The Country of the Future

Election Day in Brazil

2008-11-04T19:38:00.002-03:00

People know. The US election is big news here.

I was on an elevator when a man entered, looked at my button, and asked me when we would know who won. I told him that the results would start coming in around 10pm local time, but that Obama has already won. He smiled and told me he hoped so.

The US election has been the top news story here since Sunday, and will probably continue to be the lead on the nightly news until Thursday. All the newspapers' front pages are dedicated to today's election. And all of this is because W fucked everything up so badly. Brazilians would like nothing more than to go back to not caring about US elections, but they (nobody, really) no longer have that luxury.

Small Sacrifice

2008-11-04T11:48:00.001-03:00

I am not superstitious, and I don't believe that my beloved Skins' result has anything to do with the outcome of the presidential election. Still, on the off chance that it does, losing last night was a very small sacrifice to make, so I'm less upset about the loss than I otherwise would be.

It's the Racism, Stupid

2008-09-04T14:46:00.002-03:00

I really don't understand why mainstream journalists won't just say it, whatever "it" happens to be. When someone flat out lies, like Lieberman did this week, they won't say it. When an entire party is built on a racist foundation, they will write articles wondering why black people won't vote for that party. But whatever they do, they won't actually mention the reason why.

Today's Washington Post does it again. Why are there only 36 black delegates at the Republican Convention? Maybe because black people remember what happened in Florida in 2000? The article makes no mention of that. Maybe because black people knew what Jesse Helms stood for and what Trent Lott was talking about? The article makes no mention of that. Maybe because black people are well aware of what changed from the 50s (Republicans' favorite decade) to the 60s (the root of all contemporary problems, in the conservative cosmography)? The article makes no mention of that.

The article does, however, contain much sincere head-scratching.

Republicans spent much of the past decade working to improve their minority outreach, particularly to blacks and Hispanics. But a number of setbacks, including an anti-Republican national mood, anger over the response to Hurricane Katrina and the Democratic nomination of Sen. Barack Obama, have largely negated their efforts, several Republicans said.

Well, sure, if black voters hadn't overwhelmingly favored Democrats before 2004.

The Republican party threw its lot in with the segregationists in the 1970s, and the only change has been to move away from explicit appeals to race and toward code words (crime). Republicans have gutted the civil rights division of the Justice Department -- do they think black voters are so stupid that they won't notice? Of course not, but they know that journalists are that stupid, so they can be as racist as they want to be and still appeal to exurban voters who can't allow themselves to think that they are voting for racists.

Although all Republicans aren't racist, the Republican party is full of racists and racist policies, and that is the reason black people don't vote for Republicans. No need to wonder, Washington Post.

Bloomsday

2008-06-16T11:51:00.000-03:00

A very happy Bloomsday to all!

Some Unknown Team Won the Copa do Brasil

2008-06-13T12:13:00.002-03:00

Let's see, in the semifinals we had Corinthians, Botafogo, Vasco, and some other team. Neither of the three won, so some other team that Globo didn't want to mention won the Copa do Brasil Wednesday night.

I was there, and I still can't believe it. I spent two hours in front of the stadium drinking beer and watching the party, trying to convince myself that it had really happened. I had a strong feeling that I was fooling myself, that I was going to wake up Thursday morning to see that Corinthians had won the Copa do Brasil, but I kept looking at all the people dancing and singing in the street and I couldn't quite believe that they were all fooling themselves, too.

It was like carnaval on the streets after the game, and yesterday everywhere I went people were wearing Sport jerseys -- just like I was. I wore mine to work, in several offices (professional attire is for those whose team did not win the Copa do Brasil the night before) where the employees who couldn't wear soccer jerseys were dressed in red shirts and black pants. Santa Cruz and Náutico supporters (people who tend to hate Sport more than they love their own teams) claim that it was more a victory for Pernambuco than for Sport. (They are wrong, of course, but this is a significant victory for Pernambuco for reasons that will be discussed in a future post.)

I keep watching the goals again and again. I was there. I remember watching them happen, but neither the memories nor the videos on my monitor seem real. Sport will play in the Copa Libertadores next year. Sport will finally be able to sign a decent center-forward. In a few days all of this will sink in, but for now I'm still a few feet off the ground. Just like all the people who are still setting off fireworks and honking "cazá cazá!" This too shall pass. I'll be back to normal in a few days, just like the rest of the city, but I'm going to enjoy the celebration while it lasts.

I leave you with a pearl of wisdom from Carlinhos Bala: "The hand that applauds is the same one that boos."

There Is Nothing At All Wrong With It, But It's Still Very Funny

2008-05-20T00:04:00.003-03:00

There is a gay man playing soccer at the highest level in Brazil. He has represented Brazil (although many people, myself among them, believe that he isn't a good enough player for the Seleção). While I and the vast majority of Brazilians really don't care that he is gay, and don't believe he should have to suffer for it, the way he keeps getting outed (despite continually denying being gay) is really, really funny. (And, I should add, really, really sad. This guy has it pretty rough.)

A while back, rumors began circulating that there was a gay player at one of São Paulo's three big teams (Corinthians, Palmeiras, and São Paulo). On national television Milton Neves (who is a horrible person, but that's neither here nor there) asked one of the Palmeiras directors, José Cyrillo Júnior, if the gay player (whose name was still unknown) played for Palmeiras. The Palmeiras director replied, "We almost signed Richarlyson."

However much parts of this make me laugh, it IS serious. Richarlyson, who plays for São Paulo, sued the Palmeiras director for his comment. The judge, Maximiano Junqueira Filho, stated that "accepting gay players hasn't been shown to be reasonable because it would harm the uniformity of thought of the team, the coordination, the equilibrium, the ideal." Inadvertently, the judge gave tremendous aid to the cause of gay rights in Brazil. He was investigated by the Tribunal da Justiça, and his comments got more (negative) coverage than the original comments that Cyrillo Júnior made. (His decision, in Portuguese, is here. It is jaw-droppingly, laugh out loud stupid. It reads like something from Stephen Colbert's book. Brazilian judges have to pass a public exam, against serious and qualified competition. How did this man outperform thousands and thousands of other attorneys?) The judge was investigated by the Tribunal da Justiça, but I haven't yet located the results of the investigation.

So, that brings us up to last weekend, when this happened.

Last Saturday night Richarlyson was spotted in a gay club in São Paulo, wearing a hat, jewel-encrusted glasses, and short shorts. Well, that should put the question to rest, shouldn't it? Richarlyson will continue playing, he will open the minds of more than a few Brazilians, and hopefully he will just admit that he's gay and stop embarrassing himself. There is nothing at all wrong with his being gay, nor with his being a gay soccer player, but when he steps on the ball like this it sure does make me laugh.

There Is No Bias Against The Northeast

2008-05-19T23:58:00.002-03:00

Wednesday night the semifinals of the Copa do Brasil begin. Botafogo plays Corinthians, as globoesporte.com notes in the photo above, and Vasco da Gama plays... some other team that apparently has no chance, right? Well, no. Sport should be considered the favorite. Vasco reached the semifinals without playing a single team from the Série A. Sport beat Palmeiras and Internacional (who, along with Fluminense and Cruzeiro, make up the favorites for this year's Série A title). Yet Globo, which has no anti-Northeast bias at all, forgot to mention Sport's participation. Globo had an opinion poll on the site last week, after the quarterfinals had finished, asking readers who was most likely to win the tournament. There were only three options. Any guess as to which team wasn't included?

The Brazilian Electoral System

2008-05-16T10:49:00.001-03:00

Ultimately, there are two root causes to almost all of Brazil’s problems. The largest most complicated of these causes is poverty. Why is there so much violent crime in Brazil? Because people have no money and no job prospects, and need to survive. Why are there so many homeless people in Brazil’s cities? Because urban poverty is slightly better than rural poverty, so the rural poor migrate to the cities, where they still can’t find jobs and sustainable income, and become part of the cities’ problems. Why are so many people in Brazil undereducated? Because their families need whatever income they can generate, so the leave school and work, beg, or steal money for their families. And the lack of education makes them unemployable, and so the cycle continues. The other problem is political.

The Brazilian electoral system is simpler than its equivalent in the US, that much is true. Brazilians cannot figure out, and in fact enjoy being unable to understand, the American primary system. So, let’s give the Brazilians some points for simplicity and efficiency, and then get on with criticizing the myriad flaws of the Brazilian system (all of which were designed to benefit someone other than the voters, and work to perfection).

In Brazil, every candidate is an at-large candidate. Even worse, every voter votes for only one. So the approximately 1.1 million voting-age residents of Recife vote for one candidate (out of hundreds) for 36 city council positions. When there is a problem in the neighborhood, no one is directly responsible, no one answers directly to the voters in that neighborhood, and nobody can run specifically against an ineffective or corrupt councilman. The same is true for congressman and state representatives – all of them represent the entire state, and all of the state’s voters vote for only one candidate.

But the voters didn’t actually vote for a particular candidate. They voted for a party. (Voting specifically for a party rather than for a candidate is also an option in legislative races, and many voters do just that.) The proportion of the vote that each party (the sum of votes for the party itself and for each of its candidates) determines the number of councilmen, state legislators, or congressmen that the party puts in the legislative body. If a party wins 20% of the votes for congress in a particular state then the party wins 20% of that state’s congressional delegation. The most famous example of this was when Enéas Carneiro ran for congress in São Paulo in 2002. He received 1.8 million votes, far more than any other candidate. This entitled his tiny party to six congressmen in the São Paulo delegation, and among them was one who received just 300 votes. Left in the cold were candidates from other parties who had received over 100,000 votes. To whom did that congressman, who won 300 votes, owe his position? Certainly not to the voters of São Paulo.

This system makes it impossible for an activist citizen to enter politics. It is impossible to win office anywhere but in a tiny municipality without the support of a party machine. It is painful to hold Spiro Agnew up as a positive example, but he was (unfortunately) an example of the success of the American electoral system. Agnew went from PTA president to governor of Maryland to vice president of the country (Hunter S. Thompson referred to him as a sop to the voters who thought Nixon was a communist). In Brazil it is simply impossible for a community activist to hold a local politician accountable for the problems in a community – because there are no local politicians. So nothing gets done. Sidewalks are cracked and stay cracked, there is no hurry to repair any roads but major commuter arteries. Corrupt politicians are reelected year after year because there is no way to mount an effective anti-corruption campaign. Despite the entirely preventable outbreak of dengue fever in Rio, chances are that no one will suffer for it at the ballot box this October.

I wish I could end this on a positive note, offering hope for the future or at least pointing to a possible solution, but I can’t. The system protects the parties at the expense of the voters. Brazilian legislators everywhere but in the above-mentioned tiny municipalities owe their positions to the system and to their parties, and owe nothing at all to the voters. As long as this system remains in place, Brazilian society’s major problems will go unresolved and largely unconfronted.

The Headlines Confuse Me

2008-05-07T10:33:00.002-03:00

"Eight accused of robbing, torturing drug dealers," CNN tells me. So I read the article. But wait, the victims were subjected to simulated drowning. That's not torture! That's a motivational tactic! It's how we get information from high-value targets! It's fraternity hazing! It's no more than an enhanced interrogation technique! Sure, the enhanced interrogation was in the service of robbery, not protecting anybody from the terrorists, but surely simulating drowning isn't anything to get worked up about. Right? Right?

Random Photos from Sunday's Carreata

2008-05-07T09:43:00.002-03:00

This last photo was taken at the post-carreata game. The carreata was a big party, and not everyone remembered to save energy for the game.

Sport, Champion of Pernambuco (Again)

2008-05-05T23:18:00.003-03:00

Two weeks ago Sport won the Campeonato Pernambucano for the third straight year. Last year there wasn't much of a party (the dirty job of staying afloat during the team's first year back in the Sèrie A was on everyone's mind), but this year the fans decided to celebrate. Newspapers report that around 12,000 people went to the Avenida Boa Viagem (the street in front of the beach) on Sunday for the parade -- called a carreata in Portuguese.

This is one of the two trucks rented by the Bafo do Leão (The Lion's Bad Breath -- sounds better in Portuguese, doesn't it? And think about it, if you're close enough to the lion to smell its breath, what is going to happen to you next?) Every team in Brazil has an animal associated with it. Sport's animal is the lion, Cruzeiro's is the fox, Vasco da Gama's is the cod, and so on. I watch Sport from the Bafo's section of the stands, I travel to away games with the Bafo, and when the Bafo's second truck passed, I hopped on and partied with the Bafo do Leão. More about them later.

The truck in the photo above is known as a trio elétrico -- there's a stage on top and the speakers line the sides of the truck. This particular trio had Excesso de Bagagem playing with the singer from Marreta You Planeta (apparently that was cheaper than hiring the entire, and more popular, Excesso de Bagagem, but still had more status than hiring the extremely small-time Marreta You Planeta).

The photo above is of the singer of Marreta You Planeta. For someone who is theoretically (and probably very definitely, in his own mind) a celebrity, this guy was really anxious for me to take his photo. This was the third pose he did for me after he saw me with my camera out. My camera didn't focus quickly enough to catch the first two poses (and my amusement at his excitement to have his picture taken didn't help my concentration). He has nothing to do with the parts of the parade that I really want to show, but he was so enthusiastic about the photos that I feel I owe it to him.

Ronaldo is the titular president of the Bafo, but his wife Fabiana appears to be an equal partner in the presidency. She is also smokin' hot, but it would have been poor taste to have taken a photo of a married woman's body.

This photo gives a good idea of what the carreata looked like. The fence on the left side is because the city is repaving the sidewalk and creating a new bicycle lane. People run along side, and behind, the trios dancing to the music. Many of these people want all the way to the Ilha do Retiro, Sport's stadium, which is pretty far from the beach.

There was an exhibition game after the carreatea. Admission was R$10 and I feel like a sucker for having paid and watched a crappy reserve game, but it was a nice end to an enjoyable day. The photo above is the Bafo contingent that entered the stadium.

The Middle Class Is Out Of Touch

2008-04-06T21:57:00.003-03:00

"It's absurd," commented Kismine. "Think of the millions and millions of people in the world, labourers and all, who get along with only two maids."

I suppose you can say that about any middle class anywhere. It might be the defining feature of middle-classness. In any case, a woman in São Paulo took her ex-husband to court demanding that her alimony payment be doubled from R$6,000 to R$12,000 per month because she had to turn down dinner and theater invitations, couldn't buy a newer and nicer car, and for the last two years couldn't afford to take her vacations outside of Brazil. Her ex-husband countered that she was a psychologist with her own clinic and also a university professor, and the owner of two apartments. In a victory for common sense and decency, the judge eliminated her payment. She, of course, has appealed.

This is one greedy woman, but I think her actions illustrate something about the middle-class mentality in Brazil. According to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) the 2007 Brazilian per capita income was R$13,515. This woman, despite her income from two jobs and a rental property, felt entitled to an additional gain of slightly less than the per capita income each month.

The minimum monthly salary in Brazil is R$415. Go to the currency converter of your choice and see what that looks like in your local currency. Think about that, and think about what the unnamed woman felt entitled to have.

In the comments to this post, Randy mentions an acquaintance who hates Lula because his administration forced her to retire at 48 rather than 53, resulting in a monthly pension of
R$10,000 rather than R$12,500. I know people in Recife who make more than that per month and complain nonstop about how Lula is killing the middle class, how difficult it is for them to get by, and so on. But the same people who complain have maids, two cars, vacation homes in the interior and/or in small beach towns, and consider these to be normal expenses.

I suppose it is possible to put some of the blame on Globo's novelas, which show office workers living lavishly in enormous three and four bedroom apartments, but ultimately the blame rests with the people who drive past homeless people begging for money on their way to work (while their spouses do the same, because the family has two cars) and yet somehow fail to perceive how much better they have it.

There's nothing wrong with the bus system in Recife, nor is there likely anything wrong with the buses in any other large Brazilian city, but adult middle-class Brazilians rarely possess the humility necessary to commute shoulder-to-shoulder with the povão. They feel superior, and entitled to luxuries that most Brazilians don't dream of. They perceive demands for basic economic justice to be extortion. In short, the middle class represents very well what is basically wrong with Brazil and why it won't change any time soon.

Remembering Where I Am

2008-03-27T19:34:00.002-03:00

I love Brazil and I love living in Brazil. I have gotten used to pretty much everything about life here, and it all seems normal now. But sometimes I am reminded that this is not where I come from.

Last night I was waiting for the bus at about 10:45 at night. There were three women at the bus stop, and not much traffic on the normally very busy street. When my bus arrived, I and one of the women started to get on the bus when a passenger stuck her head out of the window and shouted, "Women, get on the bus! Get on, now!"

The two women stood up, confused, and looked at the woman on the bus. The fare-taker opened his window and told them, "Get on, there are some guys on bikes coming to rob you."

All four of us got on the bus, and the fare-taker told the women that they could get off the bus at the next stop -- one of the busiest intersections in the city, and an almost-robbery-proof location. He said that the bus had passed four men on bicycles circling around waiting for a break in the traffic so they could rob the people waiting at the bus stop.

However normal Brazil seems to me these days, this is something I will never get used to.

Soccer Is A Natural Resource And Brazil Is A Third-World Country

2008-03-26T14:30:00.003-03:00

Here are the friendly games that Brazil has played since the 2006 World Cup ended:

August 16, 2006 Brazil-Norway in Oslo
September 3, 2006 Brazil-Argentina in London
September 6, 2006 Brazil-Wales in London
October 10, 2006 Brazil-Ecuador in Stockholm
November 15, 2006 Brazil-Switzerland in Basel
February 6, 2007 Brazil-Portugal in London
March 24, 2007 Brazil-Chile in Gothenburg
March 27, 2007 Brazil-Ghana in Stockholm
June 1, 2007 Brazil-England in London
June 5, 2007 Brazil-Turkey in Dortmund
August 22, 2007 Brazil-Algeria in Montpellier
September 9, 2007 Brazil-USA in Boston
September 11, 2007 Brazil-Mexico in Boston
February 6, 2008 Brazil-Ireland in Dublin
March 26, 2008 Brazil-Sweden in London

Notice anything strange about that list? Not one friendly game has been played in Brazil in the last two years. The CBF (Confederação Brasileira de Futebol) has a contract with Nike that pays something like $65 million per year (which is a pittance), and since that contract was signed the "Seleção Brasileira" has represented Nike more than it has represented Brazil. Brazilians don't have the money, generally, to buy $150 jerseys, so Nike demands that Brazil play in countries where the people do have that kind of money. Brazil is required to play its competitive "home" matches (the majority of the games listed above consider Brazil the "home" team) within Brazil's borders, or surely Brazil would play its World Cup Qualifiers in Tokyo and Berlin rather than São Paulo and Porto Alegre.

The situation is terrible, but it isn't likely to end any time soon. The CBF is run by an incompetent thief named Ricardo Teixeira whose sole qualifications for the job are being married to João Havelange's daughter and loving money more than soccer. Brazil was the reigning World Cup champion when he signed the contract with Nike, but he signed for next to nothing. One clause in the contract allowed Nike, and not the CBF, to schedule Brazil's friendly opponents and locations.

These days Brazilian players of any quality tend to leave the country to play in Europe at 18 or 19 years of age, so the Seleção is full of players that most Brazilians don't know. Lucas, who plays for Liverpool, spent only two years playing for Grêmio's professional team before leaving the country. He is Brazil's best young talent and likely to be the cornerstone of the seleção for the next ten years, but plenty of Brazilians have no idea who he is.

Teixeira has expressed his desire to end the state championships (fortunately, he almost certainly won't be able to do that) and change the Brazilian soccer schedule to conform with that of the major European championships (September to May) in order to facilitate the sale of players abroad. Like any other third-world country rich in natural resources, Brazilians no longer enjoy the fruit of Brazilian football. Football is becoming for Brazil what coffee and diamonds were in the 19th century.

Deforestation in Brazil

2008-03-21T17:45:00.003-03:00

For the second time this week, the Washington Post has featured an article about Brazil on the front page.

It's a strange article, but more good than bad. Deforestation is an important issue, and enforcement is particularly difficult in the Amazon. The article nods at the question of poverty in Brazil's North, but doesn't look at it in any depth. The North of Brazil is like another country, completely cut off from the greater Brazilian cultural dialog. People are spread out, communities are isolated by the jungle that makes roads difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. The Post mentions that some of the individual charcoal producers have no other source of income, and that some came from far away to start their charcoal operations. Where did they come from? How bad was their situation if making charcoal in isolation is a step up? Where do these people get the money to build $300 charcoal ovens? What are their options now that their ovens have been destroyed? And, most importantly, what is the government doing to offer them a legal means of supporting themselves?

The biggest question, though, is why the article focuses on charcoal producers (throughout the article referred to as loggers) when the author admits that 80% of the deforestation is caused by soy farmers and cattle ranchers? I don't believe that there is any subsistence soy-farming or cattle-ranching going on, so the larger problem is caused by big companies with money to invest, and assets that could be seized.

In any case, it's nice to see that the Post is paying attention to problems in Brazil -- problems that are caused by poverty. It's easy to talk about stopping deforestation, but there are a lot of desperately poor people whose lives depend on it. Until the two problems are linked and approached as part of one greater problem, there will always be people who see the Amazon as their only way to move up from extreme poverty to severe poverty.

Thundercats

2008-03-19T23:07:00.002-03:00

Yesterday the Washington Post had a front page (at least online it was front page) article about a gang called Thundercats that had been operating in Recife.

A friend of mine told me, more than a year ago, that there had been a gang operating a drug market in a neighborhood near hers. The police came in, arrested everyone in the gang (and probably a few people who happened to be nearby, too), and then left. And so Thundercats stepped in to operate the drug market and nothing changed.

The gang was crippled, if not destroyed, in a series of arrests that started last April and ended last August. What I can't understand is why the Post decided to write about it now. The Post didn't offer any evidence that the arrests have had any significant impact on crime in Recife, or that the police operation has served as a model for police in other states.

In any case, the Brazilian media (in the form of Globo) loves the "positive" attention that the article represents.

Some Of Us Care About More Than The Spin

2008-03-18T18:15:00.003-03:00

But then again, some of us are the Washington Post. On the front page of the website the article about Obama's speech today is describe as "Presidential candidate tries to stem damage from divisive comments delivered by his pastor." Did he say anything at all interesting, or was it just a transparent attempt to convince us of something that doesn't matter anyway?

It was a hell of a speech, and people should know about it. Not just about what Obama was trying to accomplish (according to a reporter) when he gave it.

Winter Has Arrived

2008-03-18T00:02:00.003-03:00

There are only two seasons in Recife -- summer and winter. It rained three times today, so apparently winter is here. The third rainstorm involved thunder and lightning, something I can't recall seeing in almost five years here. Global warming in action?

Oh, the game yesterday was terrible. Sport won 1-0, but it would have been 6-3 if Sport had decent forwards and didn't have a great goalie.

Clássico dos Clássicos Today

2008-03-16T12:03:00.003-03:00

"Clássico" is the Portuguese word for what the English call a "derby" -- a game between two teams from the same city. There are three big teams in Recife (there was a fourth, América, but the last fifty years have not been kind to that club), and the two oldest are Sport and Náutico. Thus, the clássico between them is the classic clássico, the Clássico dos Clássicos. And it's today.

The Campeonato Pernambucano has a bizarre format this year, designed to force a final game (which will boost TV revenues), but the teams -- specifically Náutico -- haven't cooperated and if Sport can win today then Sport will all but guaranteed the championship with seven games to go.

The last time these two teams played was in September, in Náutico's stadium (where today's game will be played). Toward the end of that game, Sport's forward Jadilson (wearing black) suffered this foul:

Jadilson had just returned from a year-long absence due to surgery on his other knee. Vagner, the Náutico player pictured with his foot on Jadilson's knee, received a yellow card and, after Sport appealed, a four game suspension. Jadilson has yet to return. In the aftermath of that game (which Náutico won 2-0) one of Náutico's directors was rumored to have suggested that Vagner deserved a contract extension as a reward for what he did. Vagner will play this afternoon and will receive all manner of rude and ultimately ineffectual abuse from Sport's fans, myself included.

The last two times these two teams have met in Náutico's stadium there have been problems. In early February of last year Náutico only opened one gate for Sport's fans to enter, and then closed that gate half an hour before the game started. Sport's fans had to walk around the stadium (which is built into a residential neighborhood in between the buildings, so the walk is not a short one) and enter the main gate used by Náutico's fans. Then they had to walk around the inside of the stadium, suffering physical attacks from the Náutico supporters, to the police barrier between the two crowds. This confusion prompted Náutico's directors to close the main gate as well, turning away hundreds of people who had already purchased tickets. I was lucky enough to have entered an hour and a half before the game started, so I watched all this while safely in the middle of my red and black clad brothers. Should I survive whatever happens at this afternoon's game I'll give a report here.

When Did The Washington Post Change Its Focus to Humor?

2008-03-16T11:53:00.002-03:00

Is this really the best photo they could find of Bill Foster? No, obviously not. How did this slip past the editors?

The Post will fix the photo eventually, but when they do, here is the photo they originally ran.

Democratic Spies in the GOP?

2008-03-13T21:24:00.002-03:00

Seriously, how long do you think it will take for someone (the first one will no doubt be one of Sadly, No!'s regular targets) to blame this entire mess on the "fact" that Christopher Ward was a Democratic mole?

My Morning in Court

2008-03-11T16:38:00.002-03:00

A friend of mine is suing her former boss -- who we'll call F, because that's the first letter of his name. F is the kind of person you can go most of your life without meeting in the US -- because unless you're poor enough to work for him or rich enough to be just like him, you'll never meet him. In Brazil, on the other hand, if you are in the middle class (i.e., you have a college degree) then you can't help but meet someone like him at least once a month.

F owns a company that sells supplies for plastic surgery -- silicone and saline implants, botox, and so on. F's father is a surgeon, and F has gotten everything he has ever wanted in life. His father set him up in the business. F has a salesman working for him on commission, and a secretary who handles the administrative side of the business. F just signs the checks.

My friend was F's secretary for two months before he signed work book (a peculiar bit of Brazilian bureaucracy) and made her a legal employee, and then he fired her two months after she got pregnant (a huge no-no).

During her period of employment in his office, F spent as much time out of the office (sometimes on two-week trips to Rio with a friend while his wife stayed behind in Recife) as he did in the office. At least once he casually mentioned to my friend that he had spent more money the previous weekend than she earned in a month. He also told her that what he was paying her (a little over R$400 per month) was enough for her to buy a car and a house, if she was smart with her money. When he fired her he told her that "people like me work to enjoy themselves lavishly* on the weekends, people like you work to buy beans."

I met F once. He told my friend that he needed to study English, and she suggested me. He called and set up an appointment, and I went to the office to meet him. He told me, in Portuguese, that he spoke excellent English but had difficulty understanding English when it is spoken to him. He spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, in Portuguese, about how great his English was but how he needed to improve his listening because he had to go to conferences and speak to suppliers in the US. When he finished telling me, in Portuguese, about his proficiency
in English, he asked me what my price was. I told him -- R$30 per hour -- and he replied that my price was too high, he couldn't afford it, and that he knew someone who would come to his office and give English lessons for R$8 per hour (about $3US at the time). I wished him luck with his R$8 teacher, thanked him for his interest, and left.

My friend called me last night to ask me to appear as a witness this morning, because she apparently needed someone to testify that she had in fact worked for F's company. I said yes, grumbled when I got off the phone, and rearranged my schedule so I could do it. I went to the Tribunal de Trabalho (the Brazilian court system is nothing at all like the US courts) and waited for her hearing. Her attorney arrived and told me right away that I couldn't testify -- because I knew her before she worked for F. So her husband and I waited outside of the hearing room, watching through the glass.

And the good news is that F is well and truly fucked. My friend's employment is well documented, she earned commissions a few sales that took place while the salesman was out of the office, and F signed the commissions, and her pregnancy was well documented. The only objection F's attorney raised was to the pregnancy test presented as evidence -- he asked for it to be excluded because she hadn't taken a second test two weeks later to verify that it wasn't a false positive. I think that was his hail Mary, because her son's birth certificate was also in evidence. (I also suspect, on the basis of no evidence at all, that he was hoping to get a male judge -- he didn't -- so he could use the "You know we can't trust them bitches" defense.)

F was furious. That was the best part. His eyes were red and he looked like he was barely hanging on to his self control. He knows that he has almost no chance of winning this case, but his pride made him refuse the possibility of a settlement. He will, in all likelihood, have to pay seven months' salary (the pregnancy) plus another four (I think, although it might be as low as two) months' salary (maternity leave), plus damages, and then additional fines (which probably won't go to my friend). It's all too rare in Brazil that people like F have to pay for their mistreatment of others. It's too bad I couldn't hammer a nail or two into his coffin, but it was still a great morning.

*The verb he used, "luxar," doesn't have a direct translation to English -- it's the verb form of "luxury" but not exactly "to luxuriate."

Happy Data Magna!

2008-03-06T09:56:00.002-03:00

On this day in 1817 the Revolução Pernambucana began in, of course, Pernambuco. This year is the first time the state government has commemorated the date with a holiday. The revolution was a reaction against the permanent residency of the Portuguese royal family, specifically Dom João VI, in Rio de Janeiro. The economic elite of the Northeast gained nothing from the presence of the royal family in the Southeast, but suffered from the higher taxes imposed to maintain the court in Rio. At the same time, sugar and cotton exports (the main economic activity of the Northeast) fell due to competition from Jamaica (sugar) and the US (cotton). A drought in the Northeast exacerbated the economic problems of the region and inflamed revolutionary sentiments. Liberal ideas had been sweeping Brazil, and the revolution demanded Brazilian independence from Portugal and the proclamation of a Brazilian republic. The revolution gained support in Alagoas, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, and Ceará.

The revolutionaries installed a provisional government and a constitution that guaranteed freedom of expression and equal rights (although it apparently didn't free any slaves). The revolution lasted only two months. Portuguese troops from the Southeast joined with soldiers contributed by loyal plantation owners in the Northeast to suppress, violently, the revolution and imprison the leaders. The Revolução Pernambucana was the last attempt at independence before Pedro I declared Brazilian independence in 1822.

Brazilian Celebrities Who Look Like American Celebrities

2008-03-05T16:42:00.005-03:00

This will be an ongoing series here, because Brazilian television is pretty much nothing but American celebrity look-alikes.

The photo above is Fernanda Vasconcellos, who is currently starring in Rede Globo's novela Desejo Proibido, and the photo below is comedian and activist Paula Poundstone.

Tropa de Elite

2008-03-03T10:02:00.002-03:00

I finally saw Tropa de Elite on Sunday, and it was a very good movie. That said, it wasn't ambiguous, as Mr. Trend implies but quite explicit in making the BOPE the knights in shining armor. The movie's message is unmistakable: All police are corrupt except the BOPE, who are the only ones actually doing anything about the problems if crime in Brazilian society.

At no point do we ever see what the police look like to favelados who aren't in gangs. In fact, the only valid criticism of the police is related to the corruption of the normal Polícia Militar -- they don't take the "war" against drug dealers seriously enough, and the BOPE might have to kill them. The middle-class law students complain about the unfriendliness of the police at a traffic stop, tarring all criticism of police brutality as the effete rebellion of rich kids who romanticize the poor.

It's difficult to argue with the film itself -- it is probably exactly how the BOPE members see the world. Within its limited vision it is probably perfectly accurate, but what a limited vision it offers. The buzz surrounding the movie was huge, but in the end it reminded me of a cop movie from the 80s, like Cobra. Kill the bad guys and go home, nothing else to it. It's too bad, though, because unlike Cobra it could have been so much more.

Stupid Is Not The Exclusive Property Of The Right

2008-03-01T10:02:00.002-03:00

This is asinine. I hope it goes away quickly, because there are substantive issues to be engaged.

I am the recent father of a girl born to one American parent (me) and one Brazilian parent (her mother), and she is a natural-born American citizen. Period. She has a passport issued by the US government. The only paperwork involved was registering her birth at the consulate and requesting her passport. This is not open to discussion. John McCain was born outside of the US (let's simplify the situation and call the Canal Zone a foreign country) to two (the number that comes after one) American parents. He is a natural-born American citizen. There is no interpretation necessary. This isn't an interesting case. It's a waste of time.

The comments discussion on Group News Blog looks like a discussion with a wing-nut who insists that "every tax cut in history has resulted in an increase in tax revenue." On one side there are people with actual experience in the relevant area and facts at their fingertips, on the other side there are people who cling stubbornly to a belief that makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I hope I never see anyone discussing this again.

Embarrassing

2008-03-01T09:16:00.002-03:00

It is embarrassing that the US can find so much money for war and so little for food aid. This isn't penetrating analysis, or anything that hasn't already been said before. But it needs to be said.

I understand that helping others isn't the sort of thing that arouses people's emotions, and won't provoke an intense debate in congress. But how can anyone justify cutting back on food aid while spending so much more on a misguided and illegal war?

Justice is Served

2007-12-02T17:46:00.000-03:00

Corinthians, the most popular of the four teams from the city of São Paulo (excluding teams from the surrounding suburbs), has been relegated to the Série B. In 2005 Corinthians won a Sèrie A marred by a refereeing scandal, and recently the Federal Police recorded a phone conversation in which Corinthians' former president admitted to paying referees to buy the championship. The CBF -- impotent in the face of injustice, powerful when called upon to defend the powerful -- took no action. However, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or poetic justice, or something, took over and Corinthians survived relegation in the Campeonato Paulista on the last day (and only because of a São Paulo victory) and today concluded a horrible campaign with relegation. Now if Flamengo can get relegated next year, I'll think justice has finally come to Brazil.

The Charm and Danger of the Third World

2007-11-26T22:36:00.000-03:00

Yesterday a stadium collapsed in Salvador. EC Bahia, one of the traditionally powerful teams in Brazil, has been suffering a terrible five years. Bahia was relegated from the Série A in 2003. In 2004 Bahia finished third in the Série B, missing promotion only by losing the last game of the season. In 2005 Bahia was relegated to the Série C (along with arch-rivals Vítoria). In 2006 the CBF changed the format of the Série C to allow both Bahia and Vitória to achieve promotion in the same year, but only Vítoria found success. This year Bahia guaranteed a return to the Série B with a scoreless game at home against Vila Nova of Goiás.

When the game ended, fans in the lower ring of the stadium stormed the field, and fans in the upper ring began jumping. A section of the concrete gave way, and several fans fell 20 meters. Different reports have claimed that seven, eight, or nine people have died so far.

One of the things that I like so much about Recife is going to see Sport play. The Ilha do Retiro is older than Bahia's Fonte Nova, but it is better maintained. That's a relative to a very poorly maintained stadium, mind you. If you follow the second link above and click on "Veja fotos do estádio" you will see photos of the stadium and the hole in the upper deck. The conditions of the stadium are appalling -- the stands, the bathrooms, the bars, and the locker rooms are all horrible. When you consider that the people who clean the stadium most likely earn between R$400-500 per month, you can understand that they might not be the most motivated workers. What you can't understand is why the club won't just hire a few more so that even without proper motivation or remuneration they can still get the job done.

These old, poorly maintained stadiums are not without their charm. The rough concrete grandstands discourage sitting, and standing and singing makes the experience more involved than watching any first world sporting event. The stadium is dirty, pools of stagnant water lie in the corners, the bathrooms are hopelessly inadequate if the stadium is even half full. But the experience is something altogether different than any in the US. Usually that difference is entirely positive, and when yesterday's tragedy isn't so fresh I'll write more about that, but what Bahia's tragedy drives home is the danger of the official neglect in evidence all over Brazil. There are so many problems here it's impossible to know where to start or how to solve them. Yesterday was one of those days that reminds you that however great Brazil is, and Brazil is great, even when you've avoided armed robbers, corrupt police, and dengue you still aren't safe here.

Galvão Bueno Again

2007-11-08T10:03:00.000-03:00

I'm not the only one who hates Galvão Bueno. Most of Brazil does. Unfortunately, Rede Globo has a near monopoly on non-cable viewers, so there is no incentive at all to replace unpopular announcers or cancel unpopular programs. Globo also has the broadcast rights to Brazilian soccer, so when Brazil plays World Cup qualifiers, the whole country has no choice but to watch on Globo (or not watch at all, but that's not really an option). This is the only form of protest available:

The Hazards of Semi-Natural Beauty

2006-12-27T09:17:00.000-03:00

I spent Saturday at a holiday party -- holiday parties are a big deal in Brazil. In this case it was a pelada (regular pickup soccer game) that threw the party. Everyone who plays every Saturday, or once every two or three months (me), went out of the city to a small farm, or farm-like space, with beautiful natural grass fields and fruit trees all around.

We had a tournament (my team finished second), ate feijoada, galinha à cabidela (chicken cooked in a sauce made from chicken blood -- it's delicious), sururu (something related to the mussel), arrumadinho (black-eyed peas, green peppers, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and real beef jerky), and other Brazilian delicacies. And we drank beer. We drank a lot of beer. I, not usually one to be surprised by the number of empty beer bottles at the end of a party, stood amazed at the damage we had done to the national beer reserve.

The owner of the place took me on a tour, showing me all of the different kinds of fruits (two or three kinds of cashew, a ridiculous variety of mangoes, star fruit, acerola, something called manguita -- which is delicious, several kinds of bananas, coconuts, and others). He sent me home with a big bag of fruit that we picked while on our tour of the premises.

And now I have the Brazilian equivalent of poison ivy on my right wrist, hand, and forearm. It isn't really that bad -- I had a lot of experience with poison ivy in elementary school -- it's an annoying pint-sized itch, as opposed to a full-on itching-all-the-time kind of itch. But it's still a pretty annoying reminder of what was otherwise a great day.

And why not today?

2006-11-27T08:06:00.000-03:00

It has been exactly three months since my last post, so I guess it's time. I never wrote about the Brazilian election, but the truth is that the elections were anticlimactic. Lula had an enormous lead in the polls, and it seemed like the opposition just decided to phone it it -- "keeping their powder dry" for 2010, or something. There was maybe, just maybe, a chance to defeat Lula on the first ballot. But the third-placed candidate, Heloísa Helena, represented the PSOL, a party founded by former members of Lula's PT. They are former members because they thought that Lula was taking the Brazil, and the PT, too far to the right. People who voted for Heloísa Helena were voters who were obviously unhappy with Lula, but not voters who could stomach a vote for the neo-liberal PSDB.

Lula was a weak candidate, but his opponent Geraldo Alckmin was weaker still. Alckmin has a weak smile and a lack of charisma, and no natural base. He couldn't beat Lula on the first ballot, and the second ballot was just a formality.

I recently told a friend that had I voted in the election, I would have voted for Lula. He was visibly upset, and told me that everything looks different from the outside, and that it is easy for him to say that were he from the states he would vote for Bush. But that's just ridiculous. He might be anti-Lula, but he isn't stupid.

Brazilian Elections

2006-08-27T19:46:00.000-03:00

One little-known aspect of the Coriolis effect is that presidential elections and off-year elections are the opposite of those in the Northern Hemisphere. The Brazilian election machines are gearing up now, and soon you'll all wish I would just go back to writing about some second division soccer team all the time instead of Lula's myriad scandals and the bizarre Brazilian electoral system.

Good times.

In Defense of Daniel Snyder

2006-08-14T10:44:00.000-03:00

It has long been fashionable to criticize Daniel Snyder for, well, being Daniel Snyder. I have never understood why that is. There have always been better targets, even within the small group of NFL owners (Bill Bidwell? Jerry Jones? How about Art Modell, who couldn't make money with a pro football team in Cleveland?), but Snyder has always been the target of choice.

But this is going too far. Snyder is a Republican, yes, but the similarities with the DLC end there.

Snyder has done nothing but offer his coaches support, and he has tried to stay out of the spotlight. He gave Norv Turner, the Joe Lieberman of NFL coaches, more chances than he deserved. Snyder even fired GM Charlie Casserly because Casserly and Turner refused to continue working together. (Snyder later admitted that he erred in keeping Turner instead of Casserly, and apologized to Casserly. The national media ignored the story.) Well after Turner had convinced Skins fans (and by that I mean ALL Skins fans) that he would never lead the Sons of Washington to glory, Snyder dismissed him. And somehow the story became that Snyder had "meddled" and never given Turner a chance. The six plus years of mediocrity were never mentioned -- somehow the problems were all Snyder's fault. (To be fair, Turner's teams always "competed," which was always what he asked them to do. Not to win, but to compete.)

After Turner, Snyder hired Marty Schottenheimer (and his assistants, Bruce, Bill, Wendell, Olivier, and Humperdink Schottenheimers) to bring some discipline to the team. And discipline Schottenheimer brought, along with the sort of impressive 8-8 season for which Schottenheimer has become famous.

The Spurrier experiment didn't work out so well, but at least half of the owners in the NFL were green with envy when Snyder won the Spurrier sweepstakes. And then came the return of Joe Gibbs.

Snyder's errors as an owner were from acting as a fan. There is an enormous difference between the two and Snyder took a few years to learn that. He is willing to spend money to win (apparently the Cardinals and Bengals have more acceptable strategies), and in the last two years he has spent it more wisely, and it has started to pay dividends. Let's not confuse that with Donna Brazile, who prefers to lose with dignity.

If you think about it, Snyder might be the anti-DLC of the NFL -- not content to use the same losing coaches and have the same losing seasons, but ready to change in order to win. But the football media, like the political media, prefers losers like Norv Turner, Bill Bidwell, and Bob Shrum -- people who never get to the playoffs and don't seem to mind. Snyder, and real Democrats (his political opposites), are just going to have to keep suffering the negative attention that comes from wanting to win.

Will Salazar Suffer for his Stupidity?

2006-08-11T10:36:00.000-03:00

Ken Salazar (D-CO) says he will support Lieberman's independent run. So, of course, Schumer has already called Salazar to tell him that the DSCC won't give him any help in his next election, right? Dean has already called Salazar to tell him that the DNC will be working with the DSCC to recruit a primary opponent to challege Salazar, right? Reid has already called Salazar to threaten him with the loss of his committee assignments, right? Oh, wait, we're talking about Democrats...

Oh Frabjous Day!

2006-08-09T09:27:00.000-03:00

Callooh! Callay!

I'm tempted to say that I don't care what happens in CT in November, because what happened yesterday was so good. And there's some truth to that, but I'd like to see Holy Joe finished off. I hope that in the next day or two (at most) both Clintons, and whatever other major Democrats campaigned for Lieberman, make public statements of support for Lamont and call for Lieberman to withdraw. I also really like the idea of Reid stripping Lieberman of his committee assignments. Whatever happens in November, I hope Lieberman gets his share of humiliation in the interim. And his share is BIG.

Desi tells it like it is

2006-08-09T09:21:00.000-03:00

She wastes no words.

Dopey is Brazil's New Manager

2006-07-24T22:39:00.000-03:00

Dunga has been named the new manager of Brazil. (Dunga is the Portuguese name for "Dopey," of the seven dwarves.)

So apparently Germany and the Netherlands set the new trend with Klinsmann and Van Basten. Dunga has exactly no coaching experience, which is a negative, but he is not Paulo Autuori, which is a strong positive. So, all in all, Dunga is a good decision. As is always the case with Brazil, Dunga will have a deep talent pool to work with, and a year without a competitive match, so he can take the time to experiment. He was a hard-nosed player who was the antithesis of everything that Brazilian soccer is supposed to represent. Let's hope that he doesn't ask his team to play the way he did.

Ambush

2006-07-20T22:19:00.000-03:00

Look what Desi found.

Brazil's Impossible Choice

2006-07-20T21:33:00.000-03:00

I am no fan of ESPN's soccernet, even though I check the site almost every day, but for once they got it right. Sort of. Actually, Reuters got it right, and soccernet is where I found it. Here it is.

The situation is both not as bad and worse than the article makes it out to be, so I guess that on the balance Reuters got it right. Parreira, in addition to playing boring and unsuccessful soccer, has left Brazil in quite a bind. He refused to play Brazil-based players (with the rare exceptions of Robinho and Cicinho), with the exceptions of those he was clearly paid to play (more on that in a moment). So there aren't, at present, obvious replacements for players like Emerson, Roberto Carlos, Zé Roberto, and Ronaldão (he's done, face the facts and stick a fork in him -- the phenomenon ain't coming back). Ronaldinho Gaúcho and Kaká should both have another World Cup in them, if they stay healthy, and that's quite a nucleus around which to build. But Parreira refused to give experience to the players who will make up the team around them, so the next year or two will not be pretty.

But Brazil isn't England (and long may that continue), and there's no shortage of raw talent here. Players will emerge -- the CBF hasn't yet screwed up Brazilian soccer so badly that talent won't rise to the top. The on-field situation isn't as bleak as the article says. If the next manager is more daring than Parreira (and that's almost a given) then he will find world-class talent in Brazil.

The problem is the next manager, and it's a far bigger problem than you would know from the article.

Vanderlei/Vanderly/Wanderley/whatever is one of the sleaziest characters around. He lied about his age? So what. His tax returns were only the start. He was taking money from agents to play their players because once a player represents Brazil his value skyrockets. Investigators discovered that Luxemburgo (whatever he may lack in class he makes up for by having a cool name) had cashed a personal check for 800,000 reais. (You can convert that to the currency of your choice here.) Who writes a personal check for that much? A player's agent, that's who. In two years as Brazil's manager, he used 91 players. Many of whom played once or twice, were bought by European clubs, and never heard from again. Their agents took a slice of the purchase price (which is perfectly legal), making the investment in Wanderley Luxemburgo's bank account (which is completely illegal) a wise investment. Parreira is an intelligent man, and lower-key than Luxemburgo (for what it's worth), but surely this is why Diego and Alex made a few appearances in 2004.

Luxemburgo is a talented manager, to be sure, but he is so sleazy (and was such a failure his first time around, which is far worse) that it's hard to imagine that the Brazilian people will accept him. Autuori is a different case.

I remember Autuori well from the two weeks I spent in Peru in 2003. I asked to be taken to a soccer game, so my friend Marta's father (her family graciously accepted when I invited myself to visit her) took me to see his team, El Boys. Sport Boys de Callao, or El Boys, played Sporting Cristal. At the time Sporting Cristal were the defending champions and were on their way to winning another, but their manager (Autuori) had them play an extremely defensive game against a hopeless mid-table team. I had already made up my mind that El Boys were my team (it helps that they have pimp colors), but some time during the second half I decided that Autuori was my enemy. (El Boys would have won the game 1-0, but a linesman ruled a perfectly valid goal offside. I would have joined in the "hijo de puta" chants but there was a family with young children sitting in front of me, and in a way I was their guest. At times I can be quite polite.) As Peru's manager, and then as the manager of São Paulo (where he won his second Copa Libertadores) he played the same negative tactics. His Botafogo team played the same way when they won the Brazilian championship in 1995. Nobody, probably not even his mother, is excited about the prospect of him in charge of Brazil.

And that leaves... nobody. Emerson Leão, who succeeded Luxemburgo, is a great coach, but he demands more attention than his players. And then the players resent him for it. After his six-month stint in charge of Brazil was over, he claimed publicly that the CBF would give him a paper on which to write the names of the players he wanted on the team for the next game, and ten names would already be there. The CBF told him, "You pick the rest." Of course the CBF and its president, Fat Bastard (his mother named him Ricardo Teixeira), deny this. Either way (and I'm inclined to side with Leão), Leão has burned his bridges and will not be in charge of Brazil again for a long time. There are talented coaches out there, but nobody knows where. The next two years could be long ones for Brazil.

The Only Good That Can Come

2006-07-01T22:57:00.000-03:00

The only good that can come of this result is that no one will ever again believe in the theories of Carlos Alberto Parreira. Never again will Brazil field a World Cup team of players based on their performances in the past. Never again will Brazil play in the hopes that the players can recapture their past glories.

Why was Adriano in Germany and not on some beach in the Pacific? Certainly not because of his play in the last six months. The same goes for Roberto Carlos and Cafu. And Emerson, and so on...

How many players, who weren't named Pelé, have ever "retired" from international play? The answer is none, if we don't count Romário (whose "retirement" was as much of a joke as he is these days). So why did Parreira have to change things?

Parreira didn't make Brazil any more "sophisticated," or whatever he called it. (He speaks something like eight languages, and Portuguese surely isn't his favorite among them.) He is one of the many Brazilians who wishes that he were American/European, and it showed in his teams' style. And that singular/plural isn't a mistake -- his 1994 team and his 2006 team were the same -- they tried to play just ever so slightly better than their opponents. In 1994 it worked, in 2004 it worked (Copa America), in 2005 it worked (Confederations Cup) and in 2006 it failed miserably.

Adriano was on the team because he played well in the Confederations' Cup. Which is very nice, but what, exactly, did he do for Inter in the last six months? If the answer is nothing, which it is, then why was he invited to Germany as something other than a spectator? Parreira cares much, much more about a players' name than his actual performance. And today we saw how badly that can backfire.

At their very best, Parreira's teams are constructed to play ever so slightly better than their opponents. At their worst, well, we saw that today, didn't we? Why not let the players play? Could the result be worse? Brazil is not a country that is satisfied with a trip to the quarter-finals.

What has Adriano done in the last year? What has Big Fat Ron done in the same time (aside from second place in Spain)? What the hell has Parreira done? Does he think Brazil is inhabited by the English, who would content themselves (hell, they would shit their pants and call it perfume) if they could only win a continental trophy? He probably wishes that were the case.

There are good Brazilian coaches. The best is named Emerson Leão (and I am only slightly biased because he won the national championship with Sport). His particular problem is that when he was Brazil's coach (he left Sport to assume the position) he claimed that the CBF gave him a sheet of paper with ten or so names on it and told him that the next thirteen were his to name. Given the myriad scandals associated with his successor, Wanderly Luxemburgo (or something like that -- he didn't know how to spell his own name [true story]), it's impossible not to believe Leão.

We have seen the ignominious end to the international careers of Ronaldão O Ex-Fenômeno, Cafu, Roberto Carlos, Emerson, Lúcio, Emerson, Zé Roberto, and most likely more (Adriano, Gilberto Silva, and -- sadly -- Juninho). At least we have seen the end of Parreira as well.

Feijoada

2006-07-01T11:58:00.000-03:00

Feijoada is the “national dish” of Brazil the way hamburgers are the “national dish” of the US. Americans surely eat more pizza than hamburgers, but people outside of the US associate hamburgers with Americans. The same way people outside of Brazil associate feijoada with Brazilians, even though there are other foods that are far more commonly consumed in Brazil.

Feijão is Portuguese for bean, and the suffix –ada is added to food names to describe a dish based on, or at least heavily flavored by, that food. Meat sautéed with onions is described as “acebolada”, food with a lot of chili peppers is described as “apimentada.” And anyone who eats feijoada will understand this – the beans are the main part.

(I once met an unpleasant man who had worked for the foreign service, in Eastern Europe and in Brasília. He had been told, and believed – despite what should have been some familiarity with the Portuguese language – that feijoada was Portuguese for “lots of pork.” He described feijoada as “every part of the pig but the squeal,” but somehow neglected to mention that beans are involved. As a result I imagined, until I saw it, that feijoada was something much more exotic than it is. He also heard somewhere, apparently, that every city has its own traditional feijoada day and that Brasília’s day happened to be Saturday. But feijoada is served on Saturday all over Brazil, and Brasília hasn’t been around long enough to have much in the way of tradition. But enough about him.)

Feijoada was, according to the generally accepted history, slave food. Whatever bits and pieces of meat that were left over, or that couldn’t be cooked any other way (pigs’ feet, ears, and tails, for example) were thrown in the pot with the beans. Saturday is the traditional day to eat feijoada, but people make it in their homes on Sundays as well, and restaurants serve it on different days. Friday, in particular, is a good day to find feijoada in downtown areas near office buildings. It is important to point out that Brazilians would never think of eating feijoada for anything but lunch.

Now all Brazilians eat feijoada, regardless of their class or status. Feijoada takes hours to cook, so it isn’t worth the trouble to make only a small amount. (Feijoada freezes very well, and everyone knows that it tastes better after spending a few weeks in the freezer.) Feijoada is, like everything else in Brazil, a party. Large groups of people congregate in one house, drinking beer from 10 or 11am on, as one or two people (almost invariably the girlfriend/wife of the man who lives there and a female friend/relative of hers) stay in the kitchen making the feijoada. (They join the party later, don’t worry.) When feijoada is used with the indefinite article it means a party of this nature.

Feijoada is served over rice, accompanied by farinha or farofa. Farinha is a flour made from sweet cassava, and farofa is farinha fried, usually in butter, with any number of additions – onion, carrot, pumpkin, shredded beef, or bacon, to name a few. Traditionally it is also served with couve à mineiro – sliced collard greens fried in butter with bits of bacon and onion. Cachaça, a sugar cane liquor worth its own website, goes very well with feijoada (supposedly in São Paulo the feijoada is cooked with cachaça, but I don’t believe the source of that information), and after eating feijoada most people like to eat oranges.

Most Brazilians, the vast majority, believe that feijoada is difficult to make. It is not. (Brazilian supermarkets sell canned feijoada, but I can’t imagine buying it, and I have never seen anyone doing so. I asked a couple of friends about it, and they said that canned feijoada is for people who don’t know how to make feijoada. I told them it was easy to make, and they insisted that I am wrong. So maybe I’m doing it all wrong, because it sure seems simple to me.)

The basic ingredient is black beans. Lots of them. At least half a kilo, but if you have a big enough pot you should make a whole kilo. Let the beans soak overnight if you want, but the traditionally the beans are rinsed and then cooked without soaking. (If you soak the beans it is a good idea to cook the meat separately and then add it to the pot. Otherwise the meat might not cook completely. From here on I will assume that the beans are not soaked.) When you begin cooking the beans, dump all the meat in the pot as well. Traditional meats are sausage (specifically, cured low-fat sausage) sliced thinly across the link, pork loin and ribs, charque (jerky is a mispronunciation of charque), whatever kinds of pork are near at hand (and any bones with bits and pieces of meat on them), and the interesting parts of the pig that were mentioned above (I don’t care for the ear at all, the foot is okay, but the tail is particularly delicious). If you use charque, don’t put salt in the pot, if you don’t use it, then salt is necessary. That’s more or less the entire undisputed, uncontroversial part of the feijoada recipe. From here on out the opinions vary greatly.

Some people don’t season it any more than this. Other people add black pepper, cumin (and some don’t – one of my students jumped up out of his chair yelling his opposition to adding cumin to feijoada) or garlic. Some people add a tomato or two. Some people add onions. Others add (and I am a proponent of this idea) cilantro at the very end. Just a minute or two before turning off the flame, add chopped cilantro and stir it into the feijoada. Some people eat feijoada with bacon (or maybe that’s just fancy restaurant feijoada) – if you want to do that (it’s very good), cook and serve the bacon separately, because it will lose its flavor if it’s cooked with the beans.

After the feijoada is ready (you know what beans are like when they are fully cooked, same with meat, so I’m not going to say “cook it for x hours”, or anything like that), serve it as described above (with rice and farinha, at least, if not with couve à mineiro, cachaça, and oranges). The most important thing to remember is to eat too much. Do not exercise discipline. Do not refrain from eating thirds. Overindulgence is an important part of the feijoada tradition and is not to be neglected.

Hours after lunch, when you can move again, send me an email with your feijoada story.

Today I Became More Brazilian

2006-06-30T15:50:00.000-03:00

I now hate Argentina. As every good Brazilian should. I hate them. I will never forgive them for what they did today.

I entered a World Cup pool along with 101 other people. As of this morning I was in second place. First prize is a little bit more than R$3,500, and second prize is a little bit less than R$1,000. And thanks to Argentina (with an assist from the Dutch) I now have no chance at all of winning. All I have to do now is develop an irrational fear of rain, eat beans for lunch every day, and I'll be halfway to citizenship.

Brazil 3 Ghana 0

2006-06-28T11:11:00.000-03:00

It wasn't pretty, but Brazil advanced. And they passed one of the most difficult tests in doing so. Ghana plays with more speed and physical power than any other team in the tournament. Brazil was harrassed on the ball all day in a manner that they won't see again. Brazil faced the fastest counterattack in the Cup. And if Ghana had had a decente forward, well, Ghana might still be playing and there might have been an existential crisis in Brazil. But Ghana, land of Abedi Pelé and Tony Yeboah, doesn't have a decent forward.

Tostão was unhappy with Parreira (and the sun rose in the East, and water remained wet, for how many days in a row now?) for withdrawing the midfield and counterattacking. Tostão said that it was difficult to tell which was the "big" team and which was "small." He didn't feel that any injustice was done by the result (despite the obviously offside goal Adriano scored). But Brazil has to play better on Saturday against the French (Brazil's first strong opponent, according to Tostão).

If Robinho is healthy on Saturday then Brazil should play a better game. I will make it clear yet again: I don't think Robinho is a very good player. He has lots of nice little tricks with the ball, and no idea what to do with them. Andrew Downie, writing on Soccernet, called Robinho the most complete player to leave Brazil for Europe since Zico, which goes to show that the drugs are better in Rio than they are in Recife. Robinho looks thrilled to receive the ball, but then he looks like he doesn't know what to do with it. Experienced defenders can herd him to the sidelines where he has to pass the ball to someone else. But Robinho doesn't help the team with his dribbling. Robinho helps the team with his running. Both Ronaldão and Adriano are almost stationary forwards. Robinho is in constant movement, pulling defenders with him and opening space for Ronaldinho Gaúcho and Kaká to enter. When the midfielders enter that space, the defenders have to react, and that leaves Ronaldão free to receive the ball in front of the goal. Without even touching the ball Robinho makes Brazil a better team. But that doesn't mean he's ever going to be a world-class player...

France is up next, and France was horrendous in the group stage. They played better yesterday, but the Spanish players seemed to lose their way in the second half and made it easier than it should have been. It will be nice to see a rematch of the 1998 final (which the vast majority of Brazilians are convinced was bought), and this time Brazil should come out on top. Brazil is talented enough to have the luxury of playing poorly and winning against most oppositiong. Let's hope they play well in their victory over France.

The First Real Test

2006-06-27T07:37:00.000-03:00

Last Thursday Brazil finally played well, people finally started using positive adjectives to describe the team, and attitudes turned, in but two hours, from "I hope we don't embarrass ourselves too badly" to "We should be able to win this easily." The truth is probably somewhere in between, but Brazilians aren't fans of moderation, at least not when the subject is the World Cup.

Robinho's activity had everything to do with the drastic change in style on display, but he won't play today. He didn't even travel with the team. We can hope that Fred plays in his place, and we can be disappointed. I'm sure we'll see Adriano's return. There's more of a chance the Juninho will keep his place in the starting lineup, but at this point it's hard to have a lot of confidence in Parreira.

There's no point in translating Tostão's latest. That's a shame -- it's a funny column, but there's not information in it. Tostão throws up his hands and says, who knows? He loved Brazil's performance against Japan, but wonders if it would have been just as good with Adriano, Zé Roberto, and company. And maybe it would have been. He dedicates his column to a discussion of the lack of certainty in soccer and in life.

Any game against Brazil is the World Cup final for the opposing team. The players know that, every time they take the field. Today will be no different. Ghana is a good team, but they might give Ronaldinho Gaúcho and Kaká too much space. They might destroy Brazil. With Robinho on the field it would have been guaranteed to be a very entertaining game. Without him, it should still be better than watching Switzerland against Ukraine, but that won't satisfy many people in Brazil.

No, He Isn't Really Fat

2006-06-24T14:47:00.000-03:00

Not at all. Nope, he looks like he's in perfect physical condition. How could anybody suggest that Ronaldão is fat after looking at that photo? (Click on the second link on the right, the one that says "Galeria de Fotos". The question is "Ronaldinho: A little bit fat or a little bit chubby?", although to be fair the second part of the question could be translated as "a little bit strong.")

I guess we all have to believe the trainer now.

The Game, and What Tostão Said About It

2006-06-23T14:39:00.000-03:00

Tostão was thrilled yesterday. Tostão did not hold back in his praise for Brazil's performance. He said, "With the new players, who had never trained together, the team became quicker, less predictable, and more talented. It looked like a great Brazilian team and not like a European team, as it did in the first two games."

Tostão mentions that at the end of the game the tv showed Parreira and Zagallo looking very serious, and he's sure that they were considering the problems that the new players have posed. He loves Juninho, as has been mentioned here before, and thinks that Juninho (and Robinho and Gilberto Silva) should stay in the team for Tuesday's game against Ghana.

And Tostão, as usual, is right. Let's start with Robinho. I have never liked Robinho, and I probably never will (although I still have hope). He is all style, no substance. But that's fine when he is on a team this good. Adriano is a much better forward (granted, Adriano is in the middle of a terrible slump), but he is too static a player. Robinho runs, and the defense has to pay attention. Even when he runs with to no particular effect, it opens space for Ronaldinho Gaúcho, Kaká, and Ronaldão. Robinho's presence, if not his actions, make the team better.

Juninho is, first and foremost, from Recife. His career began with Sport. Right there we have two excellent reasons to support his continued inclusion in the starting eleven. He is an intelligent player who runs and passes well, and who can also support the defense. When the crowd at the bar saw him in the starting lineup they cheered almost as loudly as if Brazil had scored a goal. When Juninho, our "neighbor" scored, the bar exploded. And then the Sport fans started chanting as if we were at the Ilha do Retiro watching Sport play. And then the Náutico fans responded, only to be shouted down. The Santa Cruz fans were strangely silent, but then again, if my team were likely to go until 2007 without winning another game, I would be silent, too.

Gilberto Silva is a more than capable defensive midfielder, and he seemed better on the ball than Emerson. But I think Emerson is good enough, and I wouldn't complain too much if Emerson came back. (Even better would be Zé Roberto in Emerson's position and Juninho in Zé Roberto's old position, but that will never happen.)

Tostão compared Ronaldinho Gaúcho to two of his teammates from the 1970 World Cup - Gerson and Roberto Rivellino, and said that when he plays for Barcelona he is a combination of Gerson and Zico. High praise, indeed, and well deserved. With Robinho opening spaces in front of him, Ronaldinho Gaúcho had the chance to show what he can do. We should all hope that Robinho stays in the starting lineup against Ghana.

"Courage, Parreira," says Tostão.

What the Brazilian Media is Saying

2006-06-22T14:19:00.000-03:00

Tostão, hero of the 1970 World Cup, writes in the Folha de São Paulo that he has lost all hope. He says that no matter what happens today, even if Robinho and Juninho enter and Brazil suddenly plays the way we all know it should, Parreira will say that Japan made it easy for Brazil. Parreira will say that Japan had to attack because they had to win the game. And no matter what happens, the team that takes the field against Ghana will be the same team that started the first two games. Tostão says that under Parreira there is less joy in Brazil's participation in the World Cup. And who can disagree with Tostão?

Tostão goes on to say (and I can attest to the fact that he has been saying this for at least three years) that as well a Zé Roberto has played, the team would be better with Juninho on the field. He praises Zé Roberto but says that Juninho brings something extra to the game. He fails to mention that Juninho is from Recife and began his career at Sport, but Tostão is old and can be forgiven this oversight.

In an interview with Spanish radio, reports giant (and evil) Rio newspaper O Globo, Diego Maradona says that Brazil can only get better. And that he's sure they will. He says that Brazil has only shown half of what they are capable of doing, and that Brazil has a tendency to get better during the course of a tournament.

According to Brazil's head trainer, reports the Jornal do Comércio, Ronaldão is half a kilo above his ideal weight. A month ago he reported to pre-tournament training five kilos overweight, but he's almost fit now, the trainer apparently said with a straight face. Furthermore, the newspaper printed the entire story without a single winking emoticon.

The mood is generally one of doom and gloom, especially for the opinion Tostão expressed regarding Parriera's selection. People have no confidence in his ability to adapt, to identify and take advantage of hot players, or to identify and limit the damage done by slumping players. If Brazil manages to defeat Japan 5-0, the gloom might lift for a while, but people are less confident in this team than I have ever seen them.

Argh!

2006-06-22T09:54:00.000-03:00

The US-Ghana game is on cable here in Brazil. And I don't have cable. Neither do any of the restaurants here. So I can't watch. The game between Italy and the Czech Republic is nice, I'm sure, but I really wanted to see Ghana...

The Ark Arrives in Twenty Minutes

2006-06-21T15:20:00.000-03:00

I have discussed the rain in Recife before, and I stand by what I said. But today has been ridiculous. Really it started yesterday afternoon. With the exception of the occasional respite of ten or fifteen minutes it has been raining cats and dogs for almost twenty-four hours now. Normally I have no fear of the rain, but today I delayed even taking the trash out because the result would have been equal to taking a shower with my clothes on.

Normally I am a big fan of rain on Wednesday afternoons. I play soccer every Wednesday night, and rain depresses turnout. Which means that when it rains there's a good chance that I will get to play the full ninety minutes. So, I'm happy about the rain today, but it's still over the top.

Recife has a very poor storm sewer system. When the tide is high and it rains heavily, streets all but close down as three of the four lanes become unusable. The city itself is about three or four feet above sea level, and when it rains like this people in the poorest neighborhoods sometimes lose their homes.

Fortunately, so far I haven't heard any reports of any rain-related tragedies -- my afternoon date was cancelled, but I can't call that a tragedy. I'm just glad that there's a World Cup going on to give me something to do at home while cães and gatos fall from the sky outside.

Update: O Diário de Pernambuco (South America's oldest continually published newspaper) reports that two people died as a result of yesterday's rainstorm. Not as bad as the storms two years ago, but still pretty bad.

Who I Like and Why I Like Them

2006-06-19T16:33:00.000-03:00

Italy

Italy is the vanilla ice cream of soccer. Italy is the missionary position of soccer. Vanilla ice cream isn't the best flavor, not by a long shot, but it's the base of every other flavor of ice cream that exists. The missionary position is nobody’s favorite, but everybody uses it because it's the most versatile position.

Italy has a reputation, a deserved reputation, for playing defensive soccer. (In the last five or six years that has changed, to an extent. This year Italy is playing with three forwards.) But even when Italy plays defensively, they play very well. The Italian players are always technically excellent. Italian players never dribble the ball out of bounds. They always trap passes perfectly and pass with precision. When Italy is playing you are guaranteed to see an extremely well played game. And I would much rather watch a well played but defensive game than a poorly played game that features one scoring opportunity after another.

This is also why the Italian Serie A is the best league in the world. All of the players play with such precision. There are more long runs, passes, interceptions, and so on in college football – but the NFL has a superior product. Don't confuse “excitement” with quality.

Argentina

A man from Argentina once took a vacation in Italy. When he returned to Argentina, his friends asked him what Italy was like. He told them, “It's a great country. And you wouldn't believe how many of them have Argentine names!”

Argentina is the only Italian colony in the New World. They play a similar style to Italy, but closer together. Argentina plays with the same precision, but with shorter, quicker passes. Watch the way Argentina passes through a defense. They are like a more attack-minded Italy – the same technical excellence with a different (and more attractive) philosophy.

The Netherlands

You have to love a country whose people genuinely demand attacking soccer – winning with an ugly, defensive strategy is not an option for them. They control the ball (60% of the possession is not out of the ordinary for them), they attack, they always play with three forwards. The Netherlands play a beautiful game – fast paced, but based on slick passing, with wingers opening the whole field and stretching defenses. They are playing a more pragmatic style this year, but they are still fun to watch.

Saudi Arabia

No, I'm not joking. I like Saudi Arabia. They are the anti-Italians: Their technique is deplorable. They have no chance of winning. But they never give up. I love that. When Germany beat them 8-0 in 2002 they never stopped attacking. Even though they know they don't have the talent to play with the bigger teams, they never play with seven defenders, they never play to limit the damages. They play to win even when they have no realistic hope. I admire that never say die spirit.

Brazil

The obvious choice. But I live here, so I have an excuse, a good excuse. I'm not going to explain, except to say that Ronaldinho Gaúcho is one of the greatest players of all time and you should take every chance you get to watch him play. He will amaze you on a regular basis.

Ghana

Here we go.

Brazil's coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira, said “What makes the difference is not the system but how quickly and effectively you can get seven, eight men into forward positions and then get the same number back to defend. The team which switches best from defense to attack and vice versa will win.”

That's Ghana. From what looks like (and is) an all-out attack quickly becomes a full compliment of defenders back to stop the counterattack. With this kind of speed and stamina Ghana can afford to play a much more open style than most, if not all, of the teams in the tournament. Everyone needs to watch Ghana.

Italy beat them 2-0 in the first game, but I have never seen a team look so good in losing 2-0. Ghana doesn’t have a decent forward, and that will be their undoing this year. Ghana should have beaten Italy, but couldn’t score one. Ghana should have beaten the Czech Republic about 8-0, but could only manage 2.

Ghana is the revelation of this World Cup. Ghana is the most fun to watch of all thirty-two teams in the tournament. Ghana plays an exuberant, joyous ninety minutes every time they set foot on the field. Ghana’s players are so fast (and so well conditioned) that the field looks twice as big whenever they have the ball. Ghana makes me happy, and Ghana will make you happy if you give them the chance. Ghana shows why this sport is called the beautiful game.

Another Unimpressive Victory

2006-06-19T10:49:00.000-03:00

Brazil played better than in the first game, which is an almost meaningless statement. Ronaldão ran more in the warmups before the game than he ran against Croatia. Both he and Adriano were more active, which gave more space to Ronaldinho Gaúcho and Kaká, which brought the offense closer to life. And Zé Roberto was very good.

I watched the game at a local "Mexican" restaurant. I have never been to Mexico, and the owner (a great guy) has. But that said, I know the type of "Mexican" food that the restaurant sells, and it's a poor imitation of Chi-Chi's. They don't put cilantro in ANYTHING, which makes all the food taste just a little off. The salsa tastes like slightly, ever so slightly (and of course, the Brazilians complain that it's too hot) spicy spaghetti sauce. But the atmosphere is nice, and it's only two block from my apartment. And convenience trumps damn near everything.

Sundays are family days in Recife, if not all of Brazil. People go to the beach (except during the winter, when it rains every day), and otherwise they stay home with their families. So the restaurant wasn't too crowded. I had been hoping for a packed house, but that will have to wait for the next round.

People screamed and yelled at the tv, at the players, and we all complained about Ronaldão. We drank beer, ate "Mexican" food, and in the end Brazil managed an easy win, so we were all at least content.

Brazilian nachos are eaten with spoons. Who knew?

Still, it was a subdued crowd. As much as we drank, this Brazil team is sure taking it's sweet time getting into gear. There's a nervous edge to the party atmosphere in Brazil right now. Everyone keeps hoping that things get better, but after only two games (and a guaranteed place in the second round) people are starting to lose hope. Brazil has been a dominant force since the mid-nineties, and still has the talent to dominate. But you have to wonder what Ronaldão was doing in the last month, because it certainly wasn't preparing for the World Cup.

Maybe it's good for the game if Brazil takes a little break from dominating. Let Argentina join the tri-campeão club, or let the Netherlands win a World Cup, finally. But what I want to see is the national party that is a world championship, and I don't think I'm going to see it this year.

Bussunda 1962 - 2006

2006-06-18T10:50:00.000-03:00

The Brazilian comedian Bussunda died yesterday of a heart attack. He had been in Germany to "cover" the World Cup with the rest of his comedy show, Casseta & Planeta. He and his friends were playing soccer when he felt dizzy. He was by far the funniest actor on the show.

I don't know that much about him, other than what I read on wikipedia. He was a fanatical soccer fan, and a very funny man. It's all in Portuguese, but here's what YouTube has:

Bussunda on YouTube

In particular, even if you don't speak a word of Portuguese, look at this one (and pay attention if you get the chance to hear the real Ronaldo speak!):

Ronaldo's message for Brazil

(The US and) Ghana! Holy Shit! Ghana!

2006-06-17T22:37:00.000-03:00

First of all, great game by the US. The red cards all looked deserved to me, but according to the commenters on Steve Gilliard's (and Jen's) Newsblog the ref was obviously bought, the whole damn tournament is crooked, who can ever trust FIFA again, and so on. Look, people, it's a fucking miracle that the US didn't lose by three. I have been planning a post about the national teams that I like and why, so you can wait a few days to hear why I love watching Italy play, but face the fact that they are GOOD. The US held them despite being down a man, and that will earn the US a lot of respect. Appreciate that. I was playing futsal (a five-a-side variation of soccer) and the Brazilians were relentless in making fun of my lack of confidence in the US. Most of them gave the US more of a chance than I did in the World Cup pool. The US tied the game, but won an important battle. Unfortunately, Ghana is next.

Ghana. What can I say? If you want to know why I love soccer so much, watch Ghana. If you have a friend, relative, coworker, acquaintance, enemy -- anybody -- who doesn't like the game, suggest that they watch Ghana. Ghana makes me happy. Ghana shows why it's called the beautiful game. If you can stomach watching the US get their heads handed to them, watch Ghana. Quit your job, if you have to, Ghana is just that much fun.

More on Ghana later.

Galvão Bueno

2006-06-16T15:56:00.000-03:00

Galvão Bueno is the Al Michaels/Brent Musberger/Bob Costas of Brazilian sports. He does Formula One, all Brazil matches, important Brazilian Serie A games, Olypmic volleyball, and so on. (On the wikipedia page there is a link to his page on the Globo site, which includes a photo of him from ten or fifteen years ago.) Except that whatever positives the three North Americans might (or might not) bring to the broadcasts, Galvão Bueno brings absolutely nothing positive.

He is convinced that he knows more than the ex-professionals he is paired with. He is more of a homer than the smallest of small town announcers. Every few minute he sees a foul committed against a Brazilian that no else can see. He demands that his partners affirm the injustice of the referee's decision, and nine times out of ten they tell him there was no foul, the foul didn't merit a card, etc. And he gets upset with them for disagreeing.

Nobody wants a boring, uninterested announcer, but Galvão goes too far. Everyone shares his joy when Brazil scores, and it's nice to hear the lack of enthusiasm in his voice when Brazil gives up a goal. (It goes something like "goool, goool," as opposed to "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!") My friends and I will, along with everyone else at the bar, complain about how the referee favors the other team. We neither need nor want the announcer to do it for us.

Now that I think about it, he may need another North American analog -- Howard Cosell. Galvão Bueno is convinced that he is bigger than not just the game, but the games. All of them. He knows that people love soccer, he knows that they like Formula One, but he seems to think that people value his opinion and wouldn't pay as much attention if he weren't there. And he openly doubts other people's knowledge. Casseta & Planeta, the long ago very funny and these days sometimes funny Brazilian equivalent of Saturday Night Live (except that it's on Tuesday nights, has no musical guest, and isn't broadcast live) traditionally travels to whatever country hosts the World Cup and performs skits based on, or at least referring to, what takes place during the tournament. This has been going on since the 1994 World Cup. But on Tuesday Galvão Bueno (the target of some very funny sketches) mentioned that again this year Casseta & Planeta would be broadcasting from Germany. And he said, "We know they're funny, but now we'll see if they know anything about soccer." As if any serious fan could know less than him.

Apparently in years past Globo, the biggest network, showed all the games, but every network showed the Brazil games. Not so this year, at least not yet. Maybe in the knockout rounds. But for now we're all stuck with Galvão Bueno.

Happy Bloomsday to All!

2006-06-16T10:26:00.000-03:00

I hope you all find time to read at least a page or two of Ulysses today. Feel free to use the comments to this post to discuss the great work.

Lost Equilibrium

2006-06-15T21:43:00.000-03:00

I was going to write something about the Al Michaels of Brazil (I don't mean that in a good way, if meaning it in a good way is even possible) and how he tries his damnedest to ruin the World Cup for all Brazilians, but my sensitive equilibrium was upset by this.

Sometimes I think I would like to write another blog, in character, making fun of the way the right wing "thinks." And then I read a compendium of quotes from Jeff Goldstein and I realize that there is no way to parody these people. Unless "Jeff Goldstein" and "Michelle Malkin" are pseudonymous liberals perpetrating the greatest hoax ever. Which, when you think about it, is possible. Could anyone really think like this? And if that's the case, does that mean that
Tbogg and the General might actually be conservatives "flying under the radar", so to speak? I feel like I'm in a Lem novel.

Brazil's very own Al Michaels will have to wait until tomorrow.

The Cup Started Yesterday

2006-06-14T12:42:00.000-03:00

In Devil's Advocate there is a scene, near the end of the movie, where Keanu Reeves leaves the hospital after his wife has killed herself, and the streets of Manhattan are empty. In the middle of the afternoon there is no one on the sidewalk, no cars on the road, no sign of human movement. That's what the streets of downtown Recife look like forty-five minutes before Brazil kicks off the World Cup.

A friend picked me up at three. We went past the giant (probably ten feet by eighteen) screen tv set up on the beach. Traffic was pretty heavy, as the last people to leave work at three were hurrying to someone's house or some bar to watch the game. All street level businesses were closed. Every bar and every restaurant we passed was packed. About ten minutes later we were in one of very few cars on the street. When we got into the neighborhood where we were going to watch the game, we were the only car on the road. The whole way, there were a few stragglers on the street -- about one pedestrian every three blocks, and a few people at some of the busstops, all dressed in yellow and green and hoping to get somewhere before the game started.

We stopped at a gas station on the way in order to buy a case of beer. The store was almost out of cold beer. Actually, it was out of cold beer. They had chilly beer, which was, of course, unacceptable in that form. My friend started talking about how Americans don't drink cold beer, they just like it a little bit chilly (which is better than most Brazilians, who for some reason think that Americans drink beer at room temperature -- because it's always so cold in the US). I tried to correct him, but some people just don't want to be corrected.

We arrived at the apartment (his friend's girlfriend's) only to put the beer in the freezer and then to be sent out again to buy ice. If possible, the streets were more deserted. My friend, who is a competent driver at the best of times, was speeding through winding roads, turning left from the right lane and right from the left lane. We arrived at the gas station, and it was packed. Everyone was buying whatever it was that they needed for the game, the two women working the cash registers were hurrying through every transaction, and in their haste dropping money, hitting incorrect keys, and generally taking more time than they would have had they not hurried.

On the return trip my friend was a man possessed. He didn't stop for a single red light, and yelled out the window at drivers who did. "Retarded whore's son whose wife cheats with farm animals, don't you know the game is about to start?!" is the family version. At one point he ran a red light as a bus was making a perfectly legal left turn into the road in front of us. He put his hand out the window, showing the bus driver his palm and yelled "You're very angry! You need to calm down!" The bus driver smiled and stopped the bus to let us pass. Nobody wants to be responsible for someone missing the beginning of the World Cup.

The firecrackers, lots of them, let us know that the game had started. As we got out of the car and went running to the building, people all over Brazil began screaming and yelling. Apparently we missed a good chance on goal in the early minutes. We ran up the stairs and into the apartment, dropping two bags of ice in the kitchen and sitting on the couch in front of the tv. And then everything turned sour.

Brazil was horrible. Ronaldão played the worst game of his life. At least, I hope that was as bad as he's ever been, because it would be difficult to play worse. He looked like he didn't even want to be on the field. Parreira has already declared that Ronaldo will start the next game, but don't be surprised if he has a face-saving "injury" in practice on Friday or Saturday. Ronaldinho Gaúcho and Kaká played well, but Ronaldão and Adriano played so badly in front that it was easy for the defense to pressure the man with the ball. Fortunately, Kaká doesn't waste chances, and his goal was enough to secure the win.

But nobody in Brasil feels good about the team right now. They comfort themselves byt saying things like "this will give them something to think about, something to motivate them," and "it's still early -- they have time to get better before they come up against better opposition." But I'm not optimistic. The first day was fun, but I think I'm probably going to be chronicling a national disappointment here.

If Ghana Only Had a Forward...

2006-06-12T17:34:00.000-03:00

I was one of three people in a pool of over one hundred to pick Australia over Japan. I was the only one to pick the score 2-1 (the other two had 1-0), and it looked to give me a nice boost until Japan really broke down at the end and gave up a third goal. Nonetheless, it was a nice way to start the day. Australia will surprise a lot of people.

I went to a restaurant to represent the US in public, but the game went poorly. Maybe it's my fault for wearing the most "American" shirt I have -- a LaVar Arrington Redskins jersey. It's tough to give up a goal so early, but I still felt alright until the second one. At that point the focus shifted to avoiding embarrassment. Which the US did, I guess. But it still felt bad. I didn't expect anything more than a tie, but when the game ended, I felt the way I did when I was a little kid and the Cowboys beat the Skins. Like the day couldn't end fast enough. Like the only thing to do was wait for tomorrow, when it would hurt less.

Ghana is something else. They don't have a decent forward. Or, if they do, they have hidden him well. They mark well, they close down the midfield -- and that is surely more difficult against Italy than against most teams, and when they attack they make the field look twice as big as it is. I'm ready to forget about the money I bet on the Netherlands and become a full-time Ghana fan. Except that if Ghana finishes second in Group E, they will play Brazil in the second round. I guess I'll just enjoy the four games they are likely to play, and wish them well next time.

I think it's interesting that the two best games so far have been between Italian teams (Italy, Argentina) and African teams (Ivory Coast, Ghana). Italy-Ghana has washed away the bad taste of the US debacle. This is the way the game is supposed to be played. Now, even though the US lost, even though Ghana lost, I am in a good mood again. Now I'm ready for the World Cup to really start tomorrow.

A Sense of Disappointment

2006-06-12T08:45:00.000-03:00

That's what the Brazilian women are giving off these days. They seem disappointed, some of them a little bit, some of them a lot. It's like they think that I'm the one, the man who won't spend the entire World Cup watching the games. They're wrong. The woman Saturday afteroon, who wanted me to miss the Argentina-Ivory Coast game to see her, was disappointed that I, too, place a higher priority on the World Cup. And the woman yesterday, who offered to "keep me company" while I watched the games was disappointed that I actually wanted to watch the games, even while she was in my apartment. Fortunately, there was an hour between games, and then time unlimited after the second game, and ultimately we were both satisfied.

The US plays today, and tomorrow Brazil kicks off. Which, of course, marks the real beginning of the tournament. From what I hear, even the busses stop running when Brazil plays. I know Brazilians, not just the two women mentioned in the first paragraph, who don't like soccer. At all. I wonder what they do when Brazil plays. Stores close. Offices close. Maybe I'll call one of these friends tomorrow to find out what they are doing. But I can only call during halftime.

It's like heaven, having three games per day. But it's tough to get anything done. (It would be easier if I didn't insist on watching every game, I know.) I do my grocery shopping late at night, buying only food that I can cook quickly in the hour between games.

Anyway, halftime is over, and I need Australia to score two in the second half.

Another Day, Another Three Games

2006-06-11T00:10:00.000-03:00

Three games is my limit. I already knew that, but yesterday reconfirmed it. By the end of the third game, which was the best of the tournament so far, I was a little antsy. When I had cable tv, sometimes when I had nothing to do on Sundays I would watch an Italian game, a Dutch game, a Brazilian game, and then a Spanish game. And I would always be squirming on the couch during the fourth.

A friend called me at the beginning of the Argentina-Ivory Coast game, asking me to meet her in the center of the city. I explained, with all the patience I could muster, that she would have to wait until the game was over, because I was not going to miss a minute of it in transit. She understood, but I think she was disappointed that even the foreigners are taking the Cup so seriously.

All good Brazilians became hardcore Ivory Coast fans yesterday. When Drogba scored a late consolation goal one of the apartments upstairs from mine erupted in cheers. It made me happy, too, but for a very different reason.

My own World Cup experience this year has been corrupted by my participation in a pool. Normally I would have been squarely in the Ecuador camp, but I picked Poland to win the game. Normally I would be (and really, this one is stronger -- I still am) a hardcore fan of whatever team is playing against England. But this time I really wanted that 2-1 England victory I predicted. Worse still was watching Trinidad & Tobago play Sweden to a standstill. Normally I would have been thrilled, but I had predicted a 2-0 Sweden win and there's no telling how badly that hurt me.

I didn't go out last night, because I wanted to get up at 10 to watch the Dutch play. They have always been one of my favorite sides to watch (and in the pool I picked them to win it all, so there will be no feeling of conflict unless they play the US or Brazil). Yesterday, and again today, there were three games, with one hour between each game. It is going to be very difficult to get normal things done during this phase of the tournament. The grocery store near me is closed for renovations, so to buy food I need to take the bus. Getting my grocery shopping done during the one hour interval between games is going to be difficult. And as long as there are 10am games, I'm not going to be going out much at night. But what can you do? The Cup only comes around once every four years.

I'd write more but the second half is about to start...

One Day into the World Cup

2006-06-09T14:15:00.000-03:00

I went out to eat a quick lunch at a restaurant before returning home to watch the first game, but I ended up staying to watch the first half. Unfortunately there was no goat on offer today, but the feijoada was excellent as always. My lack of discipline always comes to the fore when I am in a self-service restaurant, and today was no exception. In addition to the feijoada I had escondidinho de charque (baked macaxeira purée with cheese and charque, which is like beef jerky) and some roast pork. The restaurant has always had a tiny little tv on the wall inside, but now they also have a big-screen tv outside on the corner of their patio. So I sat in front of the tv and enjoyed my lunch, finishing just as the match started.

The male diners, and some of the women, stayed to watch the first half. Some of the people sitting at the tables hadn't ordered anything. At halftime they all walked off to return to their jobs. I went to the butcher around the corner, only to discover that the butcher shop had closed permanently. I bought some food from the produce stand in front of where the butcher had been (that guy must be worried now). The cheapest banana option was two reais for a bunch of fourteen bananas. I live alone. How am I going to eat fourteen bananas? I have eaten five since I bought them, but I'm still doubtful that I will beat the clock and eat them all before they go bad. I also bought the cheapest carrot option, since the carrots looked very good. What am I going to do with a kilo of carrots? Actually, I have less than a kilo. He was going to put two or three more in the bag to make it an even kilo when I told him, "Let's just call this a kilo, okay?" I like carrots, but now I have nine in my refridgerator.

So I went home and watched the rest of the match. Germany is decent going forward, but their defense is laughable. Costa Rica has one good player. A game between a bad team and a horrible team wasn't the best opening the tournament could have had.

Globo (the Brazilian network that is the equivalent of ABC, CBS, and NBC combined) showed a novela during the hour between games. That's Brazil for you, right there. Football and novelas.

I watched the first half of the second game at home. At the start of the second half a friend called, saying he was waiting in his car in front of my apartment ready to go to a bar to watch the game. (It turned out he thought the game was just beginning.) So off to a bar we went, and at five in the afternoon the bar was packed with people. And it occurred to me that the World Cup is a lot like Carnaval. It's a party, one that you want to go on forever. It's like the first two or three hours of a particularly good acid trip. If it could only go on forever...

The Cup Starts Today

2006-06-09T10:29:00.000-03:00

And Recife has responded with a steady drizzle that is sure to depress the spirits of the city. No matter, Brazil doesn't play until Tuesday.

The World Cup dominates the consciousness of this country. Other topics of conversation arise only to be dispatched in favor of burning, important questions like "Other than Brazil, who do you think is the favorite to win the Cup?" After-sex conversations frequently run along the lines of "Where are you going to watch the games?" When a woman wants to know what the recent experience means for her relationship with the man, she asks, "Who will you watch the games with?"

On the main street in my neighborhood (which is one of the main commuter arteries in the city) there are two billboards (one is Johnnie Walker, I forget what the other one is advertising) counting down (days:hours:minutes:seconds) until Brazil's first game kicks off.

Brazil doesn't play until Tuesday, so I still have a few days left to prove my patriotism by purchasing a pirated Brazil jersey. I'm not being facetious -- buy an illegal copy would, in this case, be the patriotic thing to do. First of all, whatever shirt I buy will have been made in China, or Vietnam, or Indonesia. So there's no difference there. If I buy the official jersey the money goes to Nike, and to a big store, neither of which need my money. If I buy the illegal jersey, the money goes directly to some independent businessman (or woman). And the official jersey costs five or six times as much as the illegal one. And bargain-hunting is always patriotic, isn't it? It will leave me with that much more money to spend on Brazilian beer while I watch the games.

The whole city is a little bit giddy with anticipation, but not so much for the World Cup itself. It is Brazil's participation that matters. People care about the tournament and want to watch as many games as possible. But even though the it officially starts today, for the people here it starts on Tuesday afternoon. People tell me that when Brazil plays the streets empty, all businesses close (banks, stores, movie theaters, everything except bars and restaurants), and everybody sits glued to the TV. Except for one neighbor of mine, who told me that she gets too nervous to watch, and goes for walks for the duration of the game.

This should be a particularly interesting World Cup, because Recife is a tourist destination for Germans. In fact, this month there are probably fewer Germans in Recife than there have been at any time in the last several years. People mistake me for a German all the time, so I guess I will have to follow Germany's progress closely so as not to disappoint my public.

Note: I know updates have been nonexistent lately. But the World Cup is here, and that should change. Expect updates at least once daily until at least the end of the tournament.)

An Amazing Stamina

2006-05-17T23:24:00.000-03:00

The couple upstairs has a stamina that amazes me. Maybe I'm just naive. I'm certainly inexperienced.

I have never fought with a girlfriend. It's not really in my personality. In Brazil girlfriends have tried to provoke me, and when I won't take the bait, they call me cold. So I break up with them. If a girlfriend causes or imagines problems so bad that we can't resolve them calmly and rationally, well, it just wasn't meant to be, was it?

But the couple upstairs, well, they asonish me. I got home from a pelada about two hours ago, and they were fighting when I arrived. And they're still fighting now. Where do they find the energy? Shouting is hard work. It's only the woman who yells, I don't know what the man does. She yells -- he's useless, a bum, and so on. And then it gets quiet. And then, fifteen minutes later, there comes the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, and more yelling. (Once, months ago, there was the sound of pots and pans being thrown. That was the one time I have seen the police involved. One of the other neighbors called them.) And then they get quiet, I hear nothing, I think it's over. But it isn't over. Even if they stop yelling for the night, they'll be back at it before the week is over. Where do they find the energy?

Go Barça!

2006-05-17T11:52:00.000-03:00

I don't know if anybody reading this cares. I just wanted to show my support.

It's Raining in Recife

2006-05-16T16:41:00.000-03:00

That's not newsworthy, I know. But Recife (and Olinda and Jaboatão) have a strange reaction to rain. Nobody goes out. At all.

I have gotten used to it, but I don't understand it and I don't like it. If it rains on a Friday night, everybody I know stays home. For some reason, rain outside is a reason not to go to a club, where you stay inside. Rain is a reason not to go to a nice bar with a functional ceiling that keeps the tables and chairs nice and dry. And if it rains the next night as well, then nobody in Recife goes out all weekend.

One of my students (who is from Rio, and thus has no fear of rain) told me that his wife teaches yoga classes, and that only very rarely do any students show up for class when it's raining. How strange is that? These people have already paid for the class, and when it rains they decide that they don't need to get their money's worth. The same thing happens with organized pick-up soccer games (peladas), but those are outside. The yoga class is, again, in a building with functional walls, windows, and ceiling.

It took me a long time to get used to this peculiarity. Should I make plans for almost anything at all, they will fall through if the weather does not cooperate. An ex-girlfriend knew someone who married a Russian woman from near Chernobyl, and she and her friends told stories about this Russian woman's fear of rain. According to the stories, she trusted no umbrella to protect her, and panicked if even one drop touched her. Well, living near Chernobyl probably changes your attitude toward a lot of things. What excuse do the Pernambucanos have?

Recife é Rubro-Negro II

2006-05-15T15:51:00.000-03:00

Blogger is not cooperating with me. I have many, many more photos, and Blogger wouldn't let me post them in the previous entry. So, here you go:

I took over forty photos, and these guys and the woman in the post below were the only ones who noticed my camera.

There's this thing about Pernambuco and giant puppets. I can't explain it.

And finally...

To be honest, she looks much better out of focus than she looked in focus...

Recife é Rubro-Negro!

2006-05-15T10:57:00.000-03:00

(Recife is red and black!)

Saturday was the official celebration of Sport's championship. The party was delayed because May 13 is the date that Sport was founded, back in 1905.

I left my apartment at around noon, before lunch -- and I didn't eat breakfast, a fact that later became important. I got to the Avenida Boa Viagem (the road that runs along the beach) just as the beginning of the carreata (parade) passed. I ran back to my apartment to get my camera, and resolved to stay until the end.

For ninety minutes, cars, flatbed trucks, and the occasional trio-elétrico paraded down the beach celebrating Sport's 35th title.

A trio-elétrico

The parade just didn't end. Every time there was a pause in the procession, filled with irritated motorists (this is Brazil -- you thought traffic would be re-routed because of the parade?), a minute later it picked up again.

A carioca (someone from Rio de Janeiro) asked me, "All this is because Sport won the championship?"

I told him, "Yes. The whole city stops when Sport wins."

He said, "This is great. In Rio there would be so much confusion and crime if they did this."

The taxi drivers were celebrating.

After a while I got hungry. And by hungry, I mean, wondering how much longer I was going to be able to stay on my feet hungry. Worried about passing out on the sidewalk hungry. (And had I passed out on the sidewalk, I would surely have awakened without my camera or cell phone.) So hungry that I just wanted the party to end. And the party refused to do so. I kept taking pictures and hoping that each truck would be the last.

Eventually, and only after a long, long time, the last truck went past, the last car honked and waved a flag, and traffic returned to normal. And your humble blogservant took off for a restaurant where he could eat some pig innards in peace, safe in the knowledge that he had recorded the second-biggest party of the year. (The biggest will come in December when Sport has secured promotion to the Serie A. Watch this space.)

Voltei

2006-05-12T11:55:00.000-03:00

I got sick last week, and it provided my lazy ass with the lame excuse that I needed to sit around without posting anything. The worst part of getting sick was that I missed the only Sport game in Recife for a while. It had been a week or two, and it will be another two weeks, I think, until the home game. I miss the state championship -- there was always a game I could go to.

In the last two weeks the São João spirit has come to Recife, and the pirate cd vendors no longer blast crappy torch songs (accompanied by a $100 Casio keyboard), but play forró at full volume. This is a marked improvement.

Updates to follow.

Sport 1 Santo André 0

2006-04-26T13:42:00.000-03:00

Because I know that the millions of people who read this blog are desperate for more news about Sport, here it is.

Sport defeated Santo André last night, in front of 900 people (about 300 of whom, according to the radio announcer, were Sport fans). This gives Sport three wins in three games, and more importantly, two away wins. What's funny about the whole thing is that a lot of Sport fans are now making a big deal about having sole possession of first place. Three games into a thirty-eight game season. As old people say, that and a nickle will get you a cup of coffee.

The Third World

2006-04-25T18:35:00.000-03:00

No expletive this time. Just a taste of what the third world is like.

At the end of last week Recife emerged from a black pepper shortage. Now who could ever imagine a black pepper shortage?

There was clearly some problem at the warehouse of the spice distributor, because all of the supermarkets had big empty spots on the spice aisle. Apparently somebody forgot to do inventory, and the distributor found itself without, among other things, black pepper, cumin, and rosemary.

In the first world, the inventory is in a database, and when something is shipped, the shipment is logged in the database, and as long as no one steals black pepper, the database will show when it is time to order more. And then, of course, the spice company also has everything on computers and they can ship immediately, and so on. Not in Recife. Not in the third world.

The Third Fucking World

2006-04-18T00:24:00.000-03:00

I love Brazil. I want that clear, before you read anything that follows. I love Brazil, third world though it may be. Uncaring, injust, cruel, the very representation of injustice though it may be. Even though my neighbors might occasionally throw their garbage through my kitchen window, I love Brazil. And part of why I love Brazil, part of what I cannot explain to people who have not lived here, is the very third worldness of it. That doesn't mean that what follows is only found in the third world -- it isn't. That doesn't mean that I like what follows -- I don't. It just means that there is something about Brazil -- its beauty, its slow pace, its shocking lack of humanity -- that I can't, now that I know it well, imagine living without. I guess I could leave Brazil, but I would never want to. Where would I go? Peru? Liberia? I don't need to live in a warzone, but neither can I imagine living in the US again. There's an impact that Brazil has, and once it hits you, you can't even consider going long without it.

I haven't left Brazil since I arrived here. Or, I left once, to spend a week in Buenos Aires. Which was nice, but it wasn't Brazil. And as nice as it was to walk on clean streets (which don't exist as such in Recife), I was happy to get back. And I haven't felt a desire to leave since then. I have been thinking about leaving Brazil recently (not by choice), and these are not pleasant thoughts.

But that doesn't mean that all of my experiences here in Brazil are positive.

This afternoon I just wanted to read Tbogg when someone knocked on my window. (I had meant to write something about this. Because I live on the ground floor, next to the gate to the building, people seem to think it's okay to knock on my window at whatever hour to ask if their friend is home.) She had meant to ask how to buzz my apartment, but due to dumb luck, she knocked on my window, so I let her in. She was about an hour early for our dinner (to celebrate her birthday).

She became, without telling me, a vegetarian about three months ago. No problem. I spent six and a half delicious years as a vegetarian myself. (Of course, then I visited Peru and moved to Brazil, and those two acts alone guarantee that I eat a lot, and I mean A LOT, of pig meat.) So to celebrate her birthday I made an "Indian" dinner for her -- chickpeas simmered with cinnamon, cloves, garlic, hot peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, cilantro, and a little bit of black pepper (which was, oddly enough, to be the subject of tonight's essay before life threw me something of a change-up). She liked it. So did I.

We drank mango nectar with vodka, and because her reputation had preceded her (I jest -- it wasn't a reputation, it was my experience in her company), I had bought a second bottle of vodka -- just in case. And that case, unsurprisingly, happened, and we kept on drinking even after the mango nectar ran out and we had to drink peach nectar (no great sacrifice).

And, after dinner, she suggested we go to a bar to drink a beer or two. And that seemed like a great idea to me, so off we went.

The bar in question is, if not my favorite, one of my favorites (bet on the first option). We drank three beers, at which point she wanted to leave, so I offered to pay. She said, "No, let's drink one more so we both pay five reais." And that made sense, so I asked for one more.

During the fourth beer she started talking about personal tragedies. (This after I had told her a hilarious story about a cousin's wife insulting my grandmother after the wedding.) (Which has nothing to do with the third world. Everybody hurts.) And goddamn, were her tragedies ever tragedies. Okay, that's fine. It deserved a fifth beer. I paid the bill while she was in the bathroom (it was her birthday, after all).

We drank the beer (if I haven't mentioned this before, Brazilian beers are bigger than American beers and they are meant to be shared) and then left the bar. We said goodbye to the owner (a friend of mine -- his bar will some day be the subject of an ode [believe me, if a Grecian urn deserves an ode, this bar deserves one, too] -- who she had met that night) and set out toward the bus stop. She almost made it to the corner before asking me, "Is it full of animals, or is it just my impression?" Was I wrong to misunderstand the question? I asked her what she had just said, and she repeated herself. And then fell backwards onto what passes for pavement in Recife. Very softly, I must say, without even dirtying here clothes. I held her hands and waited for her to come to. Which happened quickly, without too much trouble.

When I had her on her feet again, she was all the more determined to take a bus (actually, she would have to take two busses) home. I purposely steered her toward the second-closest bus stop so she would have to pass a taxi stand. As we passed the taxies one of the drivers (who all know me because during the carnaval season I would come home at four or five in the morning by bus and stop and talk to them -- and the prostitutes, who are by nature interesting -- and so I know that any taxi driver who works at the night-time stand near my apartment can be trusted) asked if we needed a taxi. I told him that yes, we did, but my friend was insulted and declared that we needed no such thing. (The third world has yet to enter into this tale of unhappiness.)

We made it all the way to the bus stop, arguing every step of the way, me telling her that I loved her and wanted only the best for her and could not take the bus with her and did not trust her to get off the bus (I could tell her which bus to take at first) at the right stop and then get the second bus to take her home. The result of which was her cursing my neighborhood (unfortunately, I more or less agree with her) and declaring that she didn't want to spend her money on the taxi. (Let's see -- I bought the food, cooked the food, paid for the beer, and she ...?)

And the, out of nowhere, she decided to take a taxi. I would have walked her across the street to the taxi stand, and the only drivers I trust, but a taxi happened to be passing at that very moment and she hailed it and got in. Probably because of my (very foreign) presence, he declined to give her a discount price, and I gave her ten reais to pay half of her fare and (hopefully) get her home safely. (There has yet to be mentioned anything to do with the third world.)

The taxi drove off and I resisted the urge to send it on its way with a one-fingered salute. I had almost reached the corner when the light changed, and I looked across at the very driver who had originally asked me if I needed a taxi. I shrugged my shoulders at him, but something sent me across the asphalt to encounter the true unhappiness of the night.

When I arrived on the other side of the street, the prostitutes' side of the street, I saw a girl of about fifteen years old, in a skirt that would make Ally McBeal blush, telling a key-ring vendor (the third world involves some strange professions) that as much as she liked the key-ring showing a woman lovingly embracing a penis as tall as her (and twice as thick), she didn't have the money to buy it.

I told the taxi driver that I had told my friend to take his cab. I told him that I trusted him, and the other drivers (who were nowhere to be found) who used the same taxi stand. I told him that my friend was in such a state that, if her cabbie wanted to, he could do whatever he wanted with her and she probably wouldn't remember in the morning. (Minutes after it happened she didn't remember passing out on the sidewalk.) He nodded. I looked at the children, who I guessed to be seven or eight years old, playing next to his taxi, and I looked at the two prostitutes, sitting in front of a closed newsstand. I told him that I loved Brazil, and that I chose to live in Brazil. I asked him how old the prostitutes were. He said that one was nineteen, and that the other was eighteen. I reminded him of the fact that I'm not retarded. I asked him if he had seen their government-issued ids. He said that one was nineteen, but that he didn't trust the other one. I asked him which one. He pointed to the obviously underaged one. The one who had no fear. The one who was clearly not on her first, nor second, nor third, night on the stroll. I told him that as much as I love Brazil, as much as I don't want to leave, I told him that sometimes I wonder why I'm here.

And I walked home.

At least I had the chance to read Tbogg once I was back inside my apartment.

Yay!

2006-04-15T01:31:00.000-03:00

I decided to indulge my vanity and look at my blog before going to bed. Maybe today I'll get my first comment. And how about that, I did. And then I looked at the comment. Oh, well.

Traitor

2006-04-13T12:12:00.000-03:00

It just occurred to me that yesterday I criticized, or at least linked to posts criticizing, my country. And I did that from the comfort of foreign soil. And, according to conservatives, that makes me a traitor, doesn't it? If I remember correctly, Bush the Smarter made a big deal out of Clinton's participation in a Vietnam War protest in England. The issue for Bush the Smarter wasn't the fact that Clinton protested, but that he did it in a foreign country. And here I am, doing the same thing in a smaller way. Maybe this means I'll be president some day...

It's all so funny...

2006-04-12T13:15:00.000-03:00

Brazil is lurching its way through its very own Watergate (Porta de Água?) right now. Eventually I'll try to post some kind of summary of the various scandals that have surrounded Lula and his party, but for now it should suffice to say that in the face of extremely strong competition Lula has established himself as the most corrupt president in Brazilian history. (It is only fair to point out that he may very well be the U. S. Grant of Brazilian history -- fairly honest, drunk, and completely innocent of any clue as to what his advisors are doing.)

As serious as educated Brazilians take the various scandals unfolding in their own country, the Cheney administration strikes them as some kind of joke. Brazilians were bewildered (and hurt) by the 2000 theft. Brazilians are angry about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. (Around the time of one of the various "handovers" or "transitions of power" in Iraq -- I think it was that first one, in June of 2004 -- a Brazilian daily had the headline "Partial Sovereignty is Like Partial Pregnancy".)

I wasn't in Brazil when the US invaded Iraq, but I imagine that up until the moment it began the Brazilian people were sure that it was a bluff, that the US would never do such a foolish thing. Despite five years of Bush-Cheney idiocy, they still retain a charming belief in the overall goodness of the US government and people. Most Brazilians have never seen a coup, but most of them have experienced the resulting government, so the 2000 theft didn't appear particularly strange to them. (The cynic in me wants to say that they admired our ability to take the coup so gracefully. Just like Cokie Roberts did.) The 2004 election did, however.

"How could you reelect him?" They kept asking me (and occasionally still do ask me). I tried to tell them about the media in the US, about how Americans feel isolated from the rest of the world and thus unconcerned about our image abroad, about how conservatives reject any information that does not confirm their belief system (and how in the absence of evidence to confirm their beliefs they will invent such evidence -- saying that every tax cut has resulted in increased tax revenue, for example).

These are things that politically aware Americans undestand, and in some cases have assimilated so well that they seem normal. Of course Uncle Norm doesn't believe that the Abu Ghraib photos will affect world opinion of the US occupation of Iraq. Of course Bob at the office thinks DeLay is the victim of a witch hunt (while Clinton represented a genuine threat to the survival of American democracy). For most of us who are aware, there was a moment when the scales fell from our eyes (I thought the Clinton investigations were valid for a few years), but we all know, and we understand how the system works. But the Brazilians have no idea, and how can you explain all of this? They have enough trouble understanding the electoral college. I can't suggest that they read atrios or bartcop -- they won't understand the references to American political institutions, even if they can understand the English.

So when I read something like this or this, and I agree, I can't express that to my Brazilian friends. Despite the invasion of Iraq, until the bombs actually start dropping on Tehran, the whole idea of another invasion will be a joke. Just like everything relating to Halliburton, Diebold, Jack Abramoff, and so on. They think it's funny that they can describe Lula as "Bush minus the war." I wish I thought it were funny, too.

Sport é campeão!

2006-04-10T15:03:00.000-03:00

It wasn't pretty, but it sure feels good. Sport is the 2006 Pernambuco champion.

Early Saturday afternoon a tv station reported that Sport had already sold the majority of the available tickets for Sunday's game. So Sunday I left home almost three hours before game time to make sure I could still get inside the stadium.

As I crossed the bridge over the river Capibaribe someone offered me a ticket for thirty reais. That frightened me, since the ticket usually costs around ten. I thought, the line at the ticket window has to be very long before thirty reais sounds reasonable. And the line was extremely long. Fortunately, just as I began to turn to find another scalper I heard someone say "Eightteen reais! If the money's in your hand when you approach, there won't be a problem." I got my money out and approached, and there was no problem.

Still more than two hours before kickoff, I entered the stadium hoping to find a decent place to stand. (The few times I have arrived close to kickoff I have spent the entire game on the lowest level of the terraces, with the grass at eye level.) The "geral" section of the stadium (behind the northwest goal) was already full, and the arquibancada frontal (along the south side of the stadium) was about half full. Or would have been, except for the inconvenient fact that the police had blocked off about half of the section, so ten thousand people were packing themselves into a section that could uncomfortably hold five. After what was probably only twenty minutes of hot, crowded, sweaty hell -- but what seemed like much longer -- the police opened the area and the crowd surged forward to claim their spaces.

I found a spot about two meters from midfield, and three steps up the terraces, from which I was close enough to the action but not so low that I couldn't see the other side of the field. And then I waited -- two hours in the tropical afternoon sun, in my fan's uniform (a red and black clown wig). Every fifteen minutes or so I took out my sunscreen and rubbed some into my face and neck. After some time I noticed that the man on my left had a large cardboard sign that he was using to give himself some shade.

"Move that sign over to the right," I said with a laugh, and he complied.

"Hold up your side," and I did so willingly.

After some time in the welcome shade of the sign, I asked him what it said on the other side.

"Mirela te amo," he replied.

I thought about the implications of holding a sign declaring my love for a woman who, to the best of my knowledge, I had never met.

"Yeah, I love Mirela," I told him.

"What?" Not yet angry.

"She's giving me shade."

He laughed. And a few minutes later we worked out that we had played soccer together once. For a city of three million people, Recife is a pretty small town.

Eventually the game started, and there's really no need to go into detail here. Sport needed to tie the game to win the championship, while Santa Cruz needed to win the game to force penalties. And, in the last minute of the second half, Santa scored off a corner kick to force penalties.

Santa shot first, and Gustavo -- Sport's goalie -- saved. Then Léo Oliveira's shot was saved, but the linesman ruled that the keeper had moved to early, and Léo Oliveira got a second chance. Which he clanged off the crossbar, and Sport had wasted a great chance. Both teams then converted the next two penalties. Santa found success on a third consecutive penalty, and their star forward was sent off for his obscene celebration in front of Sport's fans. Sport was denied, and the championship was at the feet of Santa Cruz. Grown men were crying in the stands around me. But Gustavo saved Sport, Sport converted the next penalty, and then both teams were successful.

For those of you who are right now thinking, "How lucky you were to see such drama!" I would like to say, "Fuck you." Drama is nice when my team isn't playing. I had no desire for drama. I wanted to see Sport win the championship emphatically, to the tune of 5-0 at the very least. The last thing I wanted to do was sweat through my clown wig while adults cried.

And then, on the next penalty, Gustavo dove to his right and swatted the ball away. Sport needed one penalty to win it all. Up stepped Hamilton, who was born in Alagoas (the state to the south of Pernambuco) but will represent Togo in this summer's World Cup, to set off the celebration. We chanted happy chants, we chanted obscene chants, we sang about our love for Sport.

Sport is the 2006 champion of Pernambuco. The natural order has been restored.

Olé olé olé olé olé
Olé olé olé olé olé
Sou rubronegro do coração
Eu sou do time que é sempre campeão!

Sport 2 Santa 1

2006-04-06T12:14:00.000-03:00

The multitudes who read this blog will have to put up with more posts about Sport and the Campeonato Pernambucano.

It should have been 3-1, but the referee disallowed a perfectly valid goal. That goal would have made it 3-0, and further crushed Santa's spirit, but these things happen on the way to the championship.

Prior to last night's game Santa had played 44 straight at home without losing, a record that dated back to 2004. Neither had Sport defeated Santa Cruz in any venue since 2004. But this year everything has changed.

True Story

2006-04-04T07:38:00.000-03:00

Several months ago...

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, or so I assumed, since I was sleeping. At 8:30 in the morning, this is what almost everyone was doing unless they were on their way to the beach (or on the beach already). My doorbell buzzed angrily, jarring me from what was no doubt a lovely dream. I sat up, swung my feet over the side of the bed and stood up. I looked at the clock to confirm the ungodly hour, and walked through my apartment to the door, wondering who would risk my wrath. Surely it was important.

As I opened the door I saw first a middle-aged woman. Moving with a shocking rapidity for the hour and nature of my awakening, my mind calculated that perhaps it was the landlady, since the rent was due. I couldn't, in that state, remember what the landlady looked like, but I could remember that she always called first. It probably wasn't my landlady. As the door opened further, I saw a younger woman standing behind her. And she looked good. Involuntarily, I smiled. This might be worthwhile after all.

"Good morning," said the older woman pleasantly, while the younger one smiled behind her.

"Good morning," I replied.

"Do you like to read?" She asked me.

"All the time. Why?"

"Because I have something," and her arm stretched out toward the grating that I had not yet opened. I looked at her hand and saw, across the top of a small pamphlet, the word "Jesus."

"I don't believe you woke me up for this," I growled, and closed the door, locked it, and went back to bed.

I couldn't sleep. I was too angry. How dare they disturb me? Who let them into the building? And why didn't I say something Al Jaffee would have approved of?

I tossed and turned, and then got up. I put some water on the stove for coffee, and walked into the living room. Outside my window, I heard the older woman complaining to someone, "...and he just closed the door, right in my face. The nerve."

And someone, a man, was agreeing with her! "Yeah, that's bad."

"How rude! I couldn't believe it."

Neither could I.

Spam

2006-04-03T18:01:00.000-03:00

This may not interest anybody (does anything about this blog interest anybody?), but I just received spam with this subject: "With Generik Viagra you can smoke as much as you want."

Can someone explain this to me, please?

Does "Generik Viagra" prevent emphysema or cure cancer? Maybe the pills are minty fresh. I don't get it.

Everybody's a Winner

2006-04-03T17:07:00.000-03:00

Almost. As I explained before, the Campeonato Pernambucano is divided into two rounds, followed by the final (if necessary). Yesterday Sport won the second round. And for that accomplishment, Sport won a trophy. I had no idea the rewards were so liberal. Should Sport lose the final to Santa Cruz (the first round winner, who presumably also won a trophy), nobody will care about that trophy, but there it was, all the same. The team even took a lap with the trophy and the crowd, myself included, screamed and cheered. There were vendors selling banners that read "Sport: Second Round Champion 2006." I was surprised by the number of people who were buying.

The game itself was one of the best non-clássicos I have seen. Sport was tense at first, whatever the soccer equivalent of holding the bat too tightly is. (They laced their shoes too tight?) About ten minutes in Vítoria, the worst team in the championship and the home town of my dinner companion tonight, scored first. I saw tears welling up in the eyes of a few people near me. The goal seemed to relax Sport, and not long after Sport scored what looked like a weak goal. (Later that night I saw a replay on tv, and it was a perfectly placed, if not particularly hard, shot.) Fifteen minutes later Sport scored again, and the party began.

Wednesday night in Arruda (Santa's stadium) and Sunday in the Ilha do Retiro, Sport and Santa will dispute the state championship. The structure is bizarre -- goals don't count, only the wins. Should Santa defeat Sport 1-0 in the first game, and then Sport crush Santa 8-0, the championship will be decided by penalties. In theory, all Sport needs to do is tie the first game and then beat Santa in front of the home crowd. The games would ideally both be on Sundays, but the CBF (the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol) is run by men who neither understand nor like the sport but who love money. They want Brazil to be like European countries, which have no state championships, and so the state championships are more compressed every year. It's questionable who has the advantage here -- Sport or Santa. Sport leads the overall championship (first and second rounds combined), and so has the second game at home. This means, theoretically, that Sport only needs to tie the first game and win at home. Of course, there are plenty of people who say that this gives the advantage to Santa, who can win at home and then play for the tie on Sunday. Financially, it gives the advantage to Sport, because more people are liktely to go to the game on Sunday than on Wednesday night (with a 9:45 kickoff for television's sake). Santa will have a better presence in Sport's stadium, since the game is on Sunday. And so on. Regardless, one thing is certain. No matter what the outcome, no matter what the advantages of playing the first game in Santa's house, we can all agree that Sport is by far the better team.

I Thought it was Autumn...

2006-04-03T13:53:00.000-03:00

Jesus H. Christ is it hot today. I was working on a longer post, but I have to put it off until I can stop dripping sweat on the keyboard. I'm actually jealous of you people in the northern hemisphere, who get to experience temperate weather right now.

Last Night was the Night

2006-03-30T11:13:00.000-03:00

I don't know what the exact qualifications are for the descriptor "glorious," but when in such doubt, I would prefer not to describe last night's victory as such. It was simply a victory. Ypiranga was under pressure from the first whistle to the last. About twenty minutes into the game, which was still scoreless, I said to the man sitting next to me, "Sport will win this game 3-0." And what do you know?

Ypiranga is from a small town, a few hours from Recife, called Santa Cruz do Capibaribe. (The Capibaribe is a river which runs from the interior of the state through Recife to the Atlantic. On its way through the city, it passes through some of the nicest neighborhoods in Recife. If your humble blogger could live anywhere he wanted in Recife, he would live on the banks of the Capibaribe. But only on the South/East bank. The other bank is no good. I don't know why. That's simply the case.) Between forty and sixty Ypiranga fans attended the game, and the police duly cordoned off a section of the stands for them. To the annoyance of the Sport fans (about 23,000 were in attendance), the space allotted to Ypiranga could have held a thousand fans, easily.

Glorious or not, it's always good to watch a winning effort with twenty-some thousand of your friends. Now on Sunday, at home, Sport needs to beat Vitória, the lanterninha (no one can explain the origin of the term, but in Portuguese the last-placed team is the "little lantern") to win the second round of the championship. Last Sunday Vitória let Náutico score six goals, and Sport is much, much better than Náutico. Sunday can't come soon enough.

Tonight's the Night

2006-03-29T17:12:00.000-03:00

Sport messed around enough at the beginning of the second round that every game is do or die now. They have to win tonight, but that's doable. Then they have to win on Sunday, but that should be easy. And, if they manage that (or Santa helps out by losing), then they are through to the final, which is do or die by definition.

I had a class scheduled for 5 pm tonight, but it was cancelled. It would have been just one student who is in his last week in Recife before he moves to Brasília, and he's going crazy trying to get everything squared away at work before he leaves. My evening is easier now -- I can go play soccer from 7:30 until almost 8:30, then take a quick shower, dry off, and walk one block to the stadium, buy a ticket, watch Sport's surely glorious victory over Ypiranga (currently in third place), return to the "society" where I played, get my bag, walk to the bus stop, and go home. Sounds good, but in Brazil there's always the chance of a strange complication...

Lazy Sunday

2006-03-28T10:38:00.000-03:00

Sunday went okay. It didn't exactly go well, but it was okay. (Blogger somehow screwed up the time and date of the last post -- it most definitely wasn't Friday, it was Saturday afternoon that I wrote it.)

Sport managed to go more than eighty minutes in the belly of the beast without conceding a goal. And in the eighty-sixth minute, Santa scored to equalize the game. Had Sport managed to win the game, I would be writing about the upcoming final between Santa and Sport. Still, Sport is in front with two games to go, and if Sport can win both games (both at home first against a mediocre team, and then against the worst team in the championship) then Sport will have booked a place in the final regardless of how Santa fares. Sport should have won the first round as well, but it took about five games before Sport really got it going. Still, things are looking good. The team has gelled and they are playing really well right now.

In Brazil, on Sunday, it's easy to forget that anything other than football exists. Starting at about 10 am there is an Italian or Spanish game on one network, immediately followed by a game from whichever league was not shown at 10, and then again at 6 pm the same network shows another game from Spain. (Spain has a tradition of 10 pm kickoffs on Sunday. Don't ask me why.) At 4 pm Globo (imagine a combination of ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX, and you understand Globo's dominance) shows a Brazilian game. From the end of April until December, that game will be the Brazilian first division, but for now it's a game from the state championship, at least here. In some of the states with less popular championships (i.e., not -- from South to North -- Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, or Pernambuco) it might be a game from Rio or São Paulo. I have spent many an enjoyable Sunday lying in my hammock watching football.

But this Sunday I ignored the European games and went to the beach with some friends. The beach experience here is different than that of the US. There are vendors who pass up and down the beach all day selling, among other things hot dogs, ice cream, popsicles, sun screen, sunglasses, crappy art, pirate cds and dvds, kites, charcoal grilled queijo coalho (a cheese that is only found in Northeastern Brazil -- it's hard, very low in fat, and its consistency and flavor changes when it is grilled over charcoal or fried) on a stick, crabs, shrimp, raw oysters, and caldinho -- a kind of soup, and possibly the most popular of all the offerings. And, of course, there is beer. The beer (and water and soda) is served by the man who rents you chairs, because in Brazil no one sits on the sand. And people sell grilled fish, but it never looks very good, so I never eat it. The water was full of some kind of seaweed, which I am still discovering on the floor and walls of my apartment. (I was sure I had cleaned myself before I left the beach. And then I took a shower as soon as I got home. I wonder what those two women did while I was in the shower...)

O Campeonato Pernambucano

2006-03-24T14:39:00.000-03:00

If all goes well tomorrow, I'll be writing a lot about the Pernambuco state championship (Campeonato Pernambucano), so here's some background info.

The state championships have a long history. Until 1959 there was no national football (soccer) competition in Brazil. There only state championships (and occasional all-star games -- between Rio and São Paulo, for example). The first Campeonato Pernambucano was held in 1915, and Flamengo (not to be confused with the more famous team from Rio) won. The next year Sport won (and the year after that), and thus began the finest footballing tradition in Pernambuco, if not the world.

The Campeonato Pernambucano is presently organized into two divisions, the top division consisting of ten teams. Each team plays each other team once in the first round, and then again in the second round. If the different teams won the two rounds, they play two games (home and home) to determine the champion.

Since 1944, the championship has been dominated by the three largest clubs in Recife (the smaller clubs either moved to the interior of the state or folded) -- Náutico, Santa Cruz, and Sport. Náutico, the oldest of the three, has won 21 championships (six in a row from 1963 to 1968). Santa, the youngest, has won 24. Sport, the best, has won 34 35. (América, one of the oldest teams in the state, is in fourth place with 6.)

Náutico began as a rowing club, and is (according to tradition) the team of the elite level of society. Santa Cruz is, again according to tradition, the team of the poor. Sport has no such identifying characteristic, but rather serves as the unifying figure of Pernambucano football. Some people say that in Recife there are only two torcidas (groups of fans), those who cheer for Sport and those who cheer against Sport. A Santa fan once told me, "I hate Sport more than I love Santa."

The three teams are known by their colors. Náutico is red and white (alvirrubro), Santa is red, white and black (tricolor), and Sport is red and black (rubronegro). I heard a story once about the colors of the teams that I didn't believe, but an alvirrubra told me (and another alvirrubro later corroborated it) -- and since the story reflects poorly on Náutico, I suppose I should believe it. She said that Náutico was formed to represent the white, rich Recifenses, so the colors are red and white. Sport formed shortly after Náutico, and chose black and red because Sport represented the black people in Recife. Then came Santa, combining the three colors, to represent all the people. (Náutico was the last team in Pernambuco to integrate its roster, and the fans took decades to accept the presence of non-white players.)

While the national championship is the bigger prize (Sport won it in 1987 -- the only team from Pernambuco to do so, although Náutico was runner-up in 1967), the state championship is the most important. The state championship is the subject of far more discussion, more intense rivalries, and bigger crowds. The state championships involve more teams, more players, and are thus the source of Brazil's football tradition. The state championships involve everyone. Not every state is represented in the top two divisions of the national championship, but everyone has a stake in their state's championship.

In the past, the state championships lasted almost the entire year. Now they go from January until April, although some of the states with no representation in the top divisions may stretch their championships until June. The national championship begins at the end of April and lasts until early December. Brazil is truly football heaven.

The most common question

2006-03-23T17:32:00.000-03:00

Today a student asked me what aspects of Brazilian culture I find most difficult to get used to.

It's a deceptively difficult question. I have been here for almost three years, and Recife is what seems normal to me. Were I to go back to the US, I'm sure it would seem strange, at least for a week or two. When he asked me, I didn’t have an answer ready, and hours later I still don’t. I said something about the pace of life here, and that’s true. Sometimes it’s annoying how slowly things move here, but most of the time I like it. I still need to slow down, to be more like the locals. It finally occurred to me, only two weeks ago, that people walk slowly as a survival technique. I walk at what seems like a normal pace, which is much faster than anyone else in the state. And I sweat and they don’t. You would think I would have figured that one out long ago, but you would give me too much credit.

It’s not the first time someone has asked that question. Two years ago I’m sure I had a ready answer, and I’m sure the answer was almost always “I could trust people in the U.S., and I can’t here.” At some point I’ll examine how I was correct and incorrect in that assessment. But now I’m not exactly Brazilian, but I’m not a visitor, or a new arrival, either. It's hard to say what's different about Recife. It would be easier to see what's different about other places, now that my perspective has shifted. The one glaringly obvious difference is carnaval. There is no carnaval in the US (with the exception of Mardi Gras, which may or may not have survived Katrina), and carnaval dominates the culture of Recife, if not Brazil. The time between New Year's and carnaval is just dead time, everybody waiting for the year to really start. After carnaval people go about their lives for a few months, recovering, before they begin preparing for next year's carnaval. In August or September people start talking about carnaval again, discussing what they will do, where they will go, and who they will be with. Carnaval is the single most important part of the culture here, even more important than bikinis. And bikinis are very important.

Greetings from the country of the future

2006-03-22T11:21:00.000-03:00

That's Brazil. Everyone knows the old joke, so I won't repeat it.

This morning, a couple of hours after breakfast but still a couple of hours before lunch, I got hungry. I didn't have a lot of options in my kitchen, and I didn't want to go out to buy a snack. So I made popcorn. I poured the oil into a pan, and then the popcorn. And out of the bag of popcorn (Prato Bom, if you're curious) fell two beans. Better still, two different kinds of beans. One was black, perhaps to represent the Southeast of Brazil. The other was pink (I'm not sure what its name is in English), in Portuguese feijão mulatinho, perhaps to represent the Northeast. It made some sense. No matter where you are in Brazil, if you have a tv, you have the Southeast in your living room. And on the streets of any city in Brazil (except for Recife and the surrouding area, and maybe Salvador) outside of the southern half of Brazil, you see jerseys of teams from the Southeast. But I'm in the Northeast, and at lunchtime it is much, much easier to find restaurants serving feijão mulatinho (any restaurant that is not Chinese, Japanese, or barbecue) than black beans. So there it was, Brazil in a bowl of popcorn. Or something. I hope the extended metaphors get better as this blog goes on.