I Have a Headache, but I Don’t Care

Corn?

Remember how I said that the club cured my sore throat? Well, I guess it was replaced with some kind of headache in my front left brain. It’s lingering and even Mormon church yesterday didn’t cure it. I had a great weekend.

I had such a great weekend, I don’t even know where to begin. But I’ll just go for it. The corn man pictured above played but a small part in the weekend, but I got a great picture of him and his steam that I thought I’d use to kick things off. He sold that corn to a Chilean girl named Carolina who I met earlier in the evening. But to get to the meeting of Carolina and her corn purchase, I’ve got to give a lot more background. It all starts here:

The last piece of sushi I could eat.

I met a distant acquaintance at a sushi place in Ipanema called Benkei Sushi. His name is Eric and he’s the brother of a girl who I met through an old high school friend in NYC last week. She found out I was headed to Rio and told me that her brother would be down here studying portuguese. She introduced us over email and before long we were eating all we can eat sushi in Ipanema. Yeah, all you can eat sushi, and good too.

We walked from there to a bar where Eric was meeting up with some of his fellow students. Mingle mingle. Head off to dance somewhere. At this point there was a schism. Eric and another American girl named Rachel he met through his host family insisted that we catch a cab to Lapa while some other kids wanted to hit up a club around Ipanema. I chose Eric, and he, Rachel, the aforementioned Carolina, a girl named Lauren, and I crammed ourselves into a cab for Lapa.

Lapa: a place to not take my camera.

Here’s where I’m daunted. I don’t know if I have the energy to get Lapa into words. It is essentially two roads, one that runs along some arches and a road perpendicular. It’s not a safe place, but it’s awesome. This is exactly the kind of place that I’d like to project onto my site for everyone. I took what pictures I felt prudent, but the people and their eyes and hands made me nervous. What’s worse is that I hadn’t returned home after work, so I was carting around my backpack. I had nothing more valuable than my camera on me, but still: backpack = extra tourist.

I purchased a little microphone recorder thing for my iPod right before I came down here so I could record the crisscrossing sounds of DJs, guitarists, percussionists, singers, and poets that I’d come across down here. Lapa is precisely the place I’d like to record for our ears, but it’s also the place that I shouldn’t reveal my iPod. I’ll figure out a way to be stealth and maybe do it sometime.

We couldn’t decide on a club, so I said forget the club! Let’s go into that house!

She knows what she’s doing!

It wasn’t a house. I don’t know what it was, a storefront without a store? Without a wall? Full of people dancing and about six seated men playing the music on a variety of drums and a four-stringed mandolin type thing. We were the only foreigners in there and they immediately took to Carolina. She told them she’s Chilean and the MC (mandolinist) let out an excited “UMA SHEELEHNAA!” to announce her arrival to the dance floor. I nudged her out and she became the queen bee for a bit until the guys all got too excited and a sense of real (not play) carnality floated into the room and pushed us back onto the street.

There were times when we lost one another, and there was a guy named Eduardo who was high as a kite (oh the pot-red eyes that filled these crowds!) who took a benign liking to Lauren. At one point we met the corn man who opened this entry and soon after I ate this hot dog.

I ate this!

We ended up in another club, dancing hard to American oldies, forró, merengue and salsa until all of the sudden it was 3! Taxi home. I walked a good stretch through Leblón because they say it’s safe, and I took this:

When I meant to take this:

I like the wrong one better.

I jogged the next day along the beach. Got a blister on a toe, but it was worth it, thanks to a song. Well, really a DJ mix by the GENIUS Dan Snaith who calls himself Caribou. The entire mix is about 36 minutes long, but I’ve nipped the front off so you can listen in and have your mind bent. Download it right here! I don’t know what kind of copyright I’m violating, but I don’t think Mr. Snaith owns the rights to any of the songs on the mix. All I know is that he pulled together some of the greatest and strangest and most world loving songs I’ve ever heard. While some of the songs are deep nighttime music, the ones you’ll here in this sample are pure sunlight and glory. It was a moment to be alive in which I thanked God, my parents, Hans Shoepflin (gave me a fellowship), Dan Snaith, and every person on the planet. I’ll stop there. Man, this site’s a multimedia joyride! Hallelujah!

Oh, this is where I jog.

Sunday afternoon.

Nothing else happened Saturday. I’m engrossed in East of Eden, and was happy to rest and read into the evening. I fell asleep around 11 and got up with plenty of time to make it to Mormon church! My friend Paul lived here while I was in Brasilia and he gave me the address of the chapel. The great thing about church overseas is that—as my friend Tim has pointed out—there is zero tourist appeal, and I get to meet real Brazilians that I wouldn’t meet otherwise. Still, I was shy, and they told me I should go to another ward closer to my home anyway, so I went home and ate lunch and read and napped. Then I went for a walk with my awesome loving hosts Patricia and her son Jorge where I took the above picture. Then later,

Capoeira.

We ended up in the Ipanema hippie fair and watched this white girl tear ish up on the capoeira floor. This little kid (second from the left in the picture) really represented though, doing headspins and back flips all over the place. I got a little movie of him on my camera, but I can’t figure out how to post it yet.

Headache!? Still there, but I don’t care.