Looking at Anglo-Lusitanian clubs and societies in London to see if there are any that might be worth joining. There’s a complete list here of all clubs for lusophones in the UK, but I’m going to list the ones that are most interesting for general interest (ie, not just football of cod-admiration) in London and that don’t look defunct (e.g., if their websites only have events in the past I’m not botherin’.
Off-the-cuff reactions to Portuguese bands I was recommended by a friend of mine.
Ornatos Violeta
Funk/punk in the style of fishbone, maybe chilli peppers at a push, or some of the more grungey elements from the same eta (STP, Blind Melon). Definitely going on my Spotify library anyway.
Mão Morta
Some kind of Doom Metal, I think… Er… Well, see for yourself.
Belle Chase Hotel
Trilingual combo whose name is based on a Jim Jarmusch movie. Musically pretty good and playing in a variety of styles (so much so that at first I wondered if maybe there was more than one band that shared the name) but frustrating if, like me, you only want to hear PT lyrics, because they don’t seem to have many. One of the members is JP Simões who is also a solo artist who sings in Portuguese.
Sean Riley & the Slowriders
What? Dudes, do you even speak Portuguese?
Wray Gunn
Er… Again, struggling to find any Portuguese titles here. Rock ‘n’ Roll of the school of Link Wray. I had a look at the first one in the list and it seems to be about sleeping with his sister. No thank you. Do not want.
Minta & the Brook Trout
Really, really good but disappointingly anglophone
Jerónimo
I can only find three one songs by this lot and all English too
First Breath After Coma
Remind me of the Durutti Column or some of those post-rock bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor. The tracks I listened to were largely instrumentals with maybe some samples voices but not in Portuguese. Interesting and I’ll listen again but not really what I was after…
X-wife
Pretty decent indie dance band but again, not singing in Portuguese
Legendary Tigerman
Rock. Pretty good but English lyrics again.
Dead Combo
I really like this music. It’s quirky and energetic. They have a collab with Marc Ribot, who’s worked with Tom Waits, which should give an idea of the genre. A lot of the track titles are in Portuguese, but they’re not very loquacious and it’s mainly instrumental stuff.
Ornatos Violeta are my pick of the bunch here, being eminently listenable and with Portuguese lyrics, but they’re in no danger of displacing Deolinda in my affections!
Here’s the top Portuguese nugget from today’s conversation with my Brazilian language partner.
While discussing English idioms I mentioned the expression “break a leg” as used by actors and he replied that the Portuguese equivalent is “muita merda” (a lot of shit).
Here’s an interesting snippet: in “Reaccionario Com Dois Cês“, Ricardo Araújo Pererira has someone mocking a football player online after he is the victim of a mugging: “xupa, é bem feita por çeres um ignorante que ço çabe dar pontapés na bola”
I wondered what all the mistakes were all about – was it imitating a regional accent or something? Was the person writing just not very clever? Because the stray Çs didn’t seem like the kinds of typos one would make normally.
Apparently it’s a way of mocking someone’s lack of intelligence. If someone answers a question but you think their point is nonsense, instead of saying “sei” (I know) you reply “çei” , implying that’s the sort of thing only an idiot who can’t even spell “sei” would believe. Or if they write a tweet with lots of errors in it you can say “você çabe falar muito bem português” just as in english you might say “You’re grammer is exelent” or something.
One of the chapters in Reaccionário Com Dois Cês is an obituary for Raul Solnado, who I’d never heard of. He died in 2009 and was recognised as one of the greats of portuguese comedy. Here he is in front of an audience in the sixties or seventies, telling a rambling story of the war of 1908. Top quality R-rolling.
Acabo de ler um artigo velho sobre o uso de bicicletas (ou seja “biclas” que é, se não me engano, uma palavra infantil que quer dizer a mesma coisa). O escritor utiliza o argumento de que andar de bicicleta a caminho da escola. é melhor para crianças Como muitas cidades, Braga tem ruas construídas para facilitar o movimento de carros exclusivamente e por isso, não é sempre seguro para ciclistas mais novos. O escritor aconselha-nos que não deve ser perigoso se os pais acompanhá-las à pé. Por este método, os nossos filhos aprendem habilidades de auto-conhecimento, consciência do ambiente, navegação e sentido de equilíbrio. Além disso, ficam mais saudáveis e evitam os efeitos mais graves do peso e da falta de exercícios. Sobretudo, o escritor espera que o governo autárquica veja estes ciclistinhas e façam mudanças ao sistema de trânsito na cidade para tornar tudo mais seguro e mais fácil para os viajantes mais vulneráveis.
I’ve found myself getting a bit more feminist lately. I have tended to be a bit dismissive of some claims of 21st-century feminism, to the point of wondering whether the word had outlived its usefulness, but have been energised lately by… well, it’s a long story. Suffice to say that having a daughter makes you want to punch more misogynists in the balls. I am all about the punching. I’m a regular Jean-Claude Van Dad.
Anyway, representation in comedy is not one of my main avenues of interest, but I was struck by this tweet earlier today, by Safaa Dib, who I know nothing about but seems to be a publisher and a candidate in a sort of left-green party called Partido Livre. She posted about the Festival de Humor, FamousFest 18. You can see why she was annoyed from the picture below. Literally not one single woman in the line-up. I know 6 of the names and 2 of those are not even comedians. Miquel Esteves Cardoso is a columnist and writer, and Filipe Melo is a producer and a graphic novelist. She doesn’t seem wildly impressed with some of the others either, judging by the comments.
If you click through to the thread, Guilherme Duarte, a comedian who uses the name Por Falar Noutra Coisa chips in and says a couple of women were invited but declined. Hm… well, fair enough up to a point… but then goes on to say (and this is less fair enough) that he didn’t want to have a quota system at the expense of quality (gasp… but wait, it gets worse…) that work was needed in the background to encourage women to try and be funny instead of making makeup tutorials. He salvages this mess of a tweet to some extent but not much. I was left with the impression that the scene is even more of a boy’s club than here.
A @gaitadaria já chamou a atenção p/ isto, mas confesso que só agora realmente prestei atenção ao espreitar site do Festival de Humor de Lx. Não há mulheres comediantes, a julgar pelo cartaz. Mas homens sem piada há muitos e isso nunca os impediu de ter carreira #MulherNãoEntrapic.twitter.com/jeFLbGy4rp
I was going to put Bolsonaro’s face on Ben Stiller’s body but that seemed like it gave him too much credit, so….
É provável que vocês tenham ouvido a notícia da semana passada sobre o Museu Nacional no Rio de Janeiro, onde houve um incéndio catastrófico que destruiu a maior parte do seu espólio de vinte milhões de peças, que constituiu a maior colecção etnográfica e histórica na América do Sul.
Claro esta é uma a tragédia para o povo do Brasil e, ainda por cima, para o mundo em geral. Tantos tesouros sem preço e insubstituíveis deixam um buraco negro na memória da humanidade. Com certeza, existem lições que os gerentes dos museus do mundo devem retirar, sobre como cuidar dos seus conteúdos. Esperemos que as aprendam. Sobretudo, esperemos que os políticos que controlam os orçamentos dos museus proporcionam dinheiro suficiente para fazer as mudanças necessárias. Claro, para o Museu Nacional, é tarde de mais, e a lição seria “casa roubada, trancas na porta”.
Eu já li vários artigos sobre a situação no Brasil, e é interessante de ver como esta tragédia encaixa-se no debate político. Por um lado, há a questão de se o governo actual é culpável, até certo ponto, pela falta de segurança, e por outro lado, este museu continha um registro verdadeiro da diversidade e riqueza de historia brasileira que contradizia a narrativa da extrema-direita, e o seu líder, Jair Bolsonaro. Já que o registro está perdido, tornar-se-á mais fácil para autoritários afirmarem que Brasil é um país homogéneo, e os índios, negros, refugiados venezuelanos, e o resto da “escória do mundo” não se encaixam lá?
[Uncorrected] É mais de possível que fiz muitos erros factuais aqui. Confesso que o Brasil não é um país cuja politica anda sempre na frente dos meus pensamentos, e isso é apenas o que retirei de uns artigos que, talvez, eu mal entenda. Parece um assunto interessante mas estou a escrever exclusivamente para praticar e não para dar uma opinião considerada e baseada em evidencia. Se fizesse tal erros, ficaria interessado nas suas opiniões mas espero que não vou ofender ninguém!
I came across a new phrase the other day “Chico Espertice”, which is the quality attributed to a Chico-Esperto. What’s that? Well, a Chico-Esperto is apparently an unscrupulous, opportunistic chancer who takes the piss at any opportunity. There’s an article about Chico-Espertice here in Visão, in the context of last year’s disastrous wildfires. A few people have been caught jumping the queue, submitting bogus forms and claiming compensation for outbuildings and holiday homes ahead of those who lost their main residence.
It seems like there’s a tendency to tut and turn a blind eye to this sort of sharp practice, seeing it as an unavoidable, and even endearing trait (if this seems weird, just remember some of our best-known sitcoms, notably “Only Fools and Horses” revolve around the british equivalent of the Chico-Esperto), but in this particular instance, it’s a harmful form of fraud and – she hints in the last paragraph – may involve the people who were meant to be acting as stewards for the funds, in which case it arguably goes beyond mere piss-taking and into actual corruption.
Luso 