RAPIDINHAS

Mellanie
Released in November with the usual hype, the 1997 Pirelli calendar is first of all a Richard Avedon's portfolio.

This time, the famous New-York-based American photographer has chosen two Brazilian models to represent the months.

Mellanie Bitti, 22, born in Espírito Santo, Brazil, now resides in Milan, Italy. Bitti got the cover of the calendar, but she is not happy because the picture doesn't show her face: only her torso and derrière.

Giselle
The other Brazilian was luckier, getting two of her photos in the August page. She is Paulista (from São Paulo) Giselle Zelauy.

"She is the daughter of a famous neurosurgeon," informed Pirelli, without details, leaving an air of mystery around the girl.

• Uncle Walt is not happy at all with the little pests Brazil has been sending to Disney World in Orlando. Despite the fact that 400,000 Brazilians visit "the happiest place in the world" every year — only Britain sends more people — the Disney company decided to give them an earful and teach some manners to Brazilians even before they leave the country. For that, they prepared a video tape teaching basic good manners and giving some warnings of the type: trash goes in the trash can, cutting in line is a no-no, screaming while playing is not welcome, and stealing merchandise means trouble.

  Two thousand copies of the ten-minute lesson were distributed to 2,300 tourist guides with the recommendation that it be shown to the little troublemakers just before boarding the plane. "Brazilians are noisy, undisciplined, disorganized. That's why we decided to teach them some good manners," a spokesperson for the company explained to weekly newsmagazine Veja. The statement, coupled with the excruciatingly boring tape, was on its way to becoming a PR nightmare for the Mickey gang when the Disney World nannies went back, recognizing they hadn't shown good manners themselves in treating the problem.

  "The video doesn't intend to teach good behavior to anyone, much less to Brazilian tourists who are among the best behaved visitors we have," amended Luciano Garcia, Disney's publicity manager for Latin America. Nobody, however, did convincingly explain why only Brazilians have been targeted by this "don't be naughty" campaign.

  Luiz Fernando Benedini, Brazil's consul general in Miami, has already protested against the harsh treatment given Brazilians by the Disney people when there is shoplifting or just suspicion of such behavior. In these cases the guilty person or suspect, even in the case of a small child, is handcuffed, taken to jail and can only leave after paying a $500 bail. "The treatment," Benedini said, "is a disrespect to the thousands of Brazilians who visit the park every year."

  Not every Brazilian is outraged, however. Some travel guides recognize that Brazilian youngsters are always getting out of hand . As one of these guides said, "They throw cups and trash all over, they steal towels and even lamps from hotel rooms, they cut in line, go out of the line to buy a sandwich and claim their place back in line, and they tear up plastic bags and steal what is inside so the alarm won't sound when they get out of the shop." Paulino Mascarenhas, a tourist from São Paulo, added: "The only thing I see wrong here is that the Disney people had to start this campaign. The Itamaraty (the Brazilian Foreign Relations Ministry) should have started it a long time ago."

  Anthropologist and sociologist Alba Zaluar believes that the rich-class children who fill up the planes to Orlando are generally overbearing. Says she, "We live in a country in which we respect very little each other's space. We have a middle-class and an upper middle-class children arriving in other countries and behaving like they own the world. They forget that they have to respect the rights of others and the customs of the host country."

• Tired of their husbands' sexual escapades and fearing that their consorts might have AIDS, the women from Palestina, a little town of 3,500 in the Alagoas backlands, are on a sex strike. They say they will not have sex with their partners until they show the results of a blood test proving they are HIV negative. The AIDS scare started when João Arnaldo Carvalho, 30, left the city to be treated in São Paulo for a disease that, according to rumors, was AIDS.

  In the months before his departure Carvalho had sex with at least two women in Palestina. Panicky, many husbands opened their mouths and confessed that they had gone to bed with the same women whom Carvalho had bedded. That's when the wives who were told about adultery or just suspected it, decided to deny any sexual to their partners. Since then, the Public Clinic Health has been inundated by men asking for the AIDS blood test.

  Before, women from Palestina would look the other way when their men committed adultery, but now some are even threatening to cut their men penis if they "jump over the fence". In December, what was a rumor became a reality. Carvalho died in São Paulo from the complications of AIDS. Some women like Maria Lúcia dos Santos are decided to hold the strike to the last consequences: "I am ready and willing not to have sex again in my life," she says menacingly to the husband, who still hasn't made his blood test.

• "My heifer is acting very weird, and she is very agitated since she was raped by my neighbor." This was the complaint filed by the MP soldier Moisés da Silva at Petrolina's (state of Pernambuco) police station. Da Silva alleged that his young cow was a virgin. João Cavalcantti, Petrolina's police chief, wasn't impressed, however. When journalists started calling about the incident, he explained, non-chalantly: "This is very common here. And it happens with she-goats, cows, mules and even sows." What happens to the perpetrators? "The Ibama (Instituto Brasileiro de Meio Ambiente - Environment Brazilian Institute) should be dealing with this. All we do is give the guy a good thrashing hoping it will do him good."

• In Brazil there is no real summer without some titillation. The sun is full blast in the tropics now, which means that's time to retire old habits and that one-year-too-old beach outfit. Rio continues to decide what is in and what is out in the country. The fio dental (dental floss) bikini has disappeared. Hot this year are the tricot and crochet tangas (string bikinis) covering just the minimum necessary no to get the sun worshippers in trouble with the law. The all but invisible models can set you back as much as $70.

  Golden is the favorite color for bikinis, shorts and blouses. Another hot item — and this one is free — is the 2004 Rio Olympics pin, even though at this time Rio is only one among several candidates to hold the Games in 2004. On the steps of a hit novela (soap opera), Salsa e Merengue, the hottest music band on the sands of Copacabana is called Salsa with its mix of non-Brazilian Latin rhythms. As for sport, the latest craze on the beaches is female soccer.

• The notion seems preposterous to anyone, but his author. What José Geraldo Aguiar, a photographer from the state of Minas Gerais, is proposing in his book Lampião, o Invencível (Lampião, the Invincible) is that the infamous backlands' brigand Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, the Lampião (Lantern), hasn't died in 1938 at the hands of the police as history books state. Virgulino was beheaded and his head was put in public display. No, says Aguiar, Lampião only died in 1993 at the age of 96.

  According to this outlandish story Virgulino Ferreira changed his name to Antônio Maria da Conceição and ended up being buried as Antônio Teixeira de Lima in Buritis, a little town in Minas Gerais. Aguiar wants to exhume the body of Teixeira de Lima, but a judge said no. Antônio Amaury Corrêa, a Lampião's biographer who's been studying the Rei do Cangaço (King of the Backlands' Bandits) for 46 years, commented: "The human mind has no limits to invent stories."

• Americans are finally discovering what makes Brazilians so Brazilian: the guaraná, a cocaine and caffeine next-of-kin substance. Known and used by the Brazilian Indians for centuries, the little red Amazon berry is used as the main ingredient for a very popular soft drink called, you guessed, guaraná. Smart drug, sexual stimulant? The US will soon find out. Guarana Beverage imports the brand "Guaraná Antarctica" — the Brazilian best-seller —and is now distributing it in 18 states.

  Pepsi-Cola is selling its own version of the product throughout the country. It's called Josta. Seagram wants to include guaraná in a vodka and Miller is brewing Iguana Light, a beer that has a touch of the Amazon wonder fruit. Extreme Tea, on the other hand, is going after the college crowd offering them a guaraná version for those who love caffeine but don't want coffee. Guaraná has its own home page in the Internet: http://www.symmetrix.ch/public/guarana/

• In 1981 and 1982, during general João Baptista Figueiredo's presidency, Brazil, ignoring norms from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sold uranium dioxide to Iraq. The Iraqi government received a total of four tons of the substance used to pack nuclear fuel rods. In February 1995 the Brazilian Foreign Ministry received a tough letter from the US Embassy trying to dissuade Brazil from cooperating with Argentina's atomic program. These are just two of the Brazilian nuclear secrets that Histórias Secretas do Brasil Nuclear (Secret Stories of Nuclear Brazil) unveils with abundant details. Journalist Tânia Malheiros, the author, comments: "It's unbelievable that the society has no control over a project that costs so much."

• Darci Alves Pereira, one of the killers of rubber tapper and labor organizer Chico Mendes, is back in jail in Brasília with his father Darli Alves da Silva, also condemned to 19 years of prison for the December 1988 crime. Pereira had escaped from prison and for six months he was the target of a dragnet over six states. When the Federal Police caught him, leaving his cousin's home in Guaíra, state of Paraná, he had changed his name to Altair Gomes and was sporting a long beard.

• Steven Lamm, a New-York based endocrinologist, after a battery of tests including one for HIV, concluded that singer-composer Milton Nascimento, 54, has type II diabetes and not AIDS as the rumors in Brazil have it. Nascimento was taken at the end of October to Lamm's office by Russ Titelman, producer of Nascimento, Milton's coming album. Titelman became worried when he learned that the singer was more than 40 lbs. below his normal weight.

  This is not the first time there are reports about Nascimento being HIV positive. In 1990, Amiga magazine wrote that Milton, Caetano Veloso and Ney Matogrosso, all had AIDS. The magazine was taken to court and lost. At that time, Nascimento had to make a blood test and send the results to his family in Três Pontas (state of Minas Gerais) to prove he was HIV negative. Nascimento is on vacation now, after finishing his Brazilian Amigo tour in December. He is coming to the US in March to launch his new album, Nascimento.

• The Fluminense Football Club (in its original English) had a glorious history: national soccer champion in 1984, 28 times Rio's champion, famous fans like former President general João Baptista Figueiredo and singer-composer Chico Buarque de Hollanda. Bad administration, however, has taken the team founded in 1902 close to financial insolvency. And, unable to win a game — it came in the last but one place in the latest national championship — the Fluminense has suffered the supreme humiliation: it has been demoted from the special division to the second one. With this, not even their arch enemy Flamengo is happy. Fla-Flu (Flamengo x Fluminense) used to be a magic word to fill up soccer stadiums.

• It's a world's first for this kind of private club. The conservative Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters), which will be celebrating its centenary on June 20, has chosen a woman to be its president. The French-inspired 40-member Academy is now the kingdom of Carioca (native from Rio) Nélida Cuiñes Piñon, 59, the daughter of Spaniard immigrants. With this, the Miami University is going to lose its Hispanic-American Literature professor, since Piñon is taking her new position as a full-time job.

  "It was time for a woman to come cook here and add her own seasonings," said immortal Oscar Dias Corrêa and one of the 38 who voted for Piñon. Nobody seems to have taken the observation as sexist and the new president didn't get elected unanimously because of another woman. Writer Rachel de Queiroz refused to vote. One of Piñon's goals is to computerize the Academy's 100,000-volume library. However, to author her books — she has 13 published — Nélida uses handwriting.

• Brazil spends every month $5.1 million paying for special pensions to more than 2,500 people who have been politically persecuted during the military regime that lasted from 1964 to 1985. The average check is $2000. But some make much more like soap opera writer Dias Gomes who gets a monthly $13,000 pension and there are people even getting $36,000. This in a country where 12 million retirees receive a monthly $100 pension. In many cases these persecuted citizens weren't tortured or even jailed. Among the awarded with the pension prize is former presidential candidate Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, who gets $2,195.40 per month. Most Brazilians seem to think that the reparation gesture in these cases went a little too far.

• Still there is no laboratory producing it, but LDE is a very promising anticancer therapy which has just won a patent from the US Commerce Department. Invented by Brazilian endocrinologist Raul Maranhão, the LDE particle is useful to reduce the chemotherapy's side effects. In some cases these effects completely disappeared. Injected in the blood, the product causes the cancerous cells to absorb more of the chemotherapic medicine. "I have created a Trojan horse," explains Maranhão. "The tumor cells swallow the LDE as if they were a gift, but they are bringing the enemy in."

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• Gilberto Gil's next CD, Quanta (How Much) will be released only in March, but "Pela Internet" ("On the Internet"), one of the album's cuts, can already be heard by anyone linked to the Internet. Gil has his own domain (http://www.gilbertogil.com) on the Net, and has apparently become the first world renowned singer to launch a new song over the World Wide Web waves. The ditty will be available for download at the singer's site until January 14.

  The song is an homage to "Pelo Telefone" ("On the Phone), Ernesto dos Santos Donga's 1917 tune that is considered the first samba ever recorded. Parodying the "Pelo telefone" that says O chefe da Polícia / Pelo telefone / Mandou me avisar / Que na Carioca / Tem uma roleta / Para se jogar (The Police Chief / On the phone / Told me / That at Carioca / There is a roulette / For us to play), Gil wrote: O chefe da polícia carioca avisa pelo celular que lá na praça Onze tem um videopôquer para se jogar. (The Carioca (from Rio) police chief tells me on the cellular that there's a videopoker to be played at the Onze square)

Pela Internet

• Criar meu web site

  Fazer minha home-page

  Com quantos gigabytes

  Se faz uma jangada

  Um barco que veleje

  Que veleje nesse infomar

  Que aproveite a vazante da infomaré

  Que leve um oriki do meu velho orixá

  Ao porto de um disquete de um micro em Taipé

  Um barco que veleje nesse infomar

  Que aproveite a vazante da infomaré

  Que leve meu e-mail até Calcutá

  Depois de um hot-link

  Num site de Helsinque

  Para abastecer

  Eu quero entrar na rede

  Promover um debate

  Juntar via Internet

  Um grupo de tietes de Connecticut

  De Connecticut acessar

  O chefe da Macmilícia de Milão

  Um hacker mafioso acaba de soltar

  Um vírus pra atacar programas no Japão

  Eu quero entrar na rede pra contactar

  Os lares do Nepal, os bares do Gabão

  Que o chefe da polícia carioca avisa pelo celular

  Que lá na praça Onze tem um videopôquer para se jogar

On the Internet

• To create my Web site

  To make my homepage

  With as many gigabytes

  As you need to make a raft

  A boat that will sail

  That will sail in this infosea

  That will go out on infotide tide

  That will take my invocation of my old Orisa

  To the port of a diskette of a micro in Taipei

  A boat that will sail in this infosea

  That will go out on infotide tide

  That will take my E-mail to Calcutta

  After a hot link

  In a site of Helsinki

  To refuel

  I want to get in the Net

  To start up a debate

  To link via Internet

  A group of Connecticut's fans

  From Connecticut to access

  Milan's Macmilitia's chief

  A Mafioso hacker has just released

  A virus to attack programs in Japan

  I want to get in the Net to contact

  Homes in Nepal

  Bars in Gabon

  That the Carioca (from Rio) police chief tells me on the cellular

  that there's a videopoker to be played at the Eleven square

Brazilian novelas (soap operas) have become a super show and a daily guessing game in which the quiz is always the same: who is the next actress to take her clothes off on camera? Xica da Silva, Manchete TV network's prime-time novela, is a perfect illustration of that. After four months in the air, the soap about a black slave who gets the affection of her master during the very prude empire period, has already disrobed seven of its characters. The strip-tease of Xica herself, played by Taís Araújo, was surrounded by months of hoopla.

Even before the novela started everyone in Brazil knew Taís would show it all. The problem was her age: she was a minor. The July 1990 Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (Child and Adolescent Code) forbids anyone who isn't 18 from appearing naked on the media. Exactly three days after her much ballyhooed birthday celebration, Taís appeared in all her glorious nakedness and took a waterfall shower. The scene lasted 2 minutes and 20 seconds, an eternity on TV.

Ratings-wise the show with the strip-tease was a flop. Unwisely, Manchete scheduled the showing for the same day and same time TV Globo was broadcasting Palmeiras x Portuguesa, the national soccer championship final game. Xica da Silva got 8 points in the Ibope (the Brazilian Nielsen) compared to the 9 to 12 points it was getting previously.

A picture published in the press one day after Taís birthday, was the proof judge Siro Darlan from Rio's Child and Adolescence First Court needed to rule that the filming of the bare-it-all scenes had been made before Taís was of age. Darlan punished Manchete with an exemplary slap on the wrist: a fine that might be as little as $300, and never to exceed $2,000.