The Hot Zone The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Publisher: Anchor
Year: 1995
Pages: 448

Some of the information contained in this review may spoil the book for you, if you plan on reading it. Please be aware.

To this day, one of my favorite popcorn film remains Outbreak, the 1995 thriller starring Dustin Hoffman and Cuba Gooding Jr. as they battle a sudden outbreak of an impossibly deadly African filovirus on American soil. Something about it fascinated me—for several years, in fact, I decided that I wanted to become a virologist, such the was the hold that this new concept of the deadly virus held on me.

Though I knew that Outbreak‘s “Motaba” was based on the very real Ebola family of viruses, it wasn’t until very recently that I realized the story for Outbreak was based on a real book, itself based on a real event surrounding a real virus. Richard Preston’s 1995 novel The Hot Zone was one of the first widely popular “scientific thrillers,” a sort of blend of hard science and soap opera drama.

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§3564 · January 31, 2009 · 1 comment · Tags:

The “Is it spring yet?” edition.

  1. The Dillinger Escape Plan – [Ire Works #13] Mouth Of Ghosts
  2. Sentenced – [Frozen #03] Dead Leaves
  3. Nick Drake – [Five Leaves Left #06] Cello Song
  4. Giants – [Demo #02] Berlin Rooftop
  5. Tenhi – [Kauan #02] Huomen
  6. Sergei Rachmaninov (Vladimir Ashkenazy; André Previn, London Symphony Orchestra) – [Complete Piano Concertos, Rhapsody CD1 #05] Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18: 2. Adagio sostenuto
  7. Conor Oberst – [Conor Oberst #01] Cape Canaveral
  8. The Tea Party – [TRIPtych #12] Gone
  9. Metallica – [S&M CD2 #08] One
  10. The Decemberists – [The Tain #01] The Tain
§3566 · January 30, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: , ,

The “Back after break” edition.

  1. Sondre Lerche – [Don't Be Shallow #03] I Know I Know
  2. Paco de Lucía – [Antología CD1 #01] Almoraima
  3. Fiona Apple – [Extraordinary Machine (Brion version, unmastered) #05] Oh Well
  4. Paragon of Beauty – [Comfort Me, Infinity #01] This Impossible Moment
  5. Cave In – [Jupiter #06] Requiem
  6. Ben Folds – [Songs for Goldfish #05] Weather Channel Music
  7. Mogwai – [Rock Action #01] Sine Wave
  8. Sigur Rós – [( ) #02] Fyrsta
  9. Fastball – [All the Pain Money Can Buy #08] G.O.D. (Good Old Days)
  10. Darkane – [Rusted Angel #06] A Wisdoms Breed
§3546 · January 16, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: , ,

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Buffalo Beast, a scathing satirical people, has finally published their annual “50 Most Loathsome People In America” article for 2008.

As always, here are three of my favorites, and a link to the full article.

35. Dina Lohan

Charges: Fame isn’t the only thing that screws up child stars; it starts with self-obsessed, psychopathic parents living out their failed ambitions through their hapless offspring (Dina has been telling false stories of her days as a Rockette and Broadway actress for years). Her college-aged daughter may be a rehab veteran and serial drunk driver, but that’s no reason for mom not to televise the warping of daughter number two, a pre-rhinoplasty 14-year-old with no discernible talent or personality who calls the absent Lindsay her “role model,” and an 11-year-old boy whose future mugshot will no doubt become iconic. You may think your parents sucked, but at least they didn’t do it on TV.

Exhibit A: Rarely has a person’s life been so succinctly synopsized by real events as when Lohan’s house caught fire with her minor children alone inside while she was busy accepting—no shit—a “Mother of the Year” award.

Sentence: Age, ugliness, poverty, obscurity.

31. Stephenie Meyer

Charges: She’s the unforgivably perky Mormon mom who wrote the Twilight Series of books, currently draining IQ points from Western Civilization. This silly wank-off vampire fantasy for teenage girls has been embraced by legions of sad, middle-aged women who fight for access to their daughters’ sticky copies of the books. It’s an embarrassing spectacle for all Americans who aren’t actively participating in it. Meyer admits she can’t handle the better class of vampires and has never watched a whole vampire movie, even the more anemic kind: “I’ve seen little pieces of Interview with a Vampire when it was on TV, but I kind of always go YUCK! I don’t watch R-rated movies, so that really cuts down on a lot of the horror. And I think I’ve seen a couple of pieces of The Lost Boys, which my husband liked, and he wanted me to watch it once, but I was like, ‘It’s creepy!’”

Exhibit A: The hit movie version of Twilight, featuring Meyer’s dreary characters, a tiresome teenage girl and the pathetic “vegetarian” vampire who loves her, mooning around on first base for two hours and giving vampires everywhere a bad name.

Sentence: Meyer encounters a non-vegetarian vampire, who kills her immediately and gruesomely in front of an appreciative audience of horror film fans.

17. Rod Blagojevich

Charges: Some things are worse than being bald—Blagojevic [sic] should have given that senate seat to John Edwards’s barber. A sad truth about Blago is that he’s not really in trouble for corruption, abuse of power or favor-trading, all of which are routines practices in just about every elected official’s office across the nation; he’s in trouble for being so damn rude about it, and for not being smart enough to realize what “appreciation” means to more careful favor-traders.

Exhibit A: “[O]ur recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ‘em the fuck out of there and get us some editorial support.”

Sentence: Flesh removed a pound at a time and used as topping on deep dish pizza, which he is force-fed while his wife spews obscenities at him and Eugene Robinson writes scathing editorials about it.

§3539 · January 12, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: , ,

Casino Royale Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1953/2002
Pages: 192

When I was a young teenager, and my unrealized desire for fighting, guns, and explosions was at an all-time high, I was for perhaps 18 months a fan of Don Pendleton’s The Executioner, getting them five or six at a time from the library.

When a friend—an avid Bond enthusiast of the old-fashioned sort who owns all the old Fleming novels—dropped Casino Royale off in my cubicle just before Christmas, I was a little leery. I am a part-time Bond fan, having enjoyed Goldeneye (movie and N64 game) and loved the movie version of Casino Royale. Looking over my friend’s vintage copy of Casino Royale, I was struck by how similar it seemed the the pulp action series I had consumed as a young lad. It even had the advertisements in the back for other series on the publisher’s imprint.

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§3528 · January 9, 2009 · 2 comments · Tags: , , ,