Red Admirable

Lipstik_There Is Only One Thing.mp3

Then you get the guy in the fat guy truck–

There was no need to finish. The line erupted in laughter. The man who’d announced that we “got the guy” was waiting for his package at the Maspeth UPS Customer Center, and he was really fat. Since he didn’t work for UPS, I guess it didn’t matter. He was a doorman.

A concierge.

Oh.

Lipstik_Yer So Bad.mp3

Thirty two years I’ve been on the job. I keep my mouth shut, nobody bothers me. I’m my own boss.

Whoops, he’s his own boss. A landlord, not a doorman at all.

I biked to Maspeth this morning to pick up the new router for 211 Montrose. If I hadn’t already demanded our wireless network’s coronation as Chairman Meow, I might have felt less invested. But Chairman Meow is the greatest name I’ve thought of, ever, so I set my alarm for 8am and after frogging around with the Francis Francis espresso machine, I left the house and rode east.

I’m considering leaving New York for law school in the fall; since I started taking that idea seriously, I’ve been paying more attention to the city. I drove Young Max from Gowanus to Williamsburg on Sunday, and as we passed under the J/M/Z tracks a train was stopped at the Marcy (Marcy, son) station. All the doors were open, and I could see through the cars to the cold morning sky on the other side.

The train looked so fragile and aged, there, like something from French Connection. That’s kind of what Maspeth is like, the buildings and the streets like parking lots.

In the tiny waiting alcove, I stood next to a breezy Filipina whose driver came in at one point to check on her.

We are still waiting! she told him, laughing. Once the fat guy had made his fat guy joke, a strong sense of solidarity and first person plural pronouns prevailed. The Filipina was very flirty. I hope I am not… she thought about it… thwarting your morning plans!

The driver was very serious and, I noticed, kind of emaciated. It is my afternoon plans that I am worried about, he said, with no apparent sense of irony. A different woman leaned against the wall and sighed. She was reading a paperback called Desperate Hoodwives. I read over her shoulder:

…a joke, really, since the worst of the worst lived in Bentley Manor.

I stopped reading over her shoulder.

Everyone who worked at the Customer Center had an earring in one ear, so they all looked like my dentist. When was that cool for guys? It’s like a permanent sneer, just mixed with hairspray. The guy who waited on me had gold glitter all over his face, too. It was hilarious. I didn’t have the courage to take a picture of him from the front, though, so you will have to trust me:

[Buy Lipstik's new EP, There Is Only One Thing, here. We have been listening to it all morning. The album is the perfect Maspeth antidote, and since "Maspeth" is such a universal reference it is fine with us if Lipstik uses that quote promotionally.  Love, Red Admirable.]