A song had been driving me CRAZY for several weeks. It was from an advertisement - one of those Visa check card ones (and I will separate my dislike of the concept that Visa is pushing in its ads, namely that it is BAD and WRONG and PEOPLE WILL HATE YOU if you ever try to pay cash, or worse, with a check, for anything. I don't like the underlying idea but the choreography of the ads is kind of cool).

It was the garden center ad - peppy, vaguely Latinate (samba-ish) music, with some whistling.

I knew I knew that song. I could not place it. I could not remember any of the words.

I remembered it as having been parodied in Muppet Treasure Island (yes, my mind goes to odd and obscure places first), where the Muppet pirates were singing along to the tune (I think it was in the "Cabin Fever" sequence) and the words "...and now I'm crazy as a loon" were part of the song.

I also figured I had originally heard it in "Saludos Amigos" (yet another one of those old Disney movies I think I saw as a child in the U of A theater).

Well, finally a little search on Adtunes.com turned it up:

Aquarela do Brasil, better known here in the states as "Brazil." Head-smackingly obvious now that I looked it up. The only actual words to the actual song (there's a link to the various lyrics on that Wikipedia site) that I ever knew were "Brazil....Brazil..."

(I was trying to shoehorn "L'amour....L'amour" into the place where "Brazil" went which was what was probably throwing me off, partly)

Durr. If I could have thought of those in the first place, I would have remembered it. (And yes, I know from what I've read that it's famously used in Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil," but I've never seen it...someday I will but I've heard some people say it left them feeling a bit claustrophobic.)