Rapidinhas - September 95

Divine baring it all

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Divine Appeal

Why has Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown, 25, of Hugh Grant fame been chauffeured around Brazil in a limousine with all the perks of a top-model and a 30,000 fee for a few hours of action in front of the camera? She is the latest ad-girl for Valisère lingerie. In the TV ad, Divine appears applying lipstick while she says, "I love men. They're so much fun, so sure of themselves, so unpredictable. So if you don't want to lose your man to someone else, if I were you I would wear Valisère. Brown's mug-shot will also be shown on print ads in magazines and newspapers selling panties and bras.Ad

TV

Sweet dreams

Sex to sell chocolate? Nothing new there. Chocolate maker Garoto, however, is causing quite an impression with its TV commercial in which the awakening of the male sexuality is shown with subtlety and charm. Men and women seem genuinely enchanted with the two-minute long (a feature film for an ad) short story.

France's TV Plus has already called it the year's most beautiful publicity picture. BBC selected it as the prettiest ad for TV in the Americas. Washington Olivetto, the ad creator together with director Júlio Xavier, says that he was inspired by Hollywood's classic love scenes and also by the background tune: Sinatra's "I had the craziest dream".

The female models were all over 18, but the average age for the boys was 11. During film breaks (it took five days to get all the scenes) the boys used to torment the girls wearing mirrors in their shoes so they could see the young ladies' panties. Instead of reprimanding the action Olivetto used it in the film to give some more authenticity to his $2 million work.

Presidency

The Bard

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the President of Brazil, also known as the Prince of the Brazilian sociology, might have become the Prince of Brazilian poets too, had his career not taken a turn toward more pragmatic tasks. As a teenager, while studying at Colégio São Paulo, in São Paulo, he was part of a young group of poets, self-designated 'Novíssimos'(The Very New). At age 17 he wrote the following work which was published by Revista de Novíssimos première edition (the magazine never had its second issue):

Visão Segunda

Ai os agudos acordes do violino

Soando nos meus ouvidos

E eu que perdi o ritmo da vida

Na luta com os demônios

Criança sem vida

Amiga perdida.

Olhares vagos

De ânsias humanas sufocadas,

Apagadas imagens de gentes

Valentes de marionetes.

Inútil vida, fútil ideal.

Meus negros cabelos de espanador

Trazem bolas de neve nas pontas

E brincam com o vento sul

De fugir pro norte

O ângulo duro do mundo

Tangenciou com a reta grega

Toda feita de harmonia

Fazendo um estrago geral

Só o violino continuou puro

Nas mãos alvas do amor.

Second vision

Alas, the violin's acute harmonies

Echoing in my ears

And I who lost life's rhythm

In the struggle with the demons.

Lifeless child

Lost friend

Vague looks

Of suffocated human yearnings

Pale images of brave

People of marionettes,

Useless life, futile ideal.

My duster's black hair

Has snow balls on its tip

And plays with the south wind

Of running away to the north

The world's hard angle

Is tangent to the Greek straight line

All made of harmony

Wreaking total havoc.

Only the violin continues pure

On love's white hands.

Crime

Violent Land

According to the CPT (Pastoral Commission on Land), an organization linked to the Catholic Church, 979 rural workers were killed in disputes for land in Brazil in the last 10 years. From this perspective, the recent massacre of at least 11 landless people in the Santa Elina farm, in Corumbiara, state of Rondônia, is just another case and far from being the last. It's just one more proof that Brazil hasn't yet been able to implement its always promised and forever delayed agrarian reforms. The latest bloody episode against a group of hundreds of landless workers, who had invaded lands belonging to a farmer from São Paulo, had, however, the signs of savagery, with people being tortured and gunned down in front of their families. Even a six-year-old girl, Vanessa dos Santos Silva, was killed, shot in the back. The police, who attacked at 3 in the morning — night incursions like that are illegal — lost two men. The land invasion a month before the massacre had been condemned by the Catholic Church and even by the Movimento dos Sem-Terra (Movement of the Landless)

In Belém, a little town in the state of Paraíba, several people have been drinking their own urine to cure a series of diseases, including diabetes and heart ailments. The treatment called urinetherapy has been promoted by a group of nuns who have even prepared a little pamphlet entitled Urinoterapia Milagrosa (Miraculous Urinetherapy). The booklets are supposedly the translation of works by a team of Japanese physicians. There are already stories of miraculous cures. Like the one from José Pedro, who was dying of diabetes, "After six days of treatment, I felt much better. Now, I take the urine once a week. It is too strong to be taken every day." The health authorities are not making any comments on the weird treatment. But many doctors have been talking about the danger of infection and others classifying the "medicine" as "pure lunacy".

The new Brazilian coin might be good as a symbol of a stable economy, but not good enough to buy a soft-drink. As a gesture of faith in the new-found monetary stability, Coca-Cola decided to start selling refreshments through coin-vending machines. They started with less than two dozen of these contraptions with the promise that there would be 12,000 by July '96. Small problem though: the machines only take 1 real bills, giving back 25 centavos. The reason? The new Brazilian coins are all made of steel and the machine cannot recognize their values. These gadgets don't read the face of the coin, but the material it's made of.

In winter, 15% of the cases in children's emergency wards in São Paulo and 20% of all admissions, are due to the poor quality of the air in the city, which has 2.8 million cars in circulation. This winter the situation seems to have become worse. Fábio Feldman, the state Secretary for the Environment, following the example of Mexico City, has decided to force 20% of the drivers to leave their cars in the garage once a week. In a rotating scheme based on the license plate number, every car will be forbidden in the streets once a week. The system should be implemented by the Winter of 1996, but a dress rehearsal was planned for August 28, a Monday, and the week that followed it. Nobody seems happy with the idea. City Hall opposed it. "Such a drastic measure should be adopted only in critical days," complained Gláucia Savin from the Secretaria do Verde (Green Department). Feldman himself recognizes that his measure has no teeth. His department has no staff to enforce the partial ban on cars. And if anybody is caught by a very reduced enforcement force he or she is going to be subject to what the secretary calls "moral embarrassment", i.e., being pulled over for half an hour.

Anyone dropping by the House of Representatives on August 1 might have thought he/she had the wrong building. Representative Adroaldo Streck, from Rio Grande do Sul, turned the tribune into a farmer's market, exhibiting a host of agricultural products. Indignantly he handled the goods whilst complaining, "A kg of broccoli costs $2.19 in Brazil and $1.2 in the US. A liter of orange juice costs $2 here and $.88 there. Even the Brazil nut can be bought for $5.39 a kg while the price here is $9.36." Maybe the Brazilian sacoleiros (bag people) who use to go to Miami or New York to buy electronic goods for resale in Brazil, should start looking at the produce department of the supermarkets.

In this competition Brazil came in 5th, losing only to Indonesia, China, Pakistan and Venezuela. The title being contended for is that of 'most corrupt country in the world'. Created by the Berlin-based anti-corruption organization, Transparency International, the names are chosen by businessmen from all over the world. In the list of the 41, the US came in 15th place as one of the least corrupt, losing to Chile which came in 9th. New Zealand was considered the purest of the pack.

Among all the countries that send tourists to the US, Brazil is already in 6th place. More than 660,000 Brazilians made the trip north last year -- a record -- and projections for this year stretch it to one million tourists. However, in monetary terms Brazilians are the most spendthrifty, burning greenback at an average of $132 per capita per day. Only the Japanese spend more.

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