The Twilight Zone/ always try and work hard

Oct. 12 The Twilight Zone: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article called “Cross over into the Twilight Zone- and find today’s movie plots” by Maureen Dowd on Jul. 10, 2011.  I wrote about this article before way back in 2011:  

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2011/07/job-interview-taste-of-edmonton-artists.html

Dowd writes for the New York Times.  Now I found the full-length article and it’s really good.  Here's the whole article:

I knew I should have been out eating charred meat or watching a bad Michael Bay movie.

But I couldn’t help myself. Every July Fourth weekend, I get sucked into the spooky little dimension of “The Twilight Zone.” As the annual Syfy marathon proves, Rod Serling’s hypnotic show is as relevant as ever. 

If Anthony Weiner had watched it, he might have been more aware of how swiftly, and chillingly, our technology can turn on us. Prosecutors and reporters, dumbfounded by dramatic reversals in the cases of tabloid villains D.S.K. and Casey Anthony, might do well to keep in mind Serling’s postmodern mantra: Nothing is what it seems. 

Agnes Moorehead may seem to be a lonely farmwoman under attack by scary little robots, but after she kills them and takes an ax to their spaceship, it turns out that she’s the scary Amazon alien and the little men were U.S. astronauts from Earth. 

(Tracy’s opinion: I saw that episode.)

Ensorcelled once more by that inimitable, smoke-filled Serling voice, which is reassuring and unnerving at once, I wondered how the ingenious TV writer would have used social media and search engines in his plots. Given the way Serling treated time travel, space odysseys, robots and aliens, the 21st-century technology giants would probably have been ominous in one narrative and benign in another. (Just like in life.)
No doubt some characters would have been saved and others destroyed by Twitter, Facebook and Google. 

“When you look at ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes, everything is ambivalent,” said Serling’s friend Doug Brode, who, along with Serling’s widow, Carol, wrote “Rod Serling and ‘The Twilight Zone:’ The 50th Anniversary Tribute,” published in 2009. “Rod had an open mind to the good, the bad and the in-between of technology. He was a guarded optimist until the Kennedy assassination. After that, his work reflected his sense of hopelessness.” 

He said that Serling’s father, a middle-class grocer, lost his business in the Depression, so Rod had an early lesson in reversals. Serling also had a devastating experience while serving in World War II. During a lull at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Pacific, he was standing with his arm around a good friend and they were having their picture taken. At that moment, an Air Force plane dropped a box of extra ammunition that landed on Serling’s friend and flattened him so fatally that he couldn’t even be seen under the box. 

“Many ‘Zone’ episodes are about that split-second of fate where somebody arbitrarily gets spared or, absurdly, does not,” Brode said.

Serling himself lived a reversal, going from a trailer park after the war and 40 rejection slips in a row to having a big Hollywood house and a pool. But he grew disdainful of Babylon’s corrupting materialism and moved back to a cottage on Cayuga Lake in upstate New York. Serling fought furiously against censorship and ads, asking how you could write meaningful drama when it was interrupted every 15 minutes by “12 dancing rabbits with toilet paper?”

In one “Twilight Zone,” an inept screenwriter conjures up Shakespeare to help him. The Bard produces a dazzling screenplay but then storms out when the sponsor demands a lot of revisions.
Did Serling, who had a searing sense of social and racial justice, believe in God?

“Not Charlton Heston sitting on a cloud with the Ten Commandments, but absolutely, as a force in the universe, he did,” Brode said. “Nearly 35 years ago, George Lucas told me that the whole concept of the Force comes from Rod Serling.”

It’s impossible not to watch a stretch of the endlessly inventive Serling and not notice how many of his plots have been ripped off for movies, and how ahead of his time he was. In a popular new Samsung ad, a young woman jumps up from the lunch table and begins screaming because the tarantula screensaver on her colleague’s 4G phone is so lifelike; another guy at the table takes off his shoe and smashes it.

There’s a “Twilight Zone” episode where a Western gunfighter time travels forward and goes into a bar, where he sees a TV with a cowboy coming toward him. Thinking it’s real, he pulls out his pistol and shoots the screen.

Looking at this summer’s lame crop of movies and previews you can appreciate Serling’s upbraiding of the entertainment industry for “our mediocrity, our imitativeness, our commercialism and, all too frequently, our deadening and deadly lack of creativity and courage.” 

“The Twilight Zone” was never gangbusters in the ratings, and Serling — who smoked on screen — died at 50 from the ravages of six packs a day. He felt like a sellout and failure. He had sold syndication rights for his show to CBS for a few million, thinking he had not written anything of lasting value.

Sadly, he gave himself a trick ending. He died never realizing how influential he would be.

“Everything today is Rod Serling,” said Brode. “Everything.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/opinion/06dowd.html?_r=1&smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-TTZ-070611-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

My opinion: Reading this article about a TV writer really inspired me.  I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sure a lot of you experience reversal of situations at one time or another.

Always try and work hard: I will give you one of my own examples: When I was in gr.9, school was hard.  Then I got to gr. 10 and it was really easy.  That was because I was in mostly low classes like English 13, Social Studies 13, Science 10 and Applied Math 10.  I hardly ever had to study, work hard, or pay attention in class.  

Then in gr. 11, school was hard.  English and Social were fine.  What I learned in Applied Math 10, was gr. 8 and 9 math.  Applied Math 20 was really hard.  My skills and work ethic really atrophy in gr.10.  I didn’t have a work ethic anymore because I was so used to not working much.  

I had to study, work hard, pay attention in class so I can barely pass.  I had to endure my sister tutoring me in math nearly everyday so I can pass.

After that, I never let my skills or work ethic atrophy.  When I passed math and science, I learned that hard work does pay off.  I can work hard and pass.  I rather work hard and try and fail, then not try at all.  If I didn’t try, then I will always wonder “What if?”  

That’s why I always try and work hard.

Oct. 13 The Lovers: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Away she goes again” by Lauren Groff.  She reviews the book The Lovers by Vendela Vida on Jul. 4, 2010.  Here’s an expert:

Ambitious works usually proclaim their ambition stylistically, panoramically or on the level of the line, and it is easy for a reader to feel frustration when it appears that a writer isn't pushing herself to do something new.

It was only in light of Duras' lifelong project - to refine her story by retelling it - that I understood that Vida's project over her three novels is quite ambitious, even if her methods are quiet. In the end, by pushing deeper into her refrains of grief and travel, Vida's work becomes clearer and more sophisticated with every book she writes; and "The Lovers" is her best and most disturbing novel yet.

http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/The-Lovers-by-Vendela-Vida-3184554.php

My opinion: The part of “pushing yourself to do something new” stood out to me.  It’s not just about writing, but it could apply to life.

Adam Lewis Schroeder: Also in the Edmonton Journal on Jul. 4, 2010 was “Exotic land blossoms in winning tale.”  Robert J. Wiersema reviews In the Fabled East by Adam Lewis Schroeder.  Here’s an excerpt:

I assumed he was fast on his way to becoming a household name. Empress of Asia had everything -- great writing, a great story -- and Schroeder, who now lives in Penticton, was the sort of author who made good copy: photogenic, with a backstory of travels in Asia.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=e47bc3e1-dced-4d63-913a-922a1115c103

My opinion: I looked at his picture and studied it.  He looked like he could be an actor.  Here is the picture that was in the newspaper:

http://www.straight.com/life/travel-opens-adam-lewis-schroeders-path-fabled-east

He kind of reminded me of the actor Desmond Harrington.  They’re both handsome with dark hair.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004993/