RETURN TO RIO

FEATURED POSTS

August 21, 2017

Our friend Carl Ann Wylie emailed us to ask why our Brazilian music selections last week didn’t include one of the most popular songs to come out of that country – the famous “Girl from Ipanema.” That reminded us, of course, of another story about our visit to Rio de Janeiro.

There was a bar near Ipanema Beach that Antonio Jobim frequented and it was the place where he and collaborator Vinicius de Moraes supposedly saw the beautiful young girl walk by every day on her way to the beach. After the song became so popular, the owners of the place renamed it the Garota de Ipanema bar – Portuguese for the Girl from Ipanema.

On to our story. We catch a ride with this taxi driver one night, who is delighted to be able to practice his English by talking to us. He tells us about this bar and how famous the song made the bar. And through this
fractured conversation, he informs us that Jobim still frequents the bar – at least that’s what we think he is saying. So we tell him, let’s go there, immediately.

So we do, and he says wait here and goes into the bar and comes out with a very drunk old man with a long unkempt beard and a wrinkled suit. I’m thinking, wow, Antonio Jobim has hit the skids, but who am I to judge a musical genius like him.

So I run up, shake his hand enthusiastically, and tell him, Senor Jobim, I am so honored to meet you! Of course, it turns out not to be Antonio Jobim at all, but some pal of the taxi driver who wants us to hire him to give us a private guided tour of the city. Carmela is sitting in the cab laughing her patootie off, because even though she can’t hear what I’m saying, through my bowing and demeanor, she can pretty much guess.

The story now is on a long list of stories in which I make a fool of myself and my wife teases me unmercifully about it for the rest of my life.

– George Lee Cunningham

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News

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.

October 12, 2023

Empowered

Carmela bought this workout T-shirt, but she didn’t realize until later that just above the right breast was the word “EMPOWERED.” She likes the shirt and she continues to wear it, but it did spark a bit of a discussion between nerdy wife-and-husband over what exactly does “EMPOWERED” mean. “The word would suggest that an outside somebody “EMPOWERED” you. I know my wife, and she was born “POWERED.” It’s one of the things I like about her.