“Into every life a little rain must fall. For some this is a blessing, for some a curse, and for some it may be both in disguise. Meet Rama Rodriguez–account number 2425133, 4.2 stars, no accidents. A storm chaser in a late-model Honda Accord. But what is a surge when the surge never ends? For Mr. Rodriguez’s next pickup is flagged on an unmarked back road of an unnumbered census designation between Old Hither and Yon Terrace… in The Twilight Zone.”
“Say hello to Mr. Robert Patton, undertaking the most dangerous act that mankind has yet devised: stepping out of his front door. Because somewhere out in that angle of short memoried softwood and lost soccer balls lurks something not native to the crisscrossed streets of man’s housing-developed world. Something lean, and hungry. A creature wholly unknown to Mr. Patton’s cozy world, but attested to in numerous travelogues… from The Twilight Zone.”
“It’s a lonely vigil being the last knight and defender of the esoteric, even if only the corner-of-the-pub variety. Take a barstool next to your new old friend Matthew Blazek, topic expert. Tip one back and learn a thing or two, for it’s last call, and you may soon need both a stiff drink and a bit of advice–because this public house, along with you and its other occupants, are about to be transported to a time and a place that can’t be. A misremembering by the universe. An anachronism wrapped in a mystery, shunned to a quiet corner… of The Twilight Zone.”
“These two outlined, highlighted, tired eyes belong to Ms. Naomi Cabrera. Following the press of a button they’ve just slid off an instrument panel familiar to many of us: a brass oracle that’s long since taken the place of a man or woman in a hat, who once guided us up into the belly of a steel-boned, stone-clad, concrete beast. Did departed Romans pay their ferryman for his boat, or for safe escort? When the tower is alone, and angry, what revenge does it take on those tiny homunculi that circulate within? Naomi is about to learn, because she’s just pressed the wrong floor; a number between numbers, with a broken light; home to empty suites, the drone of air conditioners, and a small import/export concern with one other office… in The Twilight Zone.”
“Measure, tick the grease pencil and rack focus on one Eric Cheung. A man of his time, once conjured by two thin threads applied with a bit of spirit gum and a ‘comic’ accent. But the comedy masks, real and false, are not on the propman’s call list today. Our man’s sides specify a location well beyond the comfortable sets and Kino daylight; past the disused facades of once popular genres; past even the empty business offices of 90 year old hack writers and producers too cold to even meet with death in this town; through a parking lot, over an arroyo; somewhere in memory’s tall grass between the Ventura Freeway… and The Twilight Zone.”
“You’ve rolled past him on moving sidewalks at every wheel and spoke; half-watched as a dozen stewardesses poured him a thousand tiny drinks; maneuvered a bag between him and endless racks of tchotchkes that somehow serve only to make their emblazoned airport feel less like a definable location. Risk an extra minute in your boarding group, squint into the sunbeam, and you may just make out the tall form of Shlomo Harnas–citizen of the world, native to nowhere. Neither super spy nor wandering jew, just another mug trying to catch a codeshare to a little-trafficked field coded ‘H-O-M-E,’ with a connecting flight… through The Twilight Zone.”