São Paulo Letter: Despite the millions who party othe streets, carnival for most Brazilians is a televised event. This is because the four-day pre-Lenten holiday falls during the blazingly hot summer and far more people head for the beach than they do to the big parties in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo.
There, after a day by the sea and an evening gathered around the barbecue, many will spend their nights watching the big parades carried live on the main networks.
Watching other people partying their hearts out can quickly become boring, but, contrary to what you might think, carnival in Brazil is not all wild carefree fun. The televised parades in Rio and São Paulo are highly organised competitions, between samba schools competing to be best and at the very least avoid relegation from the top division of schools and with it a place in next year's main parade.
There is a touch of It's a Knockout about turning a carnival procession into a competition. But millions of Brazilians pass the early hours joining in with the television commentators in evaluating the various themes, costumes and songs chosen by the schools and trying to work out who is in the running to become this year's champion. And if you thought voting for the Eurovision was a drawn-out affair, you've yet to watch the scores come in for a samba parade.
One of the most eagerly anticipated parts of the parades is deciding which school has the best rainha da bateria or "queen of the percussion". This is a woman clad in little more than heels, huge feathery headgear and lots of glitter who dances samba with the drum troop that is a key component of each samba school's parade.
For many of the country's younger female celebrities, being selected by a school to be their rainha da bateria is as much a sign they've arrived as a slot on a primetime soap opera or a photo spread in Playboy. For some lucky stars, a great year typically involves all three.
Given that samba is a dance that when done correctly tends to result in a woman's bosom and bum shaking rather rapidly, the scantily clad rainhas are a favourite with photo editors and backstage reporters, one of whom this year employed a dwarf to slap the bared buttocks of one rainha just to make sure they were up to scratch.
Competing with the rainhas da bateria to be belles of the ball are the queens that attend Rio's famous gay balls. In events that recall Oscar night's red carpet, reporters gather to cover the arrival not of Hollywood stars but instead of Brazil's famous transvestites on their big night out.
Some are stunning examples of the excellence of Brazil's plastic surgeons, and some are just stunning - prompting reporters to ask whether they were in fact really women. Others, the butt of cruel on-air jokes, represent warnings of what a confused sexuality and access to silicone implants might end up looking like.
Into this wild mix occasionally stray foreign tourists, English and Americans mainly, trying to excuse their lack of Portuguese only to be told by presenters that their efforts at dressing up are dismal.
The parade in São Paulo lacks the tradition and glamour of Rio's but this year made up for it with controversy. The Mancha Verde samba school selected as its theme oppressed peoples around the world, and included members decked out as Palestinian suicide bombers, samba-ing their way down the city's sambodromo.
But the actual controversy was over the authorities' decision to force Mancha Verde to parade at a different time from the rest of the samba schools.
This move was to prevent trouble between the school's supporters and those of the Gaviões da Fiel samba school. The animosity between the two is a spillover from the city's most intense football rivalry.
Mancha Verde is made up of supporters of Palmeiras football club, while the Gaviões is run by the biggest supporters' organisation of Corinthians, arch-rivals to Palmeiras.
Trouble between the rival sets of fans at football grounds has been matched in the past by trouble in the sambodromo. As the Gaviões samba school scored better than Mancha in last year's parade, it was decided that only they would be allowed to attend this year's main event, while Mancha were left to protest at their exclusion, claiming that, like the Palestinians, they were being oppressed.
But Mancha Verde were able to claim victory in the end, being voted one of the best this year. Gaviões scored last in the main parade, meaning relegation and the prospect that next year they will be the ones performing away from all the fun.
