Hipsters are no fun / Karaoke / Tonight.

So, when I went up to karaoke, I went a little early to get some primo tacos and then a coffee at these places relatively near the karaoke place, but when I got off the subway stop, I saw this little Polish restaurant I've always wanted to go to, so I stopped in spontaneously for a meal there. The stuffed cabbage was so-so and way over-priced, but for $3.20, they gave you a relatively big bowl of home-made soup - I got white borshcht with cut-up little chunks of pretty good Polish sausage in it, and fresh dill choppped up in it too - and a free glass of fruit compote and a free bread basket too. I'm definitely going back.

Anyhow, I walked then like two blocks to go to a hipster coffee shop/cupcake bakery - what the fuck is up with hipsters loving their cupcakes? - the hipsters have all pushed the Poles out of this neighborhood - and when I got to the counter to get my espresso, the early 30s, too-thin blonde hipster girl who came out from the back was like, "How are you?", and I was like, "I just ate so much Polish food I could vomit," and she was like, "That's a nice way to greet a person." Hipsters are no fun; they have a very narrow tolerance for the offbeat, and sneer (sp.?) at everything else.

Karaoke was odd since it was at this hipster bar in the part of town where the hipsters have pushed out all the Ukrainians - I saw some younger high-school age thug-like Ukrainian guys walking on the sidewalk near the bar, and they looked saddly out of place - and the setting just didn't work for the host as much as the basement of the American Legion Hall where he usually does his schtick. Luckily, though, I was able to make the most of it, and was able to do a three-song set with my smokey, phlegmy voice:

1) The Searchers' "Needles and Pins".
2) Avril Lavigne's "Complicated".
3) Alicia Bridges's "I Love the Nightlife (I Love to Boogie)".

After that last one, Kirby the fat but genuinely hip regular from Minneapolis who shows up on occasion and always by himself gave me a "rock out" sign followed by a fist bump. Everyone else, though, seemed to prefer the Avril, perhaps because they didn't recognize the intro immediately, but did as soon as I busted out the first words, which are the most memorable opening lines of a song of the past ten years, I think.

Also, after I sang "Needles and Pins", the host thanked me and noted that he himself has sung that song on occasion, and it's great to see people taking over the repertoire (this is the dude I got in with by opening up with "Georgie Girl" the first time I ever came to his karaoke).

Tonight I soak chick-peas, to cook them tomorrow. I asked a fellow Puerto Rican graduate student who I know for a fact eats a lot of beans how long and how exactly to soak them, and he said overnight, on the counter, and with a little bit of salt, so that's what I'll be doing.

Loss / Slip / More Loss.

Every great once in a while some shit of mine gets broken, and all of a sudden I realize how attached I was to something though I had never quite known it before. Usually, a loss like this puts me into a funk, both because I lost something I really liked and also because I have consistently over the course of my life tried to wean myself from material possessions, so realizing I really like something makes me disappointed in myself, since I haven't weaned myself from material possessions enough to keep myself from every once in a while having a visceral, immediate sadness at some shit of mine that somehow got destroyed.

Most recently, it was discovering that since my passport has fallen into water and a lot of ink got blurred or disappeared, I can no longer find my visa stamps for Poland, Hungary, Romania, Albania, and Mongolia. I told my one friend I was visiting this like right after I discovered it, and she was like, "You should be sad, you earned them," and I thought to myself, "But what do you mean earn? any asshole with money can do the same thing," though I didn't say that, and I still missed them anyways.

On another (related?) note, the other day I was texting a friend about meeting up at a museum exhibition and since she was going to be teaching a class until late afternoon, I wrote her that I would just go early "since I'm the world's slowest person at museum exhibits and I don't want to be rushed", only when I read over my text before I sent it out, I realized that instead of 'rushed' I had written 'rich', so I had been like, "...I don't want to be rich."

Due to a chest cold and too many $4 martinis this past Sunday, I've lost my voice, or, to be more precise, gained a smokey, gravelly one, which is getting me psyched for going to karaoke this week, since now I finally have the voice to pull off some Bonnie Tyler, though it would help to be coming off a break-up so I'd also have the barely-submerged emotion necessary to make each and every audience member feel like they had just received a punch in the stomach.

A Coffee Can for You (63 of 63): IGA Regular Coffee.

I got this can when I was home in Michigan recently, but it beats me the fuck where:



Back in Michigan when I was younger and out with people driving around like high school kids from rural towns tend to do and we'd pass an IGA, everyone would start chanting "IG-GUH IG-GUH IG-GUH!" really loud in the car.

I like how IGA is a regular store, and they sell regular coffee - nothing too special, just regular coffee - good coffee, solid coffee.

I also think the coffee beans in the graphic look like rabbit scat.

A Coffee Can for You (62 of 63): Nescafe Classic.

I'm surprised I even have this can:



Though I go to ethnic food markets all the time and a lot of different ethnic groups like Nescafe, you always see it come in jars, never in cans, except the one time I popped into a market in an Indian neighborhood and found this there.

Oddly, the can has modern Greek on it:



This gives me hope that all the jarred coffees I see in Asian foodstores also have can versions that I will come across one day.

As for the Nescafe Classic can, though, I also like the sexy little tab it has. If you've noticed, I haven't poppped this one yet!

A Coffee Can for You (61 of 63): Legal Mexican Coffee Blend.

This is only the second Mexican cinnamon-and-coffee can in my collection:



Oddly, though I got it more recently than the other one, I can't remember at all where the fuck I got it.

Also, I think it's interesting that the can is short and kind of fat, like many Mexicans. All the can needs is a little mustachio, and it's all set.

A Coffee Can for You (60 of 63): Autocrat Premium Coffee.

I am fond of this can for two reasons:



First, its name is Autocrat, which strikes me as an old-fashioned name.

Second, "A Swallow Will Tell You".

A Coffee Can for You (59 of 63): Segafredo Espresso Classico.

This is a bizarre little espresso can that comes in a weird can shape and size, much like many of the cans of Turkish coffee I have:



Unless I'm mistaken, you can kind of see my reflection in the can as I took its picture, kind of like those camera mistakes you see on IMDB if you read the trivia.