Pierre Natzler

Can you live to be 103, serve your country during WW II, if not heroically, at least with some distinction, pass away and have your London Times obituary center on the fact you never learned to ride a bike, or that your rifle marksmanship was honed at an amusement park? You sure can.

Another British centenarian, with a rich war background, has passed away at 103. We learn a great deal of Mr. Natzler's life, but most notably we get the sense that without the screw-ups of his SOE service, we might not have heard about his passing at all. He might just have been another very senior gent to finally faded away.

The SOE was the wartime British spy agency, Special Operations Executive. They were responsible for a good bit of derring-do in gathering information about the Germans, and in fooling the Germans. There are innumerable books about those in the SOE. And the British, still loving to never forget the war, are always eager to turn out SOE stories and mini-series.

For a guy who rarely talked about his wartime experience, "we honestly don't know exactly what happened," his son said, there is a great deal of detail in his obituary about those wartime experience, not all flattering.

Did the obituarist get a British version of Freedom of Information Act and get into the SOE records for Pierre? It would seem so.

The obituarist blends in biographical narrative, and a wartime narrative that shows Mr. Natzler was certainly not the Spy Who came in from the Cold, but rather the spy who seemed to get lost.

Obviously, Mr. Natzler, born in Vienna,, moving to France and then England, was proficient in several languages, thus making him a great candidate for spy school. And he was drafted into that branch of the service.

He was parachuted behind enemy lines in France with the assignment of finding a safe route through France to neutral Spain. The jump worked fine, but the Resistance left him with a bike at the drop spot, and Mr Natzler had never learned to ride a bike. Growing up affluently in Vienna he learned to ride horses, but not a bike.

That's the first of the troubles he encountered on landing. His identify card was dated 1940, not 1943. Okay, whose fault was that? Maybe he should have spotted it before pulling the ripcord, but there has to be some responsibility to lay at the feet of the person who conceived of the mission.

If that dumb cluck had asked if Pierre could ride a bike, and instead had a horse waiting for him, then Pierre could have been a WW II version of Paul Revere and heroically found the route. Instead, he set out, wobbled on the bike without a map (another cock-up by the mission planner?) and instead of heading for Spain, made his way to a safe house in Paris where he had to sleep in the same bed with another agent because there was only one bed. Why someone didn't get the floor is not disclosed.

Taken on a hunting trip for food by members of the spy school at Loch Morar, Pierre's city boy roots were evident when his only familiarity with a rifle was gained "at the Prater fun-fair in Vienna." Pierre rooted for the stag to make his escape. Hunting was too much like work.

Then there was the time on a train coming back into England when his suitcase popped open and contraband oranges spilled out, oranges he intended to sell on the black market. Another intelligence officer described the hapless Pierre as "undisciplined," while another felt he was more "of a fool than a knave." Is that from Shakespeare? No. The OED tells us it's F. Donaldson: "He is far more fool than knave." Hand it to the British.

Not all his wartime activities could be mad fun of. In 1941 in Casablanca he sent regular reports back to the Free French military intelligence while also helping British former POWs return home. For his business activities after the war, he was appointed chevalier of the Ordre National du Mérite by the French government for his service to industry. At points in his life he was Austrian, then a French citizen, and then eventually a British citizen.

Despite being considered a bumbling spy, he was still allowed into the Special Forces Club in England. And we know how the British love their clubs. I'm sure he yukked it up with Beefeaters and Schweppes, swapping war stories with his chaps on padded, leather upholstery.

So, Pierre enters the pantheon of those who are remembered for one thing in their life: Wrong Way Corrigan; Bill Buckner; Steve Bartman. The list goes on.

The obit's final kicker:  "He never did learn how to ride a bike."

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Pooping Pigs in a Poke

Would you buy a pig in a poke?
I'm sweating like a pig.
You're a filthy pig.
You're a sloppy pig.
You live in a pigsty.

These are all expressions using a pig as a reference. But would you say "I poop like a pig?" Would Jack Palance have told Billy Crystal at he Oscars one year that a pig poops bigger than Billy? Well, you might once you finish reading an A-Head piece in the Wall Street Journal about how farmers raise pigs.

Sanitizing is big these day with trying to stop the spread of coronavirus. But the extent the pig farmers go to sanitizing a pig's environment is nothing new. I always heard pigs are not "filthy animals." After reading the piece, I can see why.

The reporter Jacob Bunge tells us that after showering and putting on fresh clothes, Brad Greenway checked out his pig farm, "We've always tried to practice good biosecurity." His farm produces 13,000 pigs a year, all very squeaky clean.

Mr. Greenway explains, "you don't want to bring anything back and forth" between the breeding and the hog operation. The pig farms are hyper-hygienic.

Kevin Turner, a manager of Michigan State University's swine teaching and research farm near Lansing, Michigan, has taken as many 12 showers a day going back and forth from the classroom to the farm.

Mr. Turner further explains, "right now, I feel safer health-wise if I'm in and around my pigs than if I go to the grocery store."

With as many animals as these folks have, you have to expect there is animal waste—poop. Ryan Hageman a co-owner of NEIA Pumping Service Inc., a Calmar, Iowa-based manure hauling business, minces no words about why he tries to keep clean with constant hand washing. "You're going to get dirty, you're dealing with shit."

And there it is. A four-letter word that made it into a major newspaper without ** between the first and last letters. Shit.

Okay, shit is not fuck, where you're still going to see **, but it's use has long been foretold, even by Cole Porter, who so long ago wrote the lyrics to "Anything Goes."

Good authors too who once knew better words

Now only use 

Four-letter words.

Anything goes.

And how much poop can there be on a pig farm? Apparently A LOT. There doesn't seem to anything that cannot be measured. Mr Bunge writes:

"Even stringent methods run up against natural limits. One is found in the pits beneath Mr. Turner's Michigan State research farm, which gather the roughly 1.3 gallons of manure each hog produces a day. 'It's clean, but it still smells," Mr. Turner tells us. "Pigs poop a lot."

And there we have it. If you think you exceed 1.3 gallons a day—nearly 5 liters!—you are entitled to say, "I poop like a pig."

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Billions, Family Style

A two-part recap starts off with the second episode, heavy on the examination of the psyche, principally Chuck's, who is now seeing a therapist to help him become the man he thinks he wants to be.

As usual, the word "fuck" is bandied about from all mouths. If that word had been under copyright by the early Anglo-Saxons, the producers of Billions would go broke paying royalty fees.

Episode 2 really lets the women shine. It shows Wendy and the duo at Mase Cap, Sarah and Lauren, show they can run the place while Axe is off upstate at a billionaires conference at the Mohonk House.

When an Asian ball-busting woman representing a major pension fund stakeholder comes to Axe Capital to kick the tires while the alpha males are upstate, Wendy gets Lauren, the PR princess of Mase Cap to handle the investor relations end of the business with aplomb. Lauren has tabloid gossip journalism credits—Page Six— and knows how to spin things so effectively that you don't even notice they are being spun.

She and Wendy are a great psyche team that can get anyone to do anything they want them to do while the subject thinks they're making the choice. If this show was in Washington, Lauren would be the president of a K Street lobbying firm.

Sarah, the buttoned-up other major domo female on the Mase Cap team is a retired Naval officer who reminds anyone who will listen of her Naval Academy background.

Episode 2 mostly centers on Bobby and the new nemesis Mike Prince, jousting for pissing rights in front of the assembled at the conference. Axe is allowed to be seen leaving the evening's meal with a stunning eye-candy beauty and a bottle of extremely old scotch, no doubt to go over her portfolio in a room upstairs. The eye-candy beauty actually gets to say a few words before she and Axe make their obvious exit. A speaking part pays more than a simple walk-on. A star is born.

Axe and Mike Prince are using the conference to try and corner the market on an emerging psychotropic drug Ayahuasca, which Axe and Wags used on themselves in an Alaskan wigwam with the lead shaman. Why the FDA would seemingly license a drug that seems to resemble LSD is beyond me, but there you have it.

The simple Google definition tells us it "is a brew with powerful hallucinogenic properties claimed to open your mind and heal past traumas." It doesn't say if it introduces new traumas. Will President Trump endorse it and take it himself? It sounds like dangerous stuff, and is so far illegal in the U.S. It is derived from plants.

Axe and Wags are lobbying the soon-to-be named head of the FDA for the right to buy his stock portfolio just before he is confirmed. It seems anyone who comes up for a job in Washington has to first shed the pesky conflicts of interest there would be unless they divested.

And how prescient can the screenwriters be? The NYT reports today that industry ties pose a possible conflict of interest for the scientist leading the coronavirus vaccine team. According to the Times, Moncef Slaoui has spent the last several days trying to disentangle pieces of his stock portfolio and his intricate ties to big pharmaceutical interests.

Chuck and Kate are called to governor's office, complete with a huge portrait of Teddy Roosevelt on a wall behind the governor, and taken to the woodshed over Chuck's lowering the charges against the upstate techies who caused a massive power outage trying to create a  massive Bitcoin mining operation.

Since Bobby Axe was connected to the scheme, and Chuck and Bobby are supposed to be buddies, Chuck lowers the level of the charges from criminal to civil. After all, Bobby has returned the Churchill books.

The sit down with the governor occurs in New York City, naturally, since Albany will never be recreated by the producers.  The governor wheels in the Manhattan DA, a seasoned looking woman who is dressed quite professionally, who also tells Chuck she doesn't give a "fuck" about the responsibility Chuck feels in lowering the level of the case.

The governor is cutting off Chuck's pursuit of these type of cases, and now has to work with the Manhattan DA's office. It is a blow.

As a further blow to Chuck's autonomy, the settlements collected from the civil law suits he pursues are under the control of the governor's oversight. He gets to apply them to whatever lines in the budget he likes.

But, Kate Sacker, being the legal genius that she is, reads that it is possible for Chuck's power over the settlement money to kick in if it goes to something philanthropic. Yale Law, your ship has docked.

So, all that dough that Eliot Spitzer collected when he was Attorney General probably never made it in the form of restitution for the general taxpayer. No taxes were lowered; no rebates wee made. I would have recognized the government giving me some money.

Chuck is correct in assuming that Bobby Axelrod has gotten to the Manhattan DA and ratted on Chuck's lowering the charges. That meeting is in a prior scene and amazes anyone who really thinks about it that a man with Axe's reputation for financial shenanigans can get a meeting with the sitting Manhattan DA. But hey, this is showbiz.

Episode 3 is titled "Beg, Bribe, Bully." It could also be called Billions, Family Style. The theme is set with Cat Stevens's 'Father and Son,' a beautiful song that is still one of my favorites, being played at the episode's opening. The theme is the friction between fathers and sons, and when the song came out in Cat Stevens's 'Tea for the Tillerman album, a friend of fine told me he could only think of myself and my father, since our relationship was contentious at best.

Quite a few years ago in Flushing, my neighbor told us his brother Joseph had passed away. Showing respect for our neighbor, we went to the wake one evening. There at the wake were Joseph's family, three adult sons if I remember correctly.

Apparently Joe was quite a son-of-a-bitch to his sons and they grew up with a good deal of resentment toward the father. We were at the wake on the last evening and I was surprised that their resentment lead them to bring a cassette player, hit he play button, and have the Cat Stevens song 'Father and Son' play.

Wakes of course these days are video affairs, with lots of still photos. There was none of that then, just an audio remembrance of the contentiousness the sons had with the father. Wow.

Axe's son Gordie goes to a very exclusive prep school, likely in one of those still quaint New England towns in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont. Wherever it is, it far enough away from New York that Axe takes the private jet to smooth over the trouble his son Gordie has gotten himself into when he rigged enough cable to start a Bitcoin data mine, only to create a blackout like the upstate techies did in Episode 1.

Gordie is obviously highly adventurous, a clone of his dad, but in deep, deep do-do from the headmaster who is expelling him the for misuse of resources.

Of course Axe is proud and mad at his son at the same time. Gordie is chastised for not seeing the possibility of failure and its consequences. Gordie and a nerdy girl who wears those glasses that automatically stereotype her as a nerd, were millionaires for a brief moment, but then they blew the little village's power out. I still don't understand why Bitcoin's value only exists if the power is on, but that's for another discussion.

Anyway, the headmaster will not succumb to Axe's offers of generosity in the form of a bribe disguised as a hefty donation. Moolah, and plenty of it. The headmaster wears a bow tie and looks like he should be judging dog shows. He is of such high moral rectitude that when Axe and Wags start to see where his Achilles heel lies they get nowhere.

That is of course until they get lucky and get PI photos of the Syrian refugees that the headmaster is sponsoring with diverted donated money to the sports program. The diversion is not in itself enough to ding the headmaster, since it is a noble cause, but making the Syrians do yard work around his house, uncompensated, is what brings him down. Or at least makes him vulnerable to Axe's demands.

Again, the screenwriters are ahead of the curve. Did thy anticipate Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's brouhaha with directing staff for errands? Did they remember that the long-time head of the New York Racing Association,(NYRA) Christopher Kay who was bounced for having stable help rake the leaves at his Saratoga property uncompensated? Come on. Grab a rake and do it yourself. It's good exercise.

Didn't this headmaster live through all the nominees at the start of Clinton's first term that took a nosedive when it was discovered that hired help was not on the payroll for Social Security deductions? Nannygate sunk several nominees.

Before the headmaster take-down, Axe engages in conversation with Wendy as what to do. Wendy responds with some typical fence riding psycho babble about letting the chips play out and have young Gordie suffer expulsion and going to a less prestigious school, thereby softening his chances of Harvard, and leading him to drink at 28, or, do what Axe usually does, and buy his way to a solution.

Either way, whatever Axe does, it seems young Gordie is headed for AA at 28 is he's lucky. Sometimes you just can;t win.

Armed with the photos, Axe has the headmaster by the cojones and ladles on the requirement that he get to address the student body. A chastened headmaster can only agree.

Axe therefore gets to address the school, wearing his trademark zip flannel jacket and jeans, use the word "fuck" here and there, and tell the assembled how wonderful the real world of capitalism is. It's Gordon Gecko's "greed is good" speech from the movie "Wall Street", and meets with thunderous applause.

The headmaster looks like he's going to puke. Axe delivers the financial facts of life, similar to Sonny telling C in "A Bronx Tale" that Mickey Mantle doesn't give a fuck about you. Jesus, what an eye-opener.

Gordie of course gets to stay in the august confines of Skinner Preparatory Academy, and Wags, so touched by the father and son bonding over a crisis sets out to get in touch with his far-flung offspring.

For Wags, this doesn't mean just giving them a call, since they don't live with him, it means finding them. Talk about estranged. Wags employs the Axe Capital gumshoe, Hall, to track down the products of his loins.

Only one of them seems accommodating enough to meet Wags, a young adult male Jesus freak wearing a wooden cross prominently around his neck. If this character stays in the script, it's a cinch Wags is not going to be able to take him to the gentleman's club for a session of father and son bonding over pole and lap dancing with $10 tips stuffed in G-strings.

Axe also gets an emerging abstract artist to cave in on his artistic independent principles and over Bruno's famous slices of pizza, convinces the artist to be sponsored by Axe, like Michelangelo has the Medici's at his back. Money may not completely corrupt, but it does buy some nice things.

Meanwhile, Chuck, ever eager to become a different person, shows up at his law school Alma Mater—Yale, of course—and offers to teach a course for a semester. The black, female dean of the law school is gushy over having a sitting attorney general giving lectures. To a point.

Academia, no matter how well endowed with riches, is always after more riches. The dean reminds Chuck that Chuck Sr. has never made good on his pledge of $100,000 annually. Seems pops went there as well. No surprise there.

"Well, how many years has old dad missed?"
 "All of them."
"I'll see what I can do."

This sets in motion the chain reaction of quid pro quo that Chuck is used to. Dad won't budge on making good his pledge—and therefore throwing a wrench into Chucks professorial dreams—until Chuck Jr's family accepts dad's new Native American bride and their papoose. Chuck Sr. is following Roxanne's orders that the Rhoades family needs to become one family.

Chuck needs Wendy to get on board with this. Chuck become the old Chuck by telling Wendy he'll lift the financial restraining order if Wendy will agree to a family get together, with the kids and her, to meet the latest members of the Rhoades family.

Wendy of course knows Chuck wants something as soon as he enters her office, but is willing to agree to the get together, not for any wellspring of family emotion, but I'm sure for the ability to get the next to-die-for apartment with no monetary worries.

And not to be left out of the script is the Taylor Mason sub-plot that shows off a software program that supposedly can reveal the hidden meaning beneath someone's words. Thus, when a university president says he will not divest the fossil fuel companies in the school's portfolio as demanded by the green-leaning student body, he is actually looking for a way to do so without losing face.

The pitch to divest meets with acceptance by the president after some baloney double talk with Taylor, but meets with a solid wall of resistance from the president of the trustees, a retired four-star admiral who is a James Earl Jones lookalike and soundalike.

The Naval Academy Sarah enters to sweet talk the admiral, or what really happens, drink with the admiral toe-to-toe and get him to lower his resistance. It seems buying the divested shares can make Mase Cap some money if they can run the transaction through the main house, Axe Capital.

When Taylor balks at using Axe Cap, Sarah quits in frustration. Best I can tell from the actress Samantha Mathis's IMDb, Sarah's gone after this episode. Anchors away my boys.

What are left with? Another object lesson in what money and power can achieve. Chuck is not anywhere near the man he tells the shrink he'd like to be, and Axe, well, he wants to be a bank. That's right. He's a wannabe Sandy Weill.

Axe always aims high.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Unassembled

Batteries not included, and some assembly required.

The Assembled, the four stalwart members of a rag tag group that meets at the races several times a year, is in danger of not knowing what they each look like, especially, assuming without haircuts, due to the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown.

In Johnny D's case, he was able to cadge a haircut at his wife and daughter's hairdresser, a young woman working out of her finished basement in an undisclosed location.

Aside from not handicapping and betting the horses, Bobby G's lockdown has also deprived him of his weekly poker game, a continuously held event with a core and revolving roster of players that have been gathering at various locations for over 35 years. It might be the Oldest Established Permanent Floating Card Game in New York.

The median age of this group registers at 79, and is composed of those breathing who are well enough not to be placed in nursing homes by concerned family members. The game can't be held due to social distancing concerns. If that group ever sneezed on one another, the whole game might be wiped out and placed on ventilators.

Bobby G. is the major-domo there, and has now probably gone the longest period of his life without  a deck of cards in his hands since high school. And considering Bobby G. is the oldest of The Assembled, clocking in as an octogenarian, that's A LOT of years without a shuffle. Good to hear that the absence of the smooth, waxy surface of playing cards on his skin hasn't led to any skin conditions. And being a medical man, he's in the best position of anyone to self-diagnose.

Bobby G. being a retired surgeon who still reads medical journals, has predicted Dr. Bell at Oxford, England, will be the first to break through with a Covid-19 vaccine. As for myself, I'd be willing to take Bobby's prediction and place a wager at Vegas odds if they were taking action on this. Are they? Alert readers, please let me know. Because it seems that without a vaccine, The Assembled are going to remain Unassembled at a race track.

The other members, Johnny M. and Jose are doing fine. Johnny M. is taking daily walks around Bowne Park in Flushing, and Jose. the only member young enough to still be employed, is safe working from home.

Johnny D. is thinking of downloading some pps from Santa Anita or Gulfstream or Churchill just to keep his handicapping skills from turning to rust. Racing is still running and being televised from a select few venues, without attendance of course, but with everything else the same. An exacta pays the same with or without people in the stands.

Joe Drape, sports reporter for the NYT, has a story of how Fonner Park in Grand Island, Nebraska has become a bit of an epicenter for action.

It's a great story in today's NYT, with some nice color photos, that look really good online. It's a track my guess is that Mr. Drape has attended in his migratory phase of growing up, he being from Missouri.

The story tells us the second leading jockey is a 32-year-old Jake Olesiak whose full-time job is working at an ethanol processing plant, a two-hour drive east of Fronner. On a usual Saturday and Sunday the place boasts an on-track attendance of 6,500, which would be the envy of the New York Racing Association.

There is one great picture, not of the horses and the track, but of patrons who are gathered outside the chain-link fence, handicapping their picks on folding chairs unloaded from the back of their SUV. I think is was last year when I was cutting through the Belmont parking lot making my way in from Hempstead Turnpike, that I passed a similar cluster of guys who I imagined were trying to figure out their Pick-Six ticket. The Pick-Six that day. flush with carryover money.

There was no reason to be in the parking lot, since last year you could go into Belmont, but I imagined the parking lot, void of cars, was like being in the library—you could do your work without distractions. If J. Seward Johnson needed a model to sculpt horseplayers, this would be the perfect pose. Socially distant, but connected by handicapping.

Next week I'm going to treat myself to a downloaded set of pps from either Gulfstream, Santa Anita, or Churchill, and play the card. The races will be on TVG, so I'll get to watch my cross-country bets.

And who knows, my form might return and my exactas will run 1-3, with a 68-1 shot breaking up my ticket by gaining second.

I can't wait.

http://www.onfframp.blogspot.com

Villefranche

If you somehow see a sign on the road that you're entering Villefranche, in France, then just keep going. There is no good reason to stop there for anything.

Of course if you're a French prosecutor and your car breaks down and you're stung and allergic to bees, you have to stay in Villefranhce awaiting repairs, because now you're stuck. But in this case, it's up to prosecutor Franck Siriani to stay put and check things out in Villefranche.

It's not exactly A Bad Day at Black Rock, it's more like Never A Good Day in Villefranche.  Sunshine doesn't seem to break through, the homicide rate is so high that no one seems to live a natural life span. Actuarially, it's a very bad risk to write life insurance policies in the place. Their homicide rate clocks in at six times the French average. The prosecutor says every time you open a door in Villefranche there's a body behind it. The place is a French Bermuda triangle.

Add to this a four-person constabulary lead by a distracted young woman, and you have the #MeTooMovement advancing females who wear their gun outside their pants for all the honest world to see. But unlike in Spiral, the police here carry their weapons low on the leg, gunslinger style. Even the probationary officer. Camille. gets a weapon. In fact, the whole town is armed to the teeth, and they're all crack shots with a rifle, especially the women whose windows open.

Villefranche reminds me of the  series Fortitude, without the ice. Add trees. Lots of trees. When you get to the start of Season 2 there's a flashback to 57 B.C. Folks have been dying mysteriously in this place ever since the Romans set foot in the forest and tried to build a road. The place was supposedly a sacred burial ground for the Celts.

The series is called Dark Spot in English, Zone Blanche in French. There is no church in Villefranche, and the cell phone reception is spotty at best. There is a roadhouse called EL DORADO, with the first O not lit. Something like HOT L.

The dialog is dubbed in English, but still best watched with subtitles. For some reason, Laurène's rank comes out as major, despite being called captain. Laurèn's played by Suliane Brahim, a 40-something French actress who looks younger when she's not looking worried, which is most of the time. The captain has a young adult daughter, Cora, from either a marriage, or a relationship, but the father is not in the story. The tale doesn't go there.

Laurèn is missing the fourth and fifth fingers from her left hand. She tells the prosecutor Siriani that it was a hunting accident. This of course is not believed, and eventually revealed to have resulted from her being kidnapped in the woods 20 years by someone, or something, unknown.

The rest of the police force is rounded out by someone whose nickname translates as Teddy Bear, from the French Balou, who is a bear of a man, fully bearded. Then there's Hermann, the oldest of the unit, who loves fishing and smoking very thin cigarettes.

The mayor of Villefranche, Bertrand Steiner, is a hunk who has a past with the captain. And a bit of a now. No one seems to be happily married in Villefranche. The mayor and the police force are housed in the same building.

The Steiner family is the prototypical wealthy family that seems to run the town. Their machinations play heavily into the story-line. For such an apparently small place, the town has a full-size Olympic swimming pool and a hospital that seems quite large and up-to-date.

The Steiners, led by the patriarch Gerald and former mayor—Bertrand's father—are clearly up to no good. Their machinations become the subject of Season 2.

The doctor for the town is a woman, Leila, who is portrayed as a bit of a party girl, but not one we see partying. Leila makes house calls, and does the autopsies. And like any pathologist, she knows everything once she's examined the corpse. And sometimes the corpse is quite old.

The main story-line during the first season revolves around the mayor's missing daughter, Marion. She's been gone now for eight months. The mayor's marriage is rocky, and no one in the town ever seems too happy. There are closet homosexuals to round out the demographics. In this era, you've got to have them too.

Each episode in the first season is a complete sub-story in itself. And my God, the things that happen in this little place in the neck of the woods, somewhere near the Belgium border.

Episodes 7 and 8 finally get to Marion and what happened to her. Episode 8 ends violently, with quite the surprise. But you know the lead character, Laurèn not going to die, is she? Season 2 of course opens with her in it, but how she recovered is murky. Very murky.

Is there really a horned woodsman in the woods?

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Obit from Across the Pond

It is no secret that the British style of obituary writing is a style unto itself. A decade ago Marilyn Johnson wrote about this in her book on obituaries, "The Dead Beat." And long before that there was an  A-Head piece in the WSJ  by Kyle Pope telling us about the obscure deceased in England who in death have achieved more fame at their passing than they did when they were breathing.

Never forget. And the Brits will never forget WW II when Hitler nearly came ashore, but couldn't, so he bombed the crap out of them instead, hoping they'd give up.

My daughter, son-in-law, and the two grandchildren went to England this past February, just before all the virus outbreak took hold. I asked her to bring me back a hardcopy of a newspaper, but she forgot. On her return she did however become an online subscriber to The Times, and The Sunday Times from London.

Sharing her logon, I've been given a front row access to daily obits, British style. Checking out the paper on Friday I watched a montage of the figures observing two minutes of silence celebrating V-E Day, 75 years from May 7, 1945.

There was a flyover streaming plumes of red, white and blue exhaust; Prime Minister Boris Johnson standing in place at 10 Downing Street; Prince Charles in a kilt laying a wrath at a memorial while a single bagpiper played. As Charles placed the wreath you caught just a glimpse of his watch, jutting out from his French cuffs. Certainly an expensive watch, with lots of buttons and complications. Brand unknown. Camilla also placed a wreath.

Poor Charles. He looks so old. His mother is living forever, so his reign is deferred until her demise. And that will be some obit.

The British will never stop reliving WW II. Just check out a PBS Masterpiece series, and invariably it will be a story about the war, or the hardship of shortages after the war. Other than the British incursion in 1812, The United States has never been invaded. You have to consider the planes from 9/11 to be a bombing to get a feel for what the British endured on a daily basis for years.

When I was resting at home on the morning of  9/12, after miles of walking after making my way out of Tower One and the 29th floor on 9/11, my wife brought the papers in. And there was the NYT headline, top line, U.S. ATTACKED.  Of course I saved the paper, but I've never been able to really accept the headline.

I'm sure the senior editors probably debated vigorously what it would be, and came up with that. And on 9/11, there was no guarantee that there wouldn't be a repeat on 9/12. Except that all the planes had been grounded, and there really was no invading force, even as inept as the recent one that tried to overthrow the government in Venezuela. In my head I've never been able to wrap my head around the terrorist actions being described as being invaded. But, as they say now, it is what it is.

The Times obits are not bylined. They don't necessarily favor eccentrics, but when an 8th Earl of somewhere passes away, you can bet there are aspects of their life which we Yanks would consider eccentric,

Retired colonels and veteran's of all stripes are favored, so who better to honor with a full-Monty obit on Friday, May 8th, a day after the 75th anniversary of V-E Day than William 'Terry' Clark, 101 years old and a highly decorated RAF veteran. Mr. Clark passed away on V-E Day.

A read of the obit makes you realize how many types of war aircraft there were. It is hardly all Spitfires. I count no less than three aircraft that Clark served in as a navigator, gunner and radio specialist; a Blenheim, Bristol Beaufighter and a Turbinlite Havoc.

One oddity served up in the obit is that Clark first wanted to enlist in the British Navy, but they required vaccinations in anticipation of service abroad. It seems odd that service in a plane that could possible be shot down or crash landed in enemy territory would waive vaccinations for the crew members. He was deathly afraid of needles, so he opted to be with the RAF.

I remember in the '60s before I was declared 4-F, I wanted to enlist in the Navy. However, I worried that my dog-paddle swimming would keep me from training for the Navy. Once the 4-F draft code was assigned it became a moot point as to whether I'd pass their physical.

My father wanted to enlist in the Navy during WW II. His older brother was a career officer, so I would have imagined it would have been a slam dunk for his enlistment. He probably did as well. I did come across a letter turning him down. He might have wanted to go in an officer and they said no. I don't really know the reason, and as usual, we never ask our parents enough questions before it is impossible to get the answer. So, it was the Corps of Engineers in the Army, since he had an engineering degree.

The British obit leaves nothing worth mentioning out. Thus, in the narrative for Mr. Clark we learn he tried "to  rejoin the RAF after being dismobbed, but was turned down because he had become deaf in one ear as a result of fracturing his skull when he fell off a bar stool."

How ignominious to learn that Clark fell off a bar stool when he swiveled to catch a look at "a particularly attractive member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force who had just walked past him and he lost his balance."

Survive being shot at at 10,000 feet by the Germans but felled by a woman looking good in a uniform. No matter. He did make it to 101 years old.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Spiral/Engranage

There is a foreign miniseries on Amazon Prime which should be good enough to binge on through any shelter in place lockdown. Or otherwise.

I see the NYT weekly seems to recommend series on streaming services. I don't remember if I heard of this one through something they wrote or I just stumbled on it by browsing, but it's a French police/judicial procedural that follows a squad of Judicial Paris police through a multitude of major cases. Usually several cases per season, of which there are six available for free through Amazon Prime. There is a Season 7 and 8, but they don't seem to be available yet.

There are a generous 12 episodes per season, so bingeing is almost required if you're just starting out. The squad is headed by a woman, about 35 years old, no kids, no ex's, just a pure cop, without the wiseguy, hard edge of what's portrayed in the States.

Caroline Proust is Cap-e-tan Laure Berthaud, an attractive thing if you can see under the mess she usually looks like, who is an unmade bed like the guys, but obviously without facial growth. She has a bit of a reputation for liking to sleep around, always ignoring her menstrual cycles, which of course after a few seasons catches up with her and gives her a you-know-what, and of course more plot lines.

The series in in French, with unobtrusive English subtitles. Being in French is actually a good thing, since you hear the characters as the French have hearing them since 2006, in this wildly popular series. Even if you're more than half-a-century removed from taking French in school, many words will sound familiar, and the subtitles confirm that maybe you didn't forget everything.

The Judicial police seems to be their version of the FBI, although the police/cops hardly look buttoned down. They pretty much look like unmade beds with no razors in sight. I don't know how they get the male actors to always appear with the same about of stubble from scene to scene, day to day. They obviously can't do all this filming in one day, so how do these guys just partially shave?

Judicial policing differs greatly from ours. There is an investigative judge who is assigned the case and who works with a rotation of the squads. There are squads all over the country, but Spiral seems contained in Paris and the suburbs, and it's not always the tourist part of Paris that is shown.

In fact, it is rarely the touristy part. The outskirts are full of Council housing, housing refugees from the former French colonies, thus a good number of Senegalese, Congolese. and Muslims from Algeria. It's a wild grab bag of cultures.

There are weapons, but nowhere anywhere near the number seen in American police procedurals. The plainclothes police almost quaintly approach trouble by popping orange armbands on their arms that say POLICE. There are bulletproof vests, but no vinyl windbreakers with yellow block lettering.

What confuses me a bit is that the armbands and police building are identified by the word POLICE. I guess that branch of the police might really have an English spelling. I was expecting to see something that said " endarmarie." Certainly the street scenes, cars and everything about the series is French through and through.

The investigative judge listens to the squad leader explain the case. The judge will issue warrants if they decide to do so. The judge they most deal with in 'Spiral' is François Roban, an Ichabod Crane-older looking man who is topped by a Mont Blanc head of unruly hair: The French version of a Boris Johnson hairstyle.

The judge's office a spare looking room located in the judicial ministry building, reached through a warren of staircases and narrow hallways. The place looks as old as it is, with some French provincial touches. There is a single clerk in the office accompanying the judge, monsieur jooge, "your honour in French."

The clerk is like a court reporter, taking down the conversations held between the judge and the lawyers, defendants, and whoever comes seated in front of the judge. Prisoners are interviewed, without handcuffs, while court officers stand against the wall.

It would seem the French system doesn't use a Grand Jury, but rather relies on the investigative judge to close, or refer the case to the prosecutor for trial. The judge may accompany the police during their work; they may reconstruct the narrative of the crime using life-size dummies. It is a very different pursuit of justice than ours.

One of the assistant prosecutors is Pierre Clément, played by Grégory Fitoussi, certainly a French heartthrob who has the good looks and bearing of Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mocking Bird.' He's a charmer.

The prosecutors and  defense attorneys appear in court robed and wearing a while silk scarf draped over their front, like a very wide tie. There are no wigs like in the British courts, but the judges are also draped in robes, and there may be more than one judge sitting in on the bench.

One of the defense attorneys is Joséphine Karlsson, a knockout, flaming red redhead played by Audrey Fleurot, who I suspect is also quite popular in French acting circles. She's a pit bull, the French version of any famous defense attorney who takes lost causes and argues successfully. And she is not above skating toward ethical lines.

Cap-e-tan Laure's lieutenants are Gilou, played by Thierry Godard, another French actor that you'll see in other productions. Both he and Audrey Fleurot are in the miniseries 'A French Village,' another streamed offering.

Gilou is never seen clean shaven, and with the French filming technique of taking lots of closeups, has an annoying mole just the the left of his mouth. New Wave or not, the series is shot with lots of handheld camera work, and lots and lots of closeups.

Gilou has an expressive, large face that's as big as an Easter ham. He is always in trouble with drugs and women, and at one point stealing evidence, but Laure always seems to back him. The core squad is rounded out by Tintin,  played by Fred Bianconi, another stubble-faced, jean-wearing cop who seems to at least have a stable home life. He's got kids and a wife. At least in the beginning. He and Gilou don't always get along. They fight a bit like brothers in the bedroom.

These cops wear their guns outside their pants for all the honest world to see. But when back in the office, they all make a point of emptying the chamber and storing the weapon in an unlocked desk drawer. Laure fails to do so once, and it has consequences.

There are six season available on Amazon Prime, and there are two more seasons that have been released in France, but not here. Thus, when you complete Season 6, you can peek at the summary on the Internet for Season 7. You should watch the season in order.

Maybe the series will last as 'Law and Order' here and be a French franchise. I'm sure the actors like the work.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com