It was mid afternoon, another sunny day in Santa Monica. I was running through my blogroll, checking updates and writing comments. I opened André Dahmer's comic strip, daily on the Net. HIs main characters look like badly scribbled sunflowers, maybe? They are mean, cruel, badder than life.
I like the strip and I love the comment box. There are so many crazed people in it, I wonder if I am that crazy after all. One woman keeps on coming back on how she wishes she could have sex in the kitchen, with lots of butter. Sorry, babe, sans Brando. This time, however, there is a really hot topic. The Pan American games, hosted in Rio next year chose a mascot. The mascot is the spitting image of one of Malvados, the badly scribbled sunflowers. It is in color, and merchandise is already attached to it. And it is cute not mean.
Brazilians have a funny attitude about intelectual property and art. It would've been so easy to ask André Dahmer for permission to adjust the mean sunflower into a beaming welcome to the Pan 2007 mascot. Just pay the guy for his creation. But, no, artists in Brazil must starve or leave. King Pelé started making real money after he came to the US to play on astroturf.
My cousin Hélio Oiticica gets his recogniton now, over 25 years after his untimely death. Intelectuals pour over his work and write hermetic œuvres about his art. He couldn't give a hoot from his piece of pink and green Mangueira escola de samba heaven, where he shoots the breeze with wild Cara de Cavalo. Helio scorned the inteligenzia. The closest he got to being part of a clique was when he joined Rogero Sganzerla, Julinho Bressane and Neville de Almeida, the darned filmakers of shoot it from the hip cinema.
The furthest Helio was from Brazil was when he came spend seven years in the Bronx, where I was raised in my early childhood. Helio Oiticica was heard of, but now, OMG! Between the disregard for intelectual property and the perennial anthropophagy of dead creative minds, we have not much left. Do we?
André Dahmer is a cartoonist. He'll need a lawyer. My grandpa was fantastic. He would release Helio's grandpa, his anarchist brother, and a grammarian, with a phone call. Unfortunately, my grandpa is litigating Bush v. the Planet, and that is a looong case.
Here are the links I found which corroborate my hypothesis that it is Andre Dahmer's work all over Rio sponsoring Pan 2007.
Blue Bus
Cocadaboa
Pan 2007
Malvados the real thing
Good Luck, André Dahmer, we are rooting for you!
intellectual property Brazil
Malvados
Andre Dahmer cartoonist
iRio mascot Pan games 2007
What a coincidence
1 comment:
I can't believe I am so dense about code. I hpe you enjoy the post.
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