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December 11th, 2005
02:10 am - ...any friction betwixt...
You know when you take a shit straight after a shower, and you can't wipe your arse properly because there doesn't seem to be any friction betwixt your hand and the paper?
No, it must just be me then... well, I find it really annoying, and felt the urge to share it with you. Watch this space for future toilet-related annoyances, folks!
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November 25th, 2005
09:00 pm - Mourning a Legend
I heard the sad news today that we have lost a great character, a true master of his art and one of the most loved and respected athletes of our time. He was a man not often associated with losing, but by the end of the ultimate battle, I think we could all see it coming. Rest In Peace, Pat "Mr Miyagi" Morita...
And in other news, yellow 59 year old, George Best, possibly scared to death by the extension of British licencing laws, has finally gone to the great working men´s club in the sky...
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November 20th, 2005
07:58 pm - The Argentine Royal Family
I was reading a national magazine poll over lunch yesterdat, and came across some worrying statistics, most notably that this gross Bride of Wildenstein-alike, Susana Gimenez, is considered the most sexy Argentine alive...
So if she is the queen of Argentina, and this is the king...
.. maybe I could come to accept that Charles and Camilla aren{t so bad after all.
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November 13th, 2005
05:56 am - Creamfields Buenos Aires
Bloody hell, I can{t sleep that was so good. It{s 11am and it feels like Ivan Smagghe is still playing his set, live in my brain... I will update properly when I regain my senses (note to parents.. don{t worry, I am just a bit knackered, no cause for concern x).
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November 4th, 2005
08:02 pm
Wednesday
I decided to leave Montevideo,and head for the nearby colonial landmark of Colonia de Sacramento, a popular day trip from Buenos Aires or Montevideo. When I arrived, I discovered that the only boat going to Buenos Aires that evening was in four hours time, so I paid up and did a quick tour of the city. It is one of those charming little places where the hippy artesans congregate, and the restaurants charge double. Four hours was more than enough to see the old town on foot, snoop around a crafts market with no intention of buying any thing and pay through the nose for passable ravioli, warm beer and sunstroke in the absence of decent shading.
The slow boat across the River Plate was a three journey made all the more tolerable by the presence of Batman pinball, Wonder Boy, Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition (I lost to fucking Zangief! Two spinning pile drivers in one round! It reminded me of the time I asked my Finnish au pair, Netta, to take a photograph of me pulling off the hardest of all moves some time in the 90s. Unfortunately the picture didn`t come out too well, but I know I did it, and nobody can take that away from me! I met some nice chaps on the boat, including two French guys and a Peruvian girl. We had quite an amusing conversation in which I spoke English with the Peruvian and Spanish with the French guys, although they also spoke some English and I filled a few gaps with very basic French!
Arriving back in Buenos Aires, the nostalgia hit me like a rush of exhaust fumes up the nose. It feels good to be back, although a little sad to be without Raquel in the city we first met... Arriving to find Dario and my new English flatmate, Jenny, asleep, the prospects of a relaxing night to settle back into the city were good... Unsurprisingly though I awoke the next day at 1pm after a heavy night in a new nightclub called Bahrain, and a ratherlate night. I suppose that is BA for you, which is why I intend to enjoy my time here while it lasts, but jump ship as soon as possible for the benefit of my health!
I would love to go into a nice little Lonely Planet description of how the area we live in is a beautiful, bohemian district and the like, but some incredibly loud roadworks just outside are testing my patience so, "that`s enough from me".
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November 1st, 2005
08:04 pm - The Full Monte-Video
Once again I took an over night bus to save myself hostel fees, and once again I didn[t manage a wink of sleep (Well maybe a few, but nowhere near 40!). I arrived at the Red Hostel in Montevideo nice and early in the morning of Monday, a bit shattered, but eager to go out and explore the city on foot. The capital of Uruguay is a small, compact city of about 1.5m inhabitants, and nicely situated on the banks of the River Plate which brings in a refreshing breeze. I walked around the city all day trying to get my bearings, and to get a sense of the city. One thing became clear immediately. Uruguayans are incredibly friendly people, very peaceful and laid back. They like to stroll around the streets, sit in doorways, in parks or on public squares chatting away, and invariably drinking from a gourd of mate tea. I am familiar with the custom of drinking the herby concoction from my time in Buenos Aires- the custom is to sip the water from the metal straw, and then refill and pass the gourd to the next person. But Uruguayans take the practise to an almost ludicrous level. They literally walk around the streets, all day long with a thermos flask and gourd in hand, taking a constant fix. I am told the drink has a mild stimulant similar to but weaker than caffeine, called mateine. Perhaps the substance is more addictive than people seem to be aware of! My only concern is what they should do if they accidentally nudge a valuable vase from a shelf, or witness a hapless Mother dropping her baby with no free hands? I suppose they helplessly watch the event unfold before their eyes, shrug their shoulders and then go on sipping at their precious herb.
I walked along The Rambla by the river, and soaked in the pleasing rays of a beautiful pre-summer[s day. The thoroughfare is marked out for joggers, and apparently I walked three miles in each direction on top of the several more miles I must have covered walking up and down the main road in the city. I visited the park, saw the main historic plazas and just tried to enjoy the tranquility of solidarity. I was asked the time by a local despite clearly not wearing a wristwatch, and it turned out to be a mere pretence for conversation. My new friend, Dani, spoke passable English and told me his girlfriend was in the British navy. He also went on to inform me that marijuana was legal in Uruguay (which I have yet to confirm, but, find hard to believe) although he certainly wasn[t overtly trying to sell me any, and he invited me to watch the big game with him (apparently River Plate were in town for a Copa libertadores game, but I wasn[t up to facing a crowd of Argentine hooligans without any sleep, least of all on my own). He also invited me for a drink in the large bar at the end of the road which he claimed to be his Father[s. I have no idea if he was trying to hustle any thing out of me, but if was he was certainly the most erudite hustler I have ever met!
I ate dinner in a nice, cheap pizzeria where the pizza normally comes in the Italian style, without any cheese on the top. I ordered the peperoni and found it to be absolutely delicious. The secret[s in the tomato sauce I[d say! The pizza with a bottle of water cost me the princely sum of one English pound, although the waiter did his best to overcharge me by 50p. The elderly couple beside me, Uruguay dwelling, Argentine 7-day aventists and proficient English speakers, informed me that this was far from the norm in this country. They went on to echo the conviction that Uruguayan[s are generally some of the kindest most genuine people you will come across, and in my limited experience I would be inclined to agree. It[s the small details like not accelerating when you try to cross the road in front of them, and not hollering and pestering in the street that make the difference.
Today was more of the same as I explored the historic Old City and the international port on foot. The city has the familiar bread and butter Spanish architecture of Buenos Aires, or Barcelona, but without much of the beautiful originality of a Gaudi building or the neoclassical Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. The old city is supposed to come alive in the night but, writing on a tranquil Tuesday, I am noit sure if I will be around to apply the acid test myself. The pleasures of the day, in common with the previous one, were tepid and at best pleasant. I gave the Museum of Modern Art a try, but they were closed, ironically enough, for painting. One does, however, get a sense from the streets themselves that there is an inherent artistic streak to Montevideo, and a rampant liberalism. The virile political conscience, that capitalism ironed out long ago on our own shores, makes itself known on every corner. The only culture I have exposed myself to in my short tenure though is the personal one, the culture of the people. As the sun set on my last night in Montevideo, I watched a children[s football match on a seaside gravel pitch. It was nice way to draw the curtains on my second night, and there was even a flash of genius to behold in the smallest boy on the field. In a country that has won two world cups, and at the centre of a triumvirate of nations who have won nine, the same inate feathery ball control, deceptive swivels of the hips and audacious flair is as ingrained in the Uruguayan as much as the agricultural heritage, and penchant for mate.
Maybe it is the brashnes and immediacy of Uruguay[s neighbours that contribute to making the experience that much more exciting and edgy though. Uruguay is a great place to take a break and recharge your batteries. It would be a place conducive to reflection, and the formation of verse. It would be a wonderful place to raise a family. But exciting, it would seem, is one thing that Uruguay certainly is not. There is some thing about the place I have already come to love, and I am in the right place at the right time in terms of the weather and the current tendency towards contemplation. I am looking forward to strolling in the UNESCO protected cobbled streets of Colonia tomorrow. But Montevideos unruly older brother is calling my name from across the River Plate, and the lure of spending time with an old best friend, Buenos Aires if you hadn[t guessed, is too great.
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October 30th, 2005
08:49 pm - Bowling for Turpentine
If there are any aspiring Sigmund Freud´s out there, please feel free to explain a strange dream I had the other night to me....
I was in Brazil, I think, and quite possibly with Raquel or Purdy or some one else, but certainly one other person. We were in a big car park outdoors, and for some reason there was a tenpin bowling alley there. I bowled the ball down the lane, and when it returned down the chute, there was nothing to prevent it from rolling straight out at the bottom and off towards the main road behind us. The ball rolled straight into the traffic and miraculously missed any kind of impact with any thing, which made us very relieved... until we noticed the ball rolled up a hill and started to come back towards us. Again the ball missed damaging any thing or any one n the road, and it kept on rolling right past us again until it met the kerb, and bounced into a lower level where there was a car outside some kind of garage. The ball hit the car, and it exploded spectacularly!.. Nervously peering over the edge, we noticed that the explosion had also killed a nearby pedestrian. An onlooker noticed what happened, and before long a huge crowd had gathered inthe street around the inciden, with us in the middle. I didn´t want to be blamed for the tragic accident, and tried to escape undetected, but the initial onlooker pointed me out to the crowd, and before long every body was telling us we would go to jail for this for negligence, manslaughter or worse. A lawyer appeared and started to throw the book at us... I guess the dream kind of petered out there...
I am sure it must be some thing to do with being a stranger, alone in a foreign place, and quite often finding myself trying to make myself understood to crowds of Brazilians... The most notable thing about the dream was how graphic it was, and how it seemed to follow a logical plot!
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03:29 pm - Nao Acredito!!!
Oh, I forgot to mention the two teenage girls who literally jumped around and screamed when told I was English, and posed for several photos with me... One of them told me they loved me, but it was a little early in our relationship for me to reciprocate! It´s nice to be a novelty some times I suppose!
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02:55 pm
As much as I would like to go to sleep right now, I haven´t updated for a few days, so I will do my best to engage my oxygen deprived neurons, and write some thing of interest about the last few days...
I arrived in Porto Alegre on Friday to stay with my friend Andre, and we went for a brief walk around the city centre to get my bearings. We went into the shopping centre where his office is located, and I noticed some body having his photograph taken with several hysterical girls- It was one of Brasil´s biggest musicians, a politically conscious rapper called Gabriel O Pensador. I think he was in town to sign a book he wrote in the Porto Alegre book fair, the largest in Latin America apparently.
When the excitement died down, and I had caught up on a few hours sleep with a long siesta, it was time to make our way to the German immigrant town of Igrejinha for one of the largest Oktoberfests in the world. The entire town participates in the festival, and the population triples for the party with 40 percent of the proceeds reinvested in the following year´s festivities, and 60 percent going towards local amenities such as hospitals and roads. The sourroundings, very characterisitic of the "serra" area of south Brasil, were lush, green and extremely picturesque. We stayed with Andre´s cousins and they, along with just about every body else I met in Igrejinha, were extremely friendly, hospitable and genuinely interested to meet a "gringo".
As you are probably aware, the raison détre ofan oktoberfest in to drink a hideous amount of beer and dance around to cheesy music.... It´s for this very reason that i really can´t be fucked to write any more, so i am going to summarise the event in a few key words....
Beer... Beer... Beer... squash, squeeze, push... Ivete Sangalo (one of those pneumatic stereotypically Latin divas who could shatter the Louvre with her larynx!)... hormonal teenagers... staggering fat drunk men... beer... beer... beer... attempted Portuguese conversations.... beer... beer... You get the picture!
Actually, it was a lot more fun that it sounds. I feared a bit of a nightmare scenario in which I would be surrounded by violence and vomit, but the people I met were extremely nice and they seemed to enjoy my enthusiastic recantations of a few key words and songs. I felt like a bit of a performing seal at times, juggling a ball on my noise and jumping through hoops for fish, but it was the different kind of fun that I was looking for from the weekend, adn I am glad I went...
Incidentally, we went on the Saturday as well after a day long barbecue with an unlimited supply of, you guessed it, beer (I had never tried Nova Schin before, and will probably not be able to stomach it again), and barbecued meat Gaucho style, which is reknowned as the best in Brazil. Incidentally, the smells that emanate froma group of men subsiting solely on meat and beer for a weekend are some thing nobody should ever be exposed to!
So, as the weekend draws to a close, I am now back in Porto Alegre, and alone again. I have surveyed the damage, and although I am extremely overtired, groggy and mentally drained, it shouldn´t be any thing lasting, and by the time I arrive in Montevideo tomorrow morning, I should be fresh as a daisy again. Uruguay should be a peaceful diversion on my way back to the melee of Buenos Aires!
Current Music: Cheesy Brazilian carnaval tunes ad nauseum!!!
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October 29th, 2005
08:10 pm - Gun Museum
I forgot to mention, that random gun museum I visited had an amazing wooden bust of Adolf Hitler, alongside another interesting piece of Nazi memorabilia.... I´d love to have that on my mantelpiece!!
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October 27th, 2005
06:37 pm - Goodbye Floripa
Today is my last day in Florianapolis, and in the continuing absence of any sun, I have spent my time lurking around the centre of town with a couple of new friends with the common goal of simply killing time. Florianapolis is famous for it´s incredible beaches and beautiful women, so visiting here when the sun is not shining is akin to visiting Venice during a drought- there isn´t much point. We spent an enjoyable 8 minutes or so in a small weapons museum, which had a delightful collection of guns and swords throughout the ages. The two soldiers and a stray dog who were on guard seemed a little excessive as they evidently receive about 52 tourists a year, if the entry log is any thing to go by.
Fact of the day: Smith, of Smith and Wesson fame´s first name is Oscar!
Florianapolis is like a hibernatory creature that lies dormant for the winter and only awakes in the summer. For that very reason, I will try to return on my way back to Rio in December, when things should really have started hotting up. It is hard enough finding some where to eat or have a drink at the moment to be quite honest!
I´m heading to Porto Alegre tonight for the madness of the oktoberfest weekend. I´m expecting cheesiness, hostility, claustrophobia, merriment, vomit and nausea in equal measure. Should be fun! As for my generous host, Andre, he could be a psychopathic cannibal killer for all I know, but I´ll take my chances for a free place to stay and some body to show me around.
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October 26th, 2005
12:14 pm - Sodomist´s Law
Raquel and I said our goodbyes in Sao Paulo last night as she headed back to Niteroi to work in her Mother´s publishers, and await further news on her boat trip. It looks like she might be granted berth after all if her immigration issues of the past can be resolved promptly. She still isn´t entirely sure if she wants to commit two years of her life to seafaring, but as an exciting alternative to waitressing for peanuts in Rio, it looks like it may be the best option for her at the moment. Whatever she decides to do, I will support her and keep in touch as best I can. However, this is the first juncture in our relationship in which the future really is an unknown abyss, and there are no certainties about when and where we might be able to be together again.
I´m back on the road, and heading south into new territory. I arrived in Florianapolis early this morning, truly alone for the first time in a strange South American city. Purdy and I always planned to visit "Floripa" with its outstanding beaches, and supposedly more European feel. One thing is certain, the locals certainly appear more European, with their blonde hair and blue eyes representing the legacy of European immigration, predominantly German, Ukrainian and Italian. The south is known for being more prosperous and safer than Rio, Sao Paulo or the pooer northern states of Brazil so, what do you know, I was pretty much robbed within ten minutes of arriving. I was crossing the bridge across the main ocean street, and was followed by an unsavoury looking, but certainly work fit, young ruffian. He demanded money for "rice and beans", so I led him to the nearest snack stall and offered to buy him whatever he wanted for breakfast. I told him I didn´t have any change, which was true in spite of the fact that I had around 350 Reais (about 70 pounds) in my pocket (more than I usually tend to carry about my person). He insisted on rice and beans which, and forgive my presumptiosness, could very well be a local slang for drugs and booze, but I managed to persuade him to leave me alone with a parting gift of 5 reais. It certainly could have gone to a more deserving cause, but I wasn´t about to be a hero at 8 30 in the morning with half of my worldly spossessions of my back. It´s typical that I can spend 4 months of my life in Rio, and 1 month of my life in Sao Paulo, not to mention several months travelling around some of the most deprived areas on the planet, and only now in relative safety do I have any kind of a problem. But as any South American tourist will tell you, "gringo tax" can be levied at any time in any place, and you just have to be prepared for that.
Next stop, Porto Alegre and "Oktoberfest"... It sounded like a good idea at the time when an old acquaintance and all around funny character, Andre, invited me down for the event. As each day passes though, I am beginning to dread the sight of 100,000 lagered up Brazilians, some of whom will presumably be wearing lederhosen, more and more.
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October 25th, 2005
10:33 pm - The Big Cheese
Just a quickie, the Brazilian expression for a podium or raised platform on a dancefloor is "queijo", or "cheese"... quite fitting when you bear in mind the kind of bare-chested grease-balls you often find flexing and gyrating above the crowd...
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10:30 pm - Champagne Handcuffs
With little else to do in Sao Paulo before our buses arrived, raquel and I decided to hit one of the more upmarket shopping centres in town, Iguatemi, for a little light consumer relief. The first shop we entered was the Diesel shop, and immediately as we stepped inside we were pounced on by an eager salesman. He proceeded to do the customary act of taking every single item off the shelves for our delectation, and telling us we would look really good if we would only part with a couple of hundred pounds for the pleasure. But the best was yet to come. He offered us a drink while we perused the suggested pile of over-branded sweaters... "Agua... champagne...". I thought he said the word champagne, and I repeated the word in a stupefied, longing manner which seemed to be all the encouragement he needed to fetch me a glass. And when I say glass, I mean glass. Not for me the luxury of a possible swift escape, plastic cup in hand. We had to endure several minutes more of his performance as he added item upon item to the already completely unaffordable pile. I am sure he wouldn´t have appreciated our eventual empty-handed departure, especially as Brazilian sales staff work on a healthy commission for volume sold...
Still, I didn´t go home empty handed. I am now the proud owner of a slightly audacious blazer, and a t-shirt of the Hindu God Ganesh, I believe, with the head of Gene Simmons from Kiss. It would have been rude not to!
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October 24th, 2005
07:39 pm
Hello fans. I know you missed me but I haven´t had much of a chance to write lately. Sorry to keep you all in suspense for so long....
I´ll quickly bring things up to date a little... the weekend after the big gay party, we went to Teresopolis for another chilled weekend in the hills with Benny, and a few other friends of his. We passed the time by the pool (when it wasn´t raining), playing pool in a dodgy locals bar, and spending a night out in the strangest dive of a nightclub I have been to for quite a while. It is the kind of place where the DJ makes announcements between songs, and despite not being an ostensibly gay club, there is more than a fair share of provincial gays with vests and cheap highlights in their hair. We shook our bon-bons to some excellent translated Europop, diva-house and carioca funk. We had some one night-stand friendships with the friendlier clientele, and I drank until I felt sick, perhaps in a subconscious attempt to fit in a little more.... we passed by a "rave" we had heard about in the local country club, but the lure of trance music and over-fragranced playboys wasn´t quite enough for us to forego the sizeable entry fee.... The remainder of the weekend was spent eating large amounts of good food, including some lovely locally grown mushrooms from a local farmer, who conveniently doubles up as the local marijuan salesman as well. Perhaps shiitake and weed thrive in similar growing conditions? We also watched the film version of 1984 and The Crying Game which I don´t want to ruin for any body that hasn´t seen it, but PPPPEEEENNNNIIIISSSSS!!!!
During the week, I decided to take Raquel to the cinema where we were hardly endowed with an embarrssment of riches to choose from... I succumbed to the last vestiges of romance in my soul, and decided that I wouldn´t be opposed to watching Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell´s rendition of Bewitched (A Feticeira). As I might have expected, the film was about as pleasurable as a horny dog latching onto your leg and thrusting away for an hour and a half.
There was a lot of excitment surrounding the weekend that has just passed as the TIM Festival was rolling into Rio, and bringing some international music acts along for the ride. I was over the moon about Autechre, M.I.A and Dizzee Rascal coming to town, and Raquel really wanted to go and see The Strokes who were playing alongside Kings of Leon. Unfortunately, as things were left customarily late, tickets weren´t easy to come by for the bigger shows, especially The Strokes for whom the touts were asking extortionate prices. The show seemed to be modelled on the Sonar Festival in Barcelona, with a main stage and smaller, more experimental stages operating concurrently. I managed to get tickets for the Friday night, where Jamie Liddell had replaced Autechre and Vicent Gallo was supporting. I was just as excited about seeing Jamie Liddell as I was Autechre, especially as I inadvertently missed playing at Sonar, Glastonbury and Brighton in quick succession last summer. He cuts a manic figure on stage as he displays a mind-numbing one-man show incorcorating beatboxing, live sequencing and a wonderfully soulful singing voice, interspersed with some ethereal howls and squeals... We didn´t stick around for much of Vincent Gallo. He is more famous for his movies than his music, including his direction of Buffalo 66 and 2003´s The Brown Bunny, in which then girlfriend Chloe Sevigny plays out a graphic oral sex scene with Gallo, the first of it´s kind in cenematic history. i was temoted to mention it to him at the bar, but I didn´t want to embarrass his girlfriend, or discuss another man´s erect member for that matter.
The highlight of the night, however, was an encounter with a new aquaintance of mine, Didi whom I met through Benny. She is a TV journalist, and all-round party girl and she introduced us to a couple of her friends, one of whom was in the possession of tickets for the Sao Paulo edition of the TIM festival, which he received free on his flight from Sao Paulo to Rio. Unable to attend, and noticing our enthusiasm about seeing M.I.A and The Strokes, he decided to give us the tickets free of charge on the proviso that we would promise to go to the festival. It wasn´t part of our plans to be leaving Rio, but that´s an offer that would be hard to refuse...
So we took the 00:30 bus on Sunday morning, and arrived early morning in the second biggest metropolis of the Americas. We decided to get a hotel in the Japanese district, Liberdade, which is home to the biggest community of japanese people outside of Japan. Most of the shops, including Mcdonalds, have Japanese facades, and the street lights are shaped like Japanese lanterns. In fact on of them got knocked down this morning in a car accident. I broke through a large crowd of gawpers to see a Japanese man receiving treatment, which I thought was in pretty poor taste... We have been taking advantage of the cheap and widely available sushi, and walked aimlessly around the city and it has been a refreshing change to be in a new environ and to be tourists together again like we were in Spain and Portugal last year.
The festival last night started pretty much as badly as it could have done. For no apparent reason, our clock was an hour slow, and we arrive outside to be met with a line of literally thousands of revellers. Foertunately, this is Brazil which means lines aren´t there to be joined at the back, so we just walked pretty much right to the front like everybody else. We passed the gates just as the last note of the act I really wanted to see, M.I.A, was played. Although I had seen her before at Glastonbury, and briefly at Sonar, I was really keen to see how she went down performing Brazilian music (her single Bucky Done Gun is a straight up carioca funk tune) in front of Brazilians. Although I missed the show, i did see some of her Rio show live on television and it looked like her better material went down really well, especially when she was joined on stage by a local funk diva who looked like she had won the lottery to be on stage in front of so many people, in such a locale. It wouldn´t have put me on such a downer if her show was followed by some thing a little bit more uplifting, but Canadian band-camp geeks The Arcade Fire did little to raise my spirits. I can see why they have won their fans with their stirring, melodic sound but it was just a little bedweeting and, well Canadian for my liking.
The night only really started for me when The Kings of Leon came on. I am not the biggest fan of the garage-rock revival thing, but when they dropped straight into "Molly´s Chamber" from the outset, I knew it was going to be a good show. There are quite a few numbers off their two albums that I like a lot, and the songs I was unfamiliar with went down well too. It certainly made the trip to Sao paulo seem worthwhile for an hour or so... They were followed by the headliners, The Strokes who, lest we forget, were the biggest band in the world for about 15 minutes back in 2000. I have never been their biggest fan, and I find their material a little weak and repetitive, but there were a lot of die hard fans in the Sao Paulo crowd, and I got carried along a little with the exuberance of the multitudes and Raquel. I recognised 5 or 6 tunes, and singing along to "Last Night" or whatever it is called harked back to many a drunk night out in the student union in Kingston, and the Pav Tav... So, overall it was a pretty fun night, and I was glad to finally give Raquel the birthday present she should have received a couple of months ago (although one could argue that atrasn-Atlantic flight in time for her birthday was a present in itself).... We hadn´t accounted for the difficulty of getting home without buses or the Metro, but luckily we met two friendly guys, and we all saved on the taxi fair to boot. Everybody happy!.. There are plans to meet them in town tonight, along with a guy from Brixton that they recently met, which should be interesting.
The only other thing to report from today is that i bought a couple of old Brazilian Playboy magazines from a street vendor, so my collection is coming along nicely now... As much as the thought of buying second-hand pornography is faintly repellent!
Oh, and my plans. Tonight is my last with Raquel, before I head down south for a while. I am going to porto Alegre for Oktoberfest, passing through Uruguay en route to good old Buenos Aires for a couple of weeks with Porteno friends, Purdy and Creamfields 2005... Then I am heading back to Rio via Floripa and Sao Paulo again and hoping to be back early December, should Raquel still be around (there are rumours of her boat setting sail after all). Watch this space for updates!
Current Music: the last note of Bucky Done Gun by M.I.A
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October 17th, 2005
06:04 pm - Back on track
I am writing an entry today merely because I haven´t done so for quite a while, and my readership (Hi Dad!) demands some thing of me...
To be honest, the last coupleof weeks have been pretty eventful, but I just haven´t really had the necessary volition to write any thing. It might be worth noting that the temperature has risen to the high 30s in the last few days, and who wants to write when you can hardly breathe? It´s pretty ironic that when it´s grey and cloudy I´m praying for sun, but when the sun comes out I´m begging for merciful cloud and rain.
Tuesday night, Benny invited me to a big party in a long disused train station in downtown Rio. It was my first opportunity to see Renato, Raquel´s ex deejaying in Rio which was cool, although we didn´t watch him for long. Also on the bill was a famous plump carioca funk diva, and I was a little heartbroken when she lived up to her diva status and didn´t show up. Still, it was an impressive, well-organised and well-attended party. We spent most of our time on the second dance-floor on the platform of the former station, and we even danced on the tracks for a bit towards the end. Benny made the observation that probably 80 percent of all of the men I assumed to be straight were actually gay. In addition to my assertion that 80 percent of all of the men in attendance appeared to be gay, that leaves a combined estimated total of 96 percent homosexuality. Still, they say that gays know where the best parties are! I won´t bore bore you,or myself with the finer details of the party, but we did go to an after party and I managed to slip out at the respectable hour of 8am.
When I awoke at lunchtime, I found Eduardo and Daniel deprived of their own living room due to the unholy sounds emanating from upstairs- Benny had come home with his new friend, Rafael. After a while, Benny came down and asked me to wait for him so we could go to the beach together, and after the other boy´s left I found little to amuse myself apart from a quaint 1970s illustrated English sex manual which had been a guft from Benny´s mother to his father. The book covered subjects ranging from how to pull, through masturbation and the psychology of public exposure, and as much as I enjoyed reading the book, for a very long time, is there a more sad vision alive than that of a perfectly healthy 24 year old man reading a sex manual, while his friend is upstairs doing most of the things the book describes, as well as a few that it doesn´t I suspect? So I left alone while the sun was still shining, and got the first bus back to Niteroi.
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October 10th, 2005
01:43 pm - Oh the humanity!!
We had a great weekend in a nearby beach resort, Arrail De Cabo, with Raquel´s uncle Tasizio. The weather was sublime,and the beaches were among the best I have ever seen- pure white sand and some of the clearest blue sea on the continent. There is plenty of stuff worthy of comment, but all I can think of is what a tit I am for allowing my feet to get sunburnt to a deep pink....
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October 3rd, 2005
02:11 pm
I woke up au 6 15am after about 3 hours sleep, and decided it wouldn´t be constructive to go back to sleep, especially as the sun was showing promise for the first time in weeks. Fortunately for me, Raquel hadn´t been able to sleep at all, so for once we decided to leave the house before dusk... We took the boat across to Rio, with the first stop the Port for Raquel topick up her sailing licence. She is now officially an amateur skipper and she has a piece of plastic to prove it, which is pretty fucking cool if you ask me!
Next,we went to an English school where I interviewed for a voiceover job on teaching resources. I am not sure if I quite speak the Queen´s English without the benefit of a pair of testicles inmy mouth, but hopefully they will call me back and grant me the feeling of self-worth that comes with your first paycheck in months.
Wandering through town, we caught the eye of a businessman atop a chair, having his shoes polished. The firdt thing he said upon finding out my nationality was that I should be sent into the Metro, and shot in the back of the head,which was an endearing opening gambit. Still, he seemed to be an affable enough chap,and fortunately the dialogue passed without argument.
We were back in Niteroi by midday, with the sun blazing overhead. Vague plans were made to go to visit some tourist attractions,but they all seem to be closed on a Monday,which is bloody typical. But there is no excuse for me sitting on the internet all afternoon on such a nice day, so Livejournal,I bid you farewell.
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October 2nd, 2005
08:08 pm - The Plop Thickens....
The other day, I actually topped my previous effort with a log reminiscent of Jordan´s blind baby Harvey´s arm... and no, I really don't have any thing better to write about these days... at least it went down tihout a hitch this time, though.
Well, we did go to a night club on the edge of Rio the other day which required a boat to get to, which was rather exciting. Raquels friends Kiko and Marcelo were djing again, and it would have been quite fun if it weren't for the fact that there weren't many people there, and I did the old routine of getting stupidly pissed by drinkink at the English pave with Brazilian hours- doing my headstand routine, dancing with my testicles out in full view of Raquel's friends and then appearing in bed the next day, not really remembering what I had been up to, or comprehending how I had got home.... This used to be jovial, student-like behaviour, but now I am just carrying on like a sad old man.
To be honest, living so far oout of the action and in lieu of the expected Brazilian sunshine, things haven't been fabulous lately and my greatest joys have been books and football. Raquel and I are both kind of stuck in the same situation of feeling like we are travelling without moving, and I think we both feel some thing needs to change if we are going to move forwards. Her boat trip has been delayed indefinitely, and I am just watching my funds disappear before my eyes. So, who knows, I could be back sooner rather than later. I still intend to visit some friends and do some shopping in Buenos Aires, and hopefully I will do some travelling in the south if Brazil and Uruguay. I am not sure if I will hold on into the new year though if some thing doesn't change soon. Watch this space.
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September 27th, 2005
01:44 am - Brown Baby Boy
Well, it's been a week of ups and downs I suppose. I managed to block the toilet with an enormous brown baby boy, and the problem has yet to be resolved. It's not fair. Raquel cooks most of my food, so why should I be punished for the reaction of my bowels? You don't expect sick people to look after themselves now, do you? On the other hand, there is no valid reason why she should have to come face to face with my illegitimate offspring. There's intimacy, and there's INTIMACY!!
The weather has been absolutely terrible as well. It has rained all week, and I haven't played football in 6 days, which is a bummer as getting back into that has been one of the best fruits of my trip. I bought some pretty expensive football shoes the other day, but I won't be able to use them if the rain keeps on coming. On the bright side, at least not living on the bright side has cooled things down a little, and reminded me of home.
Saturday night was the big Nokia Trends festival. We got our tickets from a tout, and paid less than we would have done, which was a good start. Most of the best acts were playing in Sao Paulo simultaneously, and we watched them in the satellite link-up area. In theory, this was a pretty cool idea, and it enabled us to see some great stuff that otherwise we would have missed, but there wasn't any kind of real atmosphere in the room. We saw The Human League, The Glimmers, some of Tiefschwarz and some of !!! on the screen, and Audio Bullys, some of Money Mark (remember him), some Asian Dub Foundation (remember them) and a few friends of ours live, in between bursts of the customary fierce, unprovoked arguments that Raquel and I inevitably get involved in whenver we are at a big festival. In fact, it got so bad that we left around 6am passing one of the City of God kids on the way out. As a sign of how bad the arguing was, we actually left just as Alter Ego were starting, whom I was really looking forward to seeing. We also missed Ellen Allien, Carl Craig, X-Press 2 and two of the best DJs in Brazil, Mau Mau and Anderson Noise, as well. I guess we also missed out on a few after parties, but considering the event finished at 10am my body would probably thank me if it could. Other notable happenings at the event- our friend Daniel dropped the tune that we recorded at his house drunk, in half an hour, with Raquel on lead vocals- unfortunately we didn't arrive early enough to hear it dropped, but it's funny nonetheless. We also purchased another random straggler, a guy called Bira who had been living in England for the past 18 months. Sadly, we lost him in the melee of our fighting before we could get his contact details, but it was fun while it lasted!.. Unfortunately, we never found Benny who was probably too busy indulging in the luxuries of the VIP area all night ;)
I did manage to achieve some thing more than sustenance on Sunday, as I read the whole of Orwell's Animal Farm for the first time... which was nice! I have started reading Brighton Rock again now as I didn't really bother reading it properly at college, and gave it to my Mum to do my research for me. God knows why I go in and out of literature so much, because when I can be bothered I always enjoy it as least as much as any thing else... Although, I am reading One Hundred Years of Solitude as well at the moment, and I don't seem to be getting into it as much as I hoped. I just don't seem to take to fantastical tales as much as some people- must be a deficit in my imagination or some thing. I will reserve judgement unti, I have finished it though...
Apart from that, I have watched a lot of American television. I just can't believe how much unintentional comedy there is to be found in the utter disbelief that American television invokes. I don't need to mention Fox News again, but there is also this spate of "self-improvement" programmes, like Extreme Makeoever, that just beggar belief. They literally carve up the insecure and surgifgy them into expressionless zombies, then whell them out in front of a parade of their most sycophantic friends, as if they have just done some thing remarkable or profound. Equally despicable is the American equivalent of Wife Swap where an All-American prissy slut of a woman has been dropped into the grasp of over-weight near-poverty, while a kind-hearted big momma type has been dropped off at the gates of a mansion, Will Smith in Bel-Air style. Of course, the poor family show the rich wife up as been completely spoilt and conceited, but that doesn't stop the producers from making the show look like some kind of political propaganda broadcast. At one point, the rich wife said that she can choose to live how she wants, because they live in America- cue an unexplained interlude of red, white and blue fireworks. What is it with these people that makes them so patriotic? Is it the fact that their annual military budget matches the rest of the world put together, and is 15 times the amount of money projected to feed the planet sufficiently for the year? It makes me sick that our own country feels so awkward and English at the party, that they feel the need to stand beside the well-built, popular jock in the hope that some of his respect and wealth will rub off on us, and the rest of the world will think twice about stealing our dinner money and bogwashing us.
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