A Day In the Life of An Intern for The Fat Jew(ish)
“I have an army of interns working out of the back of a nail salon in Queens. We have so much stuff going on: I’m writing a book, I’ve got rosé. I need them to bathe me. I’ve got so many other things that I need them to do.” — Josh Ostrovsky
4:00 AM: The automatic locks on my chains activate, releasing my ankle from the bedpost — while I might not have chosen the top-most bunk of my own accord, Ivan’s recent hobbling and Katrina’s weakness from dysentery have by default assured me my place here. I try to move as quietly as I can out of the basement, for the sake of the slumbering others. In this life, these small kindnesses are what we survive for.
4:05 AM: I steal into the nail salon, bathing briskly in a pedicure tub before drying it with my own shirt. Never leave a trace, as the Master says. For I am Intern. I am here… but only in service to Him.
4:30 AM: As First to Rise, I am accorded many honors, but none so great as this: The Initial Reading of the Feeds. While Orlando, Night Intern, might be trusted to keep watch over The Great and Bountiful Interwebs as we slumber, he has not yet proven his ability to sense what the Master will deem worthy of His attention. So I release Orlando from his post (I am of course not entrusted with the complete set of keys to the bonds that ensure our continued loyalty, but I am granted the privilege of knowing the combination for the stockade locks) and he excuses himself to the basement, and the lukewarm comfort of the bed I have abandoned.
But sleep means nothing when the riches of the Internets begin to scroll before me. BAFFLECK FUCKED THE NANNY. SUBWAY JARED GOING TO JAIL. KARDASHIAN BREATHES AIR. So much life boils outside the walls of this humble Queens nail salon… And so many people are making jokes on Twitter about it.
6:23 AM: My brothers and sisters have by now joined me, clutching the Master’s cast-off MacBook Airs and iPads as we all continue the furious hunt for that holiest of objects — The Content. The Content is all, we have been taught. The Content is what has brought us together, what binds us, what feeds our Master. Well, not our Master per se, our Master consumes a lot more every day than The Content. But for our Master’s empire to thrive, the Content must be Curated. We cannot fail Him.
9:35 AM: Maddie comes to me, her eyes alight with discovery. She has found it, she says, the perfect Tweet, bringing together Trump and Drake and Ashley Madison and Ferguson and a picture of a puppy wearing a hat — she is so certain it is worthy…
“David found this an hour ago,” I tell her.
Misery drips down her ashen cheeks. She knows what this means. “Please, I know I should have checked — I was just excited, because it was so funny and we’ve never used one of Paul Scheer’s jokes before and I thought maybe He’d be happy — ”
I raise my hand. I announce her sentence: “Update the archives. Attributions for August and September, 2013.”
Two full months is harsher than the usual punishment for this sort of transgression, but it is an error Maddie has made before. Weakness cannot be tolerated, and mistakes are only for the Master to make.
The tears fall, but she accepts her fate. Most of the other interns avert their eyes, but as she is locked into position, I hear Jessica, seated nearest her, offer a kind whisper: “Archive attribution’s not that bad.”
Jessica is lying. But it is a small kindness, and as I said, it is the small kindnesses that ease our paths.
1:36 PM: The Master has risen, and requires His daily bathing. While I have already prepared the hot tub of guacamole in the ritual fashion, I have not properly accounted for the volume displacement that occurs as He lowers Himself into the dip mixture. The Master, thankfully, is too consumed by His texting to notice, but it brings me shame nonetheless.
2:15 PM: Finish cleaning up guac splatter. Return to the Feeds.
5:45 PM: We have of course heard the rumblings of The Master since His awakening — He has been on the phone much of late, shouting at reporters about the good and glorious work He. Most excitingly, He has begun to mention, out loud, the basic fact of our existence as His loyal followers, an act of generosity beyond anything we ever might have thought possible of Him.
Now, He staggers in, the sweat of His daiquiri dripping into His chest hair. “Hey, weirdoes. What’s the tits?”
As First to Rise, I am who speaks for us. Averting eye contact, I recite the latest headlines, the latest wisecracks we have collected for His attention. He absorbs the news, the gossip, the punchlines. Before us, we see Him become more than Man — become Curator.
We see it every day, but it is never less than magnificent.
Thus transformed, He slurps out the last frozen drops from His glass, puts it down on my keyboard. “Hot shit,” He says. “Now I’m gonna go crush dinner with Andy Milonakis and Lisa Loeb. See ya manana.”
And we return to our screens.
11:45 PM: It is now time for the hours of rest we are afforded each night, so after helping the others into their own beds (and helping Orlando back into the stockade), I climb to my top bunk, curling under the thin blanket. I am weary, as the day had its rough spots — I took no pleasure in whipping Michael, though he now understands, all too well, the retribution he can expect for misattributing a Kumail Nanjiani joke. But I stop to think, as I do every night, about the important work we do, the value we bring to the world. I remember that we are in service to an Artist, and not a regular kind of artist, but a Performance Artist, whose every action and deed must be seen in the context of Art, and thus seen as valuable.
It saddens me, to recall the people I knew in my life before Him, the people who do not know the sweet joys that come with a proximity to greatness — the sort of greatness that the Master grants us daily. So I do not do it often, except for this one brief moment, before slumber.
And then I click shut the locks of my chains, and dream of the memes to come, the next day.
Please attribute this post to Liz Shannon Miller. Or, you know, Him.
