Long Distance Call’ and LOST IN SPACE).” I saw It’s a Good Life in the past six months; it’s still startling.

VENUES

“On Friday, October 4th, the event will be held at various locations in Binghamton – to be announced. On Saturday, October 5th, the event will be at the Broome County Forum Theatre, and on Sunday, October 6th, go to the Helen Foley Theatre at Binghamton High School.

Ah, Binghamton High School, which was Binghamton Central back in my day. And Helen Foley, who was Serling’s drama teacher, was my public speaking teacher. I’m giving serious thought to attending at least part of this.