Só gente bonita

Since I get home at midnight and we don't have stolen cable, no longer does dinner hour pass by in dubbed CSI episodes. The tight structure of american tv makes blatant its theft of your life- at commercial time, mid-grip of a mystery, you know that when the episode is over bed-time is upon you and you have not lived your life.

Thus the brilliance of Brazilian TV- it doesnt want your full attention. In a room of yapping godmothers on Sunday it just wants to be another voice, taking hold of the conversation no more or no longer than any other Nega.

By midnight the Novelas have released their grip and a real classy presence hits Rede-Tv. It's Amaury Jr, the godfather of society television. Whisky drinking, chain smoking, jug eared, pockmarked, user of suits where the tie is skinny and the suit shirt has a really small, round-tipped collar that I have never seen before but must be common in the world of italian fashion. I all makes him look a little bit like an emaciated Alf.

Most importantly, the man does not mess up. Check the hold on the microphone. That's Frank Sinatra Jr, by the way. Just another fish, and Amaury skins them all with class. Arm around the women's waist. Every name, every buisiness with which it is associated, flawlessly dropped. He doesnt just say, this is Paulo, President of XX, tell us about whats going on here at the Copacabana hotel, no, he lays the red carpet out for the guy, explaining everything for at least 30 seconds, so that the interveiwees first response is always. "Exatamente Amaury. "

It has to be that smooth, because the majority of the people are paying him to visit their new restaurant or club. Its a question I can't answer: you start a new upscale french restaurant, why are you going to pay supposedly over 100 thousand bucks to bring a TV crew in there and film people eating in unflattering light, proving againg that society people aren't actually gente bonita. Are the wealthy of Brazil, like me, up at midnight eating rice beans and beef in front the TV?

Ask and you shall...

Approximately 150 days after the last post on this blog,

eu fiz meu gol.

We was supposed to go out, but she got lazy, and I got in the habit of going the corner bar for another garrafa and hanging sticks off my lips. I wasn't ready for the big leagues, but

eu fiz meu gol.

Foi a minha unica chance, num jogo bem cauteloso,

mas eu fiz meu gol.

If I saw him, I would say...

We are back. No, that's not what I would say. Wait till the end of the blog for Zac to be relevant.

Ya see, sometimes it takes the innocence of a child to remind adults of what is great in the world, and get back to writing about it. But this effect is usually limited to very young children. Once kids get to be around the age enacted by the cast of high school musical, the achievement of potential has already ruined the dream of it.

A dream deferred, in an onto/tautalogical and not a political sense, is a pretty dream. That is why this blog will not be afraid to reach back into the past that is everyday purer than the present in an act of asking for forgiveness.

What woke us was a phrase, a stream of beauty shattering a news report about HSM that otherwise makes the elder wonder if someday the children will rise in primary color-clad hordes and kill everyone on earth. The dream of the 9 year old fan interviewed on TV, when asked why she liked this guy, said (refer to title)

Ele e lindo. Se eu visse ele, eu ia falar:

"You is one cat"

The translation, innocent as its speaker, truly at the foot of the wor(l)d.

one word's existence that a student reminded me of today

nope

leading you

Two days a week I arrive at an office building and have to give the reception my passport number before I can go in. I arrive at a time when a lot of english teachers are arriving. One guy today, who I heard speaks six languaged and who I overheard today speaking english with a germo-slavic accent, smelled like some eastern bloc-issue cologne I would guess to be milky green.
Adjunct the glass lobby, the smokers section is through a glass wall, some benches under the lid of the second floor. Lots of days while I wait a blind guy comes out of the turnstyle via gentle stick smacking and makes his way to the bench near the door. This is in the early morning, so I suppose he has just gone upstairs and left his things and come back for what is probably not his first cigarrette of the day, unless he takes the nicotene as some kind of shot that propels him through his morning.

On the bench he crosses his legs and lightes up and smokes deeply. The cheeks go in, the tip goes conical. His eyes, as this is the kind of blindman he is for us observer, are calm, closed and unmoving, but he doesn't always take a regular breath among drags and face-enveloping outpuffs.

"Does a blind man enjoy a cigarrette more?" I ask myself in the morning, having long abandoned interesting thoughts. And another, "Does he know he hits it so much harder than everyone else?"to which I answer.
Probly

The weather underdifferentnumericschemes

As I was walking down the street, my eyes getting baked open like two blue-yolked eggs, I noticed one of the evenly spaced street signs that alternate temperature and time. Somewhere in the Dali desert of my mind, clocks a-hanging off the branches, I thought, damn, it must be 34 degrees. The time flashed away and I was proved correct, point being, CelsiusI feel you now!

This picture, which I pulled from another blog, was taken because the ad is pretty nice, saying,

"The thermometer shows that the earth is heating up. The clock, that there's still time to save it."

Montevideo in 1 Metaphor and 2 Photos

All these vegetables may have since been eaten, but the news is new!

Its a beautiful city, with an old-port pearl inside the oyster of a typical South American urban landscape, though like everything in Uruguay, smaller. Besides the requisite 'first church' and 'exact replica of the French theater house' that every Southern Cone city seems to have, the port is packed with Belle Epoque style palaces interspersed with slightly later Art Deco that blends in perfectly.

This beautiful and agéd old port has lead us to one major metaphorical conclusion: Montevideo is the Montreal of South America.
Say it: MMMontreal,
MMMontevideo.

Just like tourists in Montreal, we have basically just been walking around and taking pictures of each other taking pictures of grey stone buildings of impressive age.
Like Montreal, we are on a huge river and the wind whips through the city incredibly. We wanted cold, but this is a little more Canadian than we bargined for! And when shutter fingers start to tremble, what do we drink? Hot Chocolate!

I went out for the famous steak dinner last night (poor Renata had to watch me devour it) and tonight we are going to a concert of a local rock band, then we are off at 315 tomorrow afternoon. The airport was so small we actually disembarked on the tarmac, which is so glamorous. I ran down the stairs so that I could turn and take a picture of Renata in her Jackie O sunglasses. Also glamorous was the official blue and gold United States of America airplane parked next to our plane- the secretary of something was visiting from Washington to talk about buying more steak and wine in exchange for old fighter jets. (kidding!)

On the whole we are excited to get back to Brazil- people here are, shall we say, more European than Brazilians, and we miss the smiles and the non-brown-wool items of clothing. Not to mention that perhaps the most European thing here is the hotel breakfast- ham, cheese, rolls, apples (not a papaya in sight, but ohhh the dulce de leche!)

In truth, too much of our impression may have been formed by an encounter today where a used-book vendor in a plaza accused us of stealing a book when I put my camera in Renata's purse. We opened it up for her inspection, but she didn't even apologize. Bitch!

We walked away miffed, an emotion that was instantly transformed when we bought a hand-knit sweater for Rafael to steady rock through the rest of winter.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!