NodeJS Request not returning

Pretty new to Node, and I'm trying to implement a twitter stream into my node/express app.

This file is inside a separate stream.js file inside my routes folder, and it's called via ajax from a client side jquery script.

I've looked and compared the http.request on several other sites and I've tried multiple configurations but nothing is budging. Everything up to http.request callback fires, but I can't get a response

    var http = require('http')
      , events = require('events')
      , url = require('url')
      , fs = require('fs')
      , path = require('path')
      , sys = require('sys')

      , tweet_emitter = new events.EventEmitter()
      , options = {
                host: "api.twitter.com",
                port: 80,
                path: "/1/statuses/public_timeline.json",
                method: "GET"
      }

    var getTweets = function() {
        console.log('getTweets');// fires fine
        var req = http.request( options, function( res ) {
            console.log('STATUS: ' + res.statusCode);// nothing here executes
            console.log('HEADERS: ' + JSON.stringify(res.headers));

            var data = "";

            res.setEncoding('utf8');
            res.on('data',function( chunk ) {
                data += chunk;
                console.log(chunk);
            });

            res.on('end',function() {
                var tweets = JSON.parse( data );
                if( tweets.length ) tweet_emitter.emit( 'tweets', tweets )
            })

            req.end()
        });

        req.on('error', function(e) {
            console.log('problem with request: ' + e.message);
        })
    }

    setInterval(getTweets, 5000 );

    exports.stream = function(req, res){
        var listener = tweet_emitter.addListener("tweets", function( tweets ) {
            res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type" : "text/plain" });
            res.write( JSON.stringify(tweets) );
            res.end();

            clearTimeout(timeout);
        });

        var timeout = setTimeout(function() {
            res.writeHead( 200, { "Content-Type" : "text/plain" });
            res.write(JSON.stringify([]));
            res.end();

            tweet_emitter.removeListener(listener);
        },10000);
    };