What am I Doing Here?

Liquids and Automobiles

2008-07-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

Today's post is about two different liquids and the effect they have on the Brazilian driving experience. One is to be found in the car, in fact, inside the driver, in quantities ranging from clearly too much to teeny tiny, infinitesimal, almost nonexistent. The other liquid is to be found outside the car in potentially enormous and terrifying quantities, such as I experienced about half an hour ago.

The first liquid, as you may have guessed, is alcohol, and I'll talk about that one later. The second one, as you also may have guessed, is water- rain water in fact, lots and lots and lots of rain water.

I did something in my car today that I've never done in my life: I headed for higher ground. Rain here in the tropics is often torrential, as I have mentioned before in this blog. Today's torrential rainstorm caught me in my car, and scared the shit out of me. The route I was taking winds through a valley- actually, a couple valleys, and it is a quite scenic and pleasant route most of the time. Low lying roads like that tend to have a big canal in the median to deal with the kind of extreme runoff I experienced today. Problem is, the median is in the middle of the road, which means the water has to cross one side of the road to get into it. If it can. If it can't, then you get what I believe is known as 'flash flooding'- terrifying uber-puddles of unknown depth and contents. At one point I was actually trying to tell if my car had begun to float- that's when I headed for higher ground.

The funny thing about rain like that is that it is generally very localized- in the midst of my distress I got a call from my sister in law not ten miles away and it wasn't raining a drop there. When I called her back half an hour later and no longer raining here, the rain had reached Paripe and it was pouring.

Now moving along to the second liquid: alcohol, or 'booze,' or 'cerveja' or 'cachaça' or whatever you want to call it. Brazil just enacted a zero tolerance drunk driving law. The traffic police, or SET as they are called, are allegedly setting up roadblocks and testing people with disposable breathalysers, or 'barfometros' as they are known in Portuguese. 'Barfometro' is a great word as it consists primarily of the word 'barfo' which means 'bad breath' (also used for other bodily-produced stinks), so it's a bad-breath-meter.

On the one hand, this is great news and I am thrilled, as I have often been appalled and terrified with the lawlessness on Brazilian roads and highways, especially in respect to drinking and driving. I asked Evani what drunk driving law this was supplanting and she told me that previously there had been nothing. No law? No repercussions at all for driving drunk? She said no, which I find a bit hard to believe, although if there was one it wasn't getting enforced. Like lots of laws here. Actually, referring to the ever-informative Wikipedia, there are a surprising number of countries that have no legal limit for alcohol consumption behind the wheel- then again, half of these countries have banned alcohol entirely.

On the other hand, why did it have to be zero tolerance? if you are caught with any alcohol in your barfo, you get something like a 960 reis (currently $600 US) fine, and if it's much more you're looking at jail time, car impounded, etcetera. This seems a bit extreme to me, and it means I can't have even a single glass of beer, even a single swallow, at the beach, or out in Paripe, or after Capoeira, or anywhere else if I've got my car and I plan on driving it. On top of that, I think it's a setup for disaster- my guess is that within a year or two the law will be repealed and we'll be back to lawlessness again. Or even more likely, they'll run out of barfometros and enforcement will stop.

I know how annoying Americans can be with our incessant "Back in the States, we do it like this!" and I generally try hard not to be one of those Americans and I can't believe I'm actually going to vouch for field sobriety tests, but why the hell don't they just do it the way we do it in the States? You know- have cops driving around looking for weaving vehicles, who then get stopped so the cop can get a better look at them- perhaps smell the barfo first hand, in which case they can be run through a series of tests, which if failed can lead to the dreaded barfometro. Seems like a better plan than hoping the drunk drivers happen upon a roadblock and then get a barfometro stuck in their face (as you may have noticed, I'm trying to get the word 'barfometro' in here as many times as possible barfometro barfometro.)

There's already been at least one scandal involving a judge getting busted and then released without repercussions, and that's the other side of it- there will probably be lots of cash quietly changing hands, and lots of the more socially privileged people getting away with murder like they usually do.

Well, I have been successfully deterred- I can't afford a R$960 fine. I'll be saving money on gas and wasting money on taxis. Or maybe I'll just save money on beer. Or maybe I'll stop going out altogether.

Dad

2008-06-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

My poor blog. It's being neglected. First it was my poor car, now it's my poor blog. Next it will be poor me and it will be time to close up shop for good.

There are several things I want to write about, the big midwinter holiday of São João that just happened, which steals the thunder of my birthday which also just happened, the improvements I just uploaded to markuza.com, etcetera. Recent street paintings and other art projects. Cute things that Lucas has done lately. But I won't talk about any of that.

What I'm going to talk about is the fact that my Dad finally has some of his artwork online, at long last! This was a project I was supposed to be involved in at one point, then a few months ago I scoured my backup discs for whatever files I might have of any of his paintings to do a throw-together page on my own site, to no avail. Then finally he told me on the phone that his wife, who maintains the exceptional Acworthian website, put together a bio with photos of him for his upcoming solo show. Here it is.

Very impressive. I learned some stuff from that article myself. I could fill in a few details, such as the fact that I am one of the two boys from the second marriage, and boy could I fill in some other details like the big lion pipe he carved which when flipped over revealed it's considerable endowment. When we were kids, we used to love to show that to our friends when they came to Dad's house to visit.

OK, enough embarrassing stories. Actually, I know my Dad well enough to know that he wouldn't be embarrassed by that at all. My father was my first and still is my most important influence artistically, no big surprise there. Last time I was in the States I told him I wanted to include some pictures of his work on my website, primarily a number of drawings he did that I used to trip out on all the time as a kid that continue to be mirrored (not copied, blast you- 'mirrored' I said (whatever that's supposed to mean)) in my own work. He also drew and painted lots of monsters, and made sculptures and mobiles and taught me from an early age that an artist need not limit themselves to a single medium.

Dad has also been my greatest fan- encouraging me from my youngest days in all my artistic endeavors. I still remember that whenever some stupid grownup asked me and my brother 'what we wanted to be when we grew up' we always gave the same answer: artists. I have moved back and forth from my role as an artist and currently I'm as active an artist as I ever have been, and my brother has made a living through his art for quite a while now.

Dad is also really into the street art that I'm doing- I believe that I mentioned in an earlier post that he was living in NYC during the big subway graffiti heyday and enjoyed it so much that he went out and painted the floor of his studio with a bunch of cans. I told him about doing silkscreening and he said he'd like to try that too.

Go Dad!

Unity

2008-06-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

Occurring today is a much-hyped event in US presidential politics- the 'Unity' event with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Although I've been following it closely, I haven't been writing about the election in this blog- it's outside of the vaguely conceived scope I have set up for it. The only reason I mention it now is because Unity, New Hampshire just happens to be right next to the tiny town where my dad lives, and he and several other members of the family have volunteered to help work the event. Wish I was there! I asked him to take photos...

Onibus

2008-06-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

Well, the car has finally crapped out, at least for the time being, and I did something on Wednesday that I haven't done in a long time: I took the bus. Here's the funny thing- I actually enjoyed it.

I think I enjoyed it because it brought back fond memories of time spent on public transit- I did a lot of reading and learned a lot of Portuguese riding the subway in New York. First I listened to the Pimsleur starter series of CD's, skipping the 'repeat out loud' part, and then I made hundreds of little flashcards to teach myself vocabulary and verbs. It was mellow time when I could just relax and work my brain a bit. A big part of the 'relaxing' bit is that I never rode the subway at rush hour.

I think the nostalgia had a chance to take hold on my Brazilian bus ride because of what it was not- although I have also done my share of reading and studying Portuguese on Brazilian buses, I have also spent a lot of time clinging to handholds for dear life, wedging my way through solid masses of human bodies, spent an hour or more on foot breathing muggy slimy thrice-breathed air as it pours rain outside, wasted more hours waiting at bus stops for buses that doesn't seem interested in arriving. None of these things occurred on Wednesday. I waited not five minutes for the bus to arrive, it was mostly empty, the busdriver was not insane, and the trip went remarkably quickly. Too quickly in fact, I wanted a little more time to read.

Today, with a verdict of 'blown head gasket' for the car, I took to the bus once more, this time with Lucas, and our destination was the Capoeira Roda. Once again- short wait, lots of empty seats, the busdriver was only mildly psychotic this time. 'Mildly psychotic' means you want to be holding onto something with both hands when you are on foot and generally one hand when you are sitting down. 'Majorly psychotic' means you need to hold on with both hands even when seated, don't dwell on the speed and proximity of things passing by the windows, and perhaps pray if you are so inclined. Lucas and I had fun together on the bus, playing little three year old games (lately he's been either Spiderman and I'm a Power Ranger) and we got there quickly. Unfortunately, the roda was cancelled, which meant we got back on the bus to go home.

On the way back I got more of a taste of why I was so happy to start driving my own car and stop riding the buses: a group of drunk young men being stupid and loud and annoying. Inane, pointless banter, trite slang and general bullshit all at a volume clearly intended to attract the attention of everyone on the bus, which of course it did. I refused to look at them but everyone else did. I let forth a stream of invective of the kind I would prefer Lucas does not hear (but is already peppering his vocabulary) when we got off.

As I contemplate taking the bus on a more regular basis, at least to get to and from Capoeira, there is a dark cloud that hangs over the whole plan. I've never been on a bus that has been robbed (knock on wood) but it happens all the time here. Someone pointed out to me once this place that hijacked buses go so the driver and cobrador (money collector) can presumably fill out incident reports, and there was almost always a bus there when I went by in the evening. Sometimes there were two, or even three. Everyone I know has stories about bus holdups, although often second- or third-hand. These holdups almost never end violently (I'm pretty sure), but you'll get your cell phone taken and of course any cash. Not to mention laptops or digital cameras if you're fool enough to take one of them along. I don't want to be on a bus that gets held up.

There was actually an amusing story on the news the other day about some guy who robbed a bus and then the cobrador and a bunch of passengers went after him and actually chased him down. Evani told me that the cobrador has to pay if the bus gets ripped off, which is probably why he went after the guy. What kind of ludicrous nonsense is that? The employee of the bus company is held responsible for the hijacking and gets his pay docked? What's he supposed to do- refuse entry to potential criminals? I can't stand it when I hear stuff like that, and I wish it didn't happen as often as it does. There is no sense here that businesses should absorb the errors of their employees, or in this case, the non-errors of the employees. It's unloading a loss that should be written off by the company onto some poor dude who is making almost nothing and it should be illegal.

Suddenly methinks that I should get some kind of verification of whether that is actually true before I keep ranting about it. Who says the blogosphere is rife with rumors?

Zines and Quadrilha

2008-06-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday is not a street art day, it's a hung-over day and also Father's Day but not here in Brazil...

But Saturday was interesting. I spent the morning trying to distract Lucas so I could finish an email interview. Some guy found me on Flickr and told me he had been seeing and enjoying my street art here in the city. He told me he was working on a zine, and asked if I would be willing to be interviewed for the first issue. I said yeah, sure, why not, of course! I thought we'd do an interview in person, but he asked if we could do it over MSN or by email. I chose email. I got a list of questions on Friday and he told me he plans to get the thing finished by Monday- pretty crazy schedule!

I think he's a student and I don't have real high expectations but nonetheless it's pretty cool to be recognized so I took the time to answer his questions as carefully as I could in my abominable written Portuguese. The questions were pretty straight forward- from where did the name Markuza come from and where am I from to how do you make your art and what kind of message are you trying to get across. We'll see how it comes out!

I got the interview/questionnaire out just in time to get Lucas ready for his São João presentation at school. São João is the big winter holiday here in the Northeast of Brazil, and it deserves more attention than I'm going to give it in this post. It's a celebration of the rural traditions of the Northeast, and is celebrated by making bonfires, drinking fruit liquors, eating peanuts, and dancing Forro. Forro is a type of music featuring, in its simplest form, an accordion, a triangle, and a very shallow drum played on both sides of the skin. São João is celebrated on June 24 (the day before my birthday) and lots of parties and events happen in the weeks leading up to it.

Evani decided to go to a birthday party for her sister rather than attend the event at Lucas' school, which left me to get him there, film the thing, applaud, and tell him he did great, which I did. It was a pretty typical kid/school/stage thing, lots of parents with cameras and lots of kids standing around in varying degrees of participation looking cute. Lucas did much better this year than last, he and his friend Henri did 'the saw' vigorously and Henri came perilously close to sawing his way right off the stage. You can check out the whole thing here if you are so inclined. Lucas was very serious about the whole thing and didn't really seem to enjoy himself until he got to jump on the trampoline. He's gotten quite good at that trampoline thing.

Viva Santo Antonio!

2008-06-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

Today I was awakened by fireworks at 6 AM. Lots of them. They were celebrating O Dia de Santo Antonio, or the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua. Santo Antonio is a big deal here. He is a Portuguese saint, and he is also syncretized with the Candomblé Orixa Ogum. Ogum is a warrior, a protector, the god of iron and tools amongst other things. In Rio Ogum is syncretized with São George, who in Bahia is Oxossi, the hunter.

Santo Antonio is Evani's patron saint, and her mother's before her. We have a carved wooden figurine of him on a little shelf/shrine in our upstairs hall. In his saintly guise he is portrayed holding a baby. As an Orixa, he is portrayed with a sword, or a machete.

In the houses of Candomblé that worship Ogum here in the city they have prayers to him for up to thirteen nights- from the 1st of the month until tonight. Generally Evani 'sponsors' one of these nights, but this year we were unable to do that. However, we will be heading to Paripe tonight in order to participate.

Viva Santo Antonio!

My Poor Car

2008-06-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

Last night, I went to open the trunk of my car, and I couldn't.

I did a lot of jiggling of the key because for some time now I've been the only one who can open it, but I knew just where that secret sweet spot was that popped it open. That sweet spot seems to be gone now.

Add this to a long and growing list of things that no longer work on my car. Last week I finally discovered why my rear speakers were making a nasty buzzing noise- the polypropylene cones had dissolved into little flakes of plastic, this despite being only a couple years old. I blame that one on the brutal UV rays of the tropical sun, which have baked the paint off the hood and caused the fabric on Lucas' child seat to similarly break down.

The other things that used to work but no longer do include:

The air conditioning
The alarm
The automatic door locks
The driver's side door lock- still locks, but doesn't unlock
The bolt at the bottom of the oil pan that lets the dirty oil out
The rear wiper
The waterproof qualities of the body
The left rear running light
The hubcaps

Actually, that last one isn't true. The hubcaps are just gone- a couple broken, a couple stolen. Some of these are simple fixes, like the busted light bulb, and I actually tried to fix it once but they sold me the wrong bulb. The thing is, I may never get around to fixing it because I have no real incentive to do so. Cars here are not inspected, except nominally (ironically, for exactly things like this- lights, directionals, not mechanical things like brakes or anything) when you first put the plates on them. I will never be pulled over on the highway by a cop- not for speeding, not for missing safety equipment, not for throwing beer cans out the window. I've seen trucks, even buses, driving at night with no lights at all. I once saw a guy driving a motorcycle in the heart of the city with an open beer in his hand. The only way you get stopped here is when they do 'blitzes,' which is mostly a check for weapons that they perform from time to time. I did get stopped, and fined, at one of these once- my registration had lapsed (you do need to register your car) and they wanted to impound my car. It was the day of Lucas' first birthday party and I had bags of ice melting in my now unopenable trunk and I begged for mercy. First birthday parties being an extremely big deal here, I think that's probably why they took pity on me.

On the positive side, none of the car's essential systems are broken. My tires and brakes are good. I figure you need decent tires and brakes on your car or you're an irresponsible idiot. The rest... well, I want to fix it, I just can't afford to right now. Actually, I'd love to get a nicer, newer car (and I know a certain spouse who wishes I'd do the same) but that is out of the question. The funny thing is, with the exception of the trunk problem and the rear speakers, this is still the nicest, lowest-mileage car I've ever owned. It's got power windows and steering. It's got four doors. It's got a CD player. It's just that it kinda stinks of mildew in the winter and... it's gradually dying.

The further irony of this car is that I don't really need it. I live right in the heart of the city, and I can, and do, walk to almost everything I need to on a day to day basis. I really only use it to go to the supermarket, to get to Capoeira, and to go to Paripe. I sometimes drive it only once or twice a week. If it died tomorrow it really wouldn't be the end of the world, although I would be unhappy. Public transportation is pretty reliable here, but I can't stand riding on buses because half of the bus drivers are insane. I'd be tempted to ride a bike but the streets are just too crazy for that.

So here's hoping the next time I try to open that trunk it decides to cooperate.

Mass Production

2008-06-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

When I was about 10, my future brother in law taught me and my brother how to silkscreen. We hand-cut designs with exacto knives into a sheet of emulsion, which he then transferred to a screen and we printed some shirts and a bunch of stationary. I still have some of that stationary somewhere- I was big into dungeons and dragons at the time and I copied an image of some monster from one of the various books we had related to it.

Later, when I was in high school, I took courses in graphic arts and became quite interested in it. That was so long ago (says I, my joints creaking as I write) that we even learned to set type- a skill that has been relegated to the realm of phones with dials on them and such (apologies to my dad, who picked up a bunch of job cases and assorted paraphernalia probably for nothing when their previous owner decided they were a waste of space, and heavy too). I even got a job in the print shop my senior year, running an offset press. And I did silkscreening too. I'm pretty sure I still have a multi-color shirt I printed in a drawer somewhere.

Then, about 12 years ago, I decided that I would get into making my own t-shirts. I had some professionally printed and still have a bunch of them stored in my dad's attic. I didn't get very far with the marketing part of the plan. At one point I planned to get into screening shirts commercially, and someone I knew even gave me a full set of used equipment including dozens of screens and a screen exposure unit to get me started. I never got around to it, and eventually sold it all on ebay.

Now, today, here, at my house, with a nominal investment, I put squeegee to screen once more to make a run of home-made stickers. How exhiliratin'!

It was pretty fun, actually, but I'm glad that I took my Murphy's Law pill before I started in case (that is, when) something went wrong. After all, a lot of time has passed since I last screened anything, and what little I read in some online tutorials was helpful, but by no means going to solve all my problems. It went pretty well actually, and now I have hundreds of stickers to plaster up all over the city and give away and get me psyched up to do other projects!

The thing that appeals to me about mass-production is this: I'm basically a lazy guy, and it's just too much freakin' work to make individual stickers by hand and go out and put them up. With silkscreening, or xeroxing, or etching or woodcutting or photography or whatever you make the image once, and then whip off several or many dozens in the matter of an hour or two. All of which can be wheatpasted, or stuck, or framed, or maybe, in some future world, sold over and over again.

The other thing is it really bums me out to see my handmade stickers ripped down or covered over by some city worker or stupid fortune teller's fliers. That being said, I know it's part of the whole street art thing ('ephemeral' they call it) and I do hope I keep making the hand-made ones if for no other reason that I've come up with lots of good ideas in the process of doing them.

Posted below are some pictures of my morning's industry, for those who enjoy that kind of thing.

The workspace, with everything I needed to make a couple hundred stickers- sheets of adhesive vinyl, ink, squeegee, screen, and the most important item- cup of coffee.

The screen, ready to go with the ink across the top!

The first sheet of stickers. I had problems with blank spots, and also with some over-inking.

The sheets pile up in short order.

The finished product, after cutting, which is turning out to be the most time-consuming step. You might recognize this photo from the beginning of the post... Our friend Nelson said that the eyes (which I did in about 10 minutes before I ran to get the screen developed- it's actually one eye flipped over in photoshop to make two) remind him of Oju Oba, or 'Eyes of Xango', a symbol of one of the Orixas.

How Does He Do That??

2008-06-04T17:43:00.001-07:00

This child

is fast

asleep.

RNE

2008-06-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

Today marks the end of a long chapter of my life in Brazil, and the beginning of a new one...

A momentous occasion...

A new dawn, a new beginning...

Alright, enough with the drama. What did happen today is that I finally, FINALLY received my Cedula de Identidade de Estrangeiro, my Brazilian ID, the Brazilian version of the Green Card. I am now a card-carrying permanent resident of Brazil.

RNE refers to my ID number, which I actually received over a year ago, printed out on a little piece of paper. That was just in time to get a Brazilian driver's license to replace my New York one. They told me it might take as long as a year to get the actual card, and here it is, a year later and I have the card in hand. I have no idea how long it was sitting at the airport waiting for me to pick it up. The date of expedição printed on it, which is presumably when it was issued, was back in October. I haven't been too concerned about getting the thing these last few months- after all, I had a picture ID with my RNE on it already- my license.

What I can finally do now is go out and open a bank account. This in fact was the reason I finally called to see if the thing had arrived- I got cold-called by a bank to see if I wanted to open an account. I told them I didn't have an ID yet, in a lame attempt to scare them off, but eventually I decided to go ahead and open the account anyways, especially because the bank came highly recommended. I figure it's about time, although I'm not entirely sure how useful a bank account is going to be to me right now. I'll figure it out.

The card itself is a bit of an anti-climax, although I'm not sure what I expected. I guess because all official US documents, including money, tend to be drab and uninteresting I thought the id would be all colorful and with cool pictures on it, kinda like Brazilian money. No such luck. It's just white with an orange line drawing in the background that looks like the map of brazil ramping up to light speed. It's got a bunch of holographic seals of the Policia Federal badge which looks like any old sheriff's badge. On top of that, it doesn't even look new- I received it already warped as if someone had bitten and twisted it but was probably caused by a long-affixed paper clip.

It's got my name, my parent's names, a little picture of me with my hair pulled tightly back so you can't tell it actually went half way down my back. This picture has a miniature twin to the right of it with someone's initials right across my face. It also has my right thumb print on it.

What is most amusing is that it has the date I started the whole process of getting the thing printed on it: March 19, 2004. More than four years ago. Lucas hadn't been born- he hadn't even been conceived. If I remember correctly, we got the ball rolling on the ID shortly before my visa was to expire and we decided to get married.

I figure that most people don't have to wait four years for their ID's, they either know someone or they don't live in Bahia or they work something else out, know what I mean? I was dying to work something else out, and I even got a lawyer involved at one point but about the best he could do was finally arrange our home visit by the Policia Federal to check the legitimacy of the marriage. By that time we had our proof toddling around the house.

So now I'm legit. Funny, I don't feel so different. It was much stranger having my US driver's license expire.

A Stickup, Mostly

2008-05-31T20:03:00.000-07:00

It was a stickup but the guy didn't get anything.

The victim was my stepson, Ruan, and it didn't happen in a dark alley late at night. It happened Friday afternoon, and just after noon, as he was on his way to school. It was in broad daylight in a very well traveled area, just off one of the busiest streets here in the city. Just a few blocks from our house.

Pivete is a very colorful Portuguese word that means 'child thief' and there are a lot of them here in Salvador. Two of them approached Ruan, calling him by some made-up name apparently to make it look like they knew him, and one of them backed him up against a wall. He grabbed Ruan's arm, and said "Passa o celular, na boa." This means "Give me your cell phone, nice and easy." The other guy was watching the street, covering for his 'friend.'

Ruan, terrified, told him honestly that he didn't have a cell phone and the guy asked him what the hell was in his pocket and even stuck his hand in to find out. He had some cologne in there - Ruan is into cologne. Much more so than myself, much to my wife's chagrin.

So they let him go, and he went, quaking. Next thing he knows someone, an adult, is calling him back. The two kids have been collared by the cops, who had found a cell phone on the one who tried to rob Ruan. They wanted to know if it was his, which he said it wasn't. They wanted to know what happened and he told them. The Pivete got smacked hard twice on the neck and a cop car pulled up ('cruiser' doesn't quite fit the cars they drive here). They were carted off and that was the end of that.

Ruan, to his credit, didn't come home- he stayed on task and went to school and we only heard about what happened when he got home. We actually want him to have a phone, and it's only because of circumstances that he doesn't. Or didn't, because if he'd had one, he wouldn't anymore. He told us he doesn't want to go to school by himself anymore and we told him that what happened was extremely unusual, to be ripped off like that under those circumstances. Clearly the kids didn't know what they were doing, and they did get caught. We told him to stick close to other people if he's nervous, do the herd thing.

I've said it before on this blog that I consider it a minor miracle that the same thing hasn't happened to me yet here in Salvador. The only place I ever got mugged was in Greenfield, Massachusetts with a friend of mine when we weren't much older than Ruan, I think we were fifteen. That also happened quite early- at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but it was December which meant it was already dark. It was also in a very public spot, on the main street in Greenfield, but a little artificial grove of Christmas trees had been set up on the sidewalk and the thieves took advantage of it for cover. When they convinced us that they were actually robbing us I gave them my week's pay, which at the time was twelve dollars. Besides that, nothing worse happened other than getting threatened with a studded leather bracelet which the smaller and more psycho of the dudes wrapped around his fist. They chased off my friend and tried to lead me down an alley but I took off and they couldn't catch me. More than twenty years later it still gets my adrenaline going to remember it.

Those guys also got caught eventually, there was an eyewitness and eventually a trial although I didn't testify.

Another Cute Kid Post

2008-05-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

Lucas woke me up this morning with Hop On Pop in hand, he wanted to read. Only problem was it was 5:30 in the morning.

I informed him that Hop On Pop was not going to happen, but I could put on a movie for him, which he thought was a good idea. The only problem, as usual, was what movie. I tried the Avatar first, as that was what was in the dvd player and didn't require my getting out of bed. That worked for a little while, until Lucas lost interest and decided to read Hop On Pop to himself on the floor. That lasted all of two minutes, and he was back at my side with book in hand wanting me to read it to him again.

I successfully distracted him with the prospect of a different movie, and this time got out of bed to find one suitable for him. This can take a while. He expressed interest in Madagascar, but for some reason the CD case wasn't suitable- he told me "Like this," putting his fists together, whatever that means. It was a different copy of the film than his original one, having received a second one on his birthday. I tried to convince him that the movie was the same but he was not convinced. Finally I opened the case, and there was no disc inside so the point was suddenly moot.

At last we settled on Elmo, an old, recently neglected favorite. He watched and I slept. I was awoken once again when the disc was finished, and I started it again. He took the opportunity to show me all his new t-shirts, which he had laid out carefully on the floor in a row. I told him that was nice and retrieved a basket of toys from the other room for him so he would have something else to play with.

Eventually he got back into the bed and went back to sleep. When I woke up, Evani was pulling clothes out of drawers. His clothes. Our drawers. As we had been sleeping, he had transferred the entire contents of his dresser from his room to our room.

Evani was not pleased. I was having a hard time concealing my amusement. After all, he had amused himself for about two hours completely by himself and hadn't relied solely on the television, which makes me happy. Plus I love it when he does silly stuff, being a fan of silly stuff in general.

Sunday is Graffiti Day, Part IV

2008-05-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Back to the streets!

Well, I finally got back out again with my paints, and I undertook what was by far my most challenging painting to date, with decidedly mixed results. I spent over two hours wrangling with this thing, trying to get it right, and it is not right. I finally wrapped it up in disgust; hungry, discouraged, and with a mild headache. This is right on a very busy road, and it looked much better to me when I drove by it yesterday evening. Then it looked iffy to me again when I took the picture this afternoon, and I guess I've got my work cut out for me if I want to take my skills to the next level.

Doldrums

2008-05-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had the urge to turn on the TV only to realize that there is nothing on but really annoying prime-time soap operas in a semi-foreign language? And then realized that half the reason you want the TV on in the first place is to drown out the constant buzz of conversation outside the window that makes you feel like you're in a movie theater before the film starts? And been so wiped out due to the consequences of something bad you ate the previous evening that you don't even feel like reading a book? Or surfing the internet? Or working once again on a Saturday night at home by yourself, the family having fled for greener pastures? Or even looking at the new artwork you have been working on and getting all excited about?

That, friends, (in case you haven't guessed) is the evening I'm having. Actually, a fair portion of my week has been like that, which is why I haven't been writing posts. But I'm going to stop complaining, and I'm going to scour the DVD collection for something I'm not entirely sick of and try the veg-out option again. And sleep. And a fresh start tomorrow.

A Frequent Conversation

2008-05-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

"Lucas, what color is this?"

"No."

"What do you mean, no? You know what color this is."

"No."

"Lucas, 'no' is not a color. It's bluuuuue.

"Bloooo."

"Yes, it is! And what color is this?" I point at something yellow.

"No."

For some reason, Lucas will not say anything is yellow. He sometimes says things are blue or red, and green is his favorite. But not yellow. He's not having it.

Sticker Expo 08 Curitiba

2008-05-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

Yess! I've been checking the flickr site of EXS 08 for some time looking for any photos of my stickers in their show, and I just found one! Here it is. I was starting to worry that they'd just tossed my poor hand-drawn lovelies, but as it turns out they even gave me a nice little name tag. This is only the third art show I've been in including my BFA show in 92, and the other one I put on myself. I'm not counting the photos and paintings I hung in Brattleboro area restaurants back in the day. I'm also not counting the streets of Salvador, or the internet, which have provided me with much wider exposure than any of the little shows I've done. Not that it's come to anything. Yet. Except this expo in Curitiba.

I must say they did a pretty nice job with the show, much more professional than I expected initially. You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Yesterday I went and priced out silk screening equipment, and made the very pleasant discovery that I could get started with a basic setup for very cheap. So I may be mass producing stickers, and doing new t-shirts, soon. Perhaps very soon...

Lucas' Capoeira Event

2008-05-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week Lucas received a special invitation. His Capoeira group at school, Kilombolas, was celebrating its 35th birthday and Lucas was invited to participate. His instructor told us that not all the kids in his class were invited, only the more advanced ones, if you can be an advanced student of Capoeira at three years old.

I knew more or less where the event was happening, but what I didn't realize was that I knew exactly where the event was happening. There had been a graffiti event in the bairro back in October and the cultural center where the party was held was in the same spot. I had spent a very enjoyable hour or so running around the same streets with a very motivated organizer who wanted me to paint every wall in the neighborhood with the dribbles I had left in a couple cans. It was really cool to go back today, because I got to see and take pictures of some paintings that I hadn't even seen in daylight. Plus I got to show them off to Evani and Lucas.

The event, which was to start at three, was typically poorly organized and late getting started. When they finally did get started, we had to sit through the usual thanking of all the mestres and advanced students present, and a couple mestres who took the mike to say a few things. There are very few things you can say about all mestres of Capoeira, but it's safe to say that they are all like to talk. So that took a while.

What made the speeches a bit different was the guy MC'ing the event told everyone, twice, right off the bat, that there was to be no stealing of cameras or sneakers or cell phones because there were police in attendance and this wasn't that kind of event. He also made a point that this was not a batizado, or baptism, but a birthday party. Batizados are initiation events in Capoeira Regional and are generally accompanied with a troca de corda, the Capoeira version of moving up a belt. Neither of these things exist in Capoeira Angola.

To open the event there was a little bit of Maculelé, which is another very cool Afro-Brazilian stick fight/dance. People who are skilled at it use machetes, everyone else uses pieces of wood. This was a bunch of kids, and nobody was using machetes.

Next up was Lucas and his crew. Their presentation lasted all of two minutes, and it was as I had expected: very cute, the kids in varying degrees of focus. They sang the usual songs that get sung when kids are in the roda, including the old favorite Nhem Nhem Nhem, where they sing:

Cala boca, menino,
Nhem nhem nhem,
Menino chorão,
Nhem nhem nhem

This translates as "Shut your mouth, kid, you crybaby," with the taunting refrain every other line. There are a bunch of other songs for kids but like I said, this was only a two minute presentation. Now I'm going to do the Proud Papai thing and post the video of the entire thing so you can say "aaawww... how cute" in the privacy of your own home.

Pretty much as soon as they finished, we left. We'd been there for an hour and a half already. The room was also quite stuffy. I don't really understand the Brazilian aversion to windows, but they build a lot of stuff that has almost no ventilation. This place was actually better than most, with a bunch of little openings high up on the walls. Thank goodness it was cool and cloudy- if it had been sunny and summertime we would have been roasted in there.

So to wrap this up I'm going to post a couple photos of my aging street art, now that I have daylight versions of them. On the way out I discovered that one of them had been painted over. Blast!!

Rodents

2008-05-16T11:37:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night. There were mice running around the room, despite the room having lots of people in it. It was our house, but it wasn't our house. There was an open door leading to the basement, and we don't have a basement. I looked and realized they were running around in the open because they were being chased out of the basement by rats that were attacking them. I looked into the basement, and there were all these rats, attacking one another and the mice. Then I looked back in the room and there were all these dead bloody rats in the corners, and rats chasing mice and it was so unpleasant that I woke myself up; I rarely remember dreams like this unless I wake up in the middle of them.

I'd hate to have someone tell me what this means. Actually, I probably had the dream because I did see two mice chasing each other around in my office (at the house) the other day. I really should set out some traps. Not that I like killing mice much- I don't like to kill anything if I can avoid it, with the notable exceptions being mosquitoes and cockroaches. Biting flies also used to get swatted with vigor but we don't have those here in Brazil. But rodents are more than just a nuisance, there are some nasty rodent-borne diseases here.

We don't have rats in the house, but one did fall off our neighbor's roof the first year we lived here. He used to have this nasty section of roof where the tenants threw trash and apparently the rats liked it. It fell off his roof onto our patio- maybe it touched the electric fence we have. I'm not going to tell you the rest of this story because it ends badly. He has since reformed that part of the house and trash doesn't accumulate there anymore- I think.

The other thing that happened yesterday that might have triggered the dream has to do with the owls we have in the neighborhood- I think someone actually raises them. I hear them screeching all the time and Evani hates it, she's very superstitious about owls and I've discovered that lots of Bahians are. One time I was drinking beer with a friend of mine and we heard an owl screech overhead- he said Bota fogo no cu dela, Maria three times. This means Put fire up her butt, Maria. Kind of an obscure comment, but the sentiment is clear.

Personally I like owls and have nothing against them. I saw one of our neighborhood owls once, and it was beautiful and snowy white. Plus they eat rodents and I'm not a big fan of rodents even if I don't like to kill them myself. So anyhow last night I heard the owl screech, and then I heard it screech again, much closer, and simultaneously heard another screech which sounded exactly like a rodent that has just been seized in the talons of an owl. This was coming from our neighbor's house, which if I'm correct counters my theory that his rats are gone. At least the furry ones- he's got plenty of human rats living there.

Ruan's Birthday

2008-05-12T07:23:00.000-07:00

Saturday was Ruan's birthday, and to celebrate we left the city for a couple days. Here's what I wrote about our trip on Saturday night at the hotel:

Today is Ruan's eleventh birthday. I am in the beach town of Imbassai with him and Lucas and their cousin Gel, who was the closest thing to a brother that Ruan had before Lucas was born.

This was Evani's idea, but she's not here. She suggested coming out here, about an hour north of the city on the 'Linha Verde,' but then decided she didn't want to join us. I asked her what she wanted for Mother's day, and she said 'paz' so I guess that says it all.

So here I am with Lucas snoring at my side. This is the first time I've done an overnight trip with the kids without Evani. It started very badly; I gave Ruan a new game for his Game Boy before we left and it ended up with Lucas crying uncontrollably, wanting to play the game, and Ruan all pissed off because he couldn't play his new game. I told Ruan I needed his help if we were going to do this trip, and apparently that worked- he mellowed out and gave Lucas the game to play, and Lucas in turn stopped crying. It helped that I gave Ruan my new cell phone to check out, which he hadn't seen yet, so they both had an electronic distraction for a while.

I think it's a good thing I didn't write more. If I'd had lots of time to hang out on the computer, I wouldn't have been doing other things, like hanging out with the kids. We swam in the pool, went to the beach and played in the sand, went to a restaurant and had pizza and cake. During dinner, I snuck off and bought some chocolate cake and candles at the bakery conveniently located next to the restaurant we were eating at. I gave them to the waiter and asked him to bring it out after we were done eating. He said no problem.

When we finished eating, I tried mightily to herd Lucas back into his seat for the cake and he almost blew the surprise when Gel told him we were going to sing 'Parabens' (Congatulations, or 'Happy Birthday' Brazilian style). Lucas did go back to his chair, but of course he went saying "Parabens de Ruan!" several times, luckily Ruan didn't catch on. Then the fool of a waiter brought out the cake with the candles unlit. We were all singing parabens already, but had to stop because the fool of a waiter couldn't get the candles lit. I had to light them myself, and we started over again. At least the cake was tasty.

We experienced several miracles on our trip, the first being that it didn't rain. It had rained... the expression in the States is 'cats and dogs' but I don't think that's adequate for the rain we had here. I'd say it rained 'horses and cows' on Thursday night and then was cloudy all day Friday, and the forecast I saw online was for nothing but clouds, rain, and thunderstorms over the weekend. Nonetheless, Ruan wanted to go, and while we didn't get much in the way of sun, at least it didn't rain on us.

Another miracle we had was when we all worked on a sand castle at the beach and Lucas didn't destroy it, but chose instead to participate in the construction. As we were preparing to leave, he reverted to form and decimated the thing.

I know there was a third miracle, but it must have been a minor one because I don't remember it.

On Sunday we went to Praia do Forte, another trendy resort-ish town on the coast which is best know for its sea turtle project. We went and saw the turtles, had lunch and ice cream, and took a ride in a funky pedal taxi.

Ruan had a great time. He got two new games for his play station, and one for his game boy, so he's happy as a clam. Overall I'd say we all had a great time. And Evani got her time off, spending nearly two days with her friends in Paripe.

In the graffiti department, another Sunday, another near-bust in production. I painted a rather ugly bichinho on a power pole on our way out of Imbassai. I'm starting to appreciate the difference between different types of paint and caps (nozzles) and I'm not entirely thrilled with the ones I've got right now. Hopefully next Sunday I can do a real painting.

Roda

2008-05-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went and played in the roda of our Capoeira group. I brought Lucas with me, because he's been bugging me since Monday about how he wanted to go. Our group is very kid-friendly, we have a bunch of local kids who train and participate in the roda with us and provide a lot of energy in general, so I like to bring Lucas along. Everyone loves him there too, which is a bonus.

Because Lucas was with me, and I haven't been training much, my expectations were pretty low for the roda. I didn't even know if I'd get to play, or even if I should. I mostly just wanted to be there and see everyone and sing the songs. Going into the second hour of the roda, a friend of mine offered to distract Lucas for me so I could play. She told me to go directly to the pé do berimbau (literally 'foot of the berimbau') which is where the next in line to play sits. I did, and next thing I know I'm in the roda.

When I first started training Capoeira, the idea of playing in the roda was just about the scariest and most personally challenging thing I could have imagined myself ending up doing. You are in the middle of a circle of people, all singing and watching you play your game with one other person. Whatever you do, for good or bad, is there for everyone to see. I still find it challenging.

So I'm in the roda with a woman from our group who I have never played against before. She's a few years older than me- I being on the shy side of forty and she being a few years on the other side. She used to train with GCAP, as did several members of our group, and all three of our mestres.

GCAP is legendary in Capoeira Angola. Without wanting to get into it too much, it was essentially the group that saved Capoeira Angola when it was being snuffed out by Capoeira Regional. It is known as having been one of the most demanding and disciplined groups with one of the strictest mestres the art has ever known. Still is. It was responsible for the formation of many other groups started by ex-students- something one of my mestres refers to as the 'GCAP diaspora.'

The woman I was about to play had left Capoeira years before, and then come back to train with our group. I'd seen her play, and knew she still used a lot of the old GCAP moves. GCAP plays an aggressive game. I don't. I'm a mellow guy, most of the time, and most of my games in the roda are mellow too. Plus I was low energy- the adjectives 'heavy' and 'stiff' come to mind.

So we start to play- very slow and polite, which is how I always start a game. Very early on she starts to play more aggressively with me, kicking me when I'm open and picking up the pace. She got me with some move that left me on the floor, not much fun in front of all those people. It was not the game I had been hoping to play. One of my mestres made a comment that I didn't follow exactly, but the gist was that I was getting thumped and better do something about it.

At this point, I had to make a choice. I could have let her play this game against me, and continued to try to counter with a non-aggressive, mellow game. I've done this in the past with mixed results. If I'm really on top of my game, I can pull it off, but usually I just end up gettting kicked a lot and annoyed. The alternative is to ramp it up and play the game she is already playing.

I decided to ramp it up.

Let me say for those who aren't familiar with Angola that when I say 'kick' I don't mean kick in a kickboxing sense. Angola is much more about showing kicks, or planting a kick lightly, to show that you 'got' the other person. I've taken real kicks before, by accident and on purpose, and they generally mean the game is over.

So I will my soggy, leaden limbs to move faster and start getting serious. I'm not a brilliant capoeirista by any means, but I have a few moves. I even have some kinda 'dirty' moves, but I decided not to pull any of them out tonight. I whiz a couple kicks by her face and pull her foot out from under her and the game is on. She reacts by setting her mouth and playing harder. It became clear that she was trying hard to get me.

It wasn't a pretty game. I was stiff and out of practice. The crowning moment for me was a well-placed cabeçada (head butt) that put her gently on the floor- payback for earlier in the game. It went back and forth and I can't say if I really took the upper hand, I'm usually not real clear on what the game looks like to other people. At one point I was doing something or other and her foot hit me in the face. I didn't even see it coming. It didn't hit me hard, but I was already annoyed and this was even more annoying. She gave me a hug and figured it was the end of the game. I wanted to keep going and we were allowed to (the mestres, and whoever is playing the berimbau, decides when the game is over most of the time). We played a bit more and then we were done.

After a game like that, I never really know what people are thinking. I go and sit in the circle again, and sing and watch other people play, and I don't know if it was good or bad, if they think I did well or if I was an idiot. The worst is when you know you looked like an idiot. I hate asking people "So how was my game??" so generally I don't.

After the roda was over, someone I know from another Capoeira group asked if I would give her a ride, which I did. As we were walking to the car, she said that she enjoyed my game. I asked her why, because I thought it was pretty ugly. She said that she thought I'd been very gentlemanly in the way I had dealt with her- that she had pushed the game, been aggressive, and been asking for it. I had given it to her, but in a very nice way. She went on to say that she sees lots of women at her roda do this kind of thing, often with guys much more experienced than they, and the guys really let them have it. She doesn't approve of this kind of thing.

So I guess I'm flattered. I'm also wondering if anyone else had the same response to the game. I'm also really wanting to get my game back together so I don't feel like such a lunk in the roda. Next week I could come up against some young guy who trains every day and decides to go after me. That's also happened before.

No, Pat, No!

2008-05-08T20:40:00.001-07:00

Lucas said to me yesterday: "No, Pat, No! Don't sit on the cat!"

This made me extremely happy.

Let me explain why.

Pat is a big, fluffy, Fozzie Bear type character in Dr. Zeuss' book Hop On Pop. He goes around sitting on things, like a hat, a bat, and of course, a cat. He also tries to sit on a cactus.

When he sits on the cat, the text reads 'Pat sat on cat.'

When he goes to sit on the cactus, the text reads 'No, Pat, No! Don't sit on that!'

So why are you so happy, you are asking. Well, Lucas said this in English. And not only did he put two different phrases together in a logical way, but he also put the article in there in the right place with no prompting from his English-speaking dad!

So the kid is finally getting it. And he's really learning, not just parroting. My words aren't just bouncing off him. I mean, I knew they weren't all bouncing off him, but now I know I'll be hearing more than just 'Look!' and 'Nother one' and 'All gone.' Oh yeah, and 'Come on man!'

Not that those aren't good words too.

Improvising in Portuguese

2008-05-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

On Tuesdays Lucas has Capoeira at school, so we dress him up in his white stretchy pants and his little tank top all emblazoned with the logo of the group that teaches there. It's a Regional group, which is not the style I train (Angola), so I'll forgive him the lack of sleeves and shoes. He's only three and hopefully some day he'll want to train Angola instead of, or as well as, Regional.

Sometimes when we dress him up we start singing Capoeira songs and I have even been known to play a little bit of Capoeira with him before we head out of the house. We did that today, and I started singing Parana ê, which is quite possibly the most famous Capoeira song of them all.

Once we left the house, Lucas started singing Parana ê again, and I joined in, improvising lyrics in Portuguese.

A loose translation:

Me: Oh Lucas is a cutie guy, Parana, he likes to play Capoeira, Parana.

Lucas: Ruan!

Me: What?

Lucas: Sing about Ruan!

Me: Oh Ruan is big and tall, Parana, he doesn't play Capoeira, Parana.

Lucas: Me! Sing about how I'm little!

Me: Oh Lucas is teeny tiny, Parana, but he still goes in the Roda, Parana.

He likes to suck his thumb, Parana, we can't get him to stop, Parana.

Of course he was sucking his thumb as I sang that. There were two women walking in front of us and they were looking back at us and laughing. Lucas gets lots of attention when he goes to school in his Capoeira clothes. Actually, he gets a lot of attention anyways- I didn't realize quite how much until we started meeting some people who live and work in the Largo- and they would tell us (mostly Evani, actually) how they'd always see me walking around with him and how wonderful Lucas' hair is.

I tend to not notice people notice me- one of the things I started doing early on when I moved here was to screen out almost everyone around me. I knew they were all looking at me, and rather than look back at all of them it was easier to just shut them all out. I know what it is to be in a minority- not an oppressed minority, but a minority nonetheless. It's an experience everyone should have.

So back to Capoeira. Improvising lyrics in Capoeira is an art- an art I haven't mastered very well, and something I'm really only capable of doing when I'm not at a roda, and especially not when I'm playing a berimbau. It's generally all I can do to remember the words I already know to the songs, let alone make up new ones. That was fine in New York, where my mestre João Grande really didn't want us to improvise at all. Here, it's a different story. You can improvise all you want.

I made it back to Capoeira yesterday, the first time since the last time I wrote a post about it. Which was (shudder) over a month ago. Sigh. I'm gonna give it up for real one of these days, but not quite yet.

I'm having a lull in my work schedule for the first time in months, which is terrifying since I'm a freelancer. I'm trying to take advantage of the dry spell and do some other things, like get back to Capoeira. Also hang out with the family a bit more, like we did on Sunday when we took a long overdue trip to the beach. I should really be trying to make artwork, and crank out stickers and drawings and such, but getting all stressed out over my lack of paying work isn't helping to motivate me. I did go and buy some fresh cans of spray paint for the first time in a couple months, and that was invigorating. If a lack of billable hours isn't artistically inspiring, hanging out with graffiteiros tends to be a bit more so. I hope to do so again soon. But there will be no 'Sunday is Graffiti Day' this week, unless I choose to call it 'Sunday is Paint My Name Sloppily by the Side of the Road With Everybody Waiting In The Car Day.' I think I'll just skip it.

Sunday is Wheatpaste Day

2008-04-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I didn't hit the streets with a bag of cans, or sharpies in my pocket. Yesterday I went out with a bucket containing a brush, a folder of copies, and a can of wheatpaste.

Wheatpaste is one of those things that is fantastic because it's so simple and so cheap- who would have thunk that wheat flour and water, when heated, makes a great glue?

Well, apparently someone thunk it because it's been around for a long time.

The image I pasted up five times on my regular turf between Campo Grande and Praça da Sé (ie within walking distance of my house) is a drawing I did about twelve years ago called Computer Freak.

Computer Freak has an interesting story. I drew it as I was recovering from jet lag after returning from a nine month international journey that ended in Thailand. I went from a very warm and green place to a very cold and slushy place- I arrived in Boston in March and my brother whisked me away to his house in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont. This saved me from the worst of the culture shock, but there wasn't much to be done about the nearly 12 hour time difference except try to sleep it off. This took more days than it should have, and during my more lucid moments I did this drawing. The original is tiny, about 4 by 6 inches, and as you can see crammed with detail. Originally the guy had electrodes going right into his head but I thought that was a little over the top so I removed them. I didn't actually buy a computer for another couple years after I did the drawing.

Despite its tiny size, I discovered that it enlarges really well, and I poster-printed a version of it about a year or so ago on nine sheets of paper and hung it on my wall. When I started to get into the sticker thing and was checking out street-art related groups on Flickr, I saw this image by d3d! and was... inspired. d3d! was also the first guy to tell me what wheatpaste was all about. So I printed out another version of the Computer Freak and had some copies made at my local copyshop. And then they sat around for months- until yesterday.

Another thing I did for the first time was include my markuza.com address along with the images, which makes me cringe a little bit but this has been part of the plan for a long time and it's time to get on with it. Let's see if I get a little spikie in the traffic reports for markuza.com. Maybe someone will even want a copy of the Computer Freak postcard, it's available for free after all.

This is one of the most popular and often-changing spots in the center of the city for graffiti- here is work by Limpo and Prem as well as mine. As you can see Limpo also posted his email- I guess he's gotten a bunch of commissions that way.

This one got hidden by a street vendor

This picture shows how the image is really too small to compete with big pieces like this one by Mônica- who is one of the only female street artists in the city (Prem's another one)

I also discovered that one of my street drawings is no more- or rather it's hidden behind another piece of scrap wood on this makeshift wall.

Day Book

2008-04-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

June 3, 1998

Well- I got my first webpage up yesterday, I think- I couldn’t access it today, not that it was terribly interesting, the old “can of beer” website.

Had a rather productive day today, as opposed to yesterday which didn’t seem so productive at all, despite the can of beer. Today I drew bugs for a couple hours, worked on the KF logo, scanned some slides, edited the Borg design.

I’m also running low on power so I think it’s time to quit.

* * * * *

I'm having a lull in my work schedule right now, so I took some time yesterday to rummage through some old files I have backed up on CD's. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find something completely unexpected- a folder called 'daybook' which contains several dozen entries over four years of my daily activities. Not exactly a complete record, but enough to surprise me and bring back some vivid memories.

My past efforts at journal-keeping have been pretty pathetic, with a notable exception. My 'domestic' journals tended to have only really boring entries or angst-ridden ones from when I was going through a low point in my life. They are very unpleasant to read. Next time I find them I will burn them so nobody will ever be subjected to them again. Especially me.

The notable exception to this rule are the journals I have kept during my travels. I made regular and detailed entries for my trips: around the US by car, Eurailing it through Europe, backpacking in Asia, and even my first trip here in Brazil. I'll have to check to see if I wrote one for the trip I took with Evani in Europe, I'm thinking I did. Kinda tough to verify as all these journals are in a chest up at my Dad's house along with the majority of my surviving artwork, some thousands of miles away. Due to the number and length of those trips, I figure I probably have at least one entry for every day of the year. I've thought it would make an interesting compilation- I could even make a book out of it, with different entries from each trip written up for each day of the year. If I ever get really motivated, and am freed from the day to day demands on my time, and find myself in the same place as the journals, maybe I'll do that some day.

So let's review that entry I posted some ten years ago with a little context.

Well- I got my first webpage up yesterday, I think- I couldn’t access it today, not that it was terribly interesting, the old “can of beer” website.

Ah, my first website. You never forget your first. Actually, I had completely forgotten about it until last night. I had no idea how to build a web page at the time, and I built that one using Microsoft Publisher- a program that I thought no longer existed but I just checked online and apparently it's still around. It was an extremely primitive, if simple, way to create websites and actually up until pretty recently a portion of my kfpro.com site still had code from back in my Publisher days.

The site, which was appended onto my user account from my ISP and had some useless url like www.sover.net~mpfohl, was probably never viewed by anyone but me. It showed a drawing, done by me, of a can of beer, with a clever caption reading something like 'A can of beer.' Then there was a link to the other page, with a similar drawing, with a similar caption reading 'Another can of beer.' I found that extremely amusing at the time. If you want another example of just how opaque my humor can be, have a look at this.

Had a rather productive day today, as opposed to yesterday which didn’t seem so productive at all, despite the can of beer. Today I drew bugs for a couple hours, worked on the KF logo, scanned some slides, edited the Borg design.

So what am I talking about here? At the time I wrote that, I was trying pretty seriously to get into marketing my artwork as t-shirts and postcards. I did a bunch of artwork, but ultimately gave up on the plan for various reasons, not least of them my being lazy and unwilling to make the hurdle into the 'marketing' aspect of it.

This plan hasn't entirely gone away, and it even experienced a renaissance of enthusiasm about a year ago. Unfortunately, I have much less time now than I did then and I'm still unsure about my prospects of marketing the stuff, but I have a bunch of ideas for Bahian themed drawings that I think would be popular with tourists- there's nothing like it around here.

I've actually found that a number of my abandoned projects are coming back in a new form. I used to do lots of drawings on blank index cards, these drawings were the precursors of the stickers I make now. I used to think about writing a book about travel, now I'm writing this blog. And who knows if I won't get back to the shirts and the postcards for real. I certainly want to. Will I ever get back to writing underground comics? I doubt it.

I did get as far as having some shirts and cards printed- my relatives and inlaws wear the shirts, and I'm trying to give away postcards on my website but haven't had much interest.

I’m also running low on power so I think it’s time to quit.

No, I didn't write this because I was working on a laptop. In June of 1998, I was house-sitting for my brother, who used to own a house in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont that was off the grid. Solar panels and batteries. I did that for two summers, and they were awesome summers. I had a big honking desktop with a 17 inch monitor and I generally had to use it during the day because it drew so much juice that I could only run it for short periods when the sun wasn't shining. This must have been one of those periods.

Parking

2008-04-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

I just listened to a story on All Things Considered about some newfangled computerized system to monitor empty parking spaces in San Francisco. The system would allow rates to be changed for different times of day and you could find empty spaces on your cell phone, etc. All the freakin' bells and whistles.

I love stories like this on the one hand, because I find technology fascinating and enjoy listening to what is coming next. On the other hand, it makes me realize just how far I am from home.

Admittedly, this system could take years to get implemented in San Francisco, if it ever happens at all. But here in Salvador, in Bahia, in Brazil, it's gonna be many years. Salvador doesn't even have parking meters as far as I know.

What Salvador has is hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have as their only or primary means of employment to watch over a number of parking spaces, help drivers get in and out of them, and sometimes wash the cars that they watch over. My neighborhood must support about a dozen guys like this. On the bigger streets and in some of the fancier neighborhoods these people are apparently legalized- they wear official vests over their clothes and write out paper tickets that you display on your dashboard, with the price of the parking on it. But most of the time, it's just a guy with a rag waving you toward an empty spot and asking for some change or one real (Brazilian dollar) or sometimes more. The most shameless of these guys work in Pelourinho, where I have been asked for as much as five reis to park my car. I mean- I know I'm obviously an estrangeiro here, but do I really have 'idiot' written across my forehead? Generally when someone tries to get me to pay that much I just move to another spot. I've actually got it pretty well figured 0ut where I can park for free in most of the places I go.

Not that these guys are all bad. There are certainly places where I need to park that I'd rather have someone at least nominally keeping an eye on my car rather than have it all alone while I go do something. When it really bugs me, beyond the absurd fools in Pelourinho, is when I just need to stop for five minutes and suddenly there's a guy at my window wanting a real for almost nothing. Sometimes I just want a parking meter.

And then there's the army (or is it armies?) of window-washer guys...

And all the little children who juggle devil sticks at stoplights for change...

And the people who sell DVD's or water or fruit or candy or WHATEVER while you're waiting for the light to change.

Poverty is a terrible thing. This is something I've always known, but I know it much more intimately now than I ever have in the past. Some of these things I think are very wrong- I hate seeing little kids juggling for change on the street, and I hate to think of how they ended up doing so. But most of these people are working very hard for very little money, doing what they can to make some cash in an economy that doesn't present them with many options, and I can't begrudge them for it. I just wish they had more options.