bizarre

NEXT time you’re exploring France, you might spot something that looks like a UFO.

However, it is more likely to be a swimming pool, built back in the 1970s.

Called “Piscines Tournesol” – or “sunflower pools” – it aimed to build 1,000 swimming pools across the country.

This was launched by then Secretary of State for Youth and Sport, Joseph Comiti.

They hoped to encourage more people to swim, after the a series of drowning incidents.

Not only that, but it followed a poor performance from the French swimming team in the 1968 Summer Olympics.

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Around 700 were built, but there was one particular style that was praised.

With a number of designs put forward, the winner was created by architect Bernard Schoellerr – called Piscines Tournesol.

Despite plans for 250 “sunflower” pools across the UK, around 183 were built.

Each one was around 25m long and 10m wide, with a 35m diamater domed roof.

Most of the light came from the round port-hole style windows.

While named after the flower, the pools look more like a spaceship, many have said.

In good weather, the roofs open 120 degrees, so are half indoors and half outdoors.

Sadly only 100 remain across France, although a number are still open to the public, although there are a few also across Luxembourg and Belgium.

One of the easiest for Brits to visit is Piscine Tournesol d’Hellemmes, on the outskirts of Lille.

Or there is Tournesol Raymond-Mulinghausen, 30 minutes from the centre of Paris which even launched €1 swims this summer for kids.

And one of the oldest is Piscine Tournesol de Bonneveine in Marseille, which was granted heritage status in 2000.

I saw one on holiday in Luxembourg, in the early 80’s. It was on top of a hill, hidden behind some trees, just like a real UFO

It’s beautiful, so Space Age looking. Does it open any further, to expose the whole pool?

Here’s how to find the grand Grecian-style pool in the UK.

And we’ve rounded up the best outdoor swimming pools in the UK.

SEATTLE — In a matter of minutes, the home of the Seattle Seahawks went from a painfully quiet Lumen “Library” to a rollicking madhouse that sent seismologists scrambling for their ground-motion sensors.

Call it the Sheesh-Quake Game.

In a historic comeback, the Seahawks dug their way out of a 16-point, fourth-quarter ditch to beat the Rams in overtime, 38-37.

Oh, the visitors will agonize over some of the bizarre calls, some deserving of further explanation from the NFL. An ineligible-man-downfield call that wiped out a Rams touchdown when they were a yard away from the end zone? That had people scratching their heads. Then there was that do-or-die two-point conversion that seemingly fell incomplete… but later was reversed. More on that in a moment.

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Gary Klein breaks down what went wrong for the Rams in their 38-37 loss to the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field on Thursday night.

When the Rams wincingly rewind the video of the collapse, they’ll be peering through the cracks in their fingers.

You’ve heard of a no-look pass? This was a no-look finish.

As soothing wins go, this was a warm bubble bath for the Seahawks, who secured a playoff berth and assumed the driver’s seat in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed.

“You hear people late in the year have losses, and you hear people come up here and say, like, ‘Man, this is going to be a good thing for us,’” said Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp, a onetime Rams hero. “It’s much better to be up here right now saying this is going to be a good thing for us.”

Kupp atoned for his first-half fumble with a successful two-point conversion in the fourth quarter — the first of three in a row for the Seahawks — and a 21-yard reception on the winning drive in overtime.

“If you find a way to get a win when you do turn the ball over three times, you do end up down 16 points, or whatever it was, in the fourth quarter, just finding ways to win games when the odds are against you and things aren’t going right — finding a way to fight back — it’s going to be a good thing for us,” Kupp said. “A good thing for us to draw on.”

The Rams are sifting through the debris of a different lesson. It was a reminder that this charmed season, with Matthew Stafford in line to win his first Most Valuable Player honor, can come crashing down at any moment. There’s no more smooth glide path to Santa Clara for the Super Bowl.

As good as it was for most of the game, picking off Sam Darnold twice and sacking him four times, the Rams defense failed to hold up when it counted most. Shades of the three-point loss at Carolina.

Darnold will have a story to tell. He exorcised a lot of demons. The Rams sacked him nine times in the playoffs last season when Darnold was playing for Minnesota, and intercepted six of his passes in two games this season.

“It’s not great when you have interceptions and turnovers, you want to limit that,” said Darnold, the former USC star. “But all you can do is fight back. For us, I was just going to continue to plug away.”

Darnold came through when it counted, completing five passes on the winning drive, then finding the obscure tight end Eric Saubert — his fourth option — wide open in the end zone on the triumphant conversion.

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold looks to pass against the Rams in the first half Thursday.

(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)

The second of the three conversions was the game’s most controversial moment. The Seahawks needed it to forge a 30-30 tie with a little more than six minutes remaining in regulation.

Darnold fired a quick screen pass to his left, trying to get the ball to Zach Charbonnet. Rams defender Jared Verse jumped the route and knocked down the pass. Everyone thought the play was dead, including Charbonnet, who casually jogged across the goal line and picked up the ball as it lay in the end zone.

That proved critical because officials — after what seemed like an eternity — ruled that Darnold had thrown a backward pass and the ball was live when Charbonnet picked it up. Therefore, a fumble recovery and successful conversion, tying the game.

Asked later if it felt like a backward pass, Darnold had a half-smile and said, “Um, yeah. It felt like I threw it kind of right on the side. I’m glad Charbs picked it up, and that turned out to be a game-changing play.”

Was that designed to be a backward pass?

“It just happened to be backwards,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily talked about. We were just trying to get it in down there on the goal line.”

The Seahawks were lined up to kick off when officials announced that, upon review, the previous play was successful. Suddenly, the most improbable of come-from-victories was within reach.

Earlier in the fourth quarter, when the home team was trailing, 30-14, the Amazon Prime crew had to do some vamping to keep viewers engaged. Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit told some Kurt Warner stories from the “Greatest Show on Turf” days. Hey, it had to be more interesting than this game.

Michaels delivered an obscure stat: When leading by 15 points or more in the fourth quarter, the Rams were 323-1.

Informed of that, Seahawks running back Cam Akers — once shown the door by the Rams — had a wry response.

“Now, they’ve lost two,” he said.

Celebration in one locker room. Silence in another.

Do you believe in meltdowns?

Two years ago, at Jason Woliner’s birthday party, there was a strange guest in attendance. Mysterious, wise, uncanny — it was an animatronic robot cowboy named Dale. In the years prior, Woliner had become transfixed by immersive theater and animatronics, prompting him to purchase Dale. Woliner’s obsession with him became akin to Frankenstein and his monster.

Dale’s presence was a triumph. Using a complex software system, Woliner made the animatronic conversational. “I set him up in my garage. People came in and asked him questions, and he gave advice on relationships,” Woliner says.

A disquieting collection of animatronics became fixtures in the director’s life. More encounters ensued. Dale hosted an event at the Dynasty Typewriter theater in place of Woliner. Later, another one of his animatronics had campfire-side chats with audiences at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans. Woliner’s creative partner of 15 years, Eric Notarnicola, joined the endeavor as well.

Notarnicola and Woliner, known for comedy projects like “Nathan for You,” “The Rehearsal,” “Paul T. Goldman” and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” found that animatronics aligned with their body of work — absurd, amusing and occasionally devastating explorations of truth and vulnerability.

Dale — now better known as “the man” — this month will host guests at the Velaslavasay Panorama in a show called “The Man in the Tuskhut.” The Nova Tuskhut is a space within the venue designed like an Arctic trading post. For the show, attendees have a one-on-one encounter with the man in the Tuskhut. That’s after watching a documentary about frontiersman Henry James Entrikin, enjoying a drink at a saloon and grilling hot dogs.

“We started experimenting with this weird, interactive, intimate conversation with an animatronic and building it into a story that is surprising and maybe funny and maybe unsettling — something that leaves you with an unusual experience,” Woliner says.

From left to right, Ruby Carlson Bedirian, Eric Notarnicola and Jason Woliner, who collaborated on “The Man in the Tuskhut,” stand behind the saloon with animatronic skeletons.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

The animatronic improvises in conversation based on a story outline written by Woliner and Notarnicola. Inside the Tuskhut, the animatronic spurs surprising encounters with guests, Notarnicola says. “Some people come in and play a character. If they’re interested in role-playing, then they get to do that. Other people play it a lot more straight,” he says.

The buzzy show, not advertised on social media, has been gaining popularity through word of mouth. “We haven’t spent a penny on marketing,” says Woliner. The collaborators have sold out 200 encounters with the animatronic, hosting 20 encounters per day.

In the Ken Burns–style sepia-stained historical documentary, visitors learn that the man was killed by “Arctic cold that was both his companion and his adversary.” His travels include encounters with Inuit people, snow blindness and a stinging need for solitude that leads him to abandon his family for a life in the Arctic trading post. The documentary echoes the protagonists of Jack London novels — men up against the wild, grappling for survival — a trope Woliner enjoys.

“We’ve done a few things with those kinds of lonesome, filthy men,” Woliner says with a laugh.

Once inside the Tuskhut, visitors sit across from the man in a dimly lighted room. Hooks line the walls. Medicine cabinets collect dust on bookshelves — ones with “remedies for ailments, some imagined, some real.” Later, the man muses: “Real medicine is having something to believe in.” A radio buzzes in the background with static and news of “that Hitler fella,” as the man says. The bizarre encounter is different for each visitor who sits in his haunting gaze.

“Some people have had experiences that seem similar to going to a confessional or to a therapy session because some of the prompts and questions are open,” says Sara Velas, founder of the Velaslavasay Panorama and collaborator on the project. “People say: ‘I hadn’t heard someone talk to me in that tone of voice since my grandfather was alive.’ It’s a framework with many different outcomes, and it has been really special to observe.”

From left to right, Jason Woliner, Ruby Carlson Bedirian and Eric Notarnicola next to an animatronic skeleton.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Notarnicola says the scope of animatronic entertainment technology is far-reaching across language and culture. “We’re able to run the experience in over 30 different languages. We’ve run the experience in Spanish, Slovak, Polish and Chinese,” he says. “It removes this boundary of communication where anyone, anywhere can experience it and communicate.”

Ruby Carlson Bedirian, head of engineering and enrichment at the theater and collaborator, says many visitors try to stump the animatronic or break it. “Many of the people coming are, proportionally, insiders — they’re interested in this form,” Carlson Bedirian says. “There have been so many artists and technicians and specialized artisans who have had really amazing interactions.”

The animatronic had a storied history before joining Woliner and Notarnicola’s world. As they discovered, the robot was manufactured as part of a U.S. military operation. It was used in an immersive training facility at Camp Pendleton to prepare soldiers for the war in Afghanistan. By a bizarre twist of fate, it ended up in the filmmakers’ possession through eBay, after a man named Juju kept the animatronic in his living room in Florida.

“We found them through Reddit — there’s an animatronics-for-sale Reddit — and a guy had posted that he was trying to unload them,” Woliner says. Woliner spends time on the animatronic Reddit alongside Disneyland and Chuck E. Cheese enthusiasts.

One of the animatronics even appeared in the most recent season of “The Rehearsal.” “We’re trying to use them for good,” Woliner says.

For Woliner and Notarnicola, “The Man in the Tuskhut” is only the beginning of their venture with animatronics. “We have other shows in development, and other things we want to do that are bigger — multiple characters. This is just the beginning of where this form of interaction and entertainment is headed,” Notarnicola says. The creative duo recently launched Incident, a new experimental entertainment company dedicated to these otherworldly projects.

Woliner is enthusiastic about being part of a growing community of interactive experiences in Los Angeles. “I’m most excited about being part of the offbeat L.A. community,” he says.