We're back home having spent a long weekend in Ilhabela, which was typically wonderful and mainly involved choosing which beaches we'd go to and where to eat - pics attached! We brought along Zila as she had never been, and I think she very much enjoyed it, although we all got bitten to shreds by mosquitoes. We stayed in a hotel up the mountain with amazing views of the mainland, and stopped off in Maresias on the way back to say hi to the people we met there last month.
Since then work has started up again in a fashion, I've made another compilation, and have published a longform article covering our weekly football sessions, which you're welcome to check out.
My phrase of the day comes from the distant archives of Brazilian Twitter and concerns Galvão Bueno, who over the years has become the voice of major sporting events in Brazil, in his position as Head Commentator at Rede Globo. He first captured the nation’s attention while commentating on Brazil’s World Cup wins in 1994 and 2002, the Olympic Games and Ayrton Senna’s fatal crash in San Marino, but by the time I became aware of him he was very much the John Motson or Jean-Michel Larqué of Brazil – a man who has commented on sports for so long that the words have lost all meaning, and has become such a broadcasting institution that a graceful retirement is unfortunately out of the question.
Although he rolls his R’s too much, relies on stock phrases and is occasionally mildly racist when he doesn’t know the camera is rolling, he’s basically harmless and surprisingly versatile in his coverage of dozens of different sports. To be honest Globo’s in-house style is far more annoying, with its insistence on a) playing loud fairground music after every goal, b) getting its analysts to plug the channel’s upcoming soap operas in-play and c) displaying the amount of time played as 35” (2nd half) rather than just 80”, forcing viewers to do complex mental arithmetic at the business end of each match. Nevertheless, public opinion has turned against him in recent years, culminating in the infamous “Cala a boca Galvão” (“Shut up Galvão”) incident of 2010.
As Bueno blathered on over the opening ceremony of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Brazilian Twitterers - no doubt already on edge because of the constant vuvuzelas - decided enough was enough and collectively made the phrase go viral in a last-ditch attempt to, well, get him to shut up.
Things got out of hand when online pranksters seized on the similarity between “Galvão” and “gavião” (hawk) to convince confused gringo onlookers that the phrase was part of a campaign to save an endangered species of Brazilian bird, with 10¢ to be donated for every utterance of the phrase online. Before long people were claiming “Cala a boca Galvão” was a new single by Lady Gaga, who had reworked her earlier hit “Alejandro” to raise awareness of the poor birds’ plight. Even acclaimed author Paulo Coelho got in on the act, in typically highbrow fashion.
By the end of the World Cup the extremely silly campaign had made the pages of the New York Times, spawned several memes and interactive games, dominated Twitter’s trending rankings and become a massive national in-joke at the rest of the world’s expense. Spectators unfurled huge “Cala a boca Galvão” signs during matches, tactfully avoided by the Rede Globo cameras. The founder of Wikipedia was forced to address the issue when speaking in São Paulo.
It was one of the first, and perhaps only instances of fake news being used for good rather than ill, although I’m not sure how the poor guy felt about it all. In an inspired touch he named his 2015 autobiography “Fala Galvão!” (“Keep Talking, Galvão!”), and is indeed still wittering on regardless. Ridaut apparently ran into him a few years ago in a Buenos Aires steakhouse, and they cross paths at Interlagos most years.
So there you have it. Speak soon!
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