by Stop Mike Lupica on February 12 at 10:23AM
BRAZIL:
Stereotypes: The hottest ladies in the world! Some of the best athletes ever! Widespread use of bio-fuels! CARNIVALE! Lots of guns!
Truth: Brazil is actually a dystopia with run by a bureaucratic totalitarian government, in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained machines that only Robert DeNiro can fix. These dreamlike qualities contribute to the rampant black humor.
Previous Olympic History: Brazil has competed in the Summer Olympics since 1920, and is currently ranked 33rd overall in medals. They have won over half their total medals (37 out of 75 total) in the last three Olympic games. They do not compete in the Winter Olympics, although in Brazilian Portuguese they do have 75 different words that mean “What the fuck is snow?”
In the 2004 Olympics, Brazil finished 16th overall, winning 10 medals. That might sound impressive, but they won 12 medals (2 more!) in 2000, and 15 (six more? We always sucked at math) in 1996. 2004's bullshit tally was just 3 bronzes, 2 silvers, and 5 golds (a record for Brazil).
The Golds were for: Beach volleyball men's team Ricardo Santos and Emanuel Rego (pictured):
Two for sailing - Robert Scheidt for the "Laser" event (pictured)
And Torben Grael for the "Star" event (pictured)
Oddly enough, they’ve been the only country entered into each of those competitions, because nobody else knows what the hell is going on.
Torben Grael is the most successful sailor in Olympic history, having won 5 medals in 6 Olympic appearances. He changed his name to just “Torbeninho” and gave himself a bizarre haircut, as is the custom of the best Brazilian athletes.
Rodrigo Pessoa initial won the silver in an equestrian event, riding his horse Baloubet du Rouet (Portuguese for “This Horse Has No Name”). The initial gold medal winner, Cian O'Connor, an Irish equestrian, rode the horse Waterford Crystal (pictured):
Waterford Crystal was later disqualified for testing positive for prohibited substances (he de-neighed the allegations, claiming it was a shot of Vitamin B-12), and Rodrigo Pessoa got awarded the gold medal. Waterford Crystal is also responsible for giving DJM the opportunity for the first ever Star Trek reference on SML.com, for which he is eternally grateful.
Baloubet de Rouet is a hugely (if you know what we mean) successful chestnut-colored stallion, having won first place three times in the World Cup (of horses), and a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics. Here he is, just after winning his third Horsey World Cup:
The Aluminium Medals:
Five Brazilians finished fourth in their events in 2004, just missing medals. That list includes the women's basketball and volleyball teams (who did, however, win the Gold for Olympic-Level Hot or Not), and the sad case of sailor Ricardo Winicki, whose 17th place finish in the last leg of the race caused him to go from 1st place all the way to fourth, missing a medal by just one point. After that he changed his name to Agony du Defeaticki.
2008 Olympic Prospects:
Brazil already has 148 athletes ready to go to the 2008 Olympics in China, in 19 sports. Obviously they’re always a team to watch in soccer, unless you’re American in which case SOCCER SUCKS GO BASEBALL! Obviously bet on Torben Grael if he brings his nautical skills to China.
True story: Last night I dreamt he sailed away to China, in a little rowboat, because he had to get his laundry clean. Strange. What does that mean?
My dream did not involve a virtual George Michael chasing men around, thankfully:
Seriously, I have no idea what any of this has to do with Brazil. Let's get this post back on track.
Brazil History:
Brazil was "discovered" by Portugese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral. Cabral's Wikipedia entry is a weird one. After listing all his achievements in his biography section - "discovering" Brazil, successfully going around the Cape of Good Hope, landing in Mozambique, discovering Madagascar, and chilling in India - it ends with this odd pair of sentences:
"Cabral is buried in a monastery in Santarem, Portugal. He died forgotten."
It then adds “Therefore, this Wikipedia page does not exist. Thank you. Please enjoy the following PARADOX! BURN!”
There is a popular theory that the shifty Portuguese actually first discovered Brazil in 1341, thanks to explorer Sancho Brandao (pictured).
Since they couldn't claim it as theirs at the time, they instead asked the Pope to extend the imaginary line splitting the world, resulting in the Tordesillas Treaty. With that in hand, they sent Cabral in the direction of Brazil in 1500, once Spain had found North America. Shifty Portuguese. With their… with their two U’s.
The Capital of Germany is New York:
For a while, from 1808-1821, the capital of a European country/empire was located in the New World. The Portuguese court, fleeing the French Juggernaut known as Napoleon, moved the entire government to Rio de Janiero. In fact, the King liked it in Rio a lot (what's to like about Rio?), and would have kept the government there if not for instability back in Portugal that forced him to go back home.
Kings Are Wild:
Brazil is also one of only two New World countries to try their hand at monarchy after achieving independence. Mexico rolled with it for a few decades; Brazil for about 90 years had a King, up until a military coup ousted the King/Emperor in 1889.
Borderline:
The country of Brazil borders 10 out of the 12 South American countries. You may think that makes it number one in the world, but it's not... China and Russia each have 14 borders. With each other. Think about that for a second.
Wait, what were we writing about?
Hey, who's up for some random border talk? Some interesting border trivia SML has stumbled upon over the years:
Pop Culture:
Capoeira is Brazilian martial art/dance that involves a lot of cool acrobatic movements. It was developed by the slaves in colonial times as a way to practice self-defense discreetly. When the slave masters would see them practicing fighting, they would say "Nah, we just dancing", and play it off. To this day many people practice capoeira as a dance movement.
Also, the main "musical" instrument in capeoira also doubles as a bow that can fire arrows (pictured):
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu superstars, the Gracie family (Helio, Royce, others) developed the “anything goes” style that lead to many of today's popular Ultimate Fighting Championships type events. In fact, SML can remember watching the early UFCs back in the early 90's (on my friend's illegal cable box that had all the channels), and watching the legendary Royce Gracie, who had never lost a fight in his career. He dominated those early tournaments, winning three of them before fighting to a draw with Ken Shamrock in the fifth UFC. We all thought Ken Shamrock (pictured) would have won that fight if time hadn't run out, as Gracie was taking a beating.
In case you are wondering, yes, he does have a cousin named "Rolls". Not the leprechaun. The other guy. Keep it together.
Footvolley is a game popular on the beaches in Rio. It is a mix of soccer and volleyball, with players having to use their feet and head to get balls over the volleyball net. They serve by kicking the ball off a little mound. It’s going to catch on here any time now! Right?
If plastic surgery was a sport, Brazil would be perennial gold medal contenders every year. Heyo!
Rio has one of the biggest imbalances in the world in terms of demographics. There are only 86.4 males per 100 females in the Rio metro area. Part of this has to do with sterilization: 40% of women age 15-49 have been sterilized according to one recent study. In other words, Rio has lots of hot, beautiful women, fewer men, and they can't get pregnant. Just FYI.
Oh yeah: Soccer is popular here, too. 5 of the top 10 largest stadiums in the world are in Brazil.
Brazil has the 2nd largest number of airports in the world and the only city that I know of that is shaped like an airplane. On purpose.
Famous Brazilians:
The famous Brazilian actor Oscarito, seen here:
Adriana Lima (model and Peruvian capital, dating overachieving basketball player):
Gisele Bundchen (model, also dating famous loser):
Anderson Varejeo (basketball player):
Pele (doesn't use his hands. for anything. SOB is like Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot):
Blanka (electrical engineer):
Bonus - Personal Experiences:
The Indian Playa (who provided all the pictures of thongs in this post) once set up a trip with like 11 of us going to Rio (Indian Playa's Eleven) for eight nights. It was a motley crew of his friends and their friends - 8 Indians, 2 Hispanics, and one Burmese dude. The Playa got us hotel rooms in a 5-star hotel for very very low rates. Three of us to a room, but the rates for the 5-star hotel were about $70 a night.
How did he get us those low rates? Well, he was seeing a girl who worked in the Philly branch of this 5-star hotel. She took her manager's letterhead, and faxed a forged note to the Rio office, letting them know that IP is an employee of the Philly branch, and to give him the employee discounted rate during his stay. So we were chilling, paying little coin on double rooms that normally would run about $300 a night.
On the seventh night, some of the group came back to the rooms early in the morning (4ish), as one does in Rio. Apparently they made a little too much noise for a couple of stewardess staying in the hotel, on the same floor. They complained to the manager in the morning. The morning manager faxed a letter to the Philly branch to notify them that their employee had gotten some complaints during his stay here.
The Philly branch manager called back to say that "there was no employee here by that name". Whoops!
By the time this had all gone down, and the day manager had a chance to talk to IP, it was the end of his shift. IP assured him it was a mistake, and would clear it up in the morning. The manager said that if it was not cleared up in the morning, he would have to charge us the full rate, and kick us out.
And with that, we took a vote. We decided to wait until late evening, long after the day manager was gone, and check out with the night manager. He charged us the discounted rate we had checked in under (he was unaware of whatever was going on), and we vanished, finding another hotel to spend the last night.
Epilogue: The IP checked in with this girl of his, to see if she got into any trouble.
"The manager was pissed off. He checked out the names of everyone registered in the hotel (only the four payers of the rooms were registered), and saw that all of the names were Indian. So he fired the Indian teenager who worked here." For the record, this girl was Hispanic.
Conclusion:
If you’re going to help your friends, make sure your friends don’t share your ethnicity. The more you know. ding DING ding.
Special thanks as always to DJM for his witty contributions. He is not of the same ethnicity as me, so we can do nice things for each other. Make sure to check out the Olympic Preview Archives for other countries.
Leave a comment
Stereotypes: The hottest ladies in the world! Some of the best athletes ever! Widespread use of bio-fuels! CARNIVALE! Lots of guns!
Truth: Brazil is actually a dystopia with run by a bureaucratic totalitarian government, in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained machines that only Robert DeNiro can fix. These dreamlike qualities contribute to the rampant black humor.
Previous Olympic History: Brazil has competed in the Summer Olympics since 1920, and is currently ranked 33rd overall in medals. They have won over half their total medals (37 out of 75 total) in the last three Olympic games. They do not compete in the Winter Olympics, although in Brazilian Portuguese they do have 75 different words that mean “What the fuck is snow?”
In the 2004 Olympics, Brazil finished 16th overall, winning 10 medals. That might sound impressive, but they won 12 medals (2 more!) in 2000, and 15 (six more? We always sucked at math) in 1996. 2004's bullshit tally was just 3 bronzes, 2 silvers, and 5 golds (a record for Brazil).
The Golds were for: Beach volleyball men's team Ricardo Santos and Emanuel Rego (pictured):
Two for sailing - Robert Scheidt for the "Laser" event (pictured)And Torben Grael for the "Star" event (pictured)Oddly enough, they’ve been the only country entered into each of those competitions, because nobody else knows what the hell is going on.Torben Grael is the most successful sailor in Olympic history, having won 5 medals in 6 Olympic appearances. He changed his name to just “Torbeninho” and gave himself a bizarre haircut, as is the custom of the best Brazilian athletes.
Rodrigo Pessoa initial won the silver in an equestrian event, riding his horse Baloubet du Rouet (Portuguese for “This Horse Has No Name”). The initial gold medal winner, Cian O'Connor, an Irish equestrian, rode the horse Waterford Crystal (pictured):
Waterford Crystal was later disqualified for testing positive for prohibited substances (he de-neighed the allegations, claiming it was a shot of Vitamin B-12), and Rodrigo Pessoa got awarded the gold medal. Waterford Crystal is also responsible for giving DJM the opportunity for the first ever Star Trek reference on SML.com, for which he is eternally grateful. Baloubet de Rouet is a hugely (if you know what we mean) successful chestnut-colored stallion, having won first place three times in the World Cup (of horses), and a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics. Here he is, just after winning his third Horsey World Cup:
The Aluminium Medals:Five Brazilians finished fourth in their events in 2004, just missing medals. That list includes the women's basketball and volleyball teams (who did, however, win the Gold for Olympic-Level Hot or Not), and the sad case of sailor Ricardo Winicki, whose 17th place finish in the last leg of the race caused him to go from 1st place all the way to fourth, missing a medal by just one point. After that he changed his name to Agony du Defeaticki.
2008 Olympic Prospects:
Brazil already has 148 athletes ready to go to the 2008 Olympics in China, in 19 sports. Obviously they’re always a team to watch in soccer, unless you’re American in which case SOCCER SUCKS GO BASEBALL! Obviously bet on Torben Grael if he brings his nautical skills to China.
True story: Last night I dreamt he sailed away to China, in a little rowboat, because he had to get his laundry clean. Strange. What does that mean?
My dream did not involve a virtual George Michael chasing men around, thankfully:
Seriously, I have no idea what any of this has to do with Brazil. Let's get this post back on track.
Brazil History:
Brazil was "discovered" by Portugese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral. Cabral's Wikipedia entry is a weird one. After listing all his achievements in his biography section - "discovering" Brazil, successfully going around the Cape of Good Hope, landing in Mozambique, discovering Madagascar, and chilling in India - it ends with this odd pair of sentences:
"Cabral is buried in a monastery in Santarem, Portugal. He died forgotten."
It then adds “Therefore, this Wikipedia page does not exist. Thank you. Please enjoy the following PARADOX! BURN!”
There is a popular theory that the shifty Portuguese actually first discovered Brazil in 1341, thanks to explorer Sancho Brandao (pictured).
Since they couldn't claim it as theirs at the time, they instead asked the Pope to extend the imaginary line splitting the world, resulting in the Tordesillas Treaty. With that in hand, they sent Cabral in the direction of Brazil in 1500, once Spain had found North America. Shifty Portuguese. With their… with their two U’s.The Capital of Germany is New York:
For a while, from 1808-1821, the capital of a European country/empire was located in the New World. The Portuguese court, fleeing the French Juggernaut known as Napoleon, moved the entire government to Rio de Janiero. In fact, the King liked it in Rio a lot (what's to like about Rio?), and would have kept the government there if not for instability back in Portugal that forced him to go back home.Kings Are Wild:
Brazil is also one of only two New World countries to try their hand at monarchy after achieving independence. Mexico rolled with it for a few decades; Brazil for about 90 years had a King, up until a military coup ousted the King/Emperor in 1889.
Borderline:
The country of Brazil borders 10 out of the 12 South American countries. You may think that makes it number one in the world, but it's not... China and Russia each have 14 borders. With each other. Think about that for a second.
Wait, what were we writing about?Hey, who's up for some random border talk? Some interesting border trivia SML has stumbled upon over the years:
- The UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Saudi Arabia have unannounced border. They came to agreement for the border in the 1970's, but decided they wouldn't tell anyone what the exact border is, so map-makers generally guess. It's somewhere in the desert, so it's not like there is any border crossing to help cartographers.
- Bolivia used to have access to the Pacific Ocean, but it lost a war to Chile (embarrassing!), and lost that territory. Thus it is now a landlocked country.
Pop Culture:
Capoeira is Brazilian martial art/dance that involves a lot of cool acrobatic movements. It was developed by the slaves in colonial times as a way to practice self-defense discreetly. When the slave masters would see them practicing fighting, they would say "Nah, we just dancing", and play it off. To this day many people practice capoeira as a dance movement.
Also, the main "musical" instrument in capeoira also doubles as a bow that can fire arrows (pictured):
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu superstars, the Gracie family (Helio, Royce, others) developed the “anything goes” style that lead to many of today's popular Ultimate Fighting Championships type events. In fact, SML can remember watching the early UFCs back in the early 90's (on my friend's illegal cable box that had all the channels), and watching the legendary Royce Gracie, who had never lost a fight in his career. He dominated those early tournaments, winning three of them before fighting to a draw with Ken Shamrock in the fifth UFC. We all thought Ken Shamrock (pictured) would have won that fight if time hadn't run out, as Gracie was taking a beating.In case you are wondering, yes, he does have a cousin named "Rolls". Not the leprechaun. The other guy. Keep it together.Footvolley is a game popular on the beaches in Rio. It is a mix of soccer and volleyball, with players having to use their feet and head to get balls over the volleyball net. They serve by kicking the ball off a little mound. It’s going to catch on here any time now! Right?
If plastic surgery was a sport, Brazil would be perennial gold medal contenders every year. Heyo!
Rio has one of the biggest imbalances in the world in terms of demographics. There are only 86.4 males per 100 females in the Rio metro area. Part of this has to do with sterilization: 40% of women age 15-49 have been sterilized according to one recent study. In other words, Rio has lots of hot, beautiful women, fewer men, and they can't get pregnant. Just FYI.
Oh yeah: Soccer is popular here, too. 5 of the top 10 largest stadiums in the world are in Brazil.
Brazil has the 2nd largest number of airports in the world and the only city that I know of that is shaped like an airplane. On purpose.
Famous Brazilians:
The famous Brazilian actor Oscarito, seen here:
Adriana Lima (model and Peruvian capital, dating overachieving basketball player):Gisele Bundchen (model, also dating famous loser):Anderson Varejeo (basketball player):Pele (doesn't use his hands. for anything. SOB is like Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot):Blanka (electrical engineer):Bonus - Personal Experiences:The Indian Playa (who provided all the pictures of thongs in this post) once set up a trip with like 11 of us going to Rio (Indian Playa's Eleven) for eight nights. It was a motley crew of his friends and their friends - 8 Indians, 2 Hispanics, and one Burmese dude. The Playa got us hotel rooms in a 5-star hotel for very very low rates. Three of us to a room, but the rates for the 5-star hotel were about $70 a night.
How did he get us those low rates? Well, he was seeing a girl who worked in the Philly branch of this 5-star hotel. She took her manager's letterhead, and faxed a forged note to the Rio office, letting them know that IP is an employee of the Philly branch, and to give him the employee discounted rate during his stay. So we were chilling, paying little coin on double rooms that normally would run about $300 a night.
On the seventh night, some of the group came back to the rooms early in the morning (4ish), as one does in Rio. Apparently they made a little too much noise for a couple of stewardess staying in the hotel, on the same floor. They complained to the manager in the morning. The morning manager faxed a letter to the Philly branch to notify them that their employee had gotten some complaints during his stay here.
The Philly branch manager called back to say that "there was no employee here by that name". Whoops!
By the time this had all gone down, and the day manager had a chance to talk to IP, it was the end of his shift. IP assured him it was a mistake, and would clear it up in the morning. The manager said that if it was not cleared up in the morning, he would have to charge us the full rate, and kick us out.
And with that, we took a vote. We decided to wait until late evening, long after the day manager was gone, and check out with the night manager. He charged us the discounted rate we had checked in under (he was unaware of whatever was going on), and we vanished, finding another hotel to spend the last night.
Epilogue: The IP checked in with this girl of his, to see if she got into any trouble.
"The manager was pissed off. He checked out the names of everyone registered in the hotel (only the four payers of the rooms were registered), and saw that all of the names were Indian. So he fired the Indian teenager who worked here." For the record, this girl was Hispanic.
Conclusion:
If you’re going to help your friends, make sure your friends don’t share your ethnicity. The more you know. ding DING ding.
Special thanks as always to DJM for his witty contributions. He is not of the same ethnicity as me, so we can do nice things for each other. Make sure to check out the Olympic Preview Archives for other countries.
Leave a comment
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4 Comments
Comments
great post as usual, I love these entries guys, congratulations
I would like to mention brazilian hoops legend Oscar Bezerra Schmidt, a sharpshooter that made Rick Barry look like Reggie Evans
Oscar played in Italy during the 80's and 90's and retired when he was 46 or something, if I recall well. FANTASTIC shooter and wonderful guy
I think he holds every single scoring record in the italian league (total of points, points avarage, three pointers, free throws etc) and had a season in which he averaged like 44 PPG when he was 40 y/o....
Americans started to get used to Oscar's name when he dropped like 40 points on a good USA team in a competition that was either the Goodwill Games or Panamerican games, 1990 or something (too lazy to go check now, sorry)
Oscar Schmidt gave the best basketball quote I can remember. The press were giving him a hard time about being lazy on D, not rebounding or setting picks and he just told them 'In this world there are piano movers and piano players. I am a piano player.'
Good piece SML, but I miss the player profiles, you got any coming up?
You're lucky you're not Welsh, or I wouldn't do shit for you.