Florida

There may not be many people who are more protective of Florida than the journalist and novelist Carl Hiaasen. In highly comical ways his characters wade through a state that is gaining population faster than raging flood waters. Carl shows no mercy toward developers and politicians. They are the enemy.

Carl has famously created a character named Sink, who now only has one eye, lives under a bridge, and is a former governor of the Sunshine State. Carl's books are hilariously funny, while trying to make a point.

In one of his books, 1987's Double Whammy, Carl gives us R.J. Decker, a disgraced newspaper photographer turned private investigator. Decker is hired to investigate cheating in a Florida bass-fishing tournaments, which draws him into a dangerous, chaotic plot involving murder and a memorable character, the vigilante former governor Skink, who has one eye and lives under a bridge.

RJ Decker has been turned into a recurring ABC broadcast show based on Mr. Hiaasen's P.I. character who was once a news photographer for a Miami newspaper, played by Scott Speedman. Mr. Hiaasen is himself a journalist for  the Miami Herald. Many of Mr. Hiaasen's hilarious books have newspaper backdrops, and great South Beach colored pastel covers

 RJ is quite likeable with emerging facial growth that might some day be a better beard. He's a railroaded ex-con, who wears colorful floral shirts with no T-shirt, and was married to a woman who divorced hum to live with her lesbian detective wife. RJ tell us he always knew his wife was "bi".

While spending 18 months in jail protecting his manhood, RJ took courses and passed the test to become a licensed private investigator. However, being a convicted felon for beating up a robber breaking into his car to steal his cameras, who happened to be the troublesome son of a corrupt state senator with aspirations for the Governor's mansion, RJ cannot carry a handgun. But his brain works fine, and he helps solve some cases that his journalist wife's lesbian  detective is having trouble solving. RJ gets in the way quite often. But with good results. His ex graciously (there is no animosity between them) lets him live in the pool house since his trailer home fell into the sinkhole. in the trailer park. Home sweet home for Hiaasen's people.

We are first introduced to RJ as he sits on the courthouse steps admiring a wrapped candy bar. An attractive lithesome woman plops down next to him and with some suggestive talk we next see RJ in the back of his car in an empty, indoor parking garage having sex, steaming up the windows, with her emerging adjusting her dress, and RJ at least naked from the waist up, wondering what the hell just happened. If only it were that simple.

Turns out she's the step-sister of the youth RJ took out when he caught him trying to break into his car. It didn't matter that the kid "threw the first punch." RJ is found guilty, a verdict heavily sealed when the lithesome young woman testifies in court that RJ is the man who beat up her young step-brother. She felt sorry for him in the parking lot, since she knew where he'd be going after she left the witness stand.

It's great to finally see the imagination of Mr. Hiaasen come to the little box. The Florida settings are authentic, and not where the tourists are. Carl is listed as one of the many executive producers. What do all those executive producers do? Get paid, I guess.

I've been reading Mr. Hiaasen's books for years, and even re-reading them. I even read the YA books. Right now I'm re-reading Tourist Season where Brian Keyes, a former reporter for the Miami Sun tries to investigate the series of deaths being perpetuated on Florida residents and tourists by a wacko columnist for the paper, Skip Wiley. Skip leads a four member squad of nut jobs who are the Las Noches de Diciembre and have plans to disrupt the Orange Bowl parade and cause harm to the beauty queen.

Ship Wiley believes if he causes enough damage to the reputation of Florida, all the people who moved there in the past decades will leave and the state will revert to what he remembers it was like when he was a kid. The good old days. Everyone wants the good old days.

There are advantages to re-reading a book I have no memory of how it turns out. I don't have to buy another book. And, there is no addition to be made to the towering stack of books shown in my nightstand photo that approaches the ceiling.

The photo was taken in 2009, and still would be representative of the height, which means I have subtracted book as I've added. The stack drives my wife nuts, but we do not actually have room for another bookcase. I've love to have a stack of books frame a doorway and walls, but I'm not going to get away with that in this lifetime.

In one of many prior postings, I've remarked how Mr. Hiaasen uses what for me are to die for phrases. I'll try memorialize a few more here.

Viceroy Winston, a former running back for the Miami Dolphins, and a member of Las Noches de Diciembra crew, when happy, flashes his "touch down smile."

As he another member of the wacko brigade are casing out the beauty pageant as security guards, they come across some rehearsals of the contestants for the pageant.

"Viceroy Wilson had never seen such large bright teeth on a white person. You could tile swimming pool with teeth like that."

With a metaphor that, I'd like to go back add the swimming pool tile to the description of Good Day New York's  Tina Cervasio who can't stop preening and tossing her head and showing off her choppers.

The latest episode of RJ's encounters to solving a crime, are to interview people connected with being a high school's mascot dressed as a green sea cumber. Pure Florida. I don't know what the reviews are for RJ Decker, but it is an appealing show. With Mr. Hiaasen somewhere near the helm, it should get renewed. I'll be disappointed if it isn't

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

That Was The Week That Was

The above title was the name of a show in the early 1960s that satirized the weekly news. Long before John Olivcr and Saturday Night Live there was TW3. Get it? Saturday Night Live might be in its 50th year, but I'm older. David Frost was one of the presenters.

We can also have news that is in itself satire, if unintentionally. Last week saw a wiseguy, Baby Boomer real estate developer from Queens, New York, President Donald J. Trump, sit in his house in front of a gold leaf fireplace, next to the new Japanese Prime Minster, Sanae Takaichi, a diminutive female that if she was sitting on a long bench NYC subway seat in a North Face puff coat there could easily be 7 more of her comfortably seated next to her, even if a pocket book or two were wedged between them.

An exchange between the president and the Japanese prime minister became news. The NYT carried the story on Page 9 in Friday's paper, led in from a teaser on the front page: Trump Makes Joke About Pearl Harbor as Japan's Leader Sits Next to Him. The online NYT is even better. There is a short video of the exchange so you can her it.

It was Sauae's first visit to the White House and The Donald made it a memorable one when fed a cue that contained the word "surprise" in it, when a member of the press asked why Japan and other allies had no advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. The president responded, "we didn't tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise."

That could have answered the question, but the Donald kept talking. He could have said we didn't tell Germany we were coming to Normandy beach on June 6th, 1944 not to sun ourselves, but to invade,  but he didn't. He, being a wiseguy real estate developer from Queens, New York, tilts his head toward Ms. Sanae Takaichi and says:  "who knows better about surprise than Japan, OK? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK? Right?

There was audible laughter from the off camera people, but not belly laughs. Seated sext to Ms. Takaichi appears to be an interpreter who no doubt was instantly translating the president's remarks. Ms. Takaichi appears a bit uneasy, catches her breath and says nothing to be translated.

The president was of course was not letting the opportunity get past him to enlighten the press what the word "surprise" really meant and provide an example. This of course was news, and was typical of the unfiltered president. Quite honestly, I being a wiseguy from Queens, New York (not a real estate developer but a onetime homeowner in my birth borough) would have said the same thing. But then again, I wasn't elected president.

The Donald was criticized for breaking diplomatic protocol. He was considered rude. The encounter reminded me of the long ago  utterance of the advertising executive Jerry Della Femina who umpteen years ago pitched the idea that the advertising agency use the tagline for the emerging Japanese companies' goods coming to the States: "From those wonderful folks who brought you Pearl Harbor," for the new Panasonic account. Jerry turned it into a book.  Being a wiseguy from Queens, I bought it.

I'm sure there are Japanese comedians. The prime minister is not one of them. What I would have loved to have seen was Sanae Takaichi gently take hold of President Trump's right arm and tell him, "Well, the atomic bomb was a surprise too, no?" The room would have erupted.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Much is being made of ChapGPT and all the other AI powered platforms and how they are going to change the world, do everything for humans, and basically replace us. Puhleeeze.

Can AI create a response to President Trump, that would knock him off his chair? The answer is no. AI is not a wiseguy real estate developer from Queens, NY. I asked ChatGPT:

"What could the Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi have said to President Trump when he talked of Pearl Harbor being a surprise too."

Here is the response verbatim.

Based on reporting of the exchange, Sanae Takaichi actually didn’t say anything sharp back to Donald Trump—she stayed composed and largely silent, which is typical of high-stakes diplomacy.

But if you're asking what she could have said, there are a few realistic responses ranging from diplomatic to subtly firm:

---

1. Diplomatic (most realistic)

“History teaches us the importance of trust and communication between allies.”

This would gently redirect the conversation without escalating tension.

---

2. Calm but pointed

“That is precisely why transparency among allies matters today.”

This acknowledges the history while turning it into a modern criticism—without sounding confrontational.

---

3. Historically grounded

“Japan and the United States have worked hard to move beyond that history and build a partnership based on openness.”

This reinforces the alliance and avoids getting pulled into the remark.

---

4. Firmer pushback (less likely in that setting)

“Pearl Harbor is a tragic chapter in history—one we treat with seriousness, not comparison.”

That would signal discomfort more clearly, but risks creating a public diplomatic clash.

---

Why she likely stayed silent

In situations like this, leaders often avoid reacting because:

• Public disagreement can damage alliances
• Japan–U.S. relations are strategically critical
• Letting the comment pass prevents it from escalating further

In fact, reports say her restrained reaction drew mixed reactions at home—some praised her professionalism, others wished she had pushed back.

All this proves is that ChatGpt is boring.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Unsolved

Rembrandt's "Christ in the Storm
on the Sea of Galiilee"

Who could have predicted that a mid-week NYT Arts section would contain two stories about festering mysteries. About art, of course.

One story is about the heist 36 years ago in 1990 from the Isabel Gardner Museum in Boston where 13 pieces of art were made off with: Vermeers, Rembrandts. The good stuff.

The story is touched off no doubt because the heist was perpetrated in the early morning hours after St. Patrick's Day. Thirty-six years is not a milestone anniversary, but the heist is remembered because this past Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day. I'm not sure anyone raised a glass of Guinness on Tuesday hoping to solve the crime. If the case had a temperature, it would be considered so cold it would be measured at Absolute Zero, -460° F.

The Luckless FBI agent, Geoffrey Kelly, who handled the case has now produced a book, "Thirteen Perfect Fugitives," outlining the cases made against 13 figures. No spoiler alert here. He doesn't know who did it either, but spins the tale of all the colorful possibilities that start with a Corsican gang, Whitey Bulger and the I.R.A. and some Boston career criminals

There was recently an obituary for one of the guards who opened the door and let the two thieves in who were dressed as Boston police. He was a suspect his entire life as being the inside man, but nothing ever came of it. Just like all the suspicions about the potential suspects, many of whom are now dead.

The article closes with a quote from Kelly who challenges all the armchair detectives who think they could have found the artworks: "If you think it's so easy, you go find them." The reward is now $10 million.

But who would come forward and produce the pieces to collect $10 million who wouldn't themselves be forever a suspect in the theft? A reward is almost meaningless. 

As for myself, I like to think someone sits in our of those vaults in Amsterdam or Antwerp where rich people stow their original art while displaying good copies in their penthouses, and are enjoying themselves.

We eventually found out who Deep Throat was and a mystery was solved.

Bansky's Girl With Balloon...
Love is in the Bin

The other story involves Bansky and the Effort to Unmask His Identity.

This one to me lacks the charm of a heist. According to Reuters news service, the identity is confirmed as being someone named Robin Gunningham.

The identification is said to have been made possible by consulting a police report on a court filing associated with Bansky's arrest when he used a billboard in New York in 2000 to show off his art.

Ever since the 1990s and 2000s there have been attempts to identify the artist who has been leaving his work on public streets and buildings. The value for Bansky art has soared.

The identification of Bansky through a police report can be compared to identifying the 1977 New York City serial killer Son of Sam to be David Berkowitz, through researching a parking ticket issued to his car parked on Shore Road in Brooklyn, near his last killing and maiming.  Why was a guy from Yonkers parked in Brooklyn? The rest is history.

The summer of 1977 was consumed by trying to find this guy after it became known that a series of shootings were emerging as the work of a killer wielding a .44 caliber pistol. Mr. Berkowitz is still in jail.

Those with a good memory will remember that the Bansky painting, "Girl with a Balloon" was put up for auction in 2018 at swanky Sotheby's auction house in London. Someone paid £1.04 million for it (with fees) to then see the artwork be driven by a hidden mechanical device to slide down through the frame, pass through the teeth of an unseen shredder, to emerge now as "Love is in the Bin."

Surely someone was in on it, because how did a bulky. heavier than usual frame that contained a shredder go undetected? No matter. The "Love is in the Bin" has recently sold for £18,582.000. 

Speaking to the press after the shredding sale, Sotheby's Senior Director Alex Branczik famously commented. "It appears we just got Bansky-ed". The auction house proceeded to describe the shredded Bansky as "the first artwork in history to have been created during a live auction." Whatever. They made lemonade from a lemon.

Years ago in NYC, in the 60s, there was a precursor to what became the graffiti movement, when all over the place you could see someone had written "Taki 183."

The tag was written with a black indelible marker, with nothing else with it. I first saw it on a street light pole outside the family flower shop on 3rd Avenue and 18th Street. It was scrawled everywhere, in all 5 boroughs.

Turns out the "tag" 183 meant 183rd Street in Washington Heights where a Greek teenager named Demetrios lived. Taki was his nickname.

Mysteries remain mysteries until they are no longer mysteries. They all have a life span. A magician's trick is still a trick until you know how it was done. A secret is not a secret if two people know it.

It was 76 days before the kidnapped Lindbergh baby was found in the woods near the house. The remains were disturbed by animals. An autopsy established the baby died the night of the kidnapping.

Before the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski there was George Metesky, the Mad Bomber in NYC who went undetected for 16 years before his arrest in Waterbury, Ct. in 1957.

In the 1940s and 1950s, George had taken to leaving bombs in all sorts of public places in New York City, 33 in fact. They exploded, but did not kill anyone. He was a major nuisance. A forensic psychiatrist James A . Brussel described a man who nearly exactly matched Mr. Metesky, who was finally brought to justice after Con Edison's records were painfully researched in a cellar by Alice Kelly, who found a case of a former Con Edison worker who was disgruntled by a workplace injury..

When the police arrested Metesky in Waterbury living with his sisters they found his bomb workshop. George, who was an electrician and mechanic, even made his own screws for his devices, He was meticulous. He was incarcerated in a psychiatric prison and released in his old age. He died in 1994.

Of more recent memory is the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who went undetected for 17 years before his arrest in a cabin in Montana.

Ted's specialty were letter bombs that did kill and maim several academics that he mailed them to. Kaczynski was a mathematical genius who no one remembered in class when it became known who he was.

He was found after his brother recognized the published paper that Ted had written to the newspapers as to his motives and how technology was warping the human race.. His brother recognized the writing, and the rest is history. Kaczynski died in prison in 2023.

Of course the current elephant in the room these days is the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Savanah Guthrie, a host on NBC's Today Show who was snatched form her Tucson-area home on the evening of January 31, and reported missing on February 1.

Door bell camera footage shows the heavily masked intruder. But that still left clues which have not yet closed the case. A lot of smart people and technology has been thrown at this case, and so far it's still a dead end. Daily reports have disappeared from the news as the case gets frosty.

Is the kidnapper(s) that smart, or just lucky? Has something obvious has been overlooked? It's obvious that if something were to crack the case it's going to come from a source not yet considered or known about. Or will it be something overlooked?

Stay tuned. We might be alive when this one gets solved.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Alan Trustman

It seems like it's longer, but it's only about a week since I've posted a substantial piece about anything.

If I have any alert readers, none came forward to ask me "what's up." Until now, I just didn't react enough to any news item, or an obituary, (they can be the same thing), until reading the New York Times obit on Alan Trustman by Alex Williams in Wednesday's paper.

The headline for Mr. Trustman goes: Alan Trustman, 95, Onetime Lawyer Who Wrote Scripts for McQueen Hits. He did this so long ago that I'm sure there are those who might wonder who is Steve McQueen, (if not a fashion designer) and what were his hits?

I don't know much about Alex Trustman, but I do know he has a way with words. And he's obviously well aware of Mr. Trustman's screenplays and Mr. McQueen's movies.

Must obituaries start off with the subject's name, then a comma. Nothing wrong with that . Gets right to the point. But I like the obits that start off differently, that lay a bit of the background of the deceased before we get to the required parts. A lede that is a bit improvisational works well.

Thus we get: "It was a sense of disgust as a moviegoer that inspired Alan Trustman, a corporate lawyer at a prestigious law firm, to take a shot as a Hollywood screenwriter in the mid-1980s.

Mr. Trustman knows the screenplays and the two McQueen hits well, when he tells us that opposite Mr. McQueen in the Thomas Crown affair, a heist caper engineered by Thomas Crown, a Boston millionaire (there were no billionaires then) who plans the perfect museum heist for kicks, is Faye Dunaway, playing Vicky Anderson, "an insurance investigator, who swathed in au courant ensembles seemingly plucked from Vogue's September issue, can't seem to decide whither to drag Thomas to justice or the altar." As anyone who has seen the movie knows, Vicky settles for something in between when she and Thomas share a cuddle together in bed. 

And then there's Bullitt, the McQueen film that stars McQueen as an "ice-cool San Francisco police detective," as well as a Highland green 1968 Ford Mustang, that seems to flatten the "ski-slope steep streets" (talk about alliteration) of San Francisco with McQueen at the wheel, chasing a pair of bad guys to what will be their doom, in one of the great car chase scenes in movie history.

As interesting as Mr. Trustman's life might have been as a corporate lawyer, and an A-list Hollywood screenwriter, it was a hardly over when the phone stopped ringing for movie projects. He moved from occupations and pursuits that were:

•An overseer of pari-mutuel gambling operations for World Jai Alai, which his father had served as a founding director.

•Successful trader of currencies and precious metals while living in Switzerland.

•An avid roulette player.

He had a life well lived.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Missed Opportunity

Each day I wonder how much better I'd be living now if I had been able to get the trade mark ™/ copyrights © to the initials AI.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Takes a Holiday

Death takes a holiday. Well, not really. Writing about death seems to be taking a holiday, at least from the New York Times's obituary desk.

One of the first things I generally do when I go online each morning is check which tribute obituaries have rolled in from the NYT obit desk. It is a reliable indicator of how hard those folks have been churning out essays about a freshly departed someone. But, ever since they wrote about the death of Iran's Ayatollah a few days ago, no new obits have emerged from that usually busy conveyor belt of obituaries.

There are usually always more online obits than appear in the print edition. It's like eastbound traffic at the George Washington bridge on a weekday morning: there's a delay is reaching the print edition, sometimes for several days.

I've X'ed (Tweeted) the editor of the obituary desk, William McDonald, and asked if all hands have now been assigned to create copy about the war with Iran. In a few very weak moments, Mr. McDonald actually answered one or two of my inquiries in the past. So far, not this time.

They must really be busy.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Last Survivors Remembered

Millvina Dean in 1994 peering through a replica porthole

This blog posting should have been written in 2009, but I was just getting started writing postings and had no idea that this would have been a great entry. The NYT is reprinting certain obituaries of women in celebration of Women's History Month. The obituary that would have been the idea for a posting was published on June 1, 2009.

Years ago I read the following in an edition of USA Today. 

There were but 11 Triple Crown winners in the last century, only three in the last 54 years.  And with Seattle Slew’s passing the other day, all of them are dead.  This we know because living Triple Crown champions are kept track of like ex-presidents and Titanic survivors.

--Mike Lopresti, USA Today, May 21, 2002

Because of that meticulous record keeping it can now be safely announced that the last survivor of the Titanic has passed away at 97. 

How is that possible you might ask. Well, Millvina Dean was 9 weeks old on the fateful evening of April 14, 1912. She was lowered in a mail sack into a life boat and as now passed away at 97 in a nursing home in Southampton, England, where the Titanic sailed from on its maiden voyage. Talk about completing a circle. Her mother and brother, who was 2 years-old, also survived.

We love record keeping. In the same celebratory view of Women's History Month, the NYT is also reprinting the 2001 obituary for the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, Rose Freedman. The fire took 146 lives in 1911.

When the Trade Center and surrounding buildings fell on September 11, 2001, I eventually started to think, will there come a day when it will be known when the last survivor of this disaster has passed away?

I was 52 at the time and am myself a survivor of 9/11, coming out of 1 World Trade Center from the 29th floor where I worked. Since it was estimated that there might have been 25,000 who escaped from multiple buildings at the site, my eventual passing will hardly make me the last survivor.

The last survivor will likely come from whoever was in the day care center that was run at what I think was 6 World Trade Center. All people from that building survived, so there were certainly some youngsters that would now be in their early 20s. 

But unless there is a great set of records, is it known who were in all the buildings at the site when the planes crashed into the two towers? Probably not.

We know how many survivors from Pearl Harbor might still be alive. And the Japanese probably know who are the survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their lives are being tracked, and someone will be the last survivor. 

But the Trade Center? The best guess is that in 2090 or so, there will be survivors who will be old enough to be considered to be the last survivors. But who will they be?

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com