An Advice for You

Just to be clear, I did my Superbowl duty.

I made a batch of chili today. With corn muffins, even.

That bit of athletic patriotism done, I did what any red-blooded nerd would do for the first half of game day.

I went to see a Brazilian movie.

It was part of UR's international film series, which I hadn't been to in almost a year, so I knew I'd be in the company of other gym class dropouts.

In fact, my fellow Brazilian cinephile bet me there'd be less than ten people at the screening.

I knew better and guessed 35.

For the record, there were 39 including us.

The film, Riscado (which means craft), was about an actress who works for an event company impersonating celebrities while trying to further her acting career.

Marilyn Monroe, Carmen Miranda, Betty Paige. She did them all.

And not because she particularly looked like them, even in costume, but her acting skills sold them.

The film had a decided European sensibility, something I loved, from the opening shots of the actress smoking on her balcony while Brazilian music played and she stared directly into the camera to intermittent, random artsy shots.

And by that, I mean slo-mo non sequiter shots of hands in a sink or a woman in a pool set to music.

My only complaint with the film was the half-assed subtitles with glaring mistakes in them for anyone with even a slipshod command of the English language.

"Live it on the floor" instead of "leave."

Damn became dam. Seems showed up as seams.

But sometimes the subtitles' fractured translations were quite charming, as in, "An advice for you. Enjoy it a lot."

The movie had some highly comic moments, but at its heart it was a drama about a woman staying true to her passion, acting, despite lectures from landladies, not enough money and a fear her time was running out to make it.

Clearly certain problems transcend cultures.

We left UR essentially for VCU, our second half happening being Live at Ipanema.

Walking up Grace Street, we noticed the signboard in front of Strange Matter read, "Yes, we'll be showing the sports ball game."

They sounded about as into it as I was.

Happily, Ipanema has no televisions for watching sports ball.

What they did have was dessert, so we scored some fine WPA Bakery banana/coconut cake and Franco Serra 10 Dolcetto d'Alba while waiting for The Black Brothers to get set up.

Before long, I could smell the incense burning.

With no announcement, much less fanfare, the quartet (guitar, drums, bass, trumpet) began playing their pastiche of indie/jazz/blues/rock as people continued to come in the door.

It was my third time seeing them, so while I know what to expect, I am still pleasantly surprised when the horn kicks in or the drumming gets especially jazzy.

Singer and guitarist Justin's voice was on point right from the first song with the lyric, "This time I'm getting it right."

The four-piece was squished into the front alcove and at times Justin's guitar neck threatened to knock into Lucas' horn mic and eventually it caught a cord of it.

When he introduced the next song as being called "Warsaw," I immediately wondered which Warsaw he might mean, at least right up until he sang, "This is a prison song."

Oh, that Warsaw.

Franklin Massey and his acoustic guitar joined the band in the already-cramped front for one song, making for an even denser sound.

Their last song was about escaping to West Virginia and from the first guitar notes, it sounded to me like a driving song, as in a windows-rolled-down kind of driving song.

Which, on a cold February night, seems like something very pleasurable to imagine.

So I took the Brazilian's advice and enjoyed it a lot.