mad cachorros

Brazilians love blond dogs.

For serious, there are enough golden retrievers and yellow labs here to make Travis feel maybe not so bad about having to shoot the rabies out of Old Yeller.

I mentioned this observation to a Brazilian friend, and he told me it's because of the movie Marley and Me.

And I laughed.

And I laughed.

Who better to set trends than Owen Wilson? You? Me? Marley? Me? Dupree?

Any which way, the prevalence of labs and retrievers gives the city an awesome atmosphere, or maybe just accentuates the already existing one: spastic energy, frenzied enthusiasm, nonstop nose-to-crotch joie de vivre. When São Paulo gets excited, it pees a little. If you throw a stick, São Paulo will bound after it, break it, drag it back to you all deformed and whine until you throw it again. I don't know what that means.

But for real, I can't stop thinking of what a WIN this is for Brazil. Think about it: the last time a breed of dog became trendy for a stupid reason in the US it was because Paris Hilton carried a chihuahua around in her purse. Then a couple of years later there appeared a generation of refugee chihuahuas, probably abandoned around the time their owners realized dogs can shit in purses.

Well Marley and Me is a few years old now and the Brazilians have shown themselves to be not as fickle as fans of ... what the hell did Paris Hilton do again? Act? Reality show? I guess just be everyone's favorite anorexic head on a stick.

tickby snapped this noise in Ibirapuera Park

It could be that they're just living out the entire Marley and Me plot, like owning the blond dog from puppyhood to deadhood, but even then, even if the loyalty is to the trend and not the dogs, it is a win, because even if Owen Wilson is kind of a dumb blond, he is not Paris Hilton.

Anyway, as a dog lover, and an (obviously) excellent judge of character, I conclude:

Brazil: 10
USA: 0

the house

Wait, I forgot to mention that we have a house. We moved in over a month ago. I no longer live in a hotel with a minibar. And to be honest I had loads of time during those Last Days of the Minibar to write and post blog pieces, but I didn’t feel like it.

Often I rather felt like watching Netflix and reading Twilight porn and smoking on the balcony. I would apologize, but I’m not sorry.

And yes, I know, I should have posted daily and chronicled the process of finding a home in São Paulo, one that others might find useful should they relocate. But again, I didn’t feel like it. 

And anyway the particulars of finding a home here were the very things rendering me unable to do anything but watch and read crap and smoke, so why, why would I record that noise and spread frustration and misery like the Bubonic plague?

(i just wanted to say Bubonic. heheh. bube.)

I will give you the midget version: three houses stood out; we called them the monkey house, the pirate house, and The House. 

We moved into The House. 

I wanted the monkey in a major way (cause monkeys rule) and Mark wanted the pirate (cause he likes hammocks and rum) until he saw The House. 

We’re here mainly because it is has a yard for the dogs, a modern kitchen and an affordable price tag. 

Then there are the things I never dared dream of, like the in-the-ground pool, the garden house, the jacuzzi, the walk-in closet. Things that kind of don’t exist in New York unless you're johnny pockets.

The only concern I have about this place is that it is a house. 

I haven’t lived in a house in years because I don't like them. I like apartments, noise, movement. Plus I'm incompetent. 

My first day alone here I spent maybe forty minutes trying to figure out how to turn off the light in the driveway before realizing it’s a motion sensor and all I had to do was stop trying and go away. I’m certain that this is a metaphor for something, I just don't know what it is. 

sinta se em casa, bichos

the honking

It's not new to me. Men in New York holler at women all the time. When I lived in Harlem dudes made me feel like a celebrity named Snowflake.

Here's the difference though: in New York, men do it in full awareness of what they're doing. It's not involuntary. They show their presence-of-mind with a dumb smile, a bobbling head, or a weird about-to-catch-a-football stance, some mixy of sheepishness and brazenness.

But in São paulo dudes honk at women the way you or I flick the right turn signal when we see our exit coming up. It is reflexive. I saw a girl with an onion booty crossing the street to what amounted to a horn-tapping version of the wave. But the men barely seemed to be looking at her. Just a glance, before returning to their phone calls, yelling-at-kids, etc. 

So unmoved do they seem by the juicy asses they acknowledge that you wonder if the acknowledgement has become a tedious chore. You look up to see who is honking at you and the honker gives an impassive nod, as though you just thanked him for something basic and unworthy of thanks.

(Is 'tedious chore' redundant?) 

I think this is dangerous. Because women don't react to car horns honking. They seem accustomed to thinking that a horn-honk is merely show of appreciation for their tight jeans or short skirt, or in my case, slutty dress they didn't realize was so old it's see-through. So they tune it out and stare straight ahead. What will happen when a honk is a warning that some brakes are failing or a rogue tomato cart is gaining on a woman fast?

I'm no anthropologist, but I wonder if this is all because men in the USA are not supposed to honk and holler, while men in Brazil are totally supposed to honk and holler. In the US it is still fun for men because they know that they are doing something degrading and wrong. Here beneath the equator, where sin does not exist, degrading women is no longer fun.

This makes me feel sad for Brazilian men. I'm going to start a campaign of like BRING THE FUN BACK FOR DUDES and try to convince pundits to discourage men here from honking at women. So they can start enjoying it again. 

this taxista honked at some chicks and Tickby snapped his photo immediately

magical médico

I saw a doctor yesterday, and I’m proud. 

Not just of myself, for finally nutting up and going, but mostly of myself, for talking to him for I think five whole minutes before he buzzed for a nurse who spoke English. 

We even chatted while waiting for her. I learned that he has an eleven-year-old granddaughter in Fort Lauderdale who has become a local tennis sensation in spite of having contracted diphtheria during the reconstruction of the South. 

Maybe it was this feeling -that my Portuguese is getting really good- that led me to keep saying yes when asked if I understood things I didn’t really understand. 

A great snowball was born; as his confidence in me grew so did mine and vice versa. Soon he was joking and laughing in Portuguese and I was laughing along in what I’d bet my soul were all the right places. I threw lots of ‘ohh’-s and ‘aha’-s on top to make it pretty.

Then he sat and wrote - spanning two pages of a double-sized prescription pad - what looked like a college essay or the beginning of a novel. He talked a lot about how and when to take each of the six thousand medications he was prescribing, and I think at one point asked if I was allergic to something or other. (I said não; I’m probably not.) 

The English speaking nurse was long gone at this point. (She’d pretty much just walked in, said ‘what you have is viral. We can only treat it symptomatically.’ and then left. I wondered if she was some drunken trick pony hired only to do that.) 

Several people have hinted that the climate here gives gringoes the flu. Which makes sense. If I were a region in South America i would  give gringoes the flu too.

So I figured I’d just continue pretending to understand him, bring the handwritten tome to the pharmacy, pretend to understand the pharmacist, then at some point call one of my friends and make him translate.

Alas, I was too proud. 

Well, a mixy of being too proud, unable to read the doctor's handwriting, and too lazy to type and email what he'd written even if I could read it. (I guess this is kind of bullshit since at that point I had a typed printout from the pharmacist.) 

my sick legs

I figured I would watch Justified on Netflix and occasionally stare at the pile of medication. The answers would come.

And they did, in the form of our realtor dropping by to pick up some paperwork. All I wanted was for her to tell me which ones to take when, but she's German, so she also opened all the boxes and read the little booklets to make sure I wasn't allergic to anything. 

By the time she left I was too tired to start taking them, so I decided to watch more Justified and start anew the next day. And it's working! I feel better.

não falo

I keep thinking I should know more Portuguese by now. 

We got here in early May and I still haven’t set up my voicemail because I have no idea what the shit the automated prompter is saying. 

I’m really good at saying ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Thank you’ and ‘I don’t speak Portuguese’ and ‘I have three dogs.’ Which is kind of enough to get by. If you’re as good as I am at gesticulating.

The lessons are wonderful and terrible at the same time - I love the Portuguese tutor a lot when he’s telling me about cool places to visit and Brazilian music to check out. The problem is that when he starts telling me to do homework or repeat sentences after him I fantasize about keying his car and hiding slugs and turds in his desk.

This is of course unreasonable because he doesn’t have a car and our lessons are usually at a Starbucks in Itaim Bibi. If he has a desk I don’t know where it is and I’ve never seen it. But I can’t help it. Learning stuff makes me feel like a restless teenager again. I keep thinking I’m angry at my mom and I haven’t spoken to her in weeks.

Also, it’s physically hard. Not just sitting still and nodding a lot, but trying to make sounds I’ve never made before, at least not in a row. I keep thinking Brazilian peoples' tongues must look like those flippy little boneless dudes in Cirque du Soleil. It took me maybe an hour to be able to say ‘qual e o seu nome’ (what is your name) because it’s like: ‘kwow-ay-oh say-oh gnome-ee’ --but fast. My lips are not used to so much rapid scrunching. It feels like doing kegels with my mouth. I’m sure it’s worth it, but for now: tedious.

There are wonderful moments though, like learning that the name Ruth in Portuguese is spelled ‘Rute’ and pronounced ‘Hooch.’ In fact, why don’t I just stop yammering and end this post with a list of my favorite Portuguese words:

anos (years)

apenas (only)

pagina (page)

pergunte (ask)

canta (sing) <-- pronounced ‘cunta’

assado (roasted)

suco (juice)

house hunting

If middle class Brazilian marriages last longer than others, it might be because nobody ever has to share a bathroom.

Like parking spaces, toilets outnumber people in many São Paulo apartments. I doubt it's because of any regulations on toilet-use like with cars, but it's a curious illustration of decadence.

Mark and I have started having fun arguments in our search for a home:

"No, NO! Look, it only has seven bathrooms, what if we have six people over and everyone needs to take a dump at the same time? What are we supposed to do, share?"

Another phenomenon new to me: uncredited toilets. In New York real estate listings, every square millimeter is shouted about. Large closets become 'flex bedrooms' and a wide windowsill is described as a 'flex balcony.'

But here you'll see bizarre shit like a listing that reads 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and 1 guest pizzad, But a look at the floor plan shows five bedrooms, four bathrooms, one guest pizzad. Who the hell undersells an apartment on bathrooms?

I discovered that the unmentionable bath and bedrooms are part of the 'Service Area,' sometimes called 'maid's quarters.' These are the accommodations built for your servants of course, and naturally they don't count as real bathrooms and bedrooms, because you wouldn't want to use them. They are small, without amenities like pretty tiling and decorative fixtures, and universally miserable-looking.

Before we made the leap here I read a lot of gringo expat blogs, several of which celebrated the fact that in Brazilian culture, 'Hurrah! Everyone has a maid!'

Oh really, assholes? Does your maid have a maid? Does her maid have a maid? Does your driver have a driver? Who does your gardener's garden?

Check this out, from an otherwise amusing gringa blog: "...visiting in-laws, end of year festivities, carnival, sick children and school holidays.  The last in the line of things to stand between me and my ‘me time’ was my maid.  She was hospitalized for a week and almost died.  If it was painful for her, it was for me too, stuck at home doing chores instead of indulging my yoga, ballet and lunch habits.  Thank God she came back."

Did you just throw up in your mouth? OMG me too! Elsewhere in the same post, Gringamel (I just made this up! It's like Gargamel from The Smurfs, but for mean gringas! Shut up.) complains about how it's hard to get used to having another adult in your home who knows your business. Then she complains about how she doesn't like hearing TMI about her maid's personal life, personal information which she then reveals on her blog.

If i had a job right now I would feel quite superior to to this Gringamel...

the robot and the slip n slide

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Brazilian television.

From the small sample of it I've seen (none during primetime) I've had enough orgasmic WTF moments to last several lifetimes.

Let's start with the robot:

As I sat one afternoon in a miserable waiting room, I began to notice that nobody around me was miserable. They seemed downright pleased. I followed their collective gaze to a large TV, on which a twelve-foot storm trooper-like robot was dancing.

But by dancing I mean the white man's overbite style: step-tap step-tap, swaying side to side. like, not dancing, but 'dancing.'

On either side of this robot were two young women with huge breasts and juicy asses (there's no other way to describe their asses) in tank tops and hot pants, also dancing the white man's overbite, though with a little more wiggle and grace than the robot.

This went on for a full five minutes.

In the studio audience were hundreds of screaming fans, most of whom were young attractive females.

After an astoundingly long time a white-haired gentleman appeared with a microphone and seemed to be the emcee. He interviewed one of the screaming juicy-assed fans in the audience and people on and around the TV cheered.

Next a young attractive man in tight clothing arrived on stage and joined the robot and girls dancing.

Almost immediately this young man was beaten off the stage with a foam noodle wielded by the older emcee. The audiences roared approval.

That very night i begged my best friend back in New York to come visit as soon as possible. I'm afraid that once I understand Portuguese the experience of these shows just won't be the same and I'd like to share it with her, preferably stoned.

Now lets get to the asses on the Slip 'n Slide:

Late one sleepless night I landed on what was perhaps a gameshow.

About a dozen women standing in a row, every other one young, buxom, beautiful and in a bikini.

Every other one was fully clothed, less groomed, older-looking and ok, several were large folks. I would later learn that these were the bikini girls' moms.

All were standing on a very large grassy hill, where a regular Slip 'n Slide - complete with the sad tiny 'splash pool' - was arranged. It looked greased with something like dish soap.

Now I grew up on shows like Fun House and GUTS and Double Dare and Wild and Crazy Kids, shit filmed on sound stages or in custom-built parks, with multimillion dollar jungle gyms and circus gear installed. A Slip 'n Slide on a hill already seemed way more practical.

I knew it was a game show because they were introducing the contestants with still shots of each of them on the hill in her bikini, followed by five second clippies of each turning around and shaking her ass.

Beside their asses would appear their stats: age, height, weight, and some stuff I'm not brazilian enough (YET) to translate. These ass shaking and stat displays were accompanied by voiceovers from each girl's mom, and capped off with a shot of each mom woman looking serious and nodding solemnly.

Next the girl in question would walk toward the Slip 'n Slide, where she was handed a life-sized toy chicken.

Then, on a LOUD go-ahead from the host, she'd crouch and begin her slippery decent to the splash pool.

With fascinating agility the camera crew were able to track each ass as it trembled with the turbulence of the irregular terrain beneath the yellow tarp. American rock music played for the duration of each run.

After each splash landing the mom-figure would talk again, apparently commenting on her daughter's performance. More than one wept, overwhelmed with pride.

Spike, get on a plane.