Parentins, visually.

http://images.google.com.br/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=parintins&spell=1

Skip the pictures of costumes and look at the big stadium shots.

Pictures in a week or so

I have a bunch of awesome pictures of Brazil, but the internet in the
areas I've been is ridiculously slow, so I'm not even trying to post
them yet.

Dolphins

Last night while chilling next to the Amazon we saw dolphins. There
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

The next day I woke up feeling like a million bucks. I lounged in my
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?

If you know anybody who lives in Brazil or who's recently lived in
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.

Parentins or Crazy Brazilian Party - Day 1: Boatride

Junior already had his ticket, so early Wednesday afternoon we went
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

I came into Brazil by bus from Venezuela, which lands you in Boa
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.