Thoughts on Women

Thinking.   So far as I can tell, men think in linear terms: A > B > C, 1 > 2 > 3.   Women think in non-linear terms:  A > bread > Friday.  We get in trouble for assuming the opposite sex thinks the same way we do.  They don’t.  And since we don’t think the same way we’re in a poor position to predict their behavior no matter how well we know them.  Certain trends based on familiarity are the best we can do.  Men seem to be better than women at acknowledging that this difference exists, but as noted we’re limited in our ability to compensate for it. 

Relative vs. GF/Wife.   I don’t recall ever having any major problems with my mom, sister, or any female relatives.   All of them treat me fairly and honestly.  Which is a sad and strong contrast to my experience with women in a romantic context.

I’ve really had three major relationships, with women I’ll identify as LC, GG, and LS.   Each of these had their ups and downs and the first two are over as romantic relationships, though I remain on friendly speaking terms with LC.  I won’t complain about any of them, though I will comment as I see fit.

Honesty & Consistency.  Consistency is sadly a concept I rarely see recognized or followed by women, particularly women in a romantic relationship.  The most egregious example was when I was with GG in Bucharest.  Her husband – who she was supposedly in the process of divorcing – apparently had a GF on the side back in Holland.  This pissed her off big time.  Mind you, she also had a French BF who she was living with before, AND a Romanian BF who was himself married.  In addition to me.  So for awhile she had FOUR different men at the same time.  Then again, I suppose I should mark her down as the extreme end of inconsistency.

For men, so far as I can tell, 5% are scrupulously honest:  they would tell the truth about literally anything, even if it meant going to prison or dying.  At the other extreme are 5% who are hopeless liars, lying about everything, even when the truth is actually more favorable than the lie.  In the middle are the 90% who are mostly honest but lie occasionally when it’s in their best interests to do so for compelling reasons, e.g. to avoid jail or being killed.  They apply this honesty to friends and relatives equally to GFs or wives.  Perhaps marginally less honest with strangers or adversaries.  

For women, that 5% scrupulously honest do not exist.  Nope.  I’d say women are almost scrupulously honest (95%) with their male relatives (brothers, fathers, sons, etc.) and fairly honest (70%) with their husbands or boyfriends.  With strangers and adversaries that number drops to below 50%.  

Sadly, the women I dealt with were not completely honest with me.  I’m not talking about times at which we might have been fighting, arguing, or on bad terms, either broken up or about to break up.  I mean at the peak time at which we were on best terms, intimate, in love, and considering marriage.  Even at those times I could not count on 100% honesty from these women.  To encounter incomplete honesty at the optimal points in the relationship is disconcerting. 

Notwithstanding the sad circumstances under which some of these relationships have ended, I still look upon all of them favorably.  April 2006 in Bucharest was fun.  Five trips to Rio de Janeiro were enjoyable.  Trips to L.A. (2010) and Paris (2017) were also enjoyable and unforgettable.  I will not complain.  However, I would warn my male readers to always use your brain and never let love turn it off.  And I also bring this up to admonish my female readers to critically examine their own behavior relative to their loved ones and not solely focus on whether their male companions are treating them fairly or honestly.  It’s a two way street.

The Fast and the Furious

These are the series of import street racer films featuring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.  You can count of lots of modified cars – imports and muscle cars – some decent babage (mainly Michelle Rodriguez and Eva Mendes), street racing (no one has heard of drag strips), idiotic bro-mance dialogue, criminal hijinks, and finally some good scenery.

 Import Tuners 101.  The first Indy 500 was in 1911.  In the 1920s and 30s, bootleggers were souping up Model Ts, and later Ford V8s, to evade Federal liquor agents, a cat-and-mouse affair which developed into NASCAR.  In 1948, Hot Rod magazine was launched and NHRA established.  In 1964, Pontiac introduced the GTO, and soon thereafter Ford brought out the Mustang.  Despite this, the import tuner scene which started in California in the 1990s acts as though they invented this whole concept of modifying cars.

            Historically, the preferred vehicles for performance modification were the Model T, the Ford V8, the ’55-57 Chevy, the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, the GM A-bodies and from Mopar, the Charger, Challenger, Barracuda, and Road Runner/GTX.  Even AMC made the Javelin.  These were rear wheel drive, V8 cars made in America, designed from the ground up for performance.  The “hot rodder” concept was simply to take the largest displacement V8s which would usually only be available in the largest, full-size models, and stuff them in mid-size (or smaller) cars – the largest engine stuffed in the smallest car it would fit in.  The GTO was the perfect example: the 389 V8 under the hood of the Tempest/Lemans.

            In the 90s, someone discovered that Honda Civics and Acura Integras, plus a whole host of other Japanese cars, could also be modified.  These were cars with 4 cylinder engines, designed for maximum reliability and fuel economy with zero thought of performance.  Since these cars are giving up 4 cylinders to muscle cars, they are prohibitively expensive to modify for actual performance, i.e. nitrous oxide, superchargers or turbochargers, at least to bring them to the level where muscle cars start out, much less exceed the performance of any muscle car with similar modifications.  Not only can V8s be modified this way, they have been modified this way for ages (see above), and with twice the cylinders and 3-4 times the displacement (e.g. 6.0L V8 in 2005-06 GTO, three times as large as a 2.0L I4 but with only twice as many cylinders), they respond far better to these modifications than the 4 cylinder sewing machines do.

            Naturally, most import tuners can’t afford the $$$ for nitrous, turbo, etc., so they focused on such substantial mods as heavily tinted windows, triple blade windshield wipers, overpowered stereos with way too much bass, super low suspension, spoilers which looked like bizarre wings, tons of stripes and decals (e.g. “Type R” badges put on non-white Acura Integras), and coffee can mufflers.  If we can’t actually be fast, let’s at least LOOK like it may be fast….when it’s not.  Eventually, this scene earned recognition in a series of movies.  To be fair, American muscle does get a heavy dose of attention and respect, so I can’t complain 2 much.

 The Fast and the Furious (First).  Main location: Los Angeles.  Dominic Torreto (Vin Diesel) & Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) are the two main characters.  DT is a colorful and bad-ass, but somehow likeable and sympathetic, criminal who always has some sort of “operation” planned.   O’Connor is an LAPD officer who goes deep (deep deep) undercover to infiltrate DT’s gang and bring him down.  Almost all of the cars are implausibly modified imports, for which the usual “mod” is a surplus of nitrous oxide, ubiquitously referred as “Nozzzz” (NOS being the most popular aftermarket supplier).  Although drag strips have been in L.A. since the late 40s – NHRA being specifically established to get drag racing off the streets and onto the strips – all the racing is on the street, with cops and other drivers conveniently absent.  O’Connor manages to convince DT – but none of his henchmen – that he’s not a cop.  Of course he is.  The import tuner crowd is obnoxious, the races implausibly computer generated, and the dialogue is mostly macho bullshit.   Jordana Brewster plays Dom’s younger sister Mia, who O’Connor falls for, and Michelle Rodriguez is Letty, Dom’s girlfriend.

 2 Fast 2 Furious.  Main location: Miami.  O’Connor returns, but Dominic is MIA; Roman “Rome” Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) replaces him as the “crime partner”.  Two classic American muscle cars surface: a 1969 Yenko Camaro (427 equipped), and a Dodge Hemi Challenger R/T – after beating the owners of the two muscle cars in a pink slips race, the muscle winds up being the ride for the remainder of the film.  Eva Mendes provides the appropriate eye candy as undercover (!) Federal agent Monica Fuentes pretending to be the bad guy’s lover.  It’s Miami, so the bad guy, Verone, is a drug dealer.  O’Connor is offered the job of bringing him in, to wipe out his no-no (letting Dom go loose at the end of the first movie). 

 #3.  Tokyo Drift.  Main location: Tokyo, Japan.  O’Connor is absent, Dom has a minor cameo at the end.  The film is essentially Sean (Lucas Black) as a white guy in an Asian world – he miraculously learns Japanese almost immediately and goes to school amidst the Sailor Moon crowd, aside from Twinkie (Bow Wow) a cool black dude who acts as his guide to Japanese culture.  He bumps ugly with Drift King, the nephew of a yakuza warlord; DK’s partner Han teaches him how to “drift” in various ugly import tuner cars.  Finally Sean beats DK in a drift race at night driving his father’s 60s Mustang which had been (again) improbably modified with a Japanese engine and other parts for drifting.

 Fast & Furious #4.  Main location: California-Mexican border.  Dominic and O’Connor meet again.  They’re out to take down a Mexican drug lord named Braga, and have to drive through a mine tunnel under the border not once, but twice – a scene which ends up looking like Lando Calrissian’s escape from the 2^nd Death Star in the Milennium Falcon in “Return of the Jedi”.  Dominic’s Chevelle and Charger both feature here, plus O’Connor’s annoying rice rockets (Dominic to O’Connor: “Muscle beats imports…every time”).  Braga’s #2 man, Fenix, drives a nasty green Gran Torino – and was responsible for killing Letty, so there is a personal element to Dom’s beef with Braga.

 #5.  Fast Five, Main location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The gang escapes down to Rio – with Agent Rock (Dwayne Johnson) hot on their tail.  The finale looks like it winds up on the Rio-Niteroi bridge.  After some drama and excitement – theft of various cars from a train the desert, which looks like far Northeast Brazil – the gang decides to rob $100 million from corrupt Brazilian businessman Reyes, who looks a lot like Dunga, the last coach of the Brazilian national soccer team.  Remarkably, they persuade Federal agent Hobbs (Rock) to assist in the theft.   “Rome” returns to the gang for this episode. 

            Here we have more shooting than driving, and excellent scenery (Cristo Redentor and the beaches of Rio, plus some favela footage) than street racing – for which the main cars are late model Dodge Chargers.  To my knowledge, Rio has no street racing scene; gas has always been expensive, VW is the GM of Brazil, and none of the usual US muscle was ever imported to Brazil.  But Rio does have beautiful beaches and favelas full of ruthless drug dealers, so the crime and beauty element of the series could effectively be showcased in this movie.

 #6?  If the ending credits of #5 are any indication, there is an excellent chance that #6 will take place in Berlin, Germany.  None of the previous movies take place in Europe, and Han is seen driving to Berlin at the end of FF5.  “Sprockets!”

Brazilian Cinema

By now I’ve seen a fair amount of Brazilian films, which are mostly entertaining.  Some are violent and cynical, others are lighthearted and enjoyable.  They tend to fall into three categories.

 Rio de Janeiro.  Brazil’s capital until Brasilia took over in 1960, Rio is still arguably Brazil’s most important city, notwithstanding São Paulo’s larger population and wealth.  Its beaches, its Carnival, and its mountains all give it a unique beauty and provide an excellent setting for various films.

Blame It On Rio.  Not sure if this qualifies as a “Brazilian” film, even if it is set in Rio.  The major players are Michael Caine, Valerie Harper, and a very young, pre-boob-job Demi Moore.  Caine and his best friend take their teenage daughters to Rio for vacation; Caine’s wife (Harper) curiously declines to accompany them, for reasons which will become apparent later.  The best friend’s daughter (Michelle Johnson) turns out to have a huge crush on Caine, and is too deliciously sexy to resist – and the saucy heat and sensuality of the city and its erotic beaches conspire to destroy whatever scruples he may have had about sleeping with a girl he considers his de facto niece (thus “blame it on Rio”).  The best friend, of course, finds out that his daughter has a lover, and vows to murder the poor fool, whoever he is, much to Caine’s dismay and concern.  How things turn out is equally amusing and entertaining.

 The Girl From Rio (old).  Part James Bond, part Barbarella, minus Jane Fonda or Sean Connery, this bizarre spy story takes place in Rio circa 1968.  I found it alluring but kind of stupid, mostly feminine eye candy (some, but not much, nudity) and a view of Rio at that time.

 The Girl from Rio (new).  A completely different movie, featuring Hugh Laurie, the doctor from “House”.  He’s a hapless, bored banker in London whose wife is having an affair with his boss.  He dreams of leaving foggy, dull London in favor of sunny, hot Rio de Janeiro and its luscious Carnival festivities – and has one particular dancer in mind.  Having been dicked over by his wife and boss, and finding himself entrusted with the bank’s ample cash supply and no supervision over the Christmas holiday, he zips off to Rio, paying for a first class ticket (one way) in cash.  He even manages to find the woman, and all sorts of crazy misadventures ensue.  Excellent views of contemporary Rio de Janeiro and an equally engaging plot.

            I recall Eddie Murphy joking about Elvis’ movies: he couldn’t act, but the moviemakers thought, “hey, he’s Elvis.  Just let him sing the parts, and he’ll be OK.”  Similarly, the temptation is to bootstrap films set in Rio by featuring lots of dazzling footage of beaches, women, mountains…beaches again…etc. and not really bother with anything resembling a coherent or intelligent plot.  At least in this case, the story is pretty good – and Laurie makes a very sympathetic character.

 Bossa Nova.  Most of the actors and actresses in this film are Brazilian veterans of TV Globo’s novellas, with the exception of Amy Irving (Steven Spielberg’s ex-wife) who plays an American ex-flight attendant widow – her husband was a pilot who drowned one day.  She teaches English (yes, Brazilians go out of their way to learn English, unlike the amigos who live in our own country).  A corporate lawyer, Pedro Paulo (Antonio Fagundes), takes a liking to her, and they start a romance, despite her misgivings (having given up on romance and men for so many years after her husband’s death).  One of her students is a highly paid Flamengo player, Acacio (typical Brazilian football players with only one name) who is angling to be signed by an English Premier League team – he’s taking lessons to learn how to trash talk his English opponents.  He ends up in a romance with Pedro Paulo’s cute intern (Giovanna Antonelli).  Another of her students is a young Brazilian girl with an Internet boyfriend Gary.  Of course, it’s the movies, so NO ONE is how they claim to be.  Somewhat funny and endearing.

 The Man Who Copied.  This takes place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, source of Mrs Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, far, far south, almost in Argentina.  A humble “copy machine operator” (Lazaro Ramos, also in "Cidade de Deus" and "Man of the Year"), Andre, who lives with his mom and has an extremely modest income, falls in love with Silvia, a pretty white girl who lives across the street from him, and whose window he peeps into every night with binoculars.  Very much aware of how “little money” + “lame ass job” = NO woman, he tries to find a way to purchase a robe for his mother, from Silvia’s clothing store, and impress her that he isn’t completely worthless.  Along the way he forges counterfeit reais (Brazilian currency) using the sophisticated new color copier at his workplace, and finally conspires to rob the armored truck which services the bank across the street, only to find, to his horror, that the girl’s father is the security guard for the bank and recognizes him from the heist. It’s not really violent or funny, more like modestly charming.  And it turns out that people from Porto Alegre have an inferiority complex with regard to Rio de Janeiro, and want to move up there.  We’ll see about that (there IS a Rio de Janeiro ingredient to the story…).

 Traficantes/Crime.  Somewhere along the line, Brazilian filmmakers got the impression that foreigners associated Brazil with RIO DE JANEIRO and scantily clad women in dental floss bikinis, and Carnival.  But what about the plight of Rio’s poor, in the slums (favelas)?  What about the crime, drugs, and despair?  Aren’t we, as Brazilian filmmakers, doing the favelados cariocas a grave injustice by not showing their problems to the world?  Shouldn’t we be making violent, bloody, depressing films, something like what Quentin Tarantino would make if he was Brazilian?  So they came out with these films:

 Cidade de Deus (City of God).  This was so well esteemed it competed at our Oscars in four categories – none of which involved foreign films.  Alas, it won none of them.  But for a movie in Portuguese, that’s remarkable in itself.  The film follows two young black boys as they grow up in the slum called City of God, which had been set up in the 1960s to pull the poor people away from the city and give them a new place to live.  Eventually this new city devolved into slums anyway, and two separate gangs competed for dominance.  Even small children were drawn into, and recruited, by the drug lords.  One of the kids takes a liking to photography and manages to avoid taking sides – and earns the trust of both gangs.  The other one is ruthless and violent, and kills his way to the top of his gang. The film is VERY violent.

 Elite Squad.  This features Rio’s elite anti-drug squad, essentially a heavily armed SWAT team of “untouchables”.  Wagner Moura stars as one of the main SWAT team members. The regular police are grossly underpaid and undertrained, so they tend to be brutal and corrupt.  The story follows several characters and covers some students and drug dealers.  The most horrible part – barely watchable – is when the drug dealers kill an NGO (social worker) who had unwittingly invited a cop into the gangster’s inner circle: they stack him up in tires and douse him with gasoline, burning him alive. 

 Manda Bala (Send a Bullet).  This is a documentary on corruption and crime in Brazil, focusing on a network of illicit frog farms in the north of the country and an egregiously corrupt governor; and the scourge of kidnapping in São Paulo.  The kidnappers cut off their victims’ fingers and ears and send them to the families to encourage ransom.  Flush with their ill-gotten ransom cash, they frequently “share the wealth” with their fellow favelados, modern-day Robin Hoods stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.  There’s not much actual violence, but the segments about reconstructive surgery, to “rebuild” an ear for a rich girl who had hers cut off completely by a kidnapper, are somewhat gruesome.  It’s not a pretty story.

 Bus 174.  This is a documentary in Portuguese with English subtitles, regarding an incident which took place in Rio de Janeiro in June 2000, just two weeks before I arrived there on my first trip.  A homeless man, Sandro de Nascimento, hijacked a bus along the main street which goes past the Jardin Botanico.  All 7-8 passengers on the bus were women.  He held them hostage for several hours.  The bus was quickly surrounded not only by police and SWAT teams, but also TV news media.  They interview the women on the bus, Sandro’s aunt, his adopted mother, various street kids who knew him, various journalists, a drug dealer, and some cops. 

            Eventually Sandro got off the bus with one of the women, and a cop charged him, shooting at point blank range.  Not only did he miss Sandro, he HIT the hostage!  D’oh!  (Chief Wiggums in SWAT gear).  For his part, Sandro shot the woman 3 times, so she died practically on the spot.  Then the crowd, a mob, was about to lynch Sandro himself (no one was impressed that the police didn’t take him out with a sniper, as they had plenty of chances) so the police threw him into a van, and then strangled him in the back of the van.  A full, 100%, complete goatfuck by the police.  For their part, the police argued that they couldn’t take a shot at him, even with a sniper, because he was on TV and no one wanted the responsibility of killing the man on live TV.  And many of the commentators observed that the media made the situation much worse by giving Sandro an outlet and putting the police on the spot. 

            For his part, Sandro had been 8 years old when his mother was brutally murdered right in front of him.  He was homeless since then, a street kid who did cocaine and glue sniffing, and had been in and out of Rio’s corrupt and brutal jail system several times.  A few social workers commented on his particular case.  The bottom line is that blame appears to be spread equally to everyone.

            Remarkably, for a documentary on such a nasty and depressing topic, like “Elite Squad” and “Manda Bala”, this has lots of fantastic overhead helicopter footage of Rio de Janeiro, which makes the city look much nicer than it is on the streets.  I suppose they wanted to juxtapose Rio’s beauty with the hard reality of street kids and a fucked up criminal justice system.

 The Man of the Year.  No, not the Robin Williams film.  It takes place in Rio de Janeiro, but part of the city I’ve never seen and don’t recognize. Wagner Moura – AGAIN!  Man, this guy is in every film.  Some actor, Murilo Benicio – who looks like a cross between Ron “Office Space” Livingston and Colin Farrell – plays Maiquel, who recently dyed his hair blond and hooked up with the girl who took care of it.  He kills Suel (Moura), a local hoodlum, simply due to a disagreement: Suel accused him of being “viado” (queer) due to the blondness.  Then something strange happens: instead of getting in trouble, he’s a celebrity.  The cops not only don’t arrest him, they thank him.  The guy’s teenage jailbait chick moves in with him.  The local dentist fixes his teeth for free – and gives him more assignments.  He winds up in a corrupt “security agency” which is more like a fancy protection racket.  As always happens when the hero gets everything he wants but is somehow unhappy, it all falls apart.  His associate Marcão (played by Lazaro Ramos, from “Cidade de Deus” and “The Man Who Copied”) gets caught with a kilo of coke – too much for even the corrupt cop Santana to fix.  Eventually he has to solve things: and he does.

 Out in Nowhere.  Set aside from the RIO RIO RIO movies, and the BANG BANG movies, are a third genre which are more low-key, philosophical, sometimes a little racy, and set in far off, remote parts of Brazil.

 Bye Bye Brasil.  This is an older film, from the 70s, taking place in various parts of Rio: the Amazon jungle, Salvador, Recife, Belem (mouth of the Amazon), and Brasilia.  Jose Wilker and Fabio Junior star in this.  Wilker is a cynical, jaded, circus performer, calling himself Gypsy Lord (in goatee and guyliner) who tours small towns in the northeast of Brazil, including Recife and Salvador, as the “Caravana Holidei”, which includes his mistress Salome and a mute black giant, Swallow.  FJ and his pregnant wife Dasdo manage to hop onboard in Salvador and follow them to Recife and Belem.  Unfortunately they have to compete with the “fishbones” (TV antennas), though each town only has ONE TV and everyone watches it together in the town square instead of paying attention to Wilker and his troupe.  After unsuccessfully pimping out his wife – FJ ends up in bed with Salome, and Wilker (Gypsy Lord) with Dasdo – he decides to take Dasdo to Brasilia, parting ways, at least temporarily, with the Caravana Holidei. 

 Cidade Baixa.  More of an erotic low-key adventure film.  Two friends, white (Wagner Moura..again) and black, in Salvador, Bahia, are enthralled by the same girl, a blonde named Karina, and their friendship is warped and challenged by their competition for her affections.  This has a modest degree of violence and a better helping of nudity and sex.

 Station Central.  A more recent film, which starts off in Rio de Janeiro.  A young boy, living with his mother, sees her killed by a bus in front of him.  An older woman reluctantly takes care of him, only vaguely aware that the boy’s father lived up in the northeast.  Despite her cynicism, she takes pity over him and hitches rides up the coast to the dry deserts of Pernambuco and other such states (which remind me of Arizona).  Many of the small towns along the way resemble the ones in Bye Bye Brasil.  Eventually the boy does find his family – a very sad and rewarding scene. 

 Behind the Sun.  Same area (northeast desert) but back in 1910.  A family, the Breves, has a sugar cane farm – and a vendetta with a competing family, Ferreiras.  Their eldest son, Inacio, has been killed by the Ferreiras, so Tonio, the second oldest, kills the Ferreiras’ father.  This means their son, whats-his-name (played by Wagner Moura), will soon be coming to hunt down and kill Tonio.  In the meantime, a “circus” consisting of an eccentric scoundrel, Salustiana (no idea why the guy’s name ends in –a) and a beautiful girl, Clara, comes by; Tonio falls in love with Clara, and she with him.  However, Tonio is a marked man, so it’s only a matter of time before the Ferreiras come by to extract vengeance to keep the cycle of death and violence going so long as someone’s left to kill.

 House of Sand.  Basically a chick flick about a woman (Aurea) and her daughter (Maria) stuck in Maranhão, a province of Brazil in the far northeast on the coast with white desert sand.  The “kicker” is that the actresses switch roles.  When the daughter has her own daughter, the movie jumps about 20 years into the future (starting out in 1910, jumping to 1919, and eventually to 1940 and 1969, and the actress playing the mother, now plays the daughter, and the actress playing the daughter now plays the new daughter.  Anyhow.  Despite the switcheroo, it manages to avoid being confusing.  But it is a chick flick, and takes place 100% in this desolate but also beautiful part of Brazil.

 Mango Yellow.  This one takes place in the present time, in Recife.  It’s a bit offbeat and raunchy – some sex & nudity, plus some other disturbing images.  Various different colorful characters are here: Dunga, a flaming bicha, who has the hots for Wellington, a straight Romario-lookalike who works in the slaughterhouse and cheats on his attractive but superreligious wife Kika, with Daisy, a far less stunning but easy “puta”.  Isaac, another weirdo, has something for corpses (but he’s not a necrophiliac) for which he trades weed.  There’s an overweight woman, Aurora, who applies her oxygen mask to her second set of lips, and a pretty barmaid, who shows Isaac that (A) she doesn’t wear panties and (B) that her hair downstairs matches the set upstairs.  The locale is dingy, dirty, and rundown, but very bright and hot anyway. 

 The Middle of the World (DVD).  Nosso amigo, Wagner Moura, returns again – as the father of a family traveling from the northeast to Rio de Janeiro by bicycle.  They have to make money various ways – the mother makes hammocks in one city, she sings Roberto Carlos songs with one son, but more often than not they go hungry.  The father insists he needs R$1000 ($300 US) per month, but can’t seem to find anyone offering that kind of money.  Eventually they do make it to Rio; it’s a bit Kerouac-ish in a way, but with excellent views of northeast Brazil. 

God is Brazilian.  Antonio Fagundes (from “Bossa Nova” and countless novellas) plays God, who is tired and looking for a vacation so he can go off to remote parts of the universe and watch supernovas explode.  But he needs a saint to run things in his absence, and has one in mind.  Along the way tags Taoca (yes, Wagner Moura again), a ne’er-do-well trying to escape a particularly nasty creditor, and a girl Mada (somewhat of a provocative yet Virgin Mary figure) who helps them out.  They travel around the northeast of Brazil (it looks like the desert, Sergipe and Natal) discussing theology and ending up in various humorous situations.  In many ways, it’s a Brazilian version of “Oh God!”, that irreverent comedy from way back with George Burns and John Denver.  Leave it to Brazilians to be both deeply religious and irreverent at the same time.

Faith No More - Epic (Rock in Rio 2 - 1991)

Their top single, performed live at Rock in Rio 2 (Maracana?). I couldn't find the video. Is it just my Friday morning net connection, or is this choppy? Anyhow, enjoy as best you can.