11.08.2007
10.08.2007
An interview with the director of BOPE: Tropa D'elite
"BOPE: Tropa De Elite" or "BOPE: Elite Troop" it's about a SWAT-style
police unit in Rio that fights drug traffickers using summary
executions and Abu Ghraib-style torture. If this film launched in
America it would be your basic late 70s / early 80s
clean-up-the-streets-with-more-than-a-touch-of-fascism police drama.
Here it is blowing everybody's mind. It also leaked a month before
the release to the vast network of pirate DVD sellers, and then broke
records in its opening weekend.
I just watched a long interview of the director on national TV
(something that people crowded around the TV for) and it made me want
to write something about the film and the phenomenon, so I'm writing
some notes here that I might use.
* The interview format was surreal. It was setup like an inquisition,
with raised, circular seating around the director sitting in the
center.
* It was one of those situations (which I understand because I've been
in them) where everybody else is having the argument for the first
time, and the director is having it for the 500th time. He is armed
to the teeth, and knows every punchline, every twist and turn of the
labyrinth, and every slippery way out when things get hairy. More
than that, he's a smooth talker.
* The director's defenses of the film as anti-violence
pro-social-change just didn't sync with the way the majority of the
audience receives the film (and even his own assessment of this). You
got the impression that this is one of those times when an artist
makes a work of art he knows is really good, but that he doesn't
disagree with. The dignified thing to do when this happens is just
take the heat (and the money) and just shut up, because the defense is
just going to be half hearted and slimey.
* If there was a woman in the panel, she did not speak during the part
I observed.
* Questioners mostly academic. One standout was a police captain from
the military police in Rio.
* I'd heard this before, but he clarified: the movie was filmed in
some of the favelas it documents (as no less than war zones). At one
point the film crew was held up and robbed by traffickers. But even
more interesting, at one point the folks from BOPE (the SWAT team)
were around when they were filming a torture scene involving a plastic
bag over the head and threatened sodomizing with a broomstick.
Filmmakers were worried the police would interfere, but when the
police came down and interrupted, it was to say "hey, you're doing
this all wrong. The bag is supposed to be like this, so it won't
leave a mark". Etc.
* Director describes interview with journalist where the journalist
lays down a series of reasons why the film is definitively fascist,
and a series of lame responses.
* I think there are English subtitles of the film on the internet now.
A search brought me to this collaborative subtitling forum, which is
incredible:
http://www.divxsubtitles.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5614
* I'd like to get the interview subtitled too.
* The host of what somebody described to me as a cheesy pop TV show
for teenagers and kids was robbed a few days back for his rolex, and
wrote an op-ed about it saying, wistfully, "where's Captain
Nascimento? [the protagonist uber-cop]"
* The film is definitely succeeding at provoking a massive debate, and
it's giving him a forum to strongly state the benefits of
decriminalization, and a fresh-start restructuring of the Military
Police.
10.06.2007
10.02.2007
Who's butts?
Like" a few nights ago, and lately I've been playing with this one
toddler a lot.
A funny thing to do while coloring is to draw "circle A's" on their
diapers. Some time later:
--"Did you draw a circle A on my daughter's butt?"
--"Um, no."
Sports and Lazer
talking about laser tag. So when I read this sentence in wikipedia
about this really big and pretty piazza I walk by a lot...
"currently the plaza is used in the community for sports and [lazer]"
...I was like, "No way!!!! Oh wait.... aw."
8.13.2007
A conversation about Açai
minitodo.rtf
8.05.2007
An article about the boredoms drum thing
ex=1186459200&en=9b6e9be0dc922e3c&ei=5070
Wow. The time I saw the Boredoms play it was one of the best shows
I'd ever seen. I bet this was really really cool.
I was just reading this Kelefah Sanneh article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/arts/music/23sire.html?ex=1186459200&en=1c9c9cbee7b3cb68&ei=5070
"To name just a few recent gigs: the 77-drummer Boredoms performance under the Brooklyn Bridge; Vampire Weekend on Roosevelt Island; Animal Collective at South Street Seaport; the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival; Built to Spill and Cat Power at McCarren Pool."
Wait. 77-drummer Boredoms performance in the Brooklyn Bridge space? Did that really happen? Fuck, man. I hope somebody I know went to that.
More Brazilian Food
(!) to remove a highly posionous substance. I tried that the day
before yesterday, but it was too salty.
I had Tacaca again last night, which was awesome. It's a soup
consisting of ransparent goo that looks like wheatpaste, with broth,
boiled green veggies, and salty little shrimps on top. I think the
goo and the broth are both made of Yucca.
8.04.2007
Videos and photos of party
http://flickr.com/photos/notsurewhen/
http://wstr.org/Videos (all the as-yet un-named ones... if you can't
play them try VLC)
Tecnobrega parties are fucking rad
when I walk in is this huge bright LED screen with animations that
remind me of the demo scene (including plasma and rotating cubes).
I met one of the producers and barely understood him say something
like "I'm making electro-brega... it's a mix between Benny Benassi
and technobrega". Sure enough, later that night the guy is up in the
spaceship DJ cockpit and I hear the baseline from "Satisfaction" all
cut up to fit into your standard rolling reggaetonish brega beat. So
amazing.
By that point me and my friend Giseli were totally just being DJ ho's
(is that designation still current and/or acceptable?) just laughing
and basking in it.
Other awesome reappropriations included melody rips of Rhianna
"Unfaithful", Ace of Base "Don't Turn Around", "Girls Just Wanna Have
Fun" and this song by the Italian R&B artist Tiziano Ferro (actually
pretty awesome) from back in 2001 that I never thought I'd hear
again. "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" even had a really strong phonetic
imprint from the original version in some of the verses.
Photos should be going up tonight.
8.03.2007
Açai
ever find anywhere. Yesterday I ate it as a cold thin soup with ice,
then with a crunchy carb made from roots, and then as ice cream.
There's also a really sweet milkshake form with chopped up nuts and
guarana.
It has a very cool deep purple color.
So amazing. I could eat the ice cream every day. Everybody should
go to the Brazilian bakery on Lincoln Street (right near Forbes) and
see if they have it.
If they don't have it, ask if they can get it! And more generally,
see if you can get Brazilian ice cream in Worcester. It's so cool!
7.30.2007
I miss Trinidad so much
Phone with FM radio
to funny brazil radio all the time when walking around. The only
downside is I will be sadder if it's stolen.
Brazilian word games
"to fuck". So there's a joke, "As duas coisas melhor na vida sao
comer" which translates (literally, radio-editly) as "The two best
things in life are eating".
2) The word "pasta" means "crack" (as in cocaine).
3) There was a Brazilian folk hero who, when under attack by an
invading army, yelled "O Mata o Moro!" to his followers, which
translates roughly as "kill or be killed!". However, it also
translates as "Either the forest or the hills!" and some say that as
he waved his sword in the air he indicated each respective exit.
4) There is a Brazilian verb that means "to lick all over and cover
with saliva", and not in an eew way. I just forget what it is.
7.29.2007
Brazilian tough kids fly kites
7.27.2007
Videos
Some miscellaneous videos up there, including one of the time we saw
dolphins!
7.26.2007
Belem
Nice old-city ultra-modern-city vibe.
Some of the people I've met say that it's a bit slow in terms of
social life though. I've definitely been hanging around the house a
lot, which is nice because I'm out of the sun. The plan is to stay
here until next week when the street party scene kicks up again after
this week, which is a holiday week where tons of people go to the beach.
Ton of new photos
just uploaded a *ton* of photos of the past few weeks.
There should be some videos of Trinidad and Dolphins at sea here in a
couple hours too:
http://nynex
Also, if you use flickr on a Mac and want to kill the uploading tool,
try fotofox, it is wicked better:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3945
7.25.2007
Brazilian ice cream is extraordinary
of crazy tropical fruits. A couple days ago I got an ice cream
called "Romeo and Juliet" that was like peppermint-stick-like gooey
guava paste with a cheesecake flavor base.
Other highlights: something that tastes like macadamia nut, chocolate
with coconut, white chocolate, and Acai, a strange all-purpose jungle
food that gets into thick energy drinks, milkshakes, and savory
cooking as well (like, as a soupy mix alongside fried fish or
chicken). Bonkers.
7.24.2007
If you travel with a laptop...
http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/
So worth it. You can just plug it in to people's internet
connections and get Wifi everywhere in the house.
The only thing wrong with it is that it doesn't have 2 ethernet ports
(one to go to the computer you just unplugged).
7.20.2007
Latest jam
http://wstr.org/nynex/Nobody%20wanna%20remix%20to%20ignition%20the%
20stripper%20song%20(nynex%20remix).mp3
If not why not?
Brazilian Margarine
that tastes and smells unbearably bad. Yuck!
7.18.2007
Wheels spinning
"shitty Spanish" holding pattern. My interest in cool linuxy
projects here has been luring me away from language learning (primary
goal) and internet projects (secondary). Met a few cool people, but
my wheels are spinning even harder than in Trinidad.
Need a better Portuguese dictionary
dictionary they include kinda blows. The word results are ordered
alphabetically instead of by best-fit (so you get marginal
translations starting with the letter "a" before you get the most
useful ones), it isn't very comprehensive, and it gives minimal
explanation for the different possible translations so you're left
guessing.
The best dictionary I've ever touched (in terms of content... the
software was windows only, not great, and DRM'ed) was the Garzanti
Italian dictionary. Using that thing was a dream, there's something
so rad about never having to guess the meaning of a word or expression.
I want a Portuguese one of those.
Traveling? Don't get a camera, get a phone.
Good spam subject
I'm disappointed that Band of Bugs didn't do more with its insect theme to make it stand out, but what it does, it does quite well.
7.13.2007
New jam available in a few moments
Uploading now. I'm pretty happy about this one. Started it late
last night and finished this morning.
7.12.2007
Casetta e Planeta: Baile Funk parody on Brazilian TV
Funk artists, Casetta e Planeta ("Casette" and "Planet"). One has a
scraggly afro (scraggle-fro?) and the other has parallel light and
dark stripes (skunk-hawk?). They talk in really Baile Funk -esque
cadences, and in this episode of the sketch Casette and Planet go to
Venezuela, where they are greeted by a parody of Hugo Chavez who
speaks in a robotic, military Spanish in the fashion of the square
not digging this crazy music.
They sing him a really silly Baile Funk song and get chased out of
the country. Then they go to Argentina. I'm not sure what happens
in Argentina, cause I got distracted.
(kevin and andy, thought I'd CC you on this, but this is basically a
blog post, if youtube has anything matching this, please link to it
in the comments).
Da un nike
that involves saying "da um nike" (give/do a nike) with a hand motion
in the shape of the nike logo. As in, "get the hell outta here".
Casetta e Planeta: Baile Funk parody on Brazilian TV
Funk artists, Casetta e Planeta ("Casette" and "Planet"). One has a
scraggly afro (scraggle-fro?) and the other has parallel light and
dark stripes (skunk-hawk?). They talk in really Baile Funk -esque
cadences, and in this episode of the sketch Casette and Planet go to
Venezuela, where they are greeted by a parody of Hugo Chavez who
speaks in a robotic, military Spanish in the fashion of the square
not digging this crazy music.
They sing him a really silly Baile Funk song and get chased out of
the country. Then they go to Argentina. I'm not sure what happens
in Argentina, cause I got distracted.
(kevin and andy, thought I'd CC you on this, but this is basically a
blog post, if youtube has anything matching this, please link to it
in the comments).
7.11.2007
Parentins crazy Brazilian party Day 4
email, I had a boat to find. Turns out the fire station was a little
far, but the walk was great. It took me outside the mayhem a bit,
down a slightly shaded boulevard and a curved market street. I
bought a heavy tapioca pancake flavored with coconut and wrapped in
big leaves, which I picked at as I walked and ate more of than I
meant to.
The streets got quieter and it looked like I might be on a dead end
when I saw the fire station. Across the street I could see an
offshoot of the Amazon, some broken down looking boats tied up--some
grounded--and a few guys sitting in the shade near a propane
station. "Have you seen a boat with foreigners?" I asked. They
hadn't. I walked back to the road and continued down to its end
where more boats sat in the mud and a small bar was set up on the
street. No boat here either. And there wasn't really any good way
to follow the river, I had to just backtrack to the next cross
street, go up a block, and walk down to the next dead end. After a
couple iterations of this in the hot sun, I decided to check one more
street and then go home. At the end of this next street floated the
boat I was looking for.
There were about 12 folks on the boat; kids (three Germans a dutch
and a Swede) from the hostel in Manaus and family and friends of the
Brazlians who owned the boat. We ate grilled fish, jumped off the
boat into the water, and then drank caipirinhas (sugar+lime+cachassa)
and danced around on the deck for the next five or six hours,
surrounded by muddy water, river boats, trees, and houses on
stilts. At one point it started pouring rain even though 3/4 of the
sky was clear blue. That was wonderful.
One of the Germans was really good at flips and dramatic dives. The
other German was really good at doing this funny Brazilian dude dance
(half dance half stance, actually) in a speedo while water poured
down from an outdoor shower on the deck. The Germans were both about
20 and had spent the past 10 months in Rio fulfilling a civil service
requirement, so they'd developed Brazilian extensions to their
personalities, which was fun to see. There was a young Brazilian guy
Lucivan (sp?) who was just a total treasure, trying to talk to
everybody in whatever language they spoke, none of which he knew.
Everybody was just being silly.
We slept in hammocks through the evening, until about midnight, and
then hit the same techno party as the night before. That night the
music was a lot better, and I ended up staying out until 8. During
the day we'd made a plan to go swimming out by the river, so I was
psychologically prepared and surprisingly un-hungover when somebody
woke me up an hour later.
7.09.2007
yo!
http://www.gmail.com/app/v1.1.1/L1/gm-Generic-Advanced_MIDP2.jad
Place them in your phone using your computer and USB cable or
7.08.2007
Parintins Day 3
them setting up the day before. They were playing Parintins songs,
which I got to know real well, because there are about 8 of them.
Some background on the theoretical framework of the history and
practices of the festival is in order. If anything seems unclear,
don't ask me because I have no idea. Just relax your need for
explanation as much as possible and use your imagination to fill in
gaps.
So there are two bulls. Bulls correspond to colors (red and blue),
to vaguely stated personality traits ("garantido" and "caprichoso")
and to two tribes of people who affiliate as one or the other and
where the corresponding color t-shirt, armband, etc. The words
"garantido" and "caprichoso" translate directly to "guaranteed" and
"capricious" so if you thought a dictionary was going to help you
understand this better, you're out of luck. Some of this had been
explained to me the night before while I was drinking, other stuff I
was just intuiting or (maybe) hallucinating.
Each side has it's own songs, like "I'm blue, I'm blue, I'm blue, I'm
'caprichoso'" or "Garantido... garaaantido". And there are four of
them. Did I say eight? No, I think there were four.
For lunch the crazy guys from the boat were having a barbacue. Huge
chunks of salted meat and sausage, and some of these really mean
looking river fish with tough black scales that you have to rip apart
like a lobster. Later that night I realized how cheap beer was and
got really drunk and ran around dancing at the techno party. At some
point I ran into a swede from the hostel scene in Manaus; they'd come
down on a smaller boat that day, but all she knew was it was near the
fire station. So the next morning when I woke up (pretty early
considering) I checked my email and went to find this boat.
7.07.2007
Orcootchie
Orkut is this weird social network site (like Myspace or Facebook)
that Google bought several years ago.
It blew up in Brazil, where it is pronounced "Orkootchie".
7.05.2007
7.04.2007
Pictures in a week or so
areas I've been is ridiculously slow, so I'm not even trying to post
them yet.
Dolphins
are fresh water river dolphins here, and some of them are pink (no
joke).
But the really cool thing about river dolphins is that at night the
river was as calm as a puddle and the town was quiet so you could
hear them breathing. Snort. And you could hear the squeaks they
made as they echolocated in the muddy water.
Parentins or Crazy Brazilian Party - Day 2
hammock half asleep and half awake for ages, soaking up the morning
chatter and swaying hammocks around me, watching the jungle slide
by. When I finally got up to walk around, I was delighted to see my
vision of an armada partly realized. In front of us I counted 9
boats trailing off into the horizon, and another 8 or so behind. It
was like a convoy crossing the Atlantic in an old war movie, keeping
sharp lookout for u-boats. And knowing that our floating hammock
city of sleepy people was part of a larger confederation just
deepened the warm feeling that'd been diffusing through my body since
I woke up.
I took a shower in river water pumped up to a tank in the top of the
boat, and then walked to the front to dry off in the breeze and watch
the country slide by. Junior was holding court. Junior lives in Sao
Paolo, a huge city, and the way to picture him in relation to other
people we met is: he's the guy from the big city who loves traveling
around his country and seeing the sites. He was basically a big,
outspoken New Yorker (or Statin Islander) taking a boatride down the
Mississippi with a bunch of locals (and a miscellaneous foreigner).
I think when I was dry I just went back in my hammock, and spent a
little time copying music onto one of the other DJs' mp3 player.
We rolled into town in the early evening, and Junior and I went off
on our own to get something to eat. We walked into town, passed the
cemetary, and up to the stadium where a huge number of absolutely
ridiculous floats and large puppets were standing by. There were
trees three stories tall, giant skulls, miscellaneous vegetation,
enormous elf-like figures and giant lizards. I had no idea what any
of this was for, and figured a parade maybe but didn't give it much
thought. The streets were full of people but everyone was just
milling around in anticipation, and even though there were some
tremendous crowds watching something on a stage by the stadium it was
too chill to be much fun. After dinner we went home early and went
to sleep.
Know anybody in Brazil?
Brazil, drop me a line: hwilson at the gee mail. I'm in Brazil now,
I'm planning to live here for 5 or 6 months, and I'm looking for a
good place to settle down. So I'd love to hear ideas about cool
cities, or get contacts of friends you might have living here or
elsewhere. Feel free to pass this on to others you know.
7.03.2007
Parentins or Crazy Brazilian Party - Day 1: Boatride
down to the boat to buy mine. The boat was crammed with others of
varying shapes and sizes along the busy river front. It was among
the larger boats, three levels high, and was made of white painted
wood. It looked like a Mississippi riverboat but without the
paddlewheel. We walked down a shifty gangplank and aboard. There
were very few people on the boat at this point--mostly just the
boat's crew and their friends-- but hammocks of all different colors,
textures, and sizes already hung from the ceiling. A guy was selling
woven cloth hammocks and I bought his cheapest one for $6. It was an
ugly set of colors and slightly smaller than the others, but seemed
fine. He tied it up to the ceiling for me in a totally inefficient
way (a few days on a sailboat and now I'm a knot snob).
The operators of the boat asked if we wanted to have a look around,
so we took a walk up to the top level where somebody stood fussing
over a table crammed with DJ equipment: amplifier, CD decks, and a
computer. I remembered that these boats were known for playing loud
dance music all night; awesome. One of the guys in charge of the
boat caught me eying the equipment and asked me if I DJ'ed. I don't
DJ, so I said "yes". "Great, so you can DJ later then!" Awesome.
After buying my ticket I went back to the hotel to get my DJ set
together, but ended up just making a soca megamix of Akon "Nobody",
"Remix to Ignition" and the old Wyclef "Stripper Song". I got kind
of sucked in and did that until I had just barely enough time to
pack, check out of the hostel, and run down to the boat. I didn't
make it on time, but the boat didn't leave on time either, so I
checked in with Junior (who was already down there) and went to buy
DEET and--as it turned out--a hat as well.
Groups of shirtless dudes in surf shorts were pushing big motorcycles
down the gangplank and lowering into the boat's hold. I boarded.
The sun was setting, the boats' engines were on, some were already
blasting dance music, and the smell of engine oil in the forest of
white painted wood made me feel like I was on an old wooden
rollercoaster at a cheap amusement park. Someone told me that there
were at least 200 boats. I had a vision of them all spanning the
river in formation, the dreaded armada of the Beer and Techno empire,
conquering the first the Amazon and then the Atlantic, the world. It
didn't happen *quite* like that.
The sunset was incredible. The sky was perfectly clear and rays of
light shot out from below the horizon through a fiery gradient of
yellow to orange to red. Then it got dark, and then we left. Music
came on and the dancing started. This was the first real Brazilian
dance party I'd seen, so first impressions were strong. First they
played Parentins music and some sugary pop songs. More on that
later. Then it was techno and people starting dancing for real. One
thing about Brazil is that dancing is more universal than music, so
the old ladies who were dancing to funny holiday songs continued
dancing when techno came on. Then forro (fo 'ho) which is Brazil's
merengue--fast dirty music for dancing close to--except the steps
looked way more complicated than merengue and there was more/faster
twirling.
Then it was baile funk (here just "funk" pronounced "funky") and
people went crazy. The dancing was less structured but still really
complicated; lots of big steps forward and little fast steps back,
like in breakdancing (uprock?).
More fojo. I tried dancing for a bit, letting the girl lead and,
well, more or less humor me. Nobody wanted to for more than half a
song or so, which was fine. I've already promised somebody I'm going
to learn how to dance bachata and merengue, which seem similar and
easier (merengue is simper, bachata is slower) so fojo seems like a
good target.
The music had shifted back to techno and almost all the girls had
stopped dancing, so it looked like a good time for me to DJ. When I
got my laptop they didn't have an 1/8th to RCA cable for connecting
it. I felt mostly relief with a touch of disappointment. But it
turned out I had one in my bag, so no escape. My laptop only has
only one audio output, and I probably could have eked out something
using the left for playing and the right for cueing, but I was drunk
so I said fuck it: I couldn't listen to a song before fading it in so
I was flying blind, so to speak. But it was fun. I'd decided the
theme was going to be hip hop remixes, since I like that and since
it's really American. I started with an Usher remix Will Schachterle
did (Let it Burn + Seven Deadly Strokes) and then had to follow with
the Akon soca megamix I'd made that afternoon since none of the other
songs were done importing into Ableton yet. That was a little
weird. Then I played another remix I made that was a little more
straightforward, and closed with two Kelis remixes back to back:
Bossy and Milkshake. And then I totally abdicated my DJ reign. I
had no idea how well it went, but the sense I got from Junior was
that I was a terrible DJ but people liked it because it was something
different. I can live with that, and now I want to be a DJ here.
Pretty soon after that I went to my hammock and went to sleep. When
I woke up in my hammock the next morning I was not at all hungover as
I'd expected-- on the contrary I felt amazing.
Parentins aka Crazy Brazilian Party - Preface
Vista and eventually Manaus. From there, if you want to go anywhere
else in Brazil other than back to Boa Vista, you need to get on a
plane or go by boat down the Amazon. Since so many legs of this trip
had been by boat so far, I felt compelled not to fly, even though it
was $20 cheaper and several days faster. This will eventually let me
say that I made it from the US to wherever I end up in Brazil without
flying--so long as Puerto Rico counts as the US, and it might as well).
Junior my Brazilian hostel (and in another life prison) bunkmate said
that a day's travel down-river there was a massive regional festival
called Parentins, in a town called Parentins. I'd vaguely heard
about this from somebody else too, and was beginning to realize that
nearly every billboard I saw in Manaus for beer or cola was Parentins-
themed, and I'd wanted to break up the trip by stopping somewhere, so
this sounded perfect. Junior was going to Parentins. I was going to
Parentins. But Junior had a much better idea of what the hell it was
going to be like, and I had none.
6.27.2007
"Flirty gym class" or "Brazil is for teenagers"
I was walking back from language book shopping with a woman from the
hostel scene (hi Claudia!) and we passed a high school in the center
of the city. There was a large paved area inside a fence next to the
school, just like you'd see in New York or Philly. And on it a huge
group of high school kids was out in the playground doing a really
flirty, dosie-doe-ing version of gym class.
We just had to stop and watch from the sidewalk. And we stood there
with huge grins on our faces.
Everybody was in the gym version of their school uniform: collared
short sleeves, grey athletic pants, and optional but often opted-for
grey short skirts for girls. There was loud Brazilian dance music;
this high school had a bumpin' PA. A few young teachers or older
students were the flirty jazzercise drill sergeants, bouncing around
and blowing whistles in an awesome fusion of authority and complicity.
At first there were two lines, and pairs had to run up the middle of
the lines grabbing hands behind their backs as they swapped sides.
The move seemed designed to distract the teenagers from being awkward
and goofy, so that they grasp hands in a moment of unselfconsciousness.
Then the next thing was even crazier; it was pretty much a G-rated
gym class version of wining! Everybody stood in two concentric
circles facing the center, standing with their back to someone else.
They did a booty shake down and back up, and then shifted to the
right. Then after a full revolution the inside circle switched
places with the outside circle.
Everybody's dancing style was different. Sporty, chill, lazy,
aloof. Oh, and did I mention that a few of the guys were really,
really flamboyantly gay? It was great!
Thinking about it now it reminds me of the parts of Brave New World
that--admit it--were pretty hot. One imagines alpha plus Brazilian
education technocrats convening meetings to puzzle over questions
like "How can we ensure everyone is socially/sexually well-adjusted?"
or "How do we boost attendance in after school programs?" (this was
at 5:00PM in late June) or "Adolescent males need to learn to be in
Brazil without having erections all the time. But how?"
We were part of a small assortment of onlookers that also included
some old guys (hey maybe that's cool here?) and one girl's mom or
someone who knew her mom (mom laughing, girl mortified). The German
felt funny watching once the sheer joy wore off and so we walked to
get ice cream and sit down to watch some more. Appropriately, the
German got popcorn flavored ice cream. Appropriate and totally
gross. Anyway, in the ice cream shop there were more teenagers who
seemed to be having a really good time, and I realized that the only
people I've really seen having fun in Brazil so far have been
teenagers. It seems really fun here to be a teenager.
So, international businesspeople, professors with sabbaticals,
lefties looking to escape Bush's America, here is my recommendation:
Based on everything I know about Brazil, there is nowhere better you
could bring teenage children. If you dragged your teenagers here, it
would be *so* hard for them to even feign grumpiness. They'll get in
shape, find teenage love, eat exotic jungle flavored ice cream, learn
to dance and get fluent in the raddest language around. Seriously.
Okay, semi-seriously.
6.26.2007
River to river, backyard to yard
It was a free concert of choral music and gospel performed by a
choral music group from St. Louis at the Manaus opera house. Manaus
is a bustling city in the middle of the jungle that grew up in the
rubber boom. Rubber boomed, and as the global economy sucked rubber
down the Amazon and out of the jungle, the jungle sucked money and
fanciness in. To Manaus. And the Opera House was the center of the
vortex.
Everywhere you turn ostentation borders on maniacal, sharpened by the
fact that in the middle of the jungle lots of stuff would have to be
imported anyway, even if no one was planning to boast about it in
drawing rooms. So it's steel from England. Architects from France.
Engineers from Germany. Painters and sculptors from Italy. Wood
from a self-consciously long list of different places tiled into a
floor so as to make you notice how many types of wood there are. And
the dome is a rainbow of individually painted ceramic tiles with
those of the Brazilian flag being the *least* intense!
When I took a tour of the opera house on Saturday I asked about
events, and saw on the calendar that there were several free concerts
coming up; the one on Monday was a gospel music group from St.
Louis. How fitting. "River to river," I thought (and kept wanting
to follow with "backyard to yard").
After Trinidad's dress codes I had a light worry about showing up in
"camper's casual", but when I arrived Monday evening, far from it
being a problem, I fit right in: everybody was dressed for a free
summer concert in the park. And even though everyone was sitting in
individual ornate mahogany (?) chairs with deep red upholstery in a
fabulously ornate concert hall, that was the vibe: summer concert in
the park.
On stage was a single piano in front of some risers, and since I
thought I'd seen the word "orchestra" in the program I felt a
momentary twinge of "uh oh" that I'd confused the date. But then a
string of singers filed onto the risers looking very much like a
small city American choral music group, and put to rest my doubt.
The conductor walked on to the stage and, working with their
interpreter and tour guide (who was in jeans and a t-shirt) greeted
the audience and announced the first few pieces of the program. One
interesting intercultural hiccup: the standard greeting ("This is our
last show in the country, we've loved its scenery, food, people,
etc.") ended with the almost-punchline "and we've spent lots of
money," which the interpreter, it seemed deliberately, didn't translate.
The first few selections weren't gospel at all; they were
ecclesiastical choral pieces sung in Latin. I felt a twinge of doubt
again: "I thought this was going to be gospel?" but that soon was
overwhelmed by the memories of my father--who died of cancer 18
months ago--singing in the Worcester Chorus. They sang music like
this to audiences like this. I'm not sure if they ever toured
Brazil, but they toured Poland and Russia, traveling bubbly in a tour
bus, singing free concerts in old, beautiful spaces that they strove
sometimes successfully, always admirably to fill with sound, drinking
a lot at dinner and then singing even more-- all this a Chorus buddy
may have reminisced in the days around his funeral, reflecting that
nook of his life back at us like a convex mirror, as happens.
The St. Louis Chorus was not well balanced; only a handful of altos,
four men-- only two tenors. And dear Missourians if this post finds
its way back to you through Google someday please understand that
this critic has an entirely unrelated bone to pick.
The program shifted into gospel, which everyone loved ("Hu--sh!" and
"My white robe" and "Children don't be weary") and then into a string
of songs for the Catholic mass sung in gospel fashion, commissioned
by the pope and composed by the conductor who stood before us. The
first of these was actually the Creed (it was pure for the virgin
birth, woeful for the death, and gospel energetic for the
resurrection). Following this were parts of the mass you would be
more likely to hear sung, again in Gospel style. I started to feel
like the whole presentation had a detectable Catholic vibe, in that
it was a bit more reserved and prim than you'd expect, but I haven't
seen enough gospel to be sure.
After intermission it went back into gospel and the conductor
encouraged the Brazilian audience to clap along, which many had been
itching to do from the start. They sang "Jonah in the Belly of the
Whale" which I either remember from some Worcester Chorus performance
or maybe even singing myself at some point in some church summer camp
somewhere. I really had no idea, but if you heard this when you were
a kid you'd remember it forever so it could have been ages ago.
The gospel thing meant that way more people had soloist chops. Some
of the soloists were amazing, and for all of them it was so much fun
to follow their flourishes.
When the last two soloists got up it sounded a little jarring. The
song they were singing sounded more like a musical than gospel, and
then it broke into a skit, "Flossy, where were you? I've been
looking all over!" in a cheesy broadway voice. The oddness quickly
became the most adorable thing in the world when I realized they were
closing their set with "Meet me in St. Louey": awww... they had to
represent the lou!
I went home delighted, and on the way back stepped into a restaurant
where who should I find but my bunkmate, Junior, who was just
finishing his meal. He ordered a beer and recommended the fish,
which was scrumptious. He told me he runs a business providing party
equipment ("you know, like helium balloons, mechanical bulls") for
kids' parties. After dinner we went for ice-cream by the kilo and
tromped home together.
Traveling
coherent thing. Visiting a friend in Puerto Rico, for example, or
camping on an island, or staying with a friend's family in the
Dominican Republic, a visit to Haiti, 12 days at sea, 5 weeks in
Trinidad waiting for the boat to be fixed. Each phase had a very
coherently defined home base, set of people, and rhythm attached to it.
Right now however, even though I'm in closest proximity to the
ostensible goal for this trip (speaking Portuguese), I am just
straight up traveling. Youth hostel backpacking dollar watching
meeting europeans on old-style Grand Tours traveling.
This post won't go out until the next time I connect my laptop to the
internet. God willing I'll have escaped by then.
6.25.2007
Norfloxacin
safety, I let my guard up and got got by Venezuela. So last night I
was like "ah ha I can eat whatever I want because tomorrow I'm taking
Cipro, motherfuckers!" and drank beer and ate street meat sticks and
stopped at a by-the-kilo ice cream sundae buffet.
Then I opted to just take the even more bacterially homocidal
Norfloxacin because it came with instructions (Cipro was way cheaper
but required waiting for a morning trip to the internet to look up
dosage info).
I also got my laptop power supply fixed today, but it doesn't help
much because Brazilian internet providers seem to use PPOE (that
bullshit where you need a password to connect on a broadband
connection and nobody remembers it after entering it the first time
ages ago) so connecting at the hostel is difficult.
Stomach feels pretty good today. Yay for hi-tech antibiotics bought
without needing to visit a doctor.
There should be an exam or something you can take in the US where if
you know enough about medicine and interpreting reference material you
can just buy certain prescription drugs.
Brazilian Girls
Brazil rates below New York so far. Especially in my age range.
Interesting. Could just be this region, or an early sign that the DR
is on its way to topping the hemisphere.
Me and a big tatooed Brazilian dude named "Junior"
to travel on a boat down the river together to some crazy traditional
Amazonian party that's on the way to where I'm going (and that I may
have cruised by or flown over had I not met said dude).
Ready, set, get your tiny monkey on
in the trees around me. I also saw manatees and river otters in
unhappy tanks. But the monkeys were happy. Pictures soon.
6.22.2007
In Brazil
Chaguaramas Trinidad. It was a little boat they use for party
cruises, so we listened to soca and reggaeton on the way over.
Decided not to sail because it would have been three weeks or more at
sea that I wanted to spend here.
Landed in Guiria Venezuela, a pretty chill reception for a pretty
chill place. Bussed out of there that afternoon, passing through
places like Santo Piritu, San Felix before getting to the border town
Santa Helena. Venezuela is the land of muscle cars and ridiculously
cheap gas.
A quick talk with a nurse at the bus station near San Felix and a few
chance vibes left me with a pretty negative initial impression of the
Chavez thing. Her take was that he was doing some good stuff but
nothing spectacular, and meanwhile stuffing every institution in the
country with friendlies. I´m 80% sure one of the bus passengers had
to show a piece of paper to some soldiers at a checkpoint about a
professional video camera they were carrying.
The huge tourbusses are over air conditioned and coup you up in a box.
If I go back to Venezuela I want a car or motorcycle-- gas is so
cheap. Something like 30-40 cents a gallon depending on the exchange
rate you get (another silly thing about Venezuela is that Chavez is
fucking around with the exchange rate so you need to exchange dollars
on the blackmarket at rates that very wildly from dealer to dealer and
across regions).
The busride through Venezuela went like: standard caribbean lushness,
massive ascent into a cloud forest, and then a subtle descent into
high, mostly treeless plains that stretched for ever under spectacular
skies.
I crossed the border that night-- nobody checked my passport on either
the Brazil or Venezuela side and I had to walk back in the morning
when the bus ticket lady spotted this and wouldn´t sell me a ticket.
It was my fault and makes total sense... folks from either country
just need a yellow fever vaccination certificate to cross from one to
the other.
I camped the night at the bus station in Paracaima (sp?), the border
town. A man named Manoel paid for my dinner just to be nice. In the
morning after the passport stamping silliness I took a shared taxi to
Boa Vista... so much nicer just to be able to feel the outside
temperature and the breeze in your face. Boa Vista is a small city on
the river. Tonight I´ll go to Manaus on a bus and arrive in the
morning. Then it´s probably a riverboat down the Amazon to Belem (in
keeping with the "use as many different types of transportation as
possible" maxim) and a bus to Fortaleza, but I might head straight to
Rio, I´m not sure.
My Portuguese is laughably bad.
6.16.2007
Karaoke revolution
screen. A Texan says "hey, this is Akon, you were gonna do Akon,
right? Is this you?" and with a sinking feeling I say "No." I
didn't even know this song was in the book. Damn, I've always wanted
to sing it but I didn't even know they had it; it wasn't in the book
for being too new.
So the guy gets up and starts singing and he's doing a great job. He
not only has the chorus down but he has perfect flow on the verses.
Everybody loves it and I'm totally jealous. Especially because I've
always wanted to do this song and do the Kels / 'Clef medley.\ I
deflate and start thinking about when the next karaoke night is and
if I'll still be in the country.
But then a glimmer of hope appears. Maybe I can jump in?
I'm hovering. He gets to the point in the song where it starts to
get repetitive. I make eye contact and go for it, jumping in all
slurry and sleazy with (oh shit!) "It's the remixto ignitiiona hotn
fresh outthe kitchenamama rollin'that body gotevery manin here
wishinga sippin oncoke and rummm. I'm like sowhatI'm drunnnkits the
freakin weakinbabyimaboutta have me some..." By the word "kitchen"
people start screaming. After the verse we jump back in to the Akon,
alternate lines and then end up hugging and belting out the chorus
together screaming into mikes over eachothers' shoulders. I give a
quick look and jump into "Just cause she dance the go go, that don't
make her a ho no" and this time it takes a little longer for
everybody to scream, but they do. We close out the song together and
it's fucking amazing.
It could not have worked out better.
Also, I really wanted to do Rhianna Umbrella, but the karaoke DJ kept
kicking me back in the queue because I sang in songs with other
people. Eventually I manage to convince them, do the Jay-Z verse,
and then there's like 12 guys and girls on the three mics rallying to
sing umbrella as the last karaoke song of the night, before it
switches to dance party. Coup # toup.
6.08.2007
Up in VIP
national holiday the next day and a big party night that night I
tagged along with some folks I met to a club called "Zen". The
friend I went to the last club with said he would never be caught
dead in the place, but I couldn't see a huge amount of difference...
except that this place was maybe just a touch trashier.
Through some awesome personal connect we got in free, and then some
Canadians in the big corporate part of the software biz were high
rolling there with a bunch of booze to offer us, so that part worked
out well. There were pretty big name producers from Jamaica
deejaying (I think they made the riddim to Sean Paul's "We be
burning'" for example) so that worked out well too.
The deejays more or less did a straight dancehall set, with just a
few big soca jams thrown in (including a soca "Time After Time" and
"Take on Me"). The set was pretty ADHD--no one song for more than 90
seconds. They didn't do any long mixes of songs on one riddim, which
surprised me; I guess that's out now.
We got in free, but we also got into the VIP section free, which
included a packed-like-sardines but heavily air conditioned hip hop
room, and a balcony where you could watch the crowd below. We spent
all our time on the balcony.
There was some excellent dancing, but it was heavily interfered with
by people's club agendas. There were pockets of people (both girls
and guys) who left their agenda at home or decided that the best way
of pursuing it was to just dance and look awesome. Seeing people do
the dance to "badman move forward badman pull up" was pretty great.
But I definitely felt like dancehall works better as an injection of
sexual aggressiveness into a friends-having-fun party than it does in
an already sexually aggressive club setting. Techno (for being just
energy) or house (for being sexual in an abstract way) both work
better for me in clubs.
Seeing guys with "dorky Indian guy" style griding dorkily with girls
gorgeous and not at all wining dorkily was--and I'm not sure of the
right word--empowering, maybe?
Right before we left there was some incredible dancing on the bar.
At least least one woman (in a sort of punk rock / bondage club
outfit and half shaved hairdo looking something like Pink in the
videos for one of the angstier songs the Four Non Blondes lady wrote)
was not at all dancing for male attention (some were) and seemed to
not give a flying fuck. And she was trying really hard in a really
endearing way to get this big woman who'd danced on stage earlier
(and really well-- the DJs said she had it lock) to come up on the
bar. She was shaking her head resisting, and if she finally caved we
left before that.
My sense is that Carnival for Trinidad is this big release from
having to party in clubs or club-like atmospheres. I'd like to see
that.
Jamaican macho bullshit
wants to see us together" Akon jam. (Look out for my karaoke medley
of that, "Remix to Ignition", and the Wyclef "Just cause she dance
the gogo" song-- it's going to blow minds.)
Anyway, so they run the "Nobody wants to see us together" chorus for
a second--which everybody loves--and then one of the DJs comes in on
the mic saying "Now the gay fraternity in America..." as he lowers
the volume on the music... He starts again "Now the gay fraternity
in America has made this song their anthem..." I'm thinking "Oh, I
get it" and then "Uh oh". He continues, "So this is now a battyman
song, and we aren't gonna play any battyman song" and then there's
that record scratch / rewind song, and he throws on another version,
to the same melody with a okay imitation of Akon's voice that goes:
"Two man dey must not lie down together..." and then I didn't catch
the second part.
My only regret was that I wasn't watching the crowd's reaction
closely enough, since I was too pissed off. I have a sense that as I
was yelling "fuck you" and giving them the finger from the balcony
other people were making noise too, and most likely cheering. The
macho anti-gay bullshit is more of a Jamaican thing than a Trini
thing, but it seems to fly here, which sucks.
If I were a girl I would've splattered my drink on them from the
balcony, but that seemed way too unpredictable in this setting, and
anyway, talk is cheap.
6.06.2007
6.03.2007
Seasickness is real
to come back due to technical difficulties. We've had a bunch of
repairs on the propeller system made in Trinidad and some of them
weren't done exactly right, or caused other problems.
Yesterday we stared really early, and I went out with some folks I'd
met here the night before. Started with karaoke and ended up going
to a club. The dj-ing at the club was just throwing together a bunch
of hits back to back-- nothing that creative. But since Trinidad has
the best shared body of pop music in the world, it was a really good
set.
So seasickness probably happened because my stomach was f'ed from
drinking so much the night before and I was really tired. And coming
out of the DR it was much easier for me to ease my way into things,
since I basically had less responsibilities. Also, the German/Slovak
couple got really sea sick, and so that effected me psychologically.
Wikipedia says that seasickness happens because your brain sees a
conflict between input from your inner ear and eyes, believes your
inner ear, assumes you're hallucinating, and then decides you've been
poisoned, to which the only solution is blargh! They said normally
vomiting doesn't stop the nausea in the case of seasickness, but for
me I felt like a million bucks afterwards, though it kicked up again
a bit later.
6.01.2007
Funny advice
thought he was motivated by greed!
When hearing for the first time the expression "It's raining dogs and
cats" everyone knows it is not the end of the world...
Likewise, in Portuguese it happens the same. You shouldn't always
take the words 'ao pé da letra' – which means 'literally, by the book'.
The Sacrifice of a Pig