In the Mud: Season 2 – Official Trailer | Netflix
MVSRS
Pretty great. Life in a women's prison in Argentina. This time we have a new female bull on the block, Gringa, and she is vicious, mean and nasty. But Gladys, AKA Borges, our female bull, builds on her base of supporters and ultimately prevails.
Everybody is starved for money, so the warden, the guards and the prisoners are colluding in a scheme to rob rich folks. Half a dozen pretty women prisoners get dolled up, load into a van, and are driven into town where they descend onto a place packed with swells where they latch onto a mark, spike his drink and go to his room. When he passes out, the woman takes everything worth stealing. And then they head back to the van and back to prison. They do this a couple three nights a week and it provides a steady source of income. Amazing what you can get away with in big city.
Curious little show about some women in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I don't think there is a clear thinking one in the bunch. The show starts with our girl driving her car into a crowd at a sidewalk cafe and killing her husband's girlfriend, for which she gets 15 years in prison. When she gets out, she's staying with a friend from prison. Her friend has a lump in her breast but won't do anything about it until our girl drags her to the doctor. Meanwhile, we have an upper class woman whose child has died. There's some confusion as to the child's sex. She blames the child's girlfriend and enlists our girl's help in getting hold of some poison. Kind of like a small scale Thelma and Louise.
El Tiempo de las Moscas is not a flawless adaptation, but it is well-made work that delivers all the elements we expect from modern crime thrillers – A mystery that unfolds slowly and with strategic precision. A risky and uncertain police plot. Moral dilemmas that resonate deeply with the audience. Actresses with electric and genuine chemistry.
Cast. Wasn't able to connect most of the names to their roles.
Six years ago I was reading Glacier Pilot by Beth Day, a story about Bob Reeve, one of the pioneers of aviation in Alaska. Now I'm trying to clean out some old drafts, so here are some items that caught my eye.
Alaska
p. 25 Nunatak - A nunatak is the summit or ridge of a mountain that protrudes from an ice field or glacier that otherwise covers most of the mountain or ridge.
p. 26 Williwaw - a sudden violent squall blowing offshore from a mountainous coast.
Before Bob went to Alaska, he spent some time in South America. Pan American Grace airlines, aka PANAGRA, used several different airplanes when they started email service to Santiago Chile (page 38).
The Aviator (2004) - Howard and Kath Flying Scene (Spanish Subtitles)
New-to-me terms:
p. 38 sin publicadad - Spanish for 'without advertising'.
p. 41 Hegira - the journey the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers took from Mecca to Medina.
p. 43 gambling - "Ship, Captain, and Crew" is a dice game where players bet tokens (like "gold booty") and try to roll a 6 (Ship), 5 (Captain), and 4 (Crew) in that order, within three rolls, setting them aside to collect the score from the remaining two dice (Cargo) for the highest score to win the pot. It's a push-your-luck game that can be played for ante to a pot, with the winner taking all the tokens.
Flying between Santiago Chile and Buenos Aires Argentina means flying over the Andes mountains, and since aircraft weren't pressurized, you needed to find a pass. Uspallata Pass with statue of Christ was one.
Life in a woman's prison in Argentina, and what a life it is, and what a nasty ass bunch of women. Guys ain't got nothin' on these bitches.
Story opens with a small group of women being transported to prison in a van. One of the women is the girlfriend of a for-real gangster and he stages an attack on the convoy. The van goes off the road and into a river. Boyfriend has a boat, swoops up to the van and rescues his girl but leaves the others chained up in the rapidly sinking van. One older broad manages to get hold of the keys and manages to unlock most of the other women who all swim to shore.
I'm thinking the boyfriend is a for-real shithead. How can you abandon a bunch of women who are likely to drown in this situation? Then I realize, the women are not part of his tribe, so he doesn't care. He's a savage, and he's at war. You're not part of his tribe, so screw you.
Inside the prison, the prisoners are divided into different groups. One is for women who are pregnant or have kids. Women are allowed to keep their kids up till age five, then they go to foster homes. Another group is making porn videos ala Andrew Tate. There are a couple of other groups. Never did figure out exactly what their deal was. Drugs and housekeeping, maybe.
La Borges, the older broad, was part of a criminal organization and understands how these things work. Not much later, Galacia, the gal who escaped, is apprehended and is brought to this same prison. Needless to say, there is bad blood between her and the others who escaped the van. Galacia is vicious and means to be top dog in the prison. Borges is trying organize her girls to stand against her, but it's hard to make an effective team when some of her girls are not too bright, not to mention flakey.
The show is pretty amazing.
P. S. Supposedly you can turn on subtitles AND choose the language in embedded YouTube videos, but I haven't been able to make it work. Turning on the subtitles works, but selecting the language doesn't. Might be Bloggers fault, mucking with the special characters.
The explanation in fine print at the bottom reads:
Comfortable was defined as the annual income required to cover a 60/30/20 budget, allocating 50% of earnings to necessities, 30% to discretionary spending, and 20% to savings.
Last year you needed an annual income of $100K to be a middle class citizen. This year you are going to need $200K and next year it is liable to be $500K.
It's now reached the point that a first-class, middle-class lifestyle in America requires pert near $200K a year. It wasn't too long ago that I was thinking that it 'only' required $100K per year.
The above picture comes from that story. I am amazed that the mules are able to keep their footing in that torrent of water. I don't think a person would be able to do it. Mules have relatively skinny legs compared to their body mass, and their hooves are probably better adapted to stepping on jagged rocks and they must have an impressive circulation system to keep those legs from freezing in that freezing water.
Why do horses or dogs ever even obey people? Trust and food, I suppose.
You can get English subtitles in the trailer with judicious pointing and clicking.
Pipa is the leading ladies nickname, on Netflix it is known as Recurrence. It fairly complex murder mystery, maybe a little too complex. I'm not even sure how many dead bodies we've got. We start with just one, but towards the end they start falling like ten-pins. It's got all the pieces required for a decent movie, but it feels just a little rough, like everyone's timing is just a tad off. It manages to get the story told, though there are some incidents that leave you wondering 'where did that come from?'
It's set in the boondocks of northwestern Argentina. I couldn't figure it out from watching it, I had to look it up. Everyone is speaking Spanish, but they're all driving big American cars, so it's not Spain. It's dry and mountainous so it could be Mexico or southern South America. But now that I know it's Argentina I realize that the mountains are the Andes, not those po-dunk little mountains they have in Mexico.
We have a single mom who left the big city police force ten years ago due to some violent event that is never explained. Her ten year old kid is hanging around with his buddies, playing with real guns. I fully expect one of them to screw up and shoot another, but that never happens. The kid is disobedient and that does cause problems. Stupid, ill-disciplined kids. They're part of the story, but annoying.
There is the wealthy landowner who owns at least some of the police. Her dissolute adult children are what start the murder ball rolling, though we don't find that out till near the end.
There are the indians who want their land back that the anglos stole from them. One of them gets arrested and gets taken to jail. His wife Lula comes to visit him but they won't let her in. Later on we see him on TV, beaten to a pulp, complaining about police brutality. Then we find out the Lula did it. Somehow she got in to see, a soft hearted cop probably let her in, and she beat him up so they could get their charge of police brutality on TV. Never seen the like, at least not from sane people.
There is one big guy, the hunter, who has an amazingly deep voice. He appears in the trailer at the 1:09 mark, though his voice is not that deep there. When I first heard it I didn't think it was real. Could anyone really have a voice that deep?
There is one scene where the rich kids are playing a game like polo, on horseback, but they are using a ball with handles that has to be picked up by hand and thrown through the goal. It could be Pato or Horseball.
Pipa drives an odd looking Ford F-100 crew cab. It doesn't look like any crew cab I've ever seen. I suppose it could be a custom. I did find one other, for sale, in Buenos Aires.
Unibody!?! Of course they might only mean that the truck bed and the cab are of unit construction. I suspect it is still body-on-frame construction. There was also a full size Ford F-150 in Siberia, which makes two Ford pickups in furrin countries this week.
Bad guy tries to steal a motorcycle at gunpoint, owner and his posse drive him off with sticks and stones.
Via IAman who says: "This was different. Helps me understand the appeal of Argentina." Or maybe Chicago? Whatever. I put a stop to the video at a minute and a half. It goes on, but it's mostly just a rehash of what happened. I saw the clip, I'm good.
I'm reading about a crew of young guys building reproductions of old sports cars. They've set up shop in Todd, Argentina, "located 170 kilometers from the Obelisk". Hey, I've been to Argentina but I don't remember anything about an obelisk, so I go checking. Okay, it's in Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires is a big city, so it's possible that I missed it. Reading up on it in Wikipedia I was struck by how it seems to be a political lightning rod:
1936 - The obelisk was built by a German company, which completed its work in a record time of 31 days, with 157 workers. 1939 - the City Council sanctioned the demolition of the Obelisco, however, the ordinance was vetoed by the municipal executive power. 1973 - decorated as a Christmas tree. 1975 - during the Peronist government of Isabel Martínez de Perón, a ring-shaped rotating sign was hung around the obelisk, with the motto El silencio es salud (Silence is health). Although it was allegedly geared against motorists creating excessive noise, it was widely interpreted as a statement calling Argentines to refrain from expressing their political views. 1976 September - La Noche de los Lápices (The Night of the Pencils), was a series of kidnappings and forced disappearances, followed by the torture, rape, and murder of a number of young students, during the last Argentine dictatorship, also known as the National Reorganization Process. 2005 - the obelisk was covered by a giant pink condom to commemorate the World AIDS Day. 2006 - To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the La Noche de los Lápices, the monument was converted into a giant pencil.
The Obelisk is about one-half the height of the Washington Monument.
Riding the wind above the Andes Mountains, an experimental glider has set a world record for high-altitude flight.
On Sept. 2, the sleek Perlan 2 glider carried two pilots to 76,100 feet, or more than 14 miles, over the El Calafate region in southern Argentina. That’s the highest altitude ever reached by humans aboard an unpowered fixed-wing aircraft, and one of the highest altitudes reached by an aircraft of any description. Only spy planes and specialized balloons have flown higher. - Tom Metcalfe
“This is certainly the fastest ship in the world,” said Incat managing director Kim Clifford. “Of course there's a few speed boats that could surpass 58 knots, but nothing that could carry 1,000 passengers and 150 cars, and with an enormous duty-free shop on board.”The Francisco is the world's first high-speed ferry that uses liquefied natural gas (LNG) as primary fuel.
I did a little checking, and for its size it may very well be the fastest ship ever. The US Navy built some hydrofoils but they only got up to around 45 knots.
Ettore Bugatti built his first Type 35 in 1924, and by 1931, the company rolled out more than 300 of these racing cars in different specifications. Today, finding an original example is a huge undertaking, but those looking for the driving experience instead of just an investment can always call Argentina's Pur Sang. - Road & Track
Oh? Somebody is building reproductions of an iconic pre-war race car in Argentina?!? I root around and I find a great story on Petrolicious:
If you think of what Argentina was like back when Bugattis, Alfas, etc, were new back in the ‘20 to ‘30s, the country rivaled almost any country in Europe. It was called the Paris of the South and it is where all the wealthy people in Europe went to get away from war time chaos. You had examples of people going to great lengths to export and re-establish their lifestyle in South America. They were building Europe all over again in Buenos Aires, the architecture attested to that. Even entire palaces were shipped over and rebuilt.
Everything that made Europe special made it to Argentina. Everybody knows about Argentina being a leader in wine making, horse racing, polo and of course motorsport which, during the ‘20’s and ‘30’s no matter where you were in the world, was the ultimate lifestyle statement. To own something like a Bugatti and to be racing it around the world was as good as it got.
...
It’s more that you have this incredible Parisian culture in very wealthy Argentina, and then you have Juan Perón who came in with this sort of idea of calling in to suspect all the nice things that all the rich people had, bringing in a certain level of stagnation in progress for decades. Over time he really brought the country to a stand-still. So in the same way that you see Cuba, you have this preserved time capsule. The same thing happened, all be it to a lesser degree of severity, in Argentina. It wasn’t like things progressed.
We just finished watching season 1 of this series and it is nuts. We've got all the standard ingredients for a crime show: cops, lawyers, kidnapping, murder, mayhem, sex, and prostitution. On top of that we have a higher level of politics and corruption. And then there is the elephant in the room that no one will talk about. We don't know what it is, but it must be big, because everyone seems to be walking around it. They drag it out for so long, it gets to be irritating, but by the end of the show it has become obvious that the rot runs deep. Corruption can be found everywhere, but from where I sit in my cozy little cell, corruption in Latin America is much worse than it is here in the USA. I don't really know of course. Maybe the criminals here are just better at covering their tracks. Or maybe because I am well fed and warm my perceptions are distorted.
There is a thread of a story running through all this, but it can be a little hard to keep a hold of it with all the random drama popping up, not to mention the red herrings. Nothing is revealed, they are saving that for season 2. Or 3 or however long they can drag this out.
Most of the show is set in Buenos Aires and it looks just like any big city with skyscrapers and modern offices. At first we were guessing that maybe it was set in Mexico or Spain, but it wasn't until I checked that I found it was set in Argentina.
View across the street from the kid's apartment in Buenos Aires. I put it together from three separate images using Autostitch, which I suppose is obsolete technology since omnivision lenses became affordable.
Anyway note how tall the buildings are: two, three, maybe four stories. The kid's apartment building is no wider than any of these buildings but is 16 stories tall. It is really nice, in an archaic, made out
of stone, fifty years old kind of way. The apartments are small, but
then so is the rent.
This whole section of Palermo is like this: mostly short buildings with the occasional monolith shooting toward the sky. All these tall buildings are built with at least one, maybe two, blank walls, like they expected somebody to build another tall building right next door, but it never happened. So it's kind of like a building boom got started fifty or so years ago and then collapsed.
There aren't any cars in the picture because I had been standing on the curb for five minutes waiting for a break in the traffic. The stop light helped. Don't worry, though. In another minute the thundering herd will return.
The farther north you go (toward the sea / river / ocean), the greater the proportion of high rises, at least until you get to the Avenida del Libertador, which was definitely built to impress.
I left my pocketknife with the kids in Buenos Aires. I could have packed it in my luggage, but I decided that since the last time I traveled by air I ended up donating my pocketknife to the TSA, I may as well donate this one to someone I know. Especially since any kind of hardware seems to be exorbitantly priced in Buenos Aires. I ordered a replacement from Amazon when I got home ($20) and it arrived yesterday. I also thought I would check to see how much it would cost to send one to B.A., but they won't do it. They now have a whole list of things they won't ship to Argentina, which makes me wonder what, if anything, they will ship.
Real Estate office in Buenos Aires. No surprise, Argentina is a Catholic Country, of course the Vatican is going to be involved.
We have two Spanish words with almost the same spelling:
iMmobiliarE
iNmobiliarIA
Part 3 of The Godfather has always been my favorite because of its portrayal of corruption at the very highest levels. The Vatican owns half of the real estate is Europe? Sure, why not? They have been there longer than any of the existing governments, it makes sense that would have their fingers deep into that pie. So when I saw this sign above a real estate office in B.A. my suspicions were confirmed. The Vatican really is deep into the real estate business, not just in Europe, but also in Argentina.
Well, not so fast Bucky. Let's see what the Google has to say about this.
There are 13 directors of the Immobiliare. Michael controls 6 votes, the Vatican controls the swing vote.
Immobiliare
("the largest landlord on earth") was a $6 Billion corporation of which
the church owned 25%. The church had a $769 Million deficit, and
Michael agreed to bail them out and take majority control for $600
Million
Inmobiliaria is simply the Spanish word for real estate, like in Società Generale Immobiliare, whose largest shareholder was the Vatican.
Inspired by this post on Military Photos dot net, and because I had this picture just waiting to be posted.
Елена Максимова Back in USSR Голос Полуфинал Сезон 2
The Voice Russia
'Man, I had a dreadful flight. I'm back in the USSR', er, USA. I really detest flying on commercial airliners. It might be the very peak of technology, but it is the very pit of civilization.
I tend to think of myself as an average sort of guy, a little smarter than average in certain narrow areas, but for day-to-day affairs, fairly average. And so I imagined that everyone felt the same way about flying as I did. This trip I had a little time to think about it. Four hours in Buenos Aires waiting to take-off, ten hours and one minute flying to Atlanta, another four hours hanging around Atlanta doing my best impression of a Zombie, and then six hours to Portland, where I got to collect my luggage and drive home. Call it 25 hours and I got maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep. I was not happy.
If everyone experienced airline travel the way I do airliners would have ten seats and there would be one flight a day leaving Portland. You want to go to New York? We have a flight leaving early next quarter. So we've got a slight disconnect here.
Sleep, or lack thereof, has a lot to do with it, and restricted legroom becomes actually painful after a few hours, which means sleep is very elusive.
On another note, those stories where the hero goes without sleep for 72 hours running and still manages to make any kind of sense? Pure fantasy. If I don't get eight hours a day, forget it, I'm not even going to try functioning. I don't get eight hours all at once, mind you. Three hours here, two hours there, but eventually I usually manage to get eight hours and around 5PM I become a human being.
P.S. While I was looking for a music video of this tune I came across one done by a Russian (I think) woman. She is pretty durned good. I was going to give it top billing, but the embedded version starts with an ad, and we can't have that.
Update March 2017 replaced missing video with the one I mentioned in the P.S. I have gotten used to YouTube ads. Still don't like them, mostly, but occasionally a good one pops up, so there is that, and it's free, which is good.
An ambulance carrying the remains of prosecutor Alberto Nisman leaves the area outside his apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina, early Monday, Jan. 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Pablo Aharonian-DyN)
If you've been following the news about Argentina (and who hasn't?), you might have heard about the La muerte de Alberto Nisman, a prominent lawyer and politico who was killed by a gunshot to the head a couple of days ago, the day before he was supposed to present his case to some commitee of bigshots.
Depending on which story you are listening to, he was on a mission to expose the corruption in Cristina Kirchner's government, or a right wing gadfly bent on stirring up shit. My daughter, who lives here and actually talks to people likes the former story. Me, a visiting gadfly who only knows a couple of words of Spanish, likes the second version, which I put together from the reports in the Buenos Aires Herald, the local English language newspaper.
It's got all the makings of a first rate political thriller / scandal, stage managed and delivered to coincide with my visit.
Everyone on Cristina's side is being very careful to imply that Senor Nisman's death was a suicide, while the opposition is doing their best to imply that Cristina sent a hit squad to eliminate this problem.
She explained that the with .22 caliber fire arms, as the one used in Nisman’s death, “usually do not deliver positive results” for gunpowder traces in forensic analysis.
