MJ. :(

'Cause underneath all the crazy-sketch, "Man in the Mirror" can still bring me to tears, and "Billie Jean" is still "Billie Jean."

In the news:
"Cher will act alongside Christina Aguilera in “Burlesque,” a contemporary musical about a young girl (Aguilera) struggling to make it big in a Los Angeles burlesque club run by an ex-dancer (Cher). The role will mark Cher’s first onscreen gig since 1999." [Variety.com]

A summary can tell you what a movie's about, but it can't tell you how it's about it. So I have to say this: This film could turn out to be much, much better than I'm imagining it will be. However, if my imagination is correct, then on the day after the premiere, I will be gathering a consciousness-raising group, '70s style, to which you are all invited, because the day this movie comes out is the day that feminism dies, and we're going to have to get to work on bringing it back.

Before Damaris sends me a guilt-inducing note about how I didn't acknowledge Father's Day, I'll post about my dad.

Things he does well:
- Tell his kids he loves them and is proud of them.
- Manage my mother. (And vice versa. Thank god they found each other. Sheesh.)
- Fix things, like with tools and stuff. It's pretty neat.
- Engage conspiracy theories. (For the last several months, he's insisted that the key to the Kennedy assassination is, to quote his oft-whispered insistence, "Two Oswalds.")

Things he does badly:
- Pass up french fries. Ever.
- Write. My mother has been trying to read his handwriting for more than 30 years, and I've never seen her successfully make it out.
- Remember things. Like mine and my sister's names. ("Uh, Teeny -- no, CC -- hey, you -- come here for a minute!")

Things I inherited from him:
- My nose. My whole face, my family insists, but I swear, I don't see it.
- 5 feet, 10 inches.
- Compassion & empathy.
- A really high butt.
- Intellectual curiosity.
- Difficulty passing up french fries.

This year, my siblings and I got him 6 months' worth of Netflix. He already has an account, since it was what I gave him for Father's Day three years ago; but fortunately, since he doesn't remember things (see above), it's a gift that we can keep on giving.

Classic example of how my supervisor (does not) communicate. Two weeks ago, I got an email from him with a man's name in the subject line, and in the text it read:
"Locate this man for an interview about his activism. Thanks."

Let me be clear: This guy, a local activist, has nothing to do with our major occupation of the summer, documenting churches in the area. This is just something A. asked me to do, which is fine. So I did whatever Googling, and I have a work address and telephone number for him, and I sent A. an email with the information.

Since then, silence on this. Until yesterday, when A. asked me, "How's it going with the interview?"

At my internship, I have a semi-supervisory position that I call "head intern." It gives me absolutely no authority but does require that I do things like make sure that people know about the upcoming ice cream social and ask them to do the mandatory computer training. In short, I do not run this project. But if our for-real supervisor is out of the office, people ask me questions like I should have the answer, because I'm the one they keep getting emails from.

So what I've concluded today is that there is a thin line between "delegating" responsibilty and "abdicating" responsibility, and my supervisor hops back and forth over that line with regularity. Here is how I see the difference: If you tell the head intern what her responsibilities are, and then you leave the office for two weeks, then you are delegating. But if you are out of the office for two weeks and expect her to provide leadership in your absence without ever having a conversation about that, then you are abdicating.

Do not cast Jessica Biel in anything. No, I don't want to hear it. I've seen Easy Virtue, and I'm telling you: NO.

Interns continue to trickle in to work on our project at the museum. This week, Peter arrived. Turns out that he's subletting a place a couple of blocks away from me in Columbia Heights, so we share a commute. Also, Peter is white. This will become relevant when I recount a piece of our conversation from our journey home:

Peter: So, what are you up to tonight?
Claudia: Twisting my hair.
Peter: Is that a metaphor?

What an adorable-pants.

INTERNET UPDATE: I have it at work now! I have it at home now! More frequent updates from Anacostia and Columbia Heights to come!

The internet situation in my sublet is... annoying. That's why I haven't updated, and why you may not hear from me much this summer. We'll have to see how this thing goes. But I did write something offline on Thursday (4), and here it is:

My internship is a HOT MESS.

My supervisor, god bless him, is a very nice man. Awkward as hell, but has a genuine heart, really. This is what I try to remember when I ask him about the hours I need to come in to work, and he tells me that getting the work done it more important than clocking hours. In a conversation that took thirty minutes and included a monologue about critical race theory. I am not kidding. First day of work, I sat with him in a cubicle and received an hour's worth of information over the course of FOUR HOURS.

Unsurprisingly, he CANNOT run a meeting. CANNOT. He ran an "orientation" for the five interns on Tuesday afternoon, scheduled until 3:30. We were there until 5. And then yesterday, we interns had to meet seprately because NOBODY UNDERSTOOD WHAT THE PROJECT IS. So we now have some kind of common understanding, but we have to meet again today with A. (supervisor) with a list of clarifying questions. Now, I'm an intern, and A. is my supervisor; but he's not that much older than I am, and I don't feel like I need to defer to him in the same way that I would feel compelled to defer to someone much older. Like how you have to listen to your grandma ramble. Maybe that's ageist, but whatever. So I'm really trying to make an effort to be respectful, but I cannot sit in another four-hour meeting in order to get the answer to five questions. Not if I have to dig through the poop of critical race theory to get to the seeds of practical answers.

That metaphor was probably unexpectedly gross. Sorry, it just came out.

And, um, pun unintended.

So that's a big problem, barely understanding my work because I can't get clear answers. The other big problem is that my desk isn't set up. I can't really talk about that right now. But let me say that if you give me the task of calling 80 churches, and I can't leave a voicemail message because I can't set up my voicemail for them to call back because I can't get online to get the instructions because the computer at my assigned desk doesn't have a hard drive and my assigned desk is behind a locked door that I haven't been given access to and so have to have a five-minute conversation with security if I want to even walk into that room, then I will not be able to efficiently complete that task.

But as I say, I can't really talk about that.

And finally, to flag a potential problem: over-eager intern. We'll call her Chaka. Listen, I'm trying to do a good job, but I'm not trying to do the best job ever. On a scale of 1-10, I'd be happy at a 7, maybe 7.5. Chaka wants to do a 10. She's an junior in college, and she's highly organized to the point of irritating redundancy -- I only met this girl on Monday, and I already know this. Case in point: After our meeting yesterday, we had to wait on a few things until we could go to next steps. Like Chaka had to get her voicemail set up. So I got a text message last night requesting that I read my email before work tomorrow. First thing: the internet in the sublet doesn't half work. (I don't want to talk about it.) So I can't necessarily check my email when I want to. Second thing: NO. This morning, Chaka asks me if I checked my email, and I explained about the first thing (therefore skirting around the second thing) and she handed me a print-out of her email, which was a three-paragraph memo about her voicemail, offering instructions to us about how we should proceed with our work in the event that (a) her voicemail is set up within the next day, or (2) if her voicemail is not set up within the next day.

It's not a good idea to irritate me at 9:30 in the morning, five minutes after I've lugged a 10-pound laptop bag across the city because my workspace in unworkable and I have to provide my own work-around. I KNEW I wasn't awake, I KNEW I was grumpy, and what did I decide to do anyway? I decided to make a deal about it. You ever do that? Do you ever hear yourself pick a completely unnecessary mini-fight when what you really need to do is shut your mouth? And twenty minutes later, when I had caffeine and actually read the thing, it was much less obnoxious. It was in my INBOX and therefore didn't need to be in my HAND, but whatever. And so I had to send my little apology email.

In conclusion, I can see this girl is going to come up with some ideas about unnecessary work, and I can see that I'm gonna need to gently set some boundaries. (1) I will not be responding to work emails after work hours. Not even if you send me a text about it. And not even if I actually read it and thought about it. You'll get my response at 11am tomorrow. (2) I'm coming up with nice ways of saying, "I'm not doing that." Because I'm 26 years old, you and I are both interns, and even my mother doesn't tell me what to do anymore.