Bizarre Brazil

So the Christ the Redeemer won the (very suspicious) election to the new 7  Wonders of the World? Don’t worry: The other Brazilian candidate was even worst. Now you’ll know Borba Gato*, The Wonder Wide Waste:

*Borba Gato is a 17th century (1649-1718) Brazilian pioneer and a kind of God’s Scourge to the native indians. The statue on the video is a 10 meters high (30 feet) alien capable of scaring even the smartest of the kids. The video is a inauguration of the statue’s candidacy for the mayor seat next year. We hope Borba Gato will at least ban the billboard ban. Go, Borba Gato, go. I’ll vote for him.

Via Pedro Doria

Unemployed since the eighties, He-Man left Greyskull to live in Brazil. Though he’s a pitiful failure since he was fired from Hollywood, he’s still powerful in some ways, so this motorbike shop employs him as a debt collector.

Thanks, Solon.

So this southerner young couple was a bit bored with urban semi-civilized Brazilian life and decided to live Diogenes style: in a barrel, literally. They bought a big oak barrel from a neighboring winemaker, and installed it in a small patch of land in a hill (1400 meters above sea level) far from any town in a mountain called Montenegro (Black Mountain) in the southern Rio Grande do Sul state. In this video you can see them showing to a national TV reporter how they use and recycle everything on their property, how they live “close to nature and birds” and so on.

“In a full moon night I can read without artificial lights” says the girl at the ending. Diogenes “get out of my sun, Alexander of Macedonia” of Sinope should approve of them.

Thanks for the hint, Träsel.

Everybody knows cats always land on their feet. Everybody knows what happens when you drop a buttered bread: it alwats land butter side down. And everybody remembers the cat/bread butter paradox. Mauricio Adachi made this experimental movie to prove the theory.

For some strange and unknown reason, Valentines Day in Brazil is June 12th. This video shows a reporter from Jornal Nacional talking about the holiday in a shopping mall in Rio. Jornal Nacional (something like ‘National News’) is the most important and viewed TV news program nationwide, with more than 50 million viewers each day. That’s why this guys behaved like ‘tards*. Click on the video to watch.

*I guess I’d do the same if I had the opportunity, just for fun.

Everyone knows how soccer is Brazilian national sport and blahblahblah. There are several leagues every year - state leagues for most Brazilian states, minor regional leagues, 2 national Cups among the country’s most important teams and the South-American Cup, Libertadores da America or “America Liberators”, the South-American counterpart to Eurocup. The winner of Libertadores is one of the teams who play the FIFA Club World Cup. Among the club supporters nationwide one of the most known for its supporters fanaticism and motivation is the Gremio from Porto Alegre (Fifa Club World Cup champion in 1983).

Yesterday Gremio qualified to the final match of Libertadores (which it won twice) and I told Ira if it did, I’d publish a post about it here. So here it is. It was a dramatic match against Santos (who also won two Cups) and not decided until the last minute, as good soccer match must be, heh.

But Gremio supporters are famous by their “avalanches” (human landslides) after a goal scored by the team. Bellow you can see Danny Dyer talking about Gremio in a real match footage last year in Porto Alegre. Danny is a British reporter whose show/documentary - The Real Football Factories International - was broadcast in UK by Bravo last 25th may.

This is the video showing a impressive “humanslide” in a match last year.

And this one shows a human landslide from inside the mob of supporters, after a penalty kick scored against Santos, last week:

As a curiosity, Ronaldinho started his successful career at Gremio and won a Brazilian League in 2001 with the team. And, yep, Porto Alegre is my hometown and, yep, Gremio is the soccer team I support.

So you think a Mercedes is a car? Think twice, in Brazil it’s also a German Panzer.

A video showing some country’s landscapes with the Brazilian national anthem (subtitled in English) as a soundtrack. The music was created right after Brazilian Independence (1822) and the anthem lyrics was created 20 years after the end of the Empire (1889) in 1909. It was based in Auguste Comte’s positivist ideas mixed with (very bad) Brazilian romanticism poetry. This is the result:

Thanks Solon.

This underdog hound fell in love with a chick in southern Brazil. See what happens:

The reporter says Lilica, the hound, doesn’t let anyone get close to her “puppy”.

(Feed readers): Click here if you can’t see the video.

The dad: One, two, three, go kid!

(Feed readers): Click here if you can’t see the video.