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The Slice: Get in the right zone to celebrate new year
It has been suggested that my annual drumbeating for the New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day “Twilight Zone” marathon on the Syfy channel represents open hostility toward First Night.
Nonsense.
In fact, I’ll go ahead and compare and contrast First Night with the TZ marathon. Then you can decide for yourself where my allegiances lie.
At First Night, there are no talking dolls threatening to kill you. At least not that I know about.
First Night is real. Well, much of it anyway.
At First Night, nobody tries to trick you into going to hell. Well, not in so many words.
None of the cookbooks used by chefs involved in First Night is called “To Serve Man.”
Most First Night activities have nothing to do with the looming shadow of nuclear war.
At First Night, they don’t take bandages off your face and reveal that, while you look like Elly May Clampett, most other people have decidedly porcine facial features.
None of the many kids at First Night has the power to turn you into a jack-in-the-box. (Need to double-check that.)
Chances are, if you go to First Night, you probably won’t wind up as an exhibit in a Martian zoo.
There are people at First Night, though perhaps not a fetching robot programmed to be your adoring companion.
At First Night, breaking your glasses doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.
At First Night, irrational neighbors don’t beat down the door of your bomb shelter.
You can walk around at First Night, whereas in the TZ episode called “Walking Distance,” we mostly learn that you can’t go home again.
At First Night, there isn’t a lot of time travel and clocks follow a fairly predictable path toward midnight.
At First Night, our vision of the future doesn’t have to be one of totalitarian conformity.
At First Night, odd or unexplained occurrences are not necessarily the work of space aliens testing us to see how quickly we will turn on each other.
At First Night, you aren’t an airline passenger looking out the window and watching some strange creature rip up a wing and one of the engines.
TODAY’S SLICE QUESTION: Any resolutions?