This was an interesting account of a biological incident at a monkey house near Washington DC, along with plenty of background information about the Marburg and Ebola viruses. I didn't mind the redundancy about which others have complained; the repetition of some of the information about viral functions prompted retention, along with stirring the imagination as to the effects of a killer virus.

After reading the book, I performed some web searches an found several sites advertising hiking excursions to Mt. Elgon's Kitum Cave in Africa, which is believed to be he home of the Ebola/Marburg strains, though it's presently unknown which animal is the natural host. Let me tell you, if you are sufficiently insane to visit Kitum Cave after reading The Hot Zone, then you are living proof of Darwin In Action.

I liked the author's analogy about fatal viruses, such as Ebola and HIV, acting at the Earth's own antibodies, protecting the environment from encroachment by humans in places where the Earth doesn't want humans to be fiddling with things. Invasions of the deep rain forests and encounters with fatal biological agents therein are warnings for humans to stay away.

Have everyone in your family read The Hot Zone, so that next time someone gets sick you will have all sorts of terminology to throw around the dinner table -- extreme amplification, crash-and-bleed-out and other delightful descriptions about the effects of disease on humans. Enjoy.

When my step-kids were 11 and 9, they LOVED this movie (and I did too). During one viewing, they asked me why someone would have an imaginary friend. Both said they had never had one. I told them that, based on what we were seeing in Drop Dead Fred, children invent imaginary friends because they are having hard times with childhood, they might have sad family problems or mean parents. Inventing an imaginary friend is apparently one way to cope with such conditions.

Well, the kids took this information to school with them, and spread it all around. Seems a few of the kids in their social orbits had (or in the past had had) imaginary friends, so all of a sudden it is rumored in school that these kids come from abusive or problem homes with bad or mean mothers. Children were upset, teachers worried, parents outraged and so forth... and it all got blamed on me.

Drop Dead Fred is a terrific movie, but if your kids ask you any questions about imaginary friends, just tell them you don't know. You won't regret doing so.

This fine, riveting film is a thousand times better than that disjointed pile of schlock starring Demi Moore's ex-husband.

This film is probably the only remaining medium in which to view the magnificent B-36 in action, and it's well worth seeing for that. Also, those of us familiar with the 1950s Fort Worth area, Amon Carter Field and Carswell Air Force Base, will recognize some of the scenery.

Why were the B-36's propellors on the backs of its wings? Another reviewer touched upon the reason, saying "six churning and four burning." Standard propellor aircraft, with props in front of the wings, are pulled through the air. Because the B-36 had jet engines also, it was pushed through the air, necessitating propellor placement in back so the props also would be pushing.

This is a guy film, so don't expect your girlfriend or wife to enjoy it. And, guys aren't exactly going to find every moment riveting -- you can take breaks, and grab more food and beer from the kitchen, during the June Allyson lovey-dovey parts.

This is a fine companion piece to Leonard Mosley's "Marshall: Hero For Our Times." Together, the two volumes provide a managable portrait of a man who conceivably can be considered the most influential American of the 20th Century. Forrest Pogue's volumes are far more comprehensive, though not from a human-interest standpoint. Cray's and Mosley's works explore Marshall's more sensitive facets.

Marshall's towering integrity (he wrote no memoirs because he wanted no one profiting from them) has kept him in history's shadow, though he wasn't exactly cloaked in anonymity during WWII (since he reported to Roosevelt, and gave orders to MacArthur and Eisenhower). I hope more young people will read about him, and emulate his character.

[H]is name was placed upon one of the largest public assistance programs in history, the European Reconstruction Plan.

If you've, uh, like ever heard, like, kids these days and they, you know, like talk among themselves and that sort of thing, like visiting or some stuff like that, can you, I mean, you know what I mean, do you ever hear them, uh, you know, talk like the five kids in this show, you know, with, like coherent sentences that have subjects and verbs and, like, uh, even adjectives and that sort of thing, you know? I mean -- you know what I mean? -- like when some of them answered questions to the others and everything was, like, in whole sentences, and nobody, uh, ever stammered around and like got off the subject or anything like that, you know. I guess that's because all these teenagers, uh, were like 22 years old or something, but I really like liked the movie, you know.

This is a great movie, explaining why Rolling Stone Magazine named it one of their Top Ten Films of the 1980s. The behind-the-scenes portrayals of newsroom activities and personnel are pricelessly entertaining and interesting, though I have no way of knowing whether it was realistic. I do know, however, that some of the plot details which touched upon journalism principles and practices were substantively accurate, thus it's appropriate to extend some credence to the rest of the material.

The character Aaron Altman, however, was an absolute simpering sniveling twinkie pantywaist from the word Go, and it's no wonder a dynamo like Jane Craig (albeit she was a tad flaky) kept finding other guys upon whom to focus her attraction.

And William Hurt's anchor-star Tom was a fine snapshot of the sorts of fifty-dollar-haircut, five-dollar-brain men our major broadcast TV networks put in the anchor spots for their evening news programs. Hurt completely nailed that role to the wall.

The only thing more astounding than the degree of thought, care, judgment and energy these con men dedicated to their dishonest trade is the fall-on-the-floor-laughing GULLIBILITY of some of the victims (marks) they ripped off. Given the plain old greed that propelled most of the victims into the traps they pretty much set for themselves, they absolutely deserved to be skinned as thoroughly as they were.

The stories in this book are eminently enjoyable, and they really make you wonder what sort of big con games are flourishing across the USA even as we speak.

As Bob Denver, for all practical purposes, became "Gilligan," in real life -- as Frances Bouvier became "Aunt Bea," and Bob Keeshan "Captain Kangaroo" -- the young and beautiful Melvin Gibson, in this earliest of roles, was incredibly, unbelievably fortunate to avoid career-long typecasting as nothing but a cheesecake, eye-candy, silver-screen pretty-boy.

This fine debut film, in which Melvin Gibson had to do little more than look extremely nice, exude male lusciousness and wear tight leather pants, came dangerously close to relegating him to Fabio status, committing him to a relatively brief film future of appearance-only, stand-and-model roles in subsequent movies. However, the overwhelming power of Melvin's acting talent (facial expressions, talking, walking, and driving vehicles) -- the raw guts of thespian talent and drive -- managed to save him from a perpetuation of calendar pin-up roles, catapulting him to an infinitely higher plane of cinematic accomplishment than is accessible by a mere male model (see Bird On A Wire, The River, Lethal Weapon VII, etc, Melvin's list is literally endless).

It was that determination which wrenched Melvin Gibson out of the male-model mold and elevated him to Oscar quality. Think of Gomer and Goober Pyle, of Herman Munster, Dan Rather and Sheila Jackson Lee... and see how intertwined, how enmeshed, how tied up those actors became with their roles. Melvin Gibson was lucky to avoid the same sort of typecasting that severely restricted the careers of these unfortunate folks, and would have condemned him to being known for the rest of his life as nothing but a darn good looking hunk of meat (as they say).

We all knew Goober Pyle -- and we can all say for a definite fact that Melvin Gibson (Mad Max) is no Goober Pyle.

The film Deliverance has touched my life in many ways:

My neighbor, whenever he encounters someone who seems a little slow on the uptake, invariably will say, "Hand that boy a banjo."

A friend of mine was called "Bobby" until we were in college, and Deliverance was released. Immediately after seeing it, he insisted upon being called "Bob" from that point forward. He even demanded that his parents call him "Bob." He wanted NO association whatever with Ned Beatty's character "Bobby."

Upon numerous occasions, in all sorts of circumstances, friends of mine have admonished someone to "squeal like a pig." It almost never fails to evoke laughter.

Deliverance is a terrific old film. Enjoy.