sabugo

Hello everyone. Like I said in the shoutbox, here I am writing about what Carnival in my home town. Most of you know Carnival in its Brazilian form, with Samba and naked women and all that. Well, there are some similarities between the two, but there are also some differences. I should tell you right away that some of the things I'm going to write about might freak you out, so consider yourselves warned. Believe me on this one. So, as some of you know, I live in a small town in Portugal called Torres Vedras. It has a population of around 35,000, but if you add all the neighbouring villages it adds up to around 70,000. But not everything is small, during Carnival we receive as many as 250,000 people in a four day span, so you can imagine the impact it has on our local economy. A lot of what is done during the year by the city and other businesses relates to Carnival and its profits. In Brazil you see the aformentioned naked ladies because it's summer time there. Here it's winter, so the weather is much, much colder than say Rio de Janeiro. In other Portuguese cities they adopted a lot of the Brazilian culture, inviting over their soap opera stars to make appearences, dancing to samba and dressing their poor women in the same kind of clothes they wear in Brazil. Of course in Portugal they are freezing their butts off. In Torres Vedras we have a slogan: "Carnaval mais português de Portugal", which roughly translates to "Most Portuguese Carnival", meaning we don't invite brazilian stars over and we don't samba. However, brazilian music is played here, along with our own Carnival music, and other stuff comparable to Weird Al's music. On to the freaky part (I have warned you. I really have): So, I bet you would never believe what our thing is here. Our very own tradition is... cross-dressing! That's right...Men dress like women for these four days. And it's not gay. Almost every guy does this sort of weirdness in Carnival. No shaved legs, but a lot of make-up, dresses, huge fake boobs and wigs. We even have a Carnival royal family, which of course has two men as a couple. One is the king, the other the queen, but really it's two queens...(They are both married with children btw!) Let me say right away that neither me, my brother or my dad have ever done such a thing. I have never felt inclined to do it, and it might have something to do with my war-veteran, autopsy-describer at the dinner table dad saying: - If any of you two ever pull something like this, you might as well start sleeping outside with the dogs. Come to think of it, it's not the dogs fault, just don't come home. I have a fun dad, huh? Anyway, one of my brothers in law is very much into this and always dresses as a 'gorgeous' lady. He's had his picture in the paper and all. On saturday night I ran into him and my niece, both dressed as spanish flamenco dancers. We have a name for guys who cross-dress, 'Matrafona'. But not all is about guys letting their inner-Liberaces come out for four days. In fact that is a very little part of it. Carnival is the time of the year in which we all become equal. There are statues around town depicting several people, from politicians - local and national, sports personalities, artists,etc. We make fun of everybody, and I mean everybody. From Cristiano Ronaldo to abusing priests, corrupt politicians, etc. Every year they place a monument in the town center depicting all that what went on during the previous year. Remember the 'Je suis charlie' signs? Well, we have been charliying everyone for almost 100 years. Every single person dresses in costume for Carnival. As a kid you go as a cowboy or a ninja or something like that, but I have really found myself around 10 years ago. For four days I dress as a bunny rabbit. (Is this freaky?!) I have reasons for it: - The fur keeps me warm - I can wear clothes with pockets for my wallet and keys underneath - It provided memorable and classy lines when talking to women such as 'Wanna go the bunny thing?' (To everyone who has daughers, my apologies) (also, can you imagine a 19 year old me getting a yes?) My wife dresses as a carrot or a squirrel, so its a nice combination. You guys can imagine all the partying done around here for these four days. As soon as it's over people start saying 'I can't believe we have to wait a year until we do this again!' The streets are crowded, people are drinking, talking to each other, to friends, to strangers, to the mayor, the chief of police, to whoever. We are all equal, we all make fun of ourselves, of each other and we drink. We go from one square to another, following the music, some friend or looking for a toilet. We drink some more. We see this friend we hadn't seen in 7 or 8 years and start talking and it lasts two hours. Sometimes we reconnect, others you don't see that friend again for another 7 or 8 Carnivals. We go to the food trucks for a 3 dollar burger and we drink some more (beer ir roughly 1 dollar). We walk around and spend some time talking with old teachers, neighbours and become best friends in the whole world with some strangers. We comment on other peoples costumes, they do the same. We head to the farmers market for a stew sandwich and whatever drink they're serving. It's 7 am so we all go the the one disco in town, where I once fell asleep while standing, dancing and talking to two of my older friends. We come back at noon, crash for a few hours and do it all over again the next day. And outside Carnival and maybe New Year's eve, I don't even drink. There is a lot more to write about, a lot more about our traditions but I've written so much I honestly have no idea where to go next! This year I even attended a Carnival wedding, where everyone showed up in costume! How crazy and fun is that? I hope it's not too long to read, and that if you do read it you don't get too freaked out. I'll share some of my Carnival stories in other posts

You mean Soriano and A-Rod are alive?

So, no Soriano or A-Rod? Where's Wally Pipp?

Thank God it's not New York.

But back then you only had one Mike Hargrove. They're around 400 now.

They're bringing it to the minors, so I'm just hoping it doesn't work. Clocks and baseball...not a good combination IMO. They should just enforce the rules that already exist. And cut the advertising time during games. I know this will never happen, but I think it would really have an impact in the total duration of the game. Other than that, most players just need a personality transplant. Just check some games from 20-30 years ago on youtube and you will see none of these 'routines' most hitters go through in the box. Just get in there and hit the damn ball, no time for all that crap they go through nowadays. Now, they get out of the box, check their gloves, check their bat, get the dirt out of the cleats, check the gloves again, stare at the bat as if they're waiting for it to tell them if they're going to get a hit or not, check the hitting gloves for the 3rd time and now they're finally ready to hit. Oh no, he asked for time again...And they do this for the entire duration of the at-bat. Just enforce the rules and they game will go a lot faster.

If anybody was going to give him the money he asked, they would have done so already. I'm more interested in the pitch clock situation.

Thanks for the words guys.

Regarding the Charlie Hebdo killings and the whole muslim religion being a peace religion my take is this: - These islamic extremists are around 600 years behind on the whole human evolution thing. Christians already did this 'let's kill everybody who isn't christian, let's force feed our religion to all the non-believers of the world and somehow save them from whatever hell they're bound to go if they don't stay on our side'. Christians did this. Six hundred years ago. Then they evolved, and now only have backwards views on harmless little things such as birth-control, homossexuality and child abuse - but this is another matter. - The vast majority of muslims I know are in fact peaceful and have nothing to do with these terrorists. Then we have a minority of loud, retrograde and violent idiots who cast a shaddow on the rest of the muslims who couldn't care less about bombs and holy wars. Really, they just want to go on about living their own lives, but they're forever tarnished by these actions. - This is not to say that I 'understand' or 'excuse' this type of behaviour. Any act of senseless violence is shameful. But to me, in Europe, we've been far to permisive and have given far too many rights to people who don't respect, deserve or use them properly. My take on these people, wheter they're muslim, christian, gypsies or red sox fans is to send them the hell back to where they came from and please, with sugar on top, keep them there. Or else, the **** is bound to hit the fan on a very near future and we'll have a WW3 on our hands. Let them kill each other and don't allow them anywhere near civilized people, because this is the real issue, civilized vs uncivilized people. - You don't like the way you live? Well, the planes go both ways, you know? Go back to wherever you came from and stay there. It's not like we travel to your countries and demand that you celebrate Christmas, that your women wear short-skirts and force you to eat pork. And guess what, when we - the civilized people - point this out, we don't go crazy claiming that you don't respect our beliefs and crying 'racism'. We merely understand that you are a backwards, underdeveloped, uncivilized, dumb people. Now please explode yourselves and get by all means get your 70 virgins. If you only knew the hard work it takes to convince just one to sleep with you, you'd much rather stay alive. (I know I sound a little angry. It happens when your relatives were friends with some of the victims)

Thank you Y4L, I appreciate that

Knee surgery. Today. Which happens to be my birthday.

The Bronx in burning

How dare you have a life? You should stay in front of the computer all day, modding so that we are all happy. Shame on you. Seriously, since I have family in the medical care business, I know you don't hear this often so: 'Thank you for the time you spend taking care of complete strangers'. 5 children... I am assuming there is no television where you live

So, I'm going to drop a name here and then run for cover: - Derek Jeter Like it or not, he was the face of baseball for the past decade. And now I'm going into hiding.

Thank you Y4L. All working now

Just one question, how do you get access to the shoutbox now? It wasn't the reason why I donated, but I was kind of looking forward to participate

The Royals are dangerous but the Giants have past WS experience and, at least on paper, a better chance to win. But so did everybody who played KC before. I'd put my mone on the Royals just because of everything they've done this past month. It's hard to stop a team like that. Should be interesting to watch.

Injuries.That's what happens when you get older. Even if they both rebound, it will be very hard for them to produce like they're paychecks suggest they would. It's a price the Yankees pay for signing guys past their prime.

We can only hope Homer

And I forgot to mention Pineda, who was great when he wasn't covering himself in pine tar. I expect great and also dumb things from him in the years to come.

Now that the regular season is about to be over and the Yankees miss the playoffs for the second straight season, it's time for me to revisit my predictions for the year and add some thoughts: - Jeter wasn't too bad the during the first half, but lost some steam during the second part of the season. He's 40 and playing shortstop so his fielding went more or less as expected and he didn't spend time in the DL, so that was a good thing (or not...). He also became the king of the RBI groundout, an achievement of which nobody should be proud of. - Ellsbury played well and didn't spend time on the DL, which I'm sure nobody saw coming. Still, he's 30 and I don't know if he's worth all that money. - Sabathia struggled with his new body and spent most of the season on the DL. Nailed it. - Teixeira sucks. End of story. Not writing anymore about this guy. - Soriano was great. Sometimes. Ten years ago. - So was Carlos Beltran, during all the years he didn't play for the Yankees. Should have signed him 7 seasons ago. - Tanaka was great when he was healthy and then he had that game in Boston a couple of days ago. Growing pains amidst some greatness. Nailed it. - The bullpen had great performances by Betances and Robertson. Warren wasn't bad either. Then of course was the Aceves comeback. The Esmil Rogers signing. And let's keep trotting David Huff out there out of the bullpen, because that's clearly where he belongs. Homegrown pitchers more than held their own, proving that the Yankees should give them more chances. Greene and Phelps come to mind as future end of the rotation starters. Whitley wasn't bad for a bit, but then he seemed way out of his depth. - Brian Roberts was a failed experiment, but he had to go much sooner than he did. Same thing with Kelly Johnson. - Some of the deadline deals went right. McCarthy was great but I'm not sure he'll be able to keep playing as well as he did. Prado was a great pickup. Headley...I'm not so sure, but at this point anything over A-Rod is fine. Solarte we miss you, it was great having you. My eyes bleed whenever Drew comes to the plate. Chris Young was a nice find, he should be a solid bench OF. - Suzuki was at times given too much time on the field. At this stage he should be a pinch-hitter/runner part-time starter. He excelled in that role but sucked whenever he had to play as a regular starter. - Can you believe that Cervelli played in 48 games?!? And averaged .301 for the season. Give this man a multimillion dollar contract asap! - McCann's average was low, but his production wasn't so bad. Maybe he should stop listening to Kevin Long. - Gardner was the team's MVP for most of the season. That DL stint derailed his production a bit. I'm so glad to have him. Now that he's 30 and striking out as he never did, there is no way the Yankees are getting rid of him. - To finalize, Phil Hughes had a good season with the Twins for which I have no reasonable explanation. It was a strange and disappointing season for the Yankees, who at times beat the best teams in baseball only to be swept by the worst in the following week. Give Girardi credit for keeping this team over .500 during the last two seasons. I'm glad it's almost over...

It was a former Portuguese dictator who came up with the phrase: 'If you don't want something to get done, name a committee." Smart man...

Let's hope he does, because he surely deserves it.

Maybe because of the distance I have a different and perhaps more romantic view than you guys. Jeter has been the face of baseball for a long time. To someone like me, in a country without baseball, the impact is bigger. That, coupled with the Yankees' and MLB's marketing machine made him a star, beyond his real value on the field. And I agree that Biggio is getting screwed. Big time. But like I said, Olbermann is so right that it hurts. I specially agree with the point he makes about the jersey patch. He's retiring, not dead. Creepy.

Three games in which we could have beaned him that simply won't happen. This is a tragedy. It could only get worse if say A-Rod comes back next year. Oh wait...