French Connection

The small Irish village of Foxford has been decorated in the white and blue colors of Argentina and soccer fans there are hoping Gabriel Batistuta and his teammates will visit after winning the World Cup. Why Argentina? It seems that 221 years ago, a chap named William Brown was born in Foxford and that he later became an admiral in the Argentine navy. Which makes it as good an excuse as any.

Mitchell Page Oakland Athletics outfielder, hitting coach with Cardinals Mitchell Page, 59, an Oakland Athletics outfielder who had his best season as a rookie in 1977 then went on to become a hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Washington Nationals, died Saturday, the Cardinals announced. The cause was not given. Page broke into the big leagues in 1977 and was an immediate hit with the A's, batting .307 with 21 homers and 75 RBIs. He also stole 42 bases and finished runner-up to Hall of Famer Eddie Murray in American League Rookie of the Year voting.

A man who allegedly oversaw heroin distribution in Harlem for the notorious French Connection was arrested Wednesday in Los Angeles, 17 years after he fled investigators probing his ties to the narcotics underworld. Stanton Garland, identified as the head of a street distribution network for the powerful drug ring of the early 1960s, was taken into custody by U.S. marshals as he visited his badly injured son at a Baldwin Hills hospital. Authorities said the manhunt came to an end when Garland, 60, arrived at Meadowbrook Neurological Center on Tuesday morning to arrange for the discharge of his son, whose insurance was scheduled to expire.

Owen Roizman has spent his career behind a camera, first as the five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer of such classics as 1971's "The French Connection," 1973's "The Exorcist" and 1976's "Network" and for the last 14 years as a still portrait photographer. In fact, he says he never travels without a digital camera in his pocket just in case he meets an interesting face. It was photographer Douglas Kirkland who introduced Roizman, 74, to the world of digital photography and software such as Adobe Photoshop.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet: The name sounds so cultured, so refined, so decidedly, inescapably, well, French. But Thibaudet says the French connection "drives me crazy." "People think I can only play French music," the young pianist said in a recent phone interview from his home in Washington. "They put a sticker on you--is that how you say it?--'You're a specialist in French music.' I don't like that. About 5 or 6 years ago, I was. . . .

An alleged drug distributor, arrested after 17 years as a fugitive, admitted Friday that he was one of those accused of involvement with a 1962 heroin case made famous by the Academy Award-winning movie "The French Connection." Stanton Garland, 60, identified himself to U.S. Magistrate Charles Eick in Los Angeles. Prosecutors and a fingerprint expert were on hand in the courtroom to prove his identity if he denied it. Deputy Federal Public Defender Yolanda Barrera said she planned to discuss the case with New York prosecutors to see if both the escape charge and the heroin distribution charge could be handled here.

Bill Sharp referred to it as the French Revolution, and although there was no storming of the Bastille, there was the storming, by a few French surfers, of some extraordinary walls of water raging shoreward off Southern France. And the result of the March 10 assault -- at Belharra Reef, two-plus miles off the coast of St. Jean de Luz -- was to turn the world of big-wave surfing upside down.

Francois Scapula, a top figure in the 1960s "French Connection" drug trafficking ring, was sentenced to 18 years in prison Tuesday on drug smuggling charges. Scapula, a top chemist for the ring portrayed in two movies starring Gene Hackman, will not serve his French sentence now because he has been in Swiss jails since 1985 serving a 20-year sentence for another drug offense.

--A woman in Paris may prove the key that unlocks the mystery of a deaf boy who cannot speak found wandering the streets of Juarez, Mexico, last year. The boy, who was turned over to officials in nearby El Paso after showing a preference for hamburgers and American cartoon characters, told officials through a combination of gestures and pictures that he survived the crash of a small airplane that killed his parents and sister.

In a Los Angeles that dwells on the present, First Century Families plots to keep the city's history fresh. "The French Connection" luncheon last week at the Regent Beverly Wilshire--chaired by Alyce de Roulet Williamson, organized by Christine Shirley and addressed by Jean Bruce Poole, senior curator of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument--could do nothing but compel listeners to dive into the city's past.

Lance Armstrong's return to the race that made him a supernova reintroduces one of the touchier cases of fan-athlete rapports, the occasionally prickly interplay between the cyclist who once dominated a revered 106-year-old race in a foreign country and the citizens of the country with the revered 106-year-old race.

The Pompidou Center is a magnet for students, tourists and arts aficionados in central Paris, housing the National Museum of Modern Art, a public library and performance spaces in an inside-out building with mechanical systems encased in giant red, blue and green pipes and a view-to-die-for escalator in a transparent cylinder. But it gets by with a little help from its American friends -- and they are based in Los Angeles.

He built it. But the truth is, they never really came. What he built was a baseball field with minor league pretensions but major league dimensions, with lockers, lights and artificial turf, and a concession stand that sells hot dogs that are tasty even if they come smeared with mayonnaise and stuffed into hollowed-out baguettes. The home team, the Montigny Cougars, is one of the better teams in France -- not that it has a lot of competition.

Robin Moore, a nonfiction author best known for writing "The French Connection" and "The Green Berets," has died after a long illness. He was 82. Moore died Thursday at a hospital in southwestern Kentucky, Dennis Monroe of Lamb Funeral Home told the Associated Press. Born Robert L. Moore Jr., he wrote several books under the pen name Robin Moore. "The French Connection," published in 1969, was about a New York drug bust.

"YOUNG and edgy?" William Friedkin rolls the words around and decides they taste just fine. "I'll ascribe to that description. Youth is something that you feel. You can feel old at 30. And from time to time I did." William Friedkin -- everyone calls him Billy -- is 71 now, but with his smooth complexion and lively manner he neither looks nor acts his age. "It's clean living," he says, grinning at the absurdity of the thought. "Clean mind, clean body, take your choice."

LYN KIENHOLZ may be the most important macher in the Los Angeles art world you've never heard of. She can seem innocuous in her sensible sandals and faded pink Chateau Marmont sweatshirt. But the names on the 3-by-5 cards she keeps in old library file drawers will make your eyes spin.

I found Clark S. Judge's column ("Sen. Kerry, It's French for Kiss Off," Opinion, Aug. 1) to be a pathetic piece of propaganda that sets France up as a straw man. I watched Sen. John Kerry's acceptance speech and he never once mentioned France. Judge neglects to mention that fact in his column. The war in Iraq is not about France; it is about an incompetent administration that chose not to thoughtfully and carefully analyze options before committing lives and money to a misguided war. I would be interested in seeing a piece by Judge in which he describes the history, policies and practices of one of the Bush administration's favorite allies, Saudi Arabia.

THE French tricolor flew above Place du General de Gaulle on a misty morning as white-gloved gendarmes in snappy blue uniforms, rifles across their chests, stood at attention and the band struck up "La Marseillaise." It was July 14, Bastille Day. I was in France, surrounded by patriotic French, yet I was 2,800 miles and an ocean away from Paris, in St.-Pierre and Miquelon. The two islands, 18 miles off southern Newfoundland, are the only remaining French outposts in North America.