Brazilian Cinema

So, I try to watch as many things down here in Portuguese as possible, to help me learn the language. This has led to an exploration of the films of Brazil. They're all pretty good, and you—the non-reader—deserve to hear about them.
Without further adieu....

PIXOTE

Pixote is about the life of street urchins in Sao Paulo in the 70s. The film starts with some anthropologist-looking guy explaining that most kids under 18 who commit crimes are sent to boys reformatories, which are pretty lawless and corrupt places. The first part of the movie explores life in the reformatory, centering around an extremely young boy by the name of Pixote. Friendships, homosexual relationships, and power dynamics are all examined. Eventually, after realizing some of the boys are being taken away by the police to be murdered, a group of the boys decide to escape. The next part of the movie details their adventures as fugitives and street kids in Sao Paulo and Rio, relying only on one other for support.

What I liked: The free-wheeling plot. The first part of the movie is entirely about the reformatory, while the second follows the boys as they become thieves, drug dealers, and, eventually, pimps of an eccentric aging prostitute with syphilis. You don't really have any idea of where things are going, which is a relief from formulaic movies, and it also makes the movie feel authentic.
-The superbly developed relationship dynamics. The bond that gets formed between the protagonists in the reformatory and is tested and strengthened as they become fledgling criminals on the outside is multi-faceted and complex. You find yourself sympathetic to their struggle, both rooting for their success in illegal and dangerous ventures while lamenting their situation and hoping they find a way out of their hopeless lives. Even though they have had to grow up very fast, the movie constantly reminds us that they are still children, which makes their stories that much more poignant.
What I didn't like: Not much. The movie is very long (almost 3 hours), but it's necessary for how well-developed the characters are. I think the first portion of the movie at the reformatory could have been cut short, but I like how the film completely shifts direction once the boys escape. It felt very contrary to the seemingly arbitrary plot structure of most western movies, and I enjoyed it very much.
-An uncomfortable amount of shots of naked prepubescent boys. I dunno. At a point, it seemed gratuitous, although it's probably metaphorical; a physical analogy for the degradation theses kids are constantly being subjected to.
Favorite Part: After losing almost everything, Pixote, for the first time, breaks down and cries. A prostitute tries to console him, eventually offering him her breast as an erotic gesture. Pixote suckles her breast like a baby, until the prostitute becomes uncomfortable and screams at him to get out. This scene is so heartbreaking, I would have to say it's quite possibly one of the most powerful moments in all of film.

O Cheiro do Ralo ("The Smell of the Drain")

From Wikipedia: Lourenço (Selton Mello) is a lonely figure, who buys used goods from people going through hard times. His profession has made him insensitive to his seller's conditions or personal stories. Lourenço's lack of emotions makes him deal with the world as a collection of objects to be bought. His main pleasure has become to conduct some perverse power games with his sellers. The planned life of Lourenço is interrupted when he falls in love with a waitress's butt. As any other object his main desire is to own it. The movie conduct us through Lourenço's mind using his as a narrator while his desire for power grows. The name of the movie comes from an insistent bad odor that comes from Lourenço's office restroom. It represents the self-awareness of Lourenço's condition, which he unsuccessfully keeps trying to hide.

What I liked: The tone. This movie is perhaps one of the blackest comedies I've ever seen, so much so that I wouldn't bother to argue with someone if they called it a drama. A character study that revolves around the misanthropic whimsies of the protagonist, the movie injects subtle levity by exposing us to Lourenço's cynical and manipulative ulterior motives as unwitting characters praise his ostensibly charitable actions. This is the funniest movie I've ever seen about such a depressed, malicious, unsympathetic person.
Also: Selton Mello. He's one of Brazil's top actors, and for good reason. He nails the role of Laurenço, allowing us just enough glimpses of a human side to stop us from hating him completely. His monotone voice overflows with bitterness and resentment, but we also sense that he has good reason to be so callous.
What I didn't like: Not enough character development. After Cheiro was finished, I remained very curious about what motivated/lead our protagonist to be the way he was. Certain things are hinted at, but nothing is ever definitively presented as the cause for our hero's malaise and maliciousness. This creates a sort of dissonance between the audience and the protagonist; we're expecting to finally, eventually understand the source of Lourenço's malcontent, but it's never really resolved. For as wonderfully nuanced as Lourenço has become by the end of the film, I still walked away from the movie a bit frustrated with how little I understood about how he came to be the person he was. On the other hand, I always appreciate a movie that leaves you thinking about it, so I suppose that's just another part of Cheiro's charm.
Favorite Part: After obsessing about the ass of a waitress at a local launchette, Lourenço comes in one day to declare his love for her, except he declares it to a different waitress. The waitress informs him he has the wrong person. Puzzled, Lourenço asks her to turn around and bend over. From the distinctly less curvaceous behind of the new waitress, he realizes it's not the waitress he wanted. All our hopes for an emotional awakening from Laurenço are dashed as we realize, in actuality, he really only ever cared about the waitress' bottom, and not her as a person, as we were being led to believe.

Cidade dos Homens ("City of Men")

The sequel to 'City of God', picks up where CG left off.

From Wikipedia: Best friends Acerola and Laranjinha live in the favellas of Rio de Janeiro and have been raised without their fathers. They are turning eighteen as a war between rival drug gangs begins around them. Each discovers things about his missing father that will compromise their solid friendship.
What I liked: Everything. City of God is one of my favorite movies, and I went into this one hoping for more of the same. I was not disappointed. Gritty cinematography, the visceral feeling of Rio imbued into every second of the film, likable characters, and a buncha drugs and violence....what's not to like?
What I didn't like: Nothing. Everything about this film goes.
Favorite part: Opening scene, where the shot-caller favella drug boss decides to descend from the favella roof-tops for the first time in a long while to escape from the summer heat at the beach. Ace, our protagonist, decides to go to the beach too, taking his 2 year old son that he's supposed to be watching with him. There's a mix up, and Ace's son ends up with the drug-boss and his crew. In a hollywood movie, there would be a big problem from this careless action...but drug dealers and regular people are both part of a community that takes care of itself, and the resulting situation only serves to develop characters and their backgrounds. We are introduced to the entire neighborhood through Ace as he searches for his son, and within the first 20 minutes of the movie we are familiar with the personalities and motivations of the various characters residing in the favella. Great job establishing characters right off the bat.

O Que é Isso Companheiro? (English Title: "Four Days in December")

Set against the backdrop of the conflict between students and Brazil's military dictatorship in 1969, this movie tells the true-life story of a group of young brazilian revolutionaries who kidnap the American ambassador to Brazil. The movie centers around a young man named Pedro Cardoso who, sick of the apparent ineffectiveness of protests and government brutality against it's participants, joins a group of militant activists. The film follows Pedro's involvement with the group, from robbing banks to finance their operations to the kidnapping of the ambassador and the subsequent friendship that develops between them. Selton Mello is in it too.

What I liked: The nuanced characters. One of my favorite things about this movie is that it avoids completely painting the revolutionaries as the heros of the story. The special police guy who is tasked with rescuing the ambassador after his abduction is constantly questioning the ethics of the brutal tactics he is told to use, and by the end, we almost have more empathy for this initial antagonist than we do for the revolutionaries themselves. A hollywood movie would delineate the characters into clear good-guys and bad-guys. O Que Isso makes no such attempt.
What I didn't like: Too long. The movie is almost 3 hours, and dragged on in some parts. At certain points I was asking myself, 'when is this gonna end?', and I actually watched it in two-settings, pausing it half-way through and finishing the next day. This is not to say the movie is boring, but it's long, and it feels long. A small complaint, in the larger picture, but still a complaint.
Favorite Part: When the secret security officer in charge of tracking down the revolutionaries speaks with his partner about his faltering faith in their work...a job primarily involving torturing political dissidents. This moment completely obfuscates the remaining shreds of 'good' and 'bad' that have steadily been being broken down throughout the film. It flips the traditional protagonist-antagonist relationship for the audience, and makes us doubt the characters we have previously been sympathizing with. Great humanizing scene.

Carandiru

This movie is about one of Sao Paulo's most notorious prison's, Carandiru. In 1992, in response to a prison riot, military police stormed the jail and massacred 111 people. The movie is told from the perspective of a doctor, who initially starts going to the prison to test the prisoners there for AIDs. He's intrigued by all the interesting characters that reside within the cells there and ends up getting a job there. From the doctor's perspective, we learn about the stories and lives of the various different eccentric criminals that are incarcerated there. The film culminates in the infamous 92 massacre, with commentary from the prisoners that lived through it.

What I liked: The way the story was executed. The doctor protagonist plays a mostly passive, nonjudgmental role, which allows us to become absorbed in the individual stories of how the inmates ended up in jail, which makes us empathize and care all the more about what happens to them over the course of their stay in Carandiru. The individual stories are all interesting and humorous, and the convict's reflections on their lives are both funny and touching, completely humanizing them. We are forced to recognize that, while not perfect, convicts are people too. Also: Wagner Morra gives a great performance as a crackhead named Zico.
What I didn't like: How occasionally it feels like the film loses focus. With the long litany of stories, sometimes the film doesn't feel coherent...just a collection of unconnected events. Everything comes together in the end, however. Also, this is another 3 hour film, so it occasionally feels too long. Still, compelling and touching. Knowing that it was based on true events only makes it that much more tragic.
Favorite Part: The beginning of one inmates tale. A convict named Chico recounts how his love of women landed him in jail. His story starts with him pulling up to a random bbq. He drinks a beer on the hood of his car and watches a pretty woman dance seductively to music blasting from a small radio. He spits some game, and then proposes to her. She says she already has a fiance, who returns from playing soccer to see what's going on. Chico whips out a gun and pops off a couple shots at the fiancé's feet, making him run away. Laughing, Chico tells the girl that if her fiance really loved her he wouldn't have run away from a few puny, misplaced gunshots. The girl gets in Chico's car and they drive away. This was the biggest boss move I've ever seen in cinema, hands down.

Se Eu Fosse Voce ("If I Was You")

A husband and wife going through some rocky marital times say the same sentence ("If I were you") during an argument and wake up the next morning with their bodies switched. The comedy then follows the couple as they try to get through each other's day, learning firsthand about what each other's lives are like. Sort of the Brazilian version of Freaky Friday.

What I liked: The movie's approach to sex. Maybe I'm just a pervert, but throughout the movie I was wondering if the husband and wife would have sex with one another, and consequently I ruminated on what it would be like to have sex with yourself in the body of your boyfriend/girlfriend. Personally, I don't think I could do it; I'm a narcissist, but not that big of a narcissist. I have no desire to explore the sensation of what my own cock inside of me would feel like. Still, I appreciated that the movie didn't try to side-step that inevitable aspect of theoretical body-switching.
What I didn't like: Completely formulaic. The movie evolves pretty much exactly as you would expect, no punches pulled, no twists, nothing different or interesting, or things you haven't seen before. It's a lighthearted romantic comedy, and doesn't really try to be anything more than that. The characters have problems, gain insight, change for the better, solve their problems, reconcile, and are better off than when they started, the end. The jokes are rudimentary: the man suddenly acting effeminately around his macho buddies when the wife is in his body, the wife threatening to cut off their daughter's boyfriend's dick when the man is in her body, etc. You know exactly what's going to happen before it does. Still, it's a nice little brainless movie to check out if you don't want to think about things too hard and want to chuckle a bit...maybe a good movie to snuggle up and watch with your girlfriend/boyfriend.
Favorite part: When the husband and wife finally have sex! The movie quickly cuts away as soon as they start kissing, and the next scene is them asleep in bed the next morning, but for some reason I had been obsessing over whether or not they would fuck for the entire movie, and just to finally know that they did was such a relief in some weird way that it had an almost cathartic effect on me. I let out a deep breath, and was happy I didn't have to get mad at the movie for dodging the most obvious issue of hypothetical husband-wife body switching.

Tropa de Elite 1 & 2 ("Elite Squad")

The BOPE is the Rio de Janeiro equivalent of a US SWAT Team, arguably maybe a bit more badass. They're the most well trained, efficient, serious, highly-regarded military police down here. They shut-down large-scale drug operations, have shoot outs with drug-dealers in the favellas, and basically handle any crisis situations that may arise at any given time. The first Tropa de Elite film follows a BOPE captain, Nascimento (played by Wagner Moura), and his proteges, chronicling the daily life of the elite squad: busting drug dealers, getting in gun-fights, and trying to reconcile their duty to protect and serve with the corruption that permeates the higher-up political figures they report to.

The second film picks up where the last one left off, but more explores the ubiquitous corruption inherent in Brazilian politics and it's effect on the community, as told through the personal story of Nacimento. Both of these films are great, action-packed thrill-rides (I hate that expression, but that's what these movies are: mafuckin ILLY-ILL THRILL-RIDES son!), as well as being intelligent, well-acted, and insightful. Based off a book about the BOPE, the movies were huge box-office successes and became a cultural phenomena. Tropa de Elite 2 is premiering on a TV movie network soon, and there are ads for it plastered all over Sao Paulo as if it were opening for the first time in theaters....TDE2 also holds the record for the highest-grossing film in Brazil, partly due to director Jose Padilha's hiring of a security team to monitor the editing process to ensure the film didn't leak and get bootlegged. The Tropa de Elite movies are perhaps the most popular films in Brazil.
What I liked: The balance between realistic and entertaining. When I initially saw the first Tropa de Elite in the states I wasn't really impressed, expecting more of a ridiculous hollywood shoot-em-up. However, after being down here, becoming acquainted with the culture, and watching it again, I really appreciate the realistic picture the movie paints while also being an action movie. The second film (which I like more than the first) focuses more on corruption and politics, while still being fast-paced and exciting. After watching it and talking to Brazilian's about it, what I inevitably heard from everyone was '...and you know what the craziest thing is? It's all 100% true.' How unscrupulous and conniving the antagonists are in the movie...it's mind boggling to think that what happens in these movies actual happens in real life. Corruption is a huge problem in the political world here in Brazil, so seeing a movie confront it via an action-movie format is just...delightful? No. Awesome.
What I didn't like: Nothing. People who haven't been to Brazil might feel these movies are a little soft, if they're expecting the typical hollywood fanfare with a bunch of explosions and graphic killing, but if you can look past that, you'll find two really great films. Definitely check them out.
Favorite Part:

(Context: basically, this is where Captain Nacimento beats the shit out of a dirty congressman and tells him if he messes with Nacimento's family he'll kill him. Swag.)
~

That's it for now! I have another 7 or 8 films, but I feel like these are enough to digest for the moment...I don't want to overwhelm anyone. Check these guys out now and I'll post Part Deux in a little bit.
At the moment, I'm working on some posts about Sao Paulo Slang, Telenovellas, Brazilian Voo-Doo, Teaching English, and a long overdue recount of Festa Junina. Unfortunately, I've been very busy with work and having adventures, so I haven't had the time to finish and polish these other pieces. I made a resolution to get back to this blog, however, so hopefully I will start updating more often...I have a tendency to break most of my resolutions, so we'll see how that goes...
Ate a mais...
-JD

Musical Edition

So, there's been quite a bit of new music I've been exposed to in my couple months here. While I'd love to touch on everything, I'll only cover a couple groups/people that have really stood out to me.

1. Tim Maia

I've talked about Tim Maia before. Everyone down here knows of him...he's sort of a legend. Brazil has long had an appreciation for Funk music, and if it didn't start with Tim, he definitely popularized it. He was a Funk musician from the 70s, making music sort of in the vein of Earth Wind and Fire. He's a great musician, and his life story is pretty amazing too. I guess he used to be a hardcore drug abuser—lots of pot and acid, cocaine and alcohol—and used to be (in)famous for not showing up to his own shows. One day he discovered this book, The Universe in Disenchantment, which was sort of the Dianetics for this cult that believed there was 'Rational Energy' and 'Animus Energy' and if we could all just harness our 'Rational Energy' then a spaceship would take us away to a utopian planet (sound familiar?) Anyway, Tim took it to heart, stopped his debaucherous ways and started to preach the word. He recorded an entire album, Racional Culture, that was meant to get people to convert to this cult's world-view. Some people regard it as his best album. One day soon after, he found out the guy who had created this cult had been swindling him out of tons of money. He tried to buy up every last copy of Rational Culture, and until recently (the mp3 era) it was a difficult record to obtain. I'd love to read his autobiography, but it hasn't been translated to English yet, and my portuguese is still sketchy. Still, great artist.

2. Los Hermanos/Little Joy

I heard about Los Hermanos after enjoying the lead singer, Marcelo Camelo's newest project Little Joy, which is a collaboration with the drummer for the Strokes and very good. Hermanos were one of the most critically acclaimed acts in Brazil in the early 2000s. Musically, they sort of sound like standard late-90s-alternative fare (although they do have some more samba-influenced tracks), but what everyone tells me makes them so amazing is the poetry of their lyrics. I've had a number of Brazilian's tell me the song I posted above, Sentimental, has made them cry. At this point, I can't really appreciate the beauty of the lyrics, but I still like their music, and it's definitely worth a listen. If it doesn't strike your fancy, you should check out Little Joy, who will resonate more with western-music-acclimated ears:

3. Os Mutantes

Os Mutantes were the Brazilian psychedelic rockers of the 60s. Their sound is so similar to the musical aesthetic of American 60's music that you'd swear you've heard one of their songs before, but then you realize you haven't, and you promptly wet your pants with excitement at finding these guys. I guess being a hippy in the 60s in Brazil was a lot more cutthroat than in the USA too, as the political powers of the time were a military regime who were pretty obvious about their opinions on dissidence. So that just sort of makes the band...more awesome? They sing in Portuguese, English, and French and play a dizzying array of instruments; imagine your favorite Jefferson Airplane song mixed up with Samba. Above is an English version of one of their songs, Minha Menina, and below is one of their songs in Portuguese. 'Shoo-Shoo' is really old slang for like, 'girlfriend/boyfriend'. Also, fun fact: These guys were apparently one of Kurt Cobain's favorite bands. So maybe you've heard of them if you really like Nirvana...but probably you haven't. Check 'em out.
More:

4. Racionais MC's

Everyone makes a big deal about Marcello D2, but honestly when I bring him up in conversations about Rap music with Brazilian's they shrug him off and say 'thats not REAL hip-hop'. The answer to the follow-up question ('What IS real hip-hop') is almost always 'Well, groups like Racionais MC's...'. Apparently it's Brazilian Gangster Rap; the guys are from the favella, they've been to/get sent to jail regularly, they're narrating the grimey shit that goes down in the hood, etc. Basically, everything us bay kids loved about our local rappers. That, plus the fact that they get played so often in friend's cars that all the songs are familiar to me (even if I can't quite rap along with the lyrics yet) is why I'm including them here. With some better production, I'm sure they'd be super-stars, but as it is now, their beats are pretty simple. To be generous, they sometimes remind me of some early 90s west-coast ghetto beats ala Brotha Lynch, or maybe the beats of more under-ground rappers who use simple production to emphasize the content of their lyrics, ie. Immortal Technique. It's probably more of the latter, although I doubt it's intentional; most of the dope producers in the Favella are probably working on Baile Funk tracks. Still, every Brazilian who likes them talks about how dope their lyrics are. You'll have to take their word for it, but they're worth checking out, if only because of how damn popular they are down here.

5. Jorge e Mateus

I don't really like Jorge e Mateus, but they're typical of a type of music that's very popular down here known as Sertanejo. Basically it's brazilian country music. I hear it in Taxi's all the time, but it seems to be much more popular with people outside of the cities, just as country music in America is more popular with cowboys than city-kids. I have a feeling these guys are like the Kenny Chesney of Sertanejo, but anytime someone tells me they like Sertanejo I chime in with 'Oh, like Jorge e Mateus?' and they're always like, 'exactly!' Also, apparently one of the biggest clubs here in Sao Paulo, where attractive girls outnumber men 5-1, is a bar that plays Sertanejo. That's probably because Sertanejo is lame, and no dudes wanna listen to it. I haven't felt quite masochistic enough to check the spot out yet, but I'm sure I will one day, and I'm sure I'll have quite a story to report afterwards. If I don't get shot by a gaucho while I'm there first.
EDIT: After more time here, this music is wildly popular with everybody except the cool kids. This particular Jorge e Matheus song has been super popular for almost 6 months now.  Also, all Sertanejo bands have names with two people, i.e. Luiz e Gustavo, Joao e Tiago, Pedro e Pixote, etc.

6. Hermeto Pascol

This guy is crazy. I guess he's some old musician from the 60s, and in his heyday made more traditional music, but how experimental he is with sound now puts him squarely on the line between musician and performance artist. His youtube videos could easily go viral, if adequately exposed to enough gringos. There's one where he plays his beard. That being said, he's also a great musician, and I can appreciate how he explores the sonic textures of everything that could be considered music. Check out some of his other youtube videos. You will not be disappointed.

7. Planet Hemp

Planet Hemp was Marcello D2's original band. It isn't quite an apt comparison, but I'd call them Brazil's Rage Against The Machine. The music is similar, in that it's rock with very aggressive, rap-ish lyrics. The lyrical content is dissimilar in that literally every song is about smoking weed or the legalization of marijuana. I guess when these guys used to go on tour, they'd get arrested all the time for possession. We rocked out to Planet Hemp while smashing on the freeway smoking a baseado. It was super sick. If you like Rage, you might wanna give these guys a listen. They're good.

8. MC Catra

You might recognize Baile Funk as the style of music Diplo came down here and ripped off to use for MIA's second album. Mostly it's associated with Rio, so much so that the terms Baile Funk and Carioca Funk (Carioca = someone from Rio) are basically interchangeable. However, if you go to the Favella anywhere, you'll hear this type of music blasting from someones car. Baile Funk is a huge music scene, so to just highlight this one artist—the one guy I've been exposed to, MC Catra—isn't to say he's the definitive Baile Funk artist at all. However the sound in this song is typical. The beat is infectous, the lyrics are repetitive, and there's all kinds of weird noises thrown in there that at first may seem a bit jarring, but end up working perfectly with the overall track. The beat builds steadily, often unexpectedly, and you really can't help nodding your head to the eclectic beat. Like rap music, people like to slap the newest Funk tracks. At the moment, I've been hearing one coming from cars that sounds like it samples the steel drums from 50 Cent's PIMP, but given the Baile treatment. I wish I knew who did it/what it's called so I could post it here, because it's been stuck in my head, but not many people in Sao Paulo are into this kind of music—like I said, it's mostly a Rio thing—so I have no one to ask. Once I find out more about this stuff, I'll do a post dedicated to Baile Funk exclusively, coz I really enjoy it.
~

So there it is. Eight or so (hopefully) new artists for you to check out. This list is by no means comprehensive of everything I've been listening to. I left out bossa-nova and samba completely, as well as music like Axe, that's more popular in places like Bahia. If all goes according to plan, I'll keep becoming familiar with the music here as time goes on and have more posts like this. There it is.
Until next time,
Tchau meninos & meninas.

Cachacaria!

Move over feijuada-burrito, I've discovered my next entrepreneurial enterprise for when I get back to the states. I'm going to open a Cachaceria in Berkeley!

My future Organic Chachaceria in Berkeley

Cachaca is a strong alcohol (anywhere from 40-55% alcohol) that is brewed from fermented sugarcane juice. If you've ever had a caipirinha in the states, you've probably only had it with vodka, but the actual recipe calls for Pinga (another moniker for Cachaca), and is much more potent. Personally, it's an alcohol I've grown to love very quickly since I've been down here. Tim Maia once said that he couldn't start his day without a trifecta of substances: Marijuana, Cocaine, and Cachaca....ah, a man after my own heart.
This past long weekend, me and the de Sa clan went out to their house in Campos de Jordao, a mountain town about two hours south of Sao Paulo proper. It's a nice little place—think Breckenridge without snow—and somewhere inbetween the massive amounts of food consumed, bike rides through the forest preserve, and pure relaxation, we all managed to take a trip to a little Cachaceria one town over in Santo Antonio do Pinhal.
The drive there was great, flying through roads carved out of the jungle-esque forest, passing small houses with faux-colonial architecture, the surroundings becoming more and more pastoral the closer we got. It took about 20 minutes, and finally we pulled up at a small ranch, a quaint wooden building flanking us, and a stable of whinnying ponies to our left. A big wooden sign over the door read 'A Bodega'

Entering the building, you see a couple tables crowded with jugs of Cachaca. People were milling around with beers and cigarettes, everyone obviously a bit tipsy. There were bees everywhere, attracted to the honey this particular distillery uses extensively in their Cachacas. However, as Joao told me, you didn't need to worry about getting stung; the bees were basically drunk from the alcohol and mostly harmless. After he said this, I noticed they were flying in erratic circles, stopping occasionally to land in a spilled drop of sugarcane nectar and take a pull themselves. The fact that this particular place was swarming with bees made it seem that much more rustic and uncommercial.

Different kinds of chronic Cachaca

As I was still looking around in awe of all the bottles of fermenting pinga, someone handed me a shot glass. You were free to go from jug to jug, sampling whichever particular brew caught your fancy. There were so many, too. Tangerines, kiwis, anis, mint, honey, and even chocolate sat pickling in different clear bottles. I went around tasting, filling up my glass about an eighth of the way full for each different cachaca I tasted. After about 5 of these miniscule sips, I had a little buzz going on. Very strong stuff.

Whatever this was, it was legit.

After you taste as many cachacas as you want, you can go over to one of the guys that works there, and for the small price of 5 Reals (roughly 3 American dollars), he will fill up a small bottle with your desired Cachaca, hammer a cork into it, put it in a little package, and then you have a deliciously alcoholic souvenir to take home with you.

For an extra 5 R. he'll take you in the back and do this to your nether-regions.

Which Cachaca did I decide to take home with me? That's right....

The reason it's called 'Super Viagra' has something to do with one of the items it's fermented with that's supposedly an aphrodisiac...I'll have to get back to everyone on that. Needless to say, when I had it at the brewery, it did nothing for my penis. Equating liquor with sex is a long-standing tradition in advertising, but who knew it's made it all the way down to the artisanal level.
Until next time...
-JD

ps. There were some bottle trees in the back I couldn't figure out a good way to incorperate into this post. Here's a picture:

A Bottle Tree: There is not much more to say about this.

And there it is! Tchausino!

A Viking in Argentina

 So Buenos Aires was great. Lots of good wine, tango, cool places, great times with friends, and a steak so good it almost made me want to renounce my blasphemous ways and turn to God. I'll touch on all that later, but right now, I want to tell you about the night I met a Viking.
I had been staying with Norwegian friends, and it was one of our last nights in the city. "A friend of ours is leaving tomorrow, and he wants to get dinner with us before he goes," Adrian said,
"He's a true viking." he added, grinning.
I assumed he was kidding. The Norwegian sense of humor is an interesting one, and I won't pretend like I understood all of their jokes. However, I wasn't put off by the idea of eating at one of the apparently best Scandinavian restaurants in Argentina (Olsen), as it had mostly been beef and vino up to that point, and I was ready for a change. Around 9, I put on my thursday night best and we headed out the door to catch a cab over to the restaurant.
On the way we got a call. Olsen was too crowded, no one could get a table, so the restaurant was switched to some arab/mediterranean place in San Telmo. We arrived to find 6 Norwegian girls—all styled like they were getting back from a day out with their puritanical grandmothers at a feminist organic gardening expo in San Francisco (that is to say, they looked very...hip*)—with four empty seats set towards the end of the table. Me, Tonje, and Adrian all sat down, and I glanced at the menu as they greeted the other girls.
I'm not particularly fluent in spanish, and the menu was Mediterranean food en espanol, which was just a little bit confusing. I was trying to decide between the one dish towards the top of the menu that I had no idea what it was or the other dish at the bottom of the menu that I had no idea what it was, when I felt the table tremble a bit under my arms. It stopped for a minute, but then trembled again, more intense than before. Another pause, another episode of shaking. Like Jurassic Park, I watched my glass of beer quiver on the table. Silverware rattled against the plates. Soon our whole table was shaking violently. I turned to see the other customers looking around in a panic.
"Holy shit guys! Earthquake!" I shouted.
The Norwegians turned and smiled at me.
"No." one of them said, "Lars."
The booming became more intense and then stopped. The door opened, and a man as big as a bear—legs as wide as cinderblocks, arms as thick as tree-trunks, a huge beard covering his enormous, square face—squatted and contorted his body to fit through the door frame. He walked over to the table, each step making the entire restaurant convulse, and sat down next to me. The chair promptly broke, and he ripped a portion of the bar from the wall and seated himself on it.
"Hello friends." The restaurant suddenly felt small and his voice filled it like thunder.
"What will we eat?"

Lars, the Viking.

The waitress timidly walked over and took our orders. I had a schwarma. Lars ordered two of everything on the menu. It took me a minute to get over his enormous stature, but when I did, I poked him in the arm until he looked down at me.
"Oh ho ho...sorry little fellow. Didn't see you there." he said.
"That's okay, man. Just wanted to introduce myself...I'm John, friend of Adrian and Tonje."
"Pleasure to meet you, John. I am Lars, son of Steigandor, sailor of seas, conqueror of lands."
"Cool man. I've never met a real viking before...it's an honor."
"Well, my friend, even though your voice betrays that you are from an ignoble land—obviously unworthy of the attentions of a Norseman— it is my last night here in Argentina, so tonight we shall eat, drink, and be merry."
"Hey bro, that's cool. Just don't like, rape and pillage me, okay? Hahaha." I offered my hand to him, which looked like an infants in his palm, and which he crushed in a painful grip.
After we had eaten (and Lars had devoured every last scrap of food and beer in the entire restaurant), I conveniently didn't have to pull out my wallet, as Lars whipped out his broad-sword and beheaded the hostess for bringing us the check. I guess Vikings don't pay for their meals.
Outside, we smoked, and everyone agreed the next stop would be to check out a place an Argentinean architect I had sat next to on the plane had recommended: 878, apparently the best whiskey-bar in all of Buenos Aires. Tonje raised her hand to hail down a cab.
"A taxi? Nonsense!" Lars shouted, "I have my ship. We will sail to the bar!"
the question of how Lars intended to sail across the city on concrete answered itself as he whistled and hundreds of enslaved Portenos came rushing around the corner, carrying a large vessel with a dragon's head mast on their backs.
"Come aboard!" Lars yelled.

On our way to the whiskey bar.

878 was a really cool little place in Palermo. Outside, you'd have no idea it was a bar, just a small entrance with a discrete address above the door: 878 Thames. Inside, however, it was a very chic spot; dim lights, well-dressed Argentineans talking and laughing over their cocktails, couples fawning over one another in the penumbra of candle light. We seated ourselves at a table (Lar's chair broke again), and the waiter brought around menus printed on a board. Lars quickly scanned the Whiskey section.
"By Thor!" he exclaimed, "They have Caol Ila! It is the finest Scotch whiskey. I have not seen it in my travels since our raid on the Scottish armaments many moons ago! We must have some!"
We hailed down the waiter and ordered a couple 18 year aged Caol Ila scotches and several kegs of heineken for Lars. Mostly my experience with whiskey has been swilling Jack Daniels from the bottle....more to look like a bad-ass than for actual appreciation of taste, but like skin cancer, it grows on you. However, I might have to reconsider my whiskey of choice after drinking the good stuff. The first sip made me shudder, as well as warmed my entire stomach and throat on the way down. The second was much smoother, and by the time I finished my glass I had a nice little buzz going on, as well as a pleasant, oaky aftertaste in my mouth.

Lars on his 4th keg of beer.

 We were having a good time, drinking and talking, when I got a phone call. A girl I had met in my TFLA class, Cait, who now lives in Buenos Aires, was coming to meet up with us. Me and Lars went outside to smoke a cigarette. We were talking about his future travel plans when we heard a loud, obnoxious 'Heeeey!' ring out in the night like a drunken, sorority gunshot. Cait stumbled over and gave me a hug.
"Oh my gaaaaawd, Joooooohn! It's soo good to seeee you! This is my friend, Ken...he's from Berkeley too!" She slurred, deferring to a skinny, spanish-looking guy in a suit coat. He shook my hand and smiled,
"We split like, a whole bottle of rum." he said, sort of apologetically. Lars seemed uncomfortable.

Imagine this + that baby that was served alcohol at Applebees = What Cait looked like that night.

"Oh hey guys, this is my new friend, Lars." The once all-mighty and confident Viking seemed a bit unsure of the obscenely drunk American girl and her friend as he shook their hands. We went back inside, I introduced everyone and we sat back down at our table. Cait's overpoweringly loud voice seemed to make the relatively demure Norwegians tense up. Soon, Lars chugged the last of his keg of beer, said he had a long voyage to Chile tomorrow, and excused himself for the night. Tonje and Adrian, sensing that if a strong Nordic Warrior such as Lars was escaping they should probably follow suit, politely said they had Spanish Class early in the morning (they didn't) and took leave as well.
After the Norwegians left, Cait proceeded to—in the course of 20 minutes—briefly pass out, cry, scream "Imma fuck you up nigga!" to Ken when he told her to get it together (shes not black), and vomit profusely.
Charming.
Sensing this night was taking a turn for the worse, I attempted to lubricate myself into some sort of tranquility. I chugged the last of everyones drinks on the table and ended up vomiting in the bathroom too,
"For solidarity." I told Cait, retching next to her. From there, my enchantment with meeting a Viking wore off, the air started smelling like piss and garbage more than the exhilarating aroma of adventure, and the rest of the time was spent baby-sitting a stereotypically drunk girl until I finally caught a cab home around 4 am. At least Ken ended up being a pretty interesting guy—we talked philosophy—or else I probably would have taken a cue from Lars and cut someone's head off.
So that's it readers. My night with a Viking. He's off somewhere around Cape Horn now, plundering small towns, raping women and men alike, and probably having the time of his life.
Next time, I have a couple stories to tell. Which sounds better: More of Argentina (wine, steak, and tango), or my experience at an 8000-person formal graduation party this past saturday?
Let me know, and I will deliver.
Until then, Tchao Companieros!
-JD



*stupid

Culinary Edition

The food here has been amazing, and I'd like to touch on some of my favorite dishes that I've had the pleasure of enjoying since I've been down here:

1. Acai (pronounced AS-AI-EE) Smoothy
The best cure for a hangover is heroin—a little known fact you won't find in a reader's digest—but second to that, an Acai-smoothy does the trick equally as well. Purple, sweet but pungent, one of these bad-boys contains 1000 calories and does a very good job indeed of counteracting inhuman amounts of alcohol consumed during the previous night. Stains your teeth a bit, but after a night of hard drinking, who really gives a shit what your teeth look like?

2. Bolinhos de Bacalhau
Sort of like a crab cake, except with cod instead of crab. These guys are fried, crunchy, and delicious. While I believe this is the most popular incarnation, I've also had Bolinhos with risotto in the middle, and some with meat within the rissoto, almost similar to an Arancini. As Flavia has told me, there's a lot of Italian influence here in Sao Paulo, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Bolinho is the Brazilian take on that classic sicilian dish. Great snack.

3. Coxinhas
The fried balls I spoke of previously. These are very popular and you can find them in almost every restaurant as well as in street-vendor carts and little bloqados. A thigh cut of shredded chicken mixed with the Brazilian cheese Catupiry and various other herbs and spices, wrapped in potato and deep-fried. I'm not really a fan of catupiry, but when it's in the context of one of these guys, I love it. Crunchy, savory, and very filling.


4. Escondidinho
Sort of like a casserole, but not really, this is another staple of Brazilian diet. Shredded meat of any variety (but usually beef or pork) with other herbs and tomato baked with a layer of mashed potato on top. This was the last thing that I ate at the Mercado Municipal the other day, and on top of everything else, it damn near made my stomach burst. Still, like a bingeing bulimic, I couldn't help but gobble up every last bite on my plate. Delicious.

5. Bobo de Camerao
Sort of a hybrid of shrimp curry and gumbo, it's cooked in a big special pot with garlic and onions being sautéed in palm oil and olive oil, then tomato puree is added with cilantro and other herbs I couldn't figure out, then the shrimp, and finally topped off with a couple quarts of coconut milk. It simmers for a while, and is then served with rice and uncooked farina (sort of a cornmeal-textured wheat product) with plantains. Very similar to Vatapa, except without manioc and bread. Absolutely incredible! I had it home-cooked on a sunday, and ate so much I was full for two days afterwards.

6. Pastel
The ubiquitous street food, you can find these guys anywhere. A sheet of pastry wrapped around any kind of food—you can get it with plain cheese, with beef, with shrimp, with chicken, with pork, with mozzarella tomato and basel....anything, really—and then deep-fried to perfection (have you noticed a lot of this food is fried?)Almost like a wonton, except more savory. The meat in the first pastel I had here literally melted in my mouth, and I was hooked, although I've found out since then that they tend to be of varying degrees of quality, depending on where you're eating. Still: strongly recommended.

7. Temaki
There's a large Japanese population here, and the Brazilians are very proud of their sushi-game and say it's the best in the world (to which, as a Californian proud of our own sushi game, I might have to disagree...I have yet to see sea-urchin on any menu here. How can you have the best sushi-game when you don't even have sea urchin?) Still, they get points for the Temaki. Sort of a sushi-burrito, temaki's have any filling you'd like—most Brazilians opt for shrimp or salmon—wrapped up like....well, you see the picture. These things are dank, and there are little places called Temakierias that strictly serve these; apparently, they're the preferred late-night drunken-munchie food. Back in the states, I usually had to settle for burgers or hot-dogs after a night of drinking....it would be awesome if there was some affordable variation of sushi for us degenerates out at late hours. America: Get on this!

8. Quindim
Little candies made out of egg yolks and coconut. They even look like the yolk portion of an egg! The top is sort of custardy but at the bottom there's a crunchy cookie-like base. Great texture, sweet, and very nice with coffee after a meal. I'd love to talk about the more widely known Brigadeiros (condensed milk—almost like dolce de leche—cooked with chocolate and rolled into balls), but honestly I haven't even had one here yet! Definitely on my to-do list, but in the meantime, if you ever get a chance, try a Quindim. Tasty.

and, of course:

9. Feijoada!
The most chronic of all the chronic meals you can have down here. Wednesday and saturday are feijoada days, and most restaurants serve it as a sort of special. Basically beans and different cuts of meat stewed for hours with other goodies like onion, bone marrow, whatever, until the meat dissolves in your mouth. Served with rice. The place where I had it here had a system set up with a whole regiment of pots, each containing feijoada with a different kind of meat (linguisa, pork shoulder, beef shanks, etc.) so you could go down the line and pick what sorts of meat you wanted on your plate. Like the best dishes, this one originated from poor people trying to make something great out of nothing (rice, beans, and the left-over, undesirable parts of pigs and cows), and has evolved into probably the best-known dish of Brazil. For good reason too...I could sit here and wax poetic on Feijoada all day, but the simpler solution is for you to just go eat some. Seriously, go get some. I don't care where you are, go track down a brazilian, make him/her take you to their grandmother, and force her to cook it for you....at gunpoint, if need be. This dish is God's blessing to this country, and it's really the most important comestible item that you should sample if you ever come down here. VIVA FEIJOADA!
~

With all that being said, theres so much more to write about. I went to my first soccer game the other day (Vai Corinthians...or as I like to say, 'Corinthians or No-rinthians'), and it was dope. I'm leaving to kick it in Buenos Aires for a week on monday, so maybe I'll have something to say about wine, steak, and tango when I get back. Hashtag, so international. Hashtag, step your life up. Hashtag, John Downey out.
-JD

Que Linda!

I suppose it's only fitting that the people of this country match the landscape and cityscape; that is to say, they are all beautiful. I remember I was in Australia, and I thought to myself, 'No wonder there are so many Australian actors...everyone here looks like some bronzed beach god'. Little did I know what awaited me here down south. Simone de Bouvoir, Luce Irigary, Julia Kristiva, please forgive me, but for a moment here, I'm going to have to objectify women.
    The girls here are more beautiful than anything I've ever seen in my entire life. Gorgeous creatures, I often find myself walking around with my jaw hanging well below my chest, dazzled by the beauty of each and every one of them. Tan skin, perfectly formed faces, bodies put together like classical greek statues. If you had asked me a year ago—in my naiveté—where the finest, sexiest, most physically endearing and uplifting women lived, I would have crossed my arms matter-of-factly and said, 'Prague...there is something in the water there that makes all the eastern women have such an indivisible level of beauty that it's staggering; bed-room eyes, perfectly-proportioned bodies, faces that put the works of renaissance painters to shame." Little did I know the true source of amazing-looks lay just a few hundred thousand miles south of my humble abode in California.

    It can't be whatever is in the water here—regularly, aquifers smell like something more rotten than fermented sewage—so I have to assume it's a product of decades of different ethnicities cross-breeding. Only the best and most breathtakingly stunning genes have been passed on from generation to generation to create something ungodly exquisite; if Helen was the face that launched the bloodshed of Troy, I can't even fathom the atrocities that would be committed over the plainest woman in Brazil a couple hundred years ago.

    I'm not that much of a horn-dog, really. I remember once, a couple years ago, I risked ostracization to chastise some friends for whistling at a passing women's behind. Growing up in Berkeley, and taking some feminist-lit classes in college, I've long known that when it comes to women, it's not what's on the outside that counts, but what's on the inside; the outside, in fact, should be actively ignored—even shunned—in order to achieve 'gender equality'. But all that erudition flew out the window the second I touched down here. Every other minute I find myself ready to gladly marry and spend the rest of my life with a complete stranger passing by on the street, even if they are the cruelest, pettiest, most inhumane and toxic person ever to grace the face of this earth. Seriously guys, it's that bad. The women here are on another level gorgeous.

    It's not like people here take it for granted. All the men I talk to freely admit (and with some pride) that Brazilian women are ravishing entities. Resplendent, angelic, they float from breath-taking place to breath-taking place, embellishing the atmosphere with their own distinct charm, not only by looking like minor Aphrodites, but by being fun and talkative and bringing all sorts of color and flavor into the equation. It has become clear to me, at this point, that I will certainly have to wed a Brazilian woman or spend the rest of my life tormented by the idea of what could have been.
    However, to speak highly of women is not to deny the men. All the guys here are also on another level of gorgeous, just look at this knock-out:

 

JK. That's Zach Galifinakiananiaskiosioakis with baby Carlos....but if you guys' want the real baby Carlos:

It was this little guy right here. Superman of Carnival, just waiting to grow up into a lady-killer (or dude-killer). Godbless you, Carnival-Superman-Baby. May our hearts one day grow up to be as bold as yours.
~

-JD

Manha de Carnival

So, back from Carnival in Rio. Wow. Just....wow. Sitting on airplanes and buses and taxis on the way back, staring out the window, puzzling over exactly how to describe that wonderful cavalcade of sensuality, I feel overwhelmed....there was too much, so many moments I swore I would laminate with words (words that would always be too clumsy) as soon as I could get to a computer. Of course there are the pithy journal entries I recorded over the course of my stay, but they don't really belong here. I sit here now, tasked with how to tell the story of perhaps one of the best times of my young life....
.......
I don't think I can do it justice.
The inadequacy of language becomes very evident now, trying to describe how things actually were. How they felt. Abstraction seems like the only solution; to boil down a narrative to it's emotional truths through images. To paint an impressionist picture—a Monet, a Pissarro—with flowery language, elegant words.
Ugh. So unappealing.
    I have pictures. They're supposedly worth a thousand words, but a thousand words isn't that much, really. A thousand words tells what the weather was like when i got off the plane. A thousand words describes one beautiful girl, shuffling a samba. I need a million words—a hundred thousand pictures—to really make you understand what Carnival was like.
I guess the best thing to do would be to give up. Really guys, you just had to be there.

Still, a couple things:

The weather in Rio was overcast most of the trip, but that didn't slow anything down. I still went to the beach everyday; the water in the ocean was bathtub warm. At night, I would slip off to Ipanema by myself (or sometimes with others) and imagine the ghost of Jobim sitting on the white sand, strumming a guitar, constructing my favorite song in his head, inspired by the same scene I was looking at then. I splashed in the waves with the favella children, I sat with thousands of other tourists (mostly people from Sao Paulo), baking in the sun, sucking on straws thrust into coconuts, each one of us thinking we were having a unique experience.
    At the Bloquinos, the little carnival parades that happen all day all over the city, I danced, drunkenly and exuberantly. A smile permanently plastered on my face, I laughed, posed for pictures, joked with strangers, let the catchy rhythms of the Carnival songs overtake me: always a single song, repeated over and over again, until even the most inept gringo could sing along with the words. I became a part of the huge mass of people, a festive monster, spewing balloons and ribbons, ravenously eating up the street in front of it, swaggering along to the blaring music, it's breath the melodies of bossa-nova.
    In Sao Paulo, where even the flowers are made of concrete, it is only the city's churning energy that sustains itself; a perpetual beast, an ouroboros, feeding its expansion from it's own tail. In Rio, the natural world plays much more of a role; slums built into rock faces, every horizon weighted with trees, the smell and taste of ocean salt present in every breath. A constant perfume of the most human stenches, prime-evil earth, lingering nimbus' of sweat and piss and mud and beer and sex and shit. When we were stumbling around one day, the word that kept popping into my head was 'electricity'. There was something electric about that place, a current that jumped from person to person. You could feel it in the street; sparks flew from peoples feet as they danced. There was lightning in every pretty girl's eyes. An ecstatic voltage, the kind you feel when you first kiss someone you're starting to fall in love with...that's what it's like in Rio.
    The people I stayed with in our apartment with were amazing. I made new friends, brothers and sisters, people I will always have that experience in common with. Carolina, Gabriella, Caio, Allen, Adriana, Maria, Carla, Joao...all names etched into my head besides specific moments. All the people I've encountered here are so warm and friendly. Even the little kid who stole my mask during a parade was nice about it. The sound of portuguese, a lilting and beautiful language, was always in my ears. The food was heavenly...I won't say more than that, because I intend to devote an entire entry to it.
Oh, look at this. I said no shitty, over-saturated writing and what did I do? Exactly fucking that.
I'm sorry guys. Once I can get people to give me their photos, I'll do a much simpler run-through of some of my favorite things from there. It'll be quick and breezy, and illustrated too: exactly what the internet wants.
Until then,
tchau companieros!
-JD

In an Ivory Tower

    I woke up this morning to the faint sound of eery, ice-cream truck music floating in from my window. It's 10 am, early now, for how late I've been sleeping; my jet-lag has finally worn off. I sit up in bed, sticky with sweat. It's been raining since I got here, so the humidity makes the air thick, your clothes cling to your skin, beads of perspiration ever-present on your forehead.
    This is my fourth day here in Sao Paulo. I'm in a mansion in a gated community in Crotia, some suburb nestled away from the manic inner-city. Joao's family all work from early in the morning til late at night, so I am left to my own devices during the day. I share the house with two maids and Joao's 100 year old grandma, who apparently is 'confusado', as one of the maids tells me. It doesn't make any difference, I can't understand anything she says anyway. No one speaks english here.
    I'm hampered from going places by the removed location of the house and a lack of transportation vehicles, so mostly I've been puttering around this castle. Coming here, I sort of had this fantasy of doing my Henry Miller thing—living in a hovel, subsisting on literature, starving amazing sentences out of myself—but it's become very apparent that as long as I'm living in this house, starving is the last thing that will happen to me. Everyday I wake up and walk down to the kitchen, I'm greeted by a plethora of foods stretched across the table; different cuts of carne, feijoa & arroz, salads, corn with cream, and a dish that seems to be shredded kale cooked with egg. I feel obligated to stuff myself by the expectant looks on maid's faces. It's as if they're making up for the language barrier through food; hospitality slow-cooked into the beans and rice. I'm going to go to the store today and get some supplies for Latkah's, try to cook it for them tomorrow to reciprocate...if they'll let me. They've been very adament about me not doing little things I'd normally do: washing dishes after a meal, making my bed, and cooking for myself. So we'll see.
    We leave for Rio on friday, Carnival starting on saturday, I think, so I'm fine to do nothing for my first week or so here. A typical day for me so far has been to wake up at noon, eat lunch with Grandma, smoke a joint (thank god I brought pot down with me!), read a book/write, take the two family dogs for a walk, smoke another joint, attempt to teach myself some portuguese, and then try to make some moves. I caught a cab out to Faria Lima yesterday to go to the mall and get a phone. I ended up watching indoor soccer (weak!) in a sports bar and pounding back caipirinhas, until Joao got off work and met up with me. We went out to dinner and came home.
Exciting, I know.
    One of the nice things about not understanding the language here, is that I compensate by imagining everyone is saying flattering things about me. When one of the maids walks by and says something to the other maid, gesturing at me, I pretend she's saying 'oh, aren't we so lucky to have such a handsome and polite young American in the house!', and when the other maid laughs and says something else, I imagine it's 'Hahah, oh yes, I'm laughing because of how funny it is that we've always talked about wanting a tall white boy to live in our house, and now it's happened!'
Oh, Natalie and Li, you're too kind. Stop it, I'm blushing!
    I guess there's not a whole lot to report right now. Since I started walking the dogs, the little pug has taken a liking to me. She follows me around the house, tries to jump onto my lap every time I sit down, which is sorta cute, but she's smelly, so it's sorta wack too. My work plans are to teach english, and the guy whose supposed to hire me said he definitely has some gigs for me in the near future. At the moment, I'm just counting down the days until I go to Rio, really get to jump head first into this Brazilian cultural thing.
    This will be the last blase post I make. Everything after this will be an exciting story, hopefully with pictures, hopefully an engaging, epic tale that will have you glued to your screen (not that you aren't already....you facebook-lurking internet junkies)
Stay tuned....we'll see if I can really live up to that promise.
T'chao.
-JD

The Adventure Begins...

So here I am, sitting at my gate in the airport, typing this on my laptop, drinking an expresso, listening to the new radiohead album on my ipod, a half OZ of extremely purple, vacuum-sealed marijuana stuffed between my butt-cheeks, absolutely DYING for a cigarette. The guy sitting next to me's daughter, a baby in a pink jumpsuit, is staring at me slack-jawed, a seemingly dumb-struck expression on her little face. When I turn my head to meet her eyes, she averts her gaze, shy, but a second later whips her head back around and smiles at me, flopping her arm around spastically as some attempt at a wave. This has been going on for 10 minutes or so....I didn't know infants had that sort of attention span. So here I am, an unwilling participant in some sort of variation on peek-a-boo...call it look-and-lookaway. Hopefully that's what this blog will be: a collection of my most degenerate/maudlin/ecstatic/morbid/hopefull but undeniably poignant moments over the course of my life here in Brazil; recollections that will both repulse and enthrall you. An unwitting game of look-and-lookaway.
Oh maybe a little back-story is in order.
Well, actually, you don't need to know that much. A californian by birth, I grew up in Berkeley, went to college in Oregon, and now I'm departing the country to tackle the next phase of my life. Why Brazil, you ask? Well, I was getting tired of the Bay Area, and the Bay Area was getting tired of me. I had grown to resent the people I was hanging out with, gotten burnt out on the exhaustive monotony of the post-college routine, and just over-all needed a change/escape. Fast forward, and here I am, sitting in this airport, ensconced in a 6-month old's gaze. I think, as people get older, they change, and their environment needs to change with them. The reason I'm choosing Brazil as my catalyst is I have a friend who lives there, who will put me up for a while until I find a job. It's a practical decision, plain and simple.
My eyelids are getting heavy. The pills I took earlier are starting to kick in. "Airplane drugs" my friend told me. I've had experience with these things before: When I went to Australia, a 24 hour flight, I bought some xanex off of my guy, 2mg bars. I popped one before I got on the plane. A half an hour in, I didn't feel anything. Being completely inexperienced with xanax—it was my first time taking it—I popped another one, thinking it was like advil or something; I always have to take two to feel any effect.
Well anyone who knows anything about benzos is probably chuckling right now. When it finally kicked in, I laid my head back and took a nap. I woke up to the stewardess putting a tray of airplane food on my seat-tray. Feeling disoriented, I turned to look at the person next to me (I had an aisle seat). The woman to my left was staring at me with a puzzled look on her face. Still drowsy, I reeled back to my food. Some abomination of an attempt at chicken souffle.
"Ugh" I said.
The sight of the food was making me queasy, so I picked it up and offered it to my neighbor.
"Hey, do you want this?"
The woman glanced at the food, then looked back at me.
"You've been asleep for 14 hours...you should probably eat something."
I must have looked shocked, because she motioned at my chest with her head, as if to prove her point. I looked down and saw half of the entire front of my shirt was soaked with drool. Embarrassment dully set in behind the xanex, and I apologized.
"Oh man, I'm sorry. Was I snoring?"
The lady looked down.
"No, but you were farting...the whole time."
Oh noooo! The situation seemed so overwhelmingly embarrassing that I just said 'fuck it'. I turned back to my meal, flipped it upside down, and went back to sleep. Another 12 hours later, I woke up in Sydney.
I can only hope this flight goes as smoothly.
They're calling for pre-boarding, cripples, babies, and rich people. I guess this is good-enough of an introduction. I'm sure you'll be able to glean more about who I am as this goes on. I have to go now, but next time you hear from me, I'll be in the mecca of samba, bossa-nova, and, most importantly, caipirinhas. Cheers readers. See you on the other side...