And so Curitiba is illuminated...

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And so it is, Megavideo. I have 54 minutes before I find out what happened in Mad Men. So I'll update this past weekend.

Surprisingly, there is more to Curitiba than the triangle pathway I've taken to the supermarket on most days. More to it than the Shop Curitiba! shopping mall.

Friday night, Bela and Mari get home. They work a lot. I work less than the homeless here. Studying Portuguese with free online Web sites and phrase books and dictionaries, it is what it is. But, this was the weekend, and that means whatever work you do do, you eliminate it and enjoy yourself.

Bela needed to go to the store to pick up food/beer for her friends coming in for I will describe later. I went with to get out of the house. Friday was abysmal. Rained for 6 hours straight before I stopped counting. Supermarket, 2 bottles of wine, 12 pack of Sol beer, bread, cheese, I'm rollin. We get back and make dinner, open up the bottle of wine. Mari assigned me homework, to watch the soap opera and find five words and use them in sentences. We were 40 minutes late. The entire show is incredibly slow flash backs. The show is on 6 times a week in prime time, so I guess they create that many episodes by this incredibly beautiful woman lead just having flash backs of twirling around in the ocean in Rio. It's a good business strategy.
One bottle of wine down.
Mari goes to bed because she's working on a Saturday. A Saturday.
2nd bottle opened.
We start watching Panico TV, a bunch of sketches, the best one being two Brazilian dudes trying to get autographs on their Brazil passports from the Argentina futeball team after they were defeated in the WC qualifiers.
2nd bottle finished.
At 12:30 am, or 00:30, her friends arrive. "Do you want to go out?" "Sim."
We get in the car and go, park, get out, okay, it's a strip of bars. Over there is the Irish Pub. Ahh, the American bar. A Japanese bar...and the one we were going to...I don't know.
I felt safe though because when we walked in they took a metal-detector wand to me. No guns in here! To the right of me was a bunch of...ticket booth things. Didn't think much of it. They handed me a sheet of graph paper. Didn't think much of it.
Walk in and it's crowded. This is a Lincoln Park bar, I quickly realize. No...no it isn't that bad, sorry. But I walk in, to the right side, separated, is a dance floor, stage with a live band. To the left is the bar, with the dozens of bottles of Johnny Walker. I'm introduced to several Kraft employees. Say my hellos and make my way to the bar. "Uma Bohemia por favor" NAILED it.

He then looks at me and says something. I repeat what I said. He makes a square thing with his hands. It's hard to explain how uncomfortable not understanding service people makes me in Brazil. It's the worst. I look around for something of a clue. Other people are handing him the graph paper. It's a tab. You pass them the tab and they mark it. I already had a 30 mark on it, because dudes were charged $30 reais. Sexism has not cured itself from Brazil, I see.

Then, I get introduced to more people and then Bela waves to follow her to the dance floor. I maneuver my way around. and follow what I think are people I know...and then we get to the part where all you have is a strobe light. Following people in a strobe light is bullshit. At first I thought it would be easier because it's like you are moving in slow motion, you know, but really everyone just looks like the crowd in NHL '94 and your mind can only process things in binary code.

Flash, flash, 1, band starts singing pink, look for heads, 27s, god dammit. Band starts singing No Doubt. god dammit. 110110101010101 I shield my eyes and just start repeating "excuse me" in Portuguese and back up into the light. I decide to just wait there. I'm not going back to that hell.
Bela finds me. More beer, this time, flawless. Then the bartender says thank you. In English. Bastard.
So then back to the dance floor. It's hard to explain just how much this cover band was like being in guitar hero. They were singing guitar hero songs, they had chosen the girl singer, the bald guitar player and the black bassist. The drummer was playing behind, plexiglass or something. The lighting was the same. The stage was the same. Uncanny. red blue blue green 100101101
I started talking to some dude from Rio who studied at UNC. We talked about how much I hated southern people. He didn't relate, but he did say they kept asking him where Brazil was in Africa. I then started talking like I knew something about the Baile Funk movement in Rio. I must've been convincing. He offered to take me to Rio and show me around. Plans are so much fun to make with people you'll never see again.
We left and were at that checkout ticket counter. Passed them my tab. $75 reais. I was miscalculating what he was saying because I don't know what the hell anyone is ever talking about. Because instead I watched Band of Brothers all summer. Which is a great series, perfectly cast.
And then we're driving and we stop and I'm so ready to sleep but hey hey were at a sushi restaurant. Except it was just raw fish in some like seaweed cone with rice. And I ate it. And then I sat there while people talked and couldn't even think. We get back as the sun rose.

When I woke up the room was spinning, and I wondered if it was spinning counter what it would in the US. I closed my eyes. I opened them and watched the TV drift away.

We had lunch at Habibis. It is a fast food chain here specializing in Arab food. The mascot was a very arab, very mustached man in a fez hat. I couldn't help but wonder how awesome this place would be to place next to a southern Baptist Church.

The ordering process was difficult because everyone was ordering more than one thing. I didn't bother with that. "Beirut, por favor" Unsuccessful. how do you miss pronounce Beirut? I don't know.

So then the reason for buying beer this Saturday was a festival being held by Bohemia beer, product of inBev, where they asked the bars to compete for who had the best food to eat with Bohemia. Think taste of Chicago for a one night launch, targeted to adults, on a smaller scale. That's the best I can come up with. It's kind of like something where there's music, beer and food. Something...

But so pregaming begins. And everyone is speaking Portuguese. For the first half hour I try to focus on words that I could learn, or expressions. Then I just started creating conversations for them based off of gestures. "I just caught a big fish! This big!" "Where's Francisco? There he is! Where's Francisco? There he is!" etc.

So then a cab ride and we're in a big warehouse lined with tiny food vendors, a huge stage with some ... Brazilian music acts. Go to a place where you give them money and they give you tickets that say $2 $3 $5...and if anyone can explain to me what his does, I'd really be pleased. Is it just to make sure things move faster at the actual vendors because they don't have to give change? Is it just a needless that one person did and then everyone copied for no reason?

I should mention that at this huge collection of people the reputation of Brazilian women, for me, was realized. Everyone was beautiful. And especially not homogenous. Blonde and brunette and tall and short. And medium. You could look anywhere and be entertained. Ordering anything was easy because every vendor had just one item. All I had to do was point. And point I did.

I spoke to a lot of people that night. One man was from Chicago. We had little in common. The conversation was short. I had women to look at, and this guy...was a man.

Mari translated some Samba songs for me...all I remember was "I am an only child, I have to go to my home and mind it" or something. It was Chris Martin quality.

I danced some dance with one of their friends. I was awful. In gym class in my youth they taught us some dances. The macarena was one. They were trying to teach us social skills. The electric slide. The waltz. None of these dances was this dance. U.S. public school fail :(

And then a couple more fried items I knew not what, a few more beers spilled on my shirt, and we are taking a cab ride home. And I slept.

And I woke up, and watched the TV drift away.