News and notes from Reston (tm).

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Reston on the Teevee: Relive Carefree, Slightly Less Airborne Pathogen-Free Summer of '89 in Feel-Good Movie of the Year

Three decades after a minor mishap in our plastic fantastic planned community put Reston on the infectious disease map -- literally -- we can all relive the carefree, go-lucky days of 1989 with a movie debuting on the National Geographic channel on Memorial Day.

The fancy trailer for The Hot Zone -- based on the Richard Preston book of the same name -- features more clips of hand-washing and zipped-up biohazard suits than exterior shots of whatever Hollywood thinks Issac Newton Square looks like, but this is the one shot that (we think) gets at the real-world fun of housing a facility full of infectious, dying crab-eating macaques next to a daycare center.

LOL, and be sure to grab the disinfectant spray popcorn before tuning this in on Monday! We're pretty sure the movie won't capture the drab banality of the actual building, which has since been torn down and replaced with yet another daycare center (no truth to the rumor that its mascot is the Fightin' Ebolas). The movie's star -- Ebola Reston, not Julianna Margulies -- has made a few cameo appearances in the years since, most recently in the Philippines. And for added fun that could only happen in the Year of Our Lord 2019, the comments on the YouTube page housing the movie trailer have devolved into a series of anti-vaxxer rants, the end.

1 comment:

  1. Formerly From the UplandsJune 2, 2019 at 12:35 PM

    The two principles in the Hot Zone are now teaching in the Kansas State University Vet School, which is adjacent to the building National Bio and Agro-defense Facility. I am in their vicinity. I though I left them behind in Reston.

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