THE STRENGH OF BRAZILIAN CULTURE

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Please note that the original article for this news was originally posted in the portuguese section of our blog site.

A month or so ago, I was lucky enough to come across an incredible Spanish woman that is a basketball, waterpolo and rugby player. If you are lucky and you speak or read Spanish you may like to have a look at her blog (and you may even post a comment -she speaks perfect English) She is a fascinating woman, I tell you!

But the reason why I am writing this post today is mainly to tell you of the musical "bloco" in which she plays and the symbolic value it has for us today.
The batucada-group is called Bloco do Baliza, and here you can see them playing in Madrid´s Puerta del Sol (the most important site within Madrid).



The discovery of this group was something that I especially liked, not just because I like blocos (and saw and visited many as I was in Brazil) but also because of the pleasure of this worldwide bizarro culture we all share. This woman, for instance, plays an american sport (basketball) a british one (rugby) and plays brazilian music, but she doesn´t just add up, she blends it instead into something new and special within herself.

The world wide bizarro culture is sort of like that (we are all like that to a certain extent in the globalization world) but what I particularly liked here today was the international reception of brazilian culture. At a time when there has been some nasty confrontations between Spaniards and Brazilians (the issue has been quite hot in the brazilian press) due to some shameful events at the border controls of both countries with the others´ citizens, it is great to see that the passion toward each others culture is a better indicator of what each other have to gain from mutual exchange and sharing.

ART AND LHARDY

Last thursday I came across Antonio at Lhardy restaurant, at the only possible side of the showcase honest people can be: outside in the fuckin´steet. I was looking -with the glow in the eyes of someone in the aftermarth of war- to the same treasure my daddy had admired before, and even my granddaddy, on some ocasión he may have come next to the same shop. If both had been stopped by the price of the goods, so was I, not just for the price, but also for my kilos, that for sure are also an invention of the rich to keep me away from this kind of place.
I don´t trust me, and they would only trust me at an interest rate.
My congratulations to Barbara and Antonio that are awaiting a child. Contratulations to Bárbara Fluxá for her exhibition at Matadero Madrid, where she has just shown “Future Testimonies” , the work you will be able to see at this link (in a very limited way, in real size she is showing her work in six big screens forming an hexagon that wraps you). Contgratulations for the same blog where I was able to get amazaed with the work Altoviti´07 above all and among others.
Trust in no decorative art, in this arte povera –l put it in the same bag, with this name– taken to video and to photograph. All our support to this format so bizarre that I think, will never look great to Lhardy´s eyes.
http://barbarafluxa.blogspot.com/

The “Bizarro” Podium: Silver “Botijo”

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He is a chatterbox who won´t shut up nor be shy. A show-off from the countryside which came to become Great Madrid outskirts. The day of the race he couldn´t stop conspiring and fixing deals with his in-law family thar was at the site. That´s the way this dear weird is.

Half Asturias, halg a fashion model, half a policeman, half an actor and a basketball power-forward. He won´t store 3 points shot nor MACHACAR EL ARO. A Weird One therefore, because when he does so it´s giving his back to the basket and it looks as if he is already coming back. He is smart as few can be, but I know him as if it was me who had given birth to him, and I do know when he is trying to pretend, when he has got good cards or he is just bluffing –and in this particular case, believe he won´t have more than forty heartbeats per minute – he´s really smart, I just told you,

A Weird One also as generous, for not taking into account neither reales nor euros, to the point he even let me be the one to control his payments on his party´s birthday, and he always complained there were too little; if someone goes, he insists in paying the taxi ride if there´s a bill available, and if something is expensive he even bluffs “…and all of this (the place, the business, etc)…who much is it going to sum up?” Tell me not if this is ain´t a Weird One or not, the guy.

With Wittgenstein he shares that there is an enormous distance between reality and the world as we perceive it, so that everything can be brought back to his personal point of view. To say it in a more colloquial way, it´s not that he can sell you a car, he can sell you the lot. Once I was witness of how he organized a Café- Thêatre, in the middle of disco-pub, well into the morning, with already half the theatre company drunk, myself at least, and with the audience in not a healthier or more sober condition. With the aim of displaying a Shakespeare play – “The Tempest” – It couldn´t have been a different one. At the end the microphones didn´t work, and the voices could get louder to those all ready celebrating friendship; the pub´s owner, who wouldn´t stop drinking was stopped by the punch of his partner and (even though) brother – we will say the were from Napoli, if that helps reduce their guilt- and everything ended up like it was the end of the world. How could we arrive to that point? The aim of this silver one and his efforts (two hours of sleep average for a month) were pretty involved in this task. Myself, dressed up as a gay angel, I keep the best memories of it. He, on the contrary, claims he has been damaged by this weird illusion moments on more than one occasions, and promises to change. Really really weird and brave, I finish, for never giving up against odds. Though a winner, he can loose rounds, matches, sets…and never admit he´s being defeated…”Do not fuck me up, Kikoso, shit…”. And I go on playing or giving cards again, without a drop of faith in the next victory.

That´s the way he has it, the guy.

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The “Bizarro” Podium: Bronze “Botijo”

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He is a simple poet who is able for rhyme at the speed of his veícolo longo. We meet each other in our inhospitable Alcarria summers, those Weird Ones´ summers that make your soul gold and your liver marinade (or so used to -any time passed by, I can´t remember).
Alcocer´s Karting 1st Grand Prix was born under a killing sun over the weird circuit of Cabanillas del Campo, quite close to Guadalajara, Spain.
The nickname came out of its neverending 13 laps, some closed ones and very closed ones the rest. The work of someone so weird as to disregard how stupid logic commands a love for your ribs, for your teech (centifugal force makes seat and ribs come close like only passionate lovers do, running away out of jealousy the body that is kept between them, what causes the driver an important ache during around three weeks). In that very same place, the guy had dared to defy me “I bet we don´t do it” and from that moment on we were already late in organizing it. Don Victor (or Mr Guindos as you may prefer) -as nothing ever comes out in this country if there is not a trinity for it - was asked for his blessings (Ain´t he not a company consultant for reasons like that?) he gave his thumb up and a November 25th the creature weas born, in the presence of The Father and The Son, since The Holy Spirit was already heading for “Buenos Aires” (“Good Airs” in English, or even better ones if you like. My memory is week)

From “Osuli”, that´s his name -hadn´t I told you so? came the weird idea of the Golden, Silver and Bronze “Botijos” as well as the idea of the “Honour Beret” for the fastest lap. His is also the idea of giving a turtle (“la tortuga fisikela que ni corre ni vuela” - watch F1 races for further understanding) to the lowest ranking driver at the end of the race.
Ain´t he artistic? He is a drinker (one of the good ones) ante merididan, who may not take even a drop during daylight, what gives him a vampire air that has always make me wonder. As soon as the sun sets, the Weird One, half copper, half tin, shows a neverending list of ideas and crazy remarks over the Dyc bottles´blanket to which his followers gather and there he comes up with poems, jokes, and years have made him the living memory of his fellas. But that it´s true, each year the gathering is smaller in numbers, which makes the party even more weird, and the pile of bottles shorter.
As a conclusion, and in proof of his Weirdness (Bizarría) I will only reveal one os his habits: on tuesday parties he would gather with his fellas in an almost cracked down building that they would call “Peña” , and there he would come up with a battle of spitting that would make people feel like coming out from a shower, while the radio-cassette was broken down for some -not Weird ones- who had been able to dance. I hope you may forgive me this kind of technological last words, and believe me, to tell this is not a fourth of seeing them coming out of the barrack, so showered up, after their personal “Catarsis”.

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HISPANIC WEIRD or the corageous phenomenum

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Mi name is Enrique. I am Golden “Botijo” (drinking jug) and Honour Beret to the fastes lap in Alcocer´s Karting Grand Prix. It took me thirty eight years to do it, but finally I managed to. I can show one of the weirdest trophys in my inexisting showcase.

I look back at the ordeal as a promised land, as the demanding paradise of Jehova´s Witnesses, something bigger than Camp Nou stadium - what is that in comparison to human history? Little more than a football club - to which all are called who fight against the Law of Big Numbers.

I would like somehow to join, in this space - to the meaning that “bizarro” in our language (Spanish) has (hard working, and generous, suitable, splendid) and the meaning in French and English (really weird, strange, outlandish or abnormal)

That it´s, I think the Weid Ones (the bizarros) are a phenomenum, an abnormality, yes, but a corageous and brave phenomenum (characteristics which are simbolizes and materailised in my Golden Botijo, that is, plainly, weirdly and unmodestly speaking)

Please appreciate that under this meaning the Weird One (the bizarro) is something more than a freak (a geek)
and that the Weird object is more than a kitsch object, since the sublime quality of Weirdness is reached through the corageous attitude that the person or object has. On the other hand, the quality of a “freak” or “kitsch” or “geek” depends on the eyes of the beholder, whilst “Bizarría” (Weirdness) is always depending on the subject and the subject is the world. It´s intentional and undoubted as long as one feels it. One himself is an inmense minority within himself.

The Restless Weird One (“El bizarro sin interrupción”) is conscious of his own limitations, but, far of being this an undefeatable problem to this will, it is just a medal for his/her suit. He or she knows the fight is against majority which slowly pushes in an unique and stubborn direction, making a virtue of behaving like sheep, just for the fact os being it, looking for recoginition in the acts os the other members of the cattle (baaa baaaa, as they say). On the contrary, each Weird One has to carve the shape in the stone in a way and path he alone dares to follow. No green lands, no clear waters, only the promise that may be (oh god´s paradise) he might be able to find some place where he or she has never been before.

And that is it.

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