JJS: I think that’s probably right. That was happening at some fairly base level, that I was acting out a little against that—the American equivalent of lad mags. Which GQ was really much smarter than; it was a kind of bratty acting out. But I wouldn’t have done it if there weren’t a lot of other things going on. It was also an attempt to exorcise many years spent watching MTV, and the toll that I knew it was taking. I remember being sixteen and watching MTV and thinking This is harming me. I shouldn’t be doing this. But I can’t stop. It was this poisonous but tantalizing world that you could lower yourself into when you got home from school…

RM: Do you still watch any MTV?

JJS: No, I haven’t seen it in a long time. Is The Real World even still on?

RM: Yeah. And it’s gotten so much worse, you have no idea—Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, Jersey Shore and its spin-offs. Come to think of it, in that essay you sort of predicted the rise of Jersey Shore…

JJS: The professionalization of the genre, yeah.  You know, reading that piece is a little like looking back at your page in the yearbook. There’s some wincing. But when I look back at the stuff I said about the shows, I think, Yeah, well, that is still sort of what I think. What’s going on now, is, my wife is on me to realize what’s interesting about the Real Housewives series. And I’m listening to her, because she’s super smart about TV—she’s a media studies person. She’s like, “You’re totally not getting it. These shows are fascinating.” And I’m trying to figure out what the fuck she’s talking about. Then at the same time, while we’re having all of these conversations, I get a letter from Kandi Burruss, one of the women on Real Housewives of Atlanta saying, “Why don’t you go down to Atlanta and let us show you what it’s all about?”

RM: Wait, what? How did she even know to write to you?

JJS: Because she liked my Michael Jackson piece, and the Venus Williams one.