Naomi Campbell
The director of Samba School Beija-Flor de Nilópolis, Mílton Cunha, announced and Naomi Campbell, the model-goddess, confirmed: she will be the main attraction of that Escola de Samba during the upcoming Rio's Carnaval.
Campbell's fee for the most trivial of tasks is rarely less than $20,000, but the participation at the Beija-Flor Carnaval parade is for love and, naturally, for free.
It's curious this sudden Brazilian passion, since the 25-year Naomi, who is also famous for her fits of anger, in 1994, used her purse to attack a Brazilian photographer who insisted on taking her picture at the airport, soon after she arrived.
What's she going to wear during the parade, people have been asking. The norm has been very little or less than that. She has confided to an Italian magazine, "I don't wear intimate clothes when it is hot." And Rio is going to be the hottest place on earth.
Beija-Flor's Cunha, however, has already thrown some cold water on those more excited, revealing: "Naomi will be dressed as a jelly-fish, on a plot-samba celebrating life on earth."
Compulsion to write made him do it, says ex-President José Sarney about his just-published 284-page novel O Dono do Mar (The Sea's Master). Sarney who is a member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras considers himself a writer by a higher calling and a politician by accident.
Even before Sarney's book appeared in print, it has stirred a lot of curiosity. O Dono do Mar was the result of ten years of research with Northeastern fishermen and advance word had that it was filled with erotic undertones.
The author himself comments, "To compare the woman genitals to a black seagull is not eroticism, just poetic symbolism. Check for your yourself these excerpts:
"Mas até hoje, depois de tantos anos, aquela calcinha ainda queimava seu pensamento. Os seios, escondidos na blusa branca, eram só um leve contorno com as pontinhas duras.
Quertide deitou-se e ficou quieta. Jogou a saia no rosto, Cristório tirou a calcinha de chita e apareceu aquela parte acomodada entre as coxas, como uma gaivota morena, de peito gordo, pousada.
Passou a mão levemente como se quisesse acariciar suas penas e abrir-lhe as asas para que ela voasse solta e livre pelo espaco do desejo (...) Nunca pensara que mulher pudesse ter esse sabor e perfume, coisa que não era só possuir, mas um sentimento de amplidão. Seu corpo estava amarrado ao de Maria das Águas, a maré batendo e ele desejando que nunca se acabasse esse tempo. Ela lhe pedia que continuasse e ele pedia que não parasse de girar como a Terra."
"But up to this date, after so many years, those panties still burned his mind. The breasts, hidden under the white blouse, were only a light outline with its hard little tips. Quertide went to bed and lay still.
She threw the skirt on her face, Cristório took off the calico panties and there it was that part comfortably place between the thighs, as a brunette seagull, with a fat breast, perched.
He touched her lightly as he wished to stroke her feathers and open her wings for her so she could fly loose and free through the space of desire (...)
He never thought a woman could have such taste and perfume, something that wasn't only to possess, but a feeling of amplitude. His body was tied up to that of Maria das Águas, the tide rising and he wishing this time would never end. She asked him to continue and he asked her not to stop spinning like the Earth."
"He is still in my belly and he is already kicking more than the father," says Andréa Oliveira, 21, ready to give birth to a new heir for soccer legend Romário. At least, that's what she says. Romário himself is not recognizing the paternity of soon-to-be-called Gabriel Felipe and wants distance from Andréa. She was the model who followed the player around the world, even during the 1994 World Cup in the US, and with whom Romário had a steamy romance.
Andréa precipitated the separation between Romário and wife Mônica Santoro, the mother of his two children. Andréa, who loves a spotlight, swears she isn't bitter: "Romário doesn't want to believe this is his child. If I said the father is Bill Clinton he would believe me. Anyway I can perfectly raise my child without him. I have enough love to be mother and father at the same time."
Going Dutch
Contrary to federal guidelines, in a move to prevent AIDS, the São Paulo state Health Department decided to distribute close to 4,000 kits containing two syringes and needles, straws, a plastic spatula, a little cup and distilled water, everything you need to prepare and inject a dose of cocaine. The straws are to encourage people to sniff the powder in the future. The material comes discreetly inside a box for eyeglasses. Drug addicts will be able to get a new kit a week. In São Paulo, 32% of the HIV-positive population got the disease from a contaminated needle.
Caetano for export
With Un Caballero de Fina Estampa, HBO Brazil intends to give the world a taste of Bahiano (from Bahia) singer-composer Caetano Velloso. The 90-minute special, the first one to be entirely produced by the Brazilian HBO, was aired on Christmas night to all of Latin America and this month will be presented in the US. Fina Estampa contains the Rio's Metropolitan show of the same name used to promote Velloso's latest CD.
Luxury go-betweens
To get an authorization to work in Brazil, today, a foreign executive may have to wait for three months before being allowed in the country. Unless naturally he or his company has some disposable income. This situation has contributed to the growth in Brasília of a gang of middlemen who can charge as much as $30,000 for a sole fast visa. The underworld of bribes and under-the-table money represents $20 million a month, according to documents presented to Brazil's Ministério do Trabalho (Labor Department).
Here comes the bull
This February, more than 30 experts in bullfighting, including renowned torero Manolo Sanchez, will be in São Paulo for the First Hispanic-Brazilian Encounter of Tauromachy. The meeting to happen at the exclusive Maksoud Plaza Hotel will be the first step to introduce in Brazil a practice until now better known in Spain: the toreada. Knowing that it will be an uphill battle to introduce this bloody sport to Brazil, Spain's consul general in São Paulo reminded that the country has a Spanish colony which numbers more than one million. "Besides," he added, "all we want is to spread our culture."
Tongue tight
Inspired by the French Parliament, which in 1994 approved a law to protect the French idiom against foreign words, mainly the English ones, a Brazilian congressman also wants to preserve the integrity of the Portuguese spoken in Brazil. Mato Grosso senator Júlio Campos is proposing that foreign words be banned from products, shops, signs, leaflets and ads. The hundreds of shopping centers, for example, would immediately be baptized with a more national centro comercial. And those who insist on calling Golden Fork a restaurant that should be called Garfo de Ouro will have to pay a fine until they give up the name. Comment from writer, journalist and politician Fernando Moraes, "Doesn' t he have anything to do?"
Bike yourself
Some people might mistrust Rio's general population. Not Rio's City Hall, which has decided to place bikes in some strategic points close to the beach, so people can just pick them up and go pedaling. Three sponsors are paying for the initial bicycles. To make the vehicles hopefully steal-proof they including tires are being painted in bright colors.
Old is new
A recent study made in São Paulo revealed that parents are giving traditional names to their children again. The ten most popular names (five for girls and five for boys) are all from old times. Laura, Luísa, Júlia, Joana e Mariana are the favorite monikers for women. For men, they are: Pedro, Matheus, Caio, Lucas, and João. Composed names like Maria Antônia have lost appeal and the same goes for foreign and hard to pronounce names such as Washington.
Not be outdone by a series of recent ads in Brazil which used from the Hollywood's prostitute Divine Brown to First Lady Hillary Clinton showing her underwear to sell lingerie, Lowe Loducca & Partners conceived a campaign in which 200 girls and guys in different states of undressing are shown through six pages of magazines. All of this to make the point that any body big and small, fat and thin and all in between can fit in one of the 18 models of It's jeans.
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