***As of 3:30 p.m., this event has been canceled due to illness (the presenter, not Rod Serling or the Simpson family -- he passed away 34 years ago and they don't actually exist).***

Straight up, The Twilight Zone always creeped me the hell out.

I always found the subtly off-kilter parallel universe it illustrated far more haunting and worrisome than the more out-there slasher flicks and other ghoulish fare, possibly because it seemed considerably more likely to actually take place. When I was a kid the nightly news was rife with stories of "the disappeared" and other seemingly paranormal flights of freakishness that were in fact just products of brutal sadism masquerading as geopolitics, so Rod Serling's vision of a dark reality just around the corner from our own was tangibly terrifying.

I saw the movie version when I was 12, though I can't entirely remember why, since I had actively avoided the endless reruns of the original TV show at a time when at least four of the dozen terrestrial channels we got back then showed them seven days a week. The fact that Vic Morrow and two child actors died in a gruesome helicopter accident during production of the film further convinced me that the whole damned enterprise was simply a standing invitation for Evil itself to waltz in at any moment and thump the everloving bejeezus out of all that was good in the world. Yet there I sat at the old State Theater, enduring the madness with school chums gleeful at the notion of a gremlin ripping the wings off a flying airplane.

Never really trusted my friends after that.

Anyway, fast forward far too many years to mention here, and I confess I'm actually considering attending some events at this year's Rod Serling conference (he taught here up until his death in 1975, further unnerving your humble fraidycat reporter). There's a marathon of classic episodes Saturday night, but that's not really my thing. No, I'm not quite ready for that level of commitment. I need to find neutral ground between my brave new initiative and the timidity of my youth.

Which is why I'll be attending Diana DePasquale's "From Serling to Simpson" this afternoon at 3:30 in Emerson Suites (that's Homer, by the way, not OJ, who wouldn't be any less scary than TZ itself). I always knew The Simpsons frequently used elements from what Homer once called "that show about that twilighty zone," but apparently the connection is even stronger than I thought.

Anyway, you should be there (and at a bunch of the other events too, since so many are free and open to the public). In the meantime, check out my fave Twilight Zone homage, from one of those "Treehouse of Horror" episodes they do after Halloween every year. Submitted for your approval, natch.