My Friday, My Saturday.

Karaoke at that one place blew hard. They had neon signs up proclaiming the city's best karaoke -- if they have to advertise it, I highly doubt it's the city's best karaoke -- and most everything sucked a lot. The room was long and the karaoke was down on one end, so no one would listen, and the song book was highly uneven, though thick, and the atmosphere was kind of tiki bar/frat bar, though with a prominent few showoffs. I would have sung "Blue Velvet", but I couldn't remember the bridge, and the rest of the stuff I was thinking of -- "Nothing but a Heartache", "Believe Me", and a couple other things I'm thinking of right now -- they didn't have, and the wait for a song was over an hour (this despite that some people they were letting go twice already, doing it based on order of slips and not the more-democratic 'everyone goes once before anyone can go twice' style of karaoke hosting I love and respect!), so I just grabbed a friend and ended up leaving. The worst part was that usually no one is up for going out for karaoke, and like eight people I invited all showed up, so I felt really guilty for all the awfulness and blowing hard, since I had gotten them involved in it, though since there was too much inertia to move the group, I had no compunction about cutting my losses and leaving them to cut their own throats and go stew in the awfulness more.

On Saturday at the local CVS I complimented the black counterwoman on her vintage Obama button, which she wore above this other button that had a minimalist cartoon cross on it and written around it the motto "TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED!" She said that years ago she gave twenty cents to a homeless man who came in the store to buy something and was short of change, and he was so thankful, he was like, "I have to give you something," and he pulled out an Obama button and gave it to her, which she's kept in her jewelry drawer ever since. She said she took it out a few months ago and started wearing it for the presidential campaign, but then she lost it somewhere in the store and it hadn't turned up in Lost and Found, so she was bummed, but then one day when she was telling her one coworker that doesn't work too often about how she's been trying to support Obama, her coworker was like, "Wait, let me give you this," and she pulled out from her coat pocket the very same Obama pin the lady had lost, and told her that she had found it on the floor of the store and had been wearing it on and off, but she should wear it since she works the counter more often and more people will see it if she wears it and not her. Personally, I think I liked the "TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED!" button a little bit more than the vintage Obama button, though they were both cool.

At the coffee shop I then went to to relax and drink some coffee and read some more of "Heaven's Harlots" before heading off grocery shopping, and since the place was mega-crowded, I ended up sharing a table with this chic foreign-looking girl in her mid-30s who had a fur-lined coat and thin sunglasses with neon green lenses. The girl, it turns out, was Turkish, and a friend of hers dropped by and offered me a piece of Turkish delight -- he keeps a box in his pocket on cold days to carry around with him since every time he puts his hand in his coat pocket he finds the box there and ends up thinking of Turkey and feeling warmer -- and after he left, we talked some, and it turns out that she's a marathon runner who came back after a leave of absence to finish up her history dissertation despite this inconsistent barrage of shit from her advisor. I suggested she harness the power of positive thinking and put up a sign saying "I am calm and focused" on her bathroom mirror so she sees it every morning, and by the time she left, she said she was totally going to go home and do it. I also suggested that she start wearing a pendant to ward off the evil eye, since she's been getting bad vibes from the main library on campus, and she was slightly less enthused about that idea, though she' s considering it, especially since her mom's been harrassing her lately to actually wear her evil eye pendant that she had given her and not just leave it pinned to the hallway wall facing the front door of her apartment so it confronts everyone who walks in and keeps her apartment safe.

After that when I went to the grocery store, the place was packed since the huge local grocery store just closed up and it's going to be a month until the replacement tenant moves in. The lines were forever, though I wasn't pissed -- what can you do, after all? -- and when I was up close towards the front of the line, I started looking at the persimmons nestled in boxes off to my right, and so in looking for a good one, I then turned to the mom-type woman in line behind me, who was in her late 30s with Lebanese coloring, a tasteful quilted black jacket, and a shoulder-length haircut carefully coiffed to look natural, and asked her if she knew how much they cost.

"Hmm," she was like. "I don't see the sign up."

"Neither do I," I was like. "I'm pretty curious to try one, though; I've never had one."

"To tell you the truth," she was like, "I've never tried one, either."

I then put a little joking tone in my voice and was like, mock-seriously, "I need a little more excitment in my life, I guess it's time for a persimmon." She laughed a little bit, slyly, and then reading off the advertising on the persimmon box, I was like, "You know, they're Nature's Candy, after all"

She looked at the box, too, then looked in my eyes and said slowly, also mock-seriously, "Children love them."

"They're high in anti-oxidants," I was like, too, and then improvising a little bit, I added, "Just like blueberries."

She didn't know what to say next since we had run out of taglines from the box, and since it was getting a little intense since she was still looking at me intensely, a fire behing her eyes, I kind of turned forward back into line, which sort of ended the conversation abruptly. When I left, she tapped my shoulder and was like, "Enjoy your persimmon," and gave a little upward nod while smiling to say goodbye.

That night I went to go see a documentary about the making of a Steinway piano. The theater was surprisingly packed, and before the movie began the people behind me were in their 40s were talking a bit loudly and the woman was saying something to her male friend about how she was surprised you could go to Florence and not see something (I missed what) and how that sort of thing happens a lot and she just kept going on and on and on, and since I needed to fart, I did so into my seat, and luckily it was quiet and no one heard it, but unfortunately it wasn't smelly at all, so I don't think her and her friend noticed it. During the film itself when the Steinway workers were going on and on about hand-craftmanship and how it's essential for pianos and no one does it like that anymore and then various pianists were talking about each instrument as an individual that you had to make music with, the crowd kept spontaneously being like, "Yes, yes!" and "Mmm hmmm" and "That's right!" just like in a black church, only they were a little bit more restrained in their outbursts and none of them were black, but rather just a bunch of withered old white aesthetes who tend to wear a lot of black. I really wish I could have farted more, but somehow I just didn't have it in me; I really wanted to, but somehow what I had eaten earlier had only given me enough power to summon that one, not-at-all stinky fart that I couldn't even upset the couple behind me with. I guess that's luck for you, as they say; next time I go to a documentary like that I'll have to plan ahead and eat half-cooked lentils beforehand.