Forget the Super Bowl. Go to the Beach

2/4/2018

The Girl From Ipanema -- Celia Silva and Some Other People

While some Americans were preparing for the Super Bowl (see below) in icy Minneapolis on Sunday, the Silva family of Rio went to Ipanema.
Altenir, Neo and Celia posed at the statue of Tom Jobim, who wrote "Garota de Ipanema."
On the beach, hundreds of people are usually performing tricks, maneuvering a large round ball with their feet and chests and knees and foreheads.
The soul of that sport is in Brazil.
Senhoras e senhores, Antonio Carlos Jobim:

If one is going to see only one American football game per season -- and I did -- this was the game to see.
Super Bowl LII was full of twists and athleticism and trick plays.
The brain damage will be assessed in a few years.
I've got some friends who are Iggles fans, and they had never won the Super Bowl.
It isn't hard to root against the Patriots, except that Tom Brady is still admirable, on the field, after all these years. He had the ball in the closing seconds.
Great game.
Our daughter Laura made gumbo that warmed me up, maybe just as much as I might have been on the beach at Ipanema.
Boa noite a todos.

Altenir Silva

2/4/2018 06:25:37 pm

Wow! Tom Jobim is our pride here in Brazil, like Lou Gehrig is to the Yankees. Always when we get into the Ipanema Beach (Rio de Janeiro) and see the statue of Mr. Jobim, we remember you, George.
Thanks, my friend.
Cheers - Altenir

Alan Rubin link

2/4/2018 06:59:57 pm

Chilling out with Altenir and his family would be a great alternative to watching the super bowl (lower case intended).

The best we cab do is Alma Brasileira byHeitor Villa-Lobos.

Game note--I'm pulling for the Eagles. Nice article in the NYT Sunday sports section about how they use analytics very successfully.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/sports/football/eagles-analytics-super-bowl-lii.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ffootball&action=click&contentCollection=football®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront

I agree with the concept of taking the long view and not always opt for the immediate score.

Gene Palumbo

2/5/2018 12:17:47 am

Alan Rubin:
I recently discovered something that makes life a bit easier: when copying a NYTimes link, you can drop all the characters that follow html. e.g. in the link you just sent us, this would have been enough: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/sports/football/eagles-analytics-super-bowl-lii.html

Ed Martin

2/5/2018 07:48:51 pm

Re: Antonios Carlos Jobim, aka Tom, our friend, the late U. Of Alabama Theater Director, Marian Galloway, PH.D, Iowa always referred to UI friend as “Tom” rather than Tennessee Williams. In case they thought she was name dropping, all they had to do was to see Blanche DuBois in “Streetcar.” Meanwhile Jobim made an album, circa 1990, of his compositions and one US piece, “You Do Something To Me... something that mystifies me....”. He sang it in English and we listened in the company of our newly born grandson, Alec, and we sang it to him many times. In a loosely asasociated note, Alec’s younger sister, Gwen, is in Liberia as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching math and science in a village with no water system, phone, etc. She has a dog she adores called, “Neymar.”

George Vecsey

2/5/2018 10:05:29 pm

Dear Ed, good for your grand-daughter.
Only thing I can say is that Brazil is so musical, and so attuned to other forms and cultures, that performers just toss an American (or Italian, or whatever) song in the mix. For example, Caetano Veloso has a CD, A Bossa de Caetano, with mostly Jobim, but smack in the middle he aces Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean"....and also Cole Porter's "Get Out of Town" -- charming pronunciations of the English.
They know our music, and theirs is part of our heritage now. Hope all is well. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Welcome to World Cup 2022, the most absurd thing that the routinely absurd world of sports has ever produced.
Those extreme descriptions were what virtually the entire world, save for those who had walked off with bags of cash from Qatar, called the awarding of soccer’s greatest event to the incredibly tiny, incredibly wealthy country back in 2010.
Twelve years ago, many were convinced this event couldn’t possibly happen: staging the world’s biggest sporting event in a country the size of Connecticut, one with zero soccer culture and even less soccer infrastructure? The tournament couldn’t possibly take place in 120-degree heat, and FIFA, the governing body of soccer, most certainly wouldn’t upend football leagues around the world to change the traditional summer schedule, could it?
And, for God’s sake, what about the beer?
Those were just the logistical concerns. The moral concerns are far more distressing. FIFA, so busy paying lip service to equality, couldn’t possibly expect the world to embrace a country where you could go to prison for being gay, where women’s rights are severely curtailed and female victims of sexual assault could go to prison, charged with engaging in extramarital sex. And all those questions came before the global realization that the World Cup was being built on the backs of migrant labor: modern-day slaves held in Qatar with virtually no rights, low wages and no ability to leave. Migrants make up 90% of Qatar’s stated population of 3 million. The country’s native-born equal about 300,000, or roughly the size of Anaheim.
---Ann Killion, columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Forget the Super Bowl. Go to the Beach

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