Illustration: Sarah Kilcoyne
When, in 2003, New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum first had the idea to write a book about the business of reality television and the “powerful, somewhat dangerous” industry that had emerged in Hollywood, a friend told her to “write it fast” — before the fad disappeared. Now, more than 20 years later, “reality television” practically is television, and Nussbaum’s new book, Cue the Sun!, tracks its history back to its roots in 1940s radio, to the Survivor-era early-aughts boom and into our current, Bravo-dominated present. “I’m just fascinated by reality television,” Nussbaum says. “People like to look down on it, but they can’t look away from it.” This week, she balanced a bit of book promo with family like in Brooklyn, tracking it all for the Grub Street Diet.
Friday, June 7
My husband, Clive, and I alternate getting up with our teenager, a high-school junior. Most days we pack a bag lunch for him (his public high school’s cafeteria slashed its menu options, so it’s a parade of mystery patties these days). None of us are morning people, to put it lightly. Today, Clive took the hit and also brought me black coffee in bed. I’m the opposite of a coffee snob: It’s all about the caffeine to me, so bodega coffee works as well as high-end beans. Eventually, I got up and microwaved some steel-cut oatmeal (I slow-cook a pot every few days, then refrigerate it), with blueberries, brown sugar and — my contribution to oatmeal innovation — a splash of coffee.
I had cut together a tentative book excerpt of my chapter on MTV’s The Real World for the New Yorker and I was in writerly limbo, waiting for notes from my editor. Clive and our older son, who was home from college, were all working together in our living room, a sweetly companionable situation. As I finished up a terrific book called Big in Sweden by a woman who won a Swedish reality show, Clive cut up some carrots as a snack. For lunch, I baked two cuts of salmon with olive oil and salt and pepper, then I ate half a cut with some brown rice in a bowl, mixed with chopped onions, spinach, half an avocado, and Clive’s carrots. I also had the first of what will be many, many Diet Cokes.
A little context for my eating habits: I grew up in the 1980s in the New York suburbs, where I absorbed a hideous but ordinary set of female food pathologies. This was the era of a famous diet named after my hometown and Thin Thighs in Thirty Days and girls judging one another by whether they had three diamonds between their legs. In many ways, the world has gone downhill, but I’m grateful that fat asses are more welcome these days! Anyway, because of either my women’s-mag–addled teens, personal taste, or the fact that I am now a middle-aged lady with high cholesterol and a family-based fear of heart disease, I eat my food relatively plain: no mayo, no dressing, no condiments. Spices good, sauces bad. I’m borderline phobic when it comes to ketchup and sour cream.
An hour later, while dealing with an agitating book-promo issue, I had a square of salty Hü dark chocolate (spicy or salty chocolate is my favorite — I also love Mexican hot chocolate). Then I ate a slice of low-fat Swiss cheese on a thick whole-wheat Wasa cracker, which is probably what Thin Thighs In Thirty Days would advise me to do.
I’ve never been much of a cook! I love diners, takeout Thai or Indian food — any kind of shortcut. In some Sliding Doors alternative life, I’d be one of those Manhattan eccentrics who lives in a hotel and eats at the hotel bar. Before we moved to Brooklyn, Clive and I had an idea for a YouTube cooking show called “Fuck It,” in which Clive, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, would start some recipe in our tiny kitchen — he’d chop up squash or whatever — before realizing that he was missing an ingredient or didn’t know how to julienne, then say “fuck it” and order in. Once we had kids, we realized that we were legally required to feed them, so we raised our game a little. As with the rest of the housework, we trade off on who cooks, with one person stepping up (or ordering in) when the other one has more work.
Then, during the pandemic, my younger son got interested in cooking. This kid now makes pho, quesadillas, homemade dumplings, fish and chips, one time a brisket! We upgraded our skill set and I bought a wok, a small KitchenAid food processor, and other useful things, like a wonderful Dash egg cooker that sings to me when I make hard-boiled eggs. Clive started baking bread. Now our game is medium!
On Fridays, however, we always order from Joe’s Pizza on Fifth Avenue for movie night — crispy, thin crust, delicious. We get two large pies, one broccoli, one pepperoni. I had two broccoli slices and another Diet Coke. Tonight’s movie is The Conversation, which was a huge hit with everyone. At around 10:30, Clive and I walked over to Rullo’s, a bar a block away — we both like to write in bars and he’s trying to hit his word count for the day — and I had a glass of white wine, no idea what kind. I’m not a wine person either.
Saturday, June 8
Clive got up early to help fix our older kid’s bicycle (they’re both long-distance bikers), so I got another coffee in bed. Coffee in the shower, also great! There was a brief period when we convinced our then-grade-school-age sons, Tom Sawyer–style, that making coffee was fun, so they’d excitedly brew cups for us — for a short time, they even ran a lemonade-stand-like coffee booth called 2 Bros Coffee.
The edited book excerpt was now in Google Docs, so I worked in bed for most of the morning, folding in call-backs to the larger themes of Cue the Sun! (Procrastinating, I also watched an episode of the show Evil with a plot about possessed pigs on my phone.) By the time I got up, half the family had eaten bagels from the Bagel Factory, but, haunted by the shadow of the Grub Street Diet, I whipped up a big egg scramble, sautéing some chopped onions and diced garlic then scrambling in eggs, fresh spinach, chopped red peppers, black pepper, salt, and garlic powder and toasting fat slices of sourdough bread. After that, I worked for a few more hours then had my usual bowl of healthy-ish leftovers, with brown rice and salmon, plus a Diet Coke, then a pear.
By now, I was the only one left in the house: One son was biking and the other one was hanging out with friends. In addition to being a journalist, Clive plays in two bands, and one of them, Lipstick Driver, was playing at the Brooklyn Pride festival, so I headed up Fifth Avenue to the bar High Dive on my spiffy new e-bike, which I bought to keep up with my more athletic family. (A frightening multi-tasker, Clive just biked across the country and is working on a book about micromobility and biking.)
While grooving to the band, I drank a Stella Artois, a beer I began ordering as a running joke with Clive after David Brooks mocked it as “the beer of the Belgian working class” in a bizarre 2003 column about hipster chic. Maybe this is a goofy way to make drink choices, but that’s the way it goes, at least in my experience. Back in the 1990s, I started ordering a vodka gimlet, up, with Rose’s lime juice after my friend Lisa pegged it as a sophisticated drink for a 30-year-old. Now that I’m in my 50s, I’ve tried to evolve into a broad who orders bourbon, straight up, without much success.
The crowd was wonderful: There was a euphoric dancing toddler in rainbow stripes, an older butch woman whose shirt read “George Strait / but I ain’t,” a friendship group sporting tops with slogans like “Live, Laugh, Lesbian” and, more alarmingly, a middle-aged woman whose T-shirt said “I paint so I don’t choke people.” Clive’s bandmates from his other band, the Delorean Sisters, stopped by to see the show, and I got yet another Diet Coke, then ate 15 or so of his banjo player’s French fries.
I biked home around six, then cooked cheese tortellini for the boys with heated-up tomato sauce and fresh grated Parmesan cheese. My younger son baked Brussels sprouts as a side dish. When Clive showed up post-concert, there wasn’t quite enough ravioli for all four of us, so I decided to heat up an Amy’s mini-burrito for myself. Then we all had a boring and pleasant evening dominated by TV re-reruns, reading, etc. Later on, I had two more squares of dark chocolate with salt, medicinally.
Sunday, June 9
I took coffee duty. Everyone made his or her own breakfast: Clive had Cheerios, my older son toasted a pumpernickel bagel, and my younger one made an omelet with kielbasa and onions. I had my usual oatmeal.
I worked on the excerpt for a few hours — I’m cutting it down — then my younger son and I went for a bike ride. On the way to Prospect Park, we passed our local community garden, which was hosting a Pride barbecue. We ran into some friends; I had a rainbow-colored Rice Krispies treat. Then we biked to to the Nethermeads, an idyllic meadow deep into the south side, and spent two hours reading under a leafy tree and eavesdropping on the people picnicking nearby, who were having a long conversation about anxiety medication. It was an absolutely gorgeous, perfect late-spring day, with a bright blue sky and huge, fluffy clouds. After that, we biked over to Betty, a bakery on Prospect Park West, where we had a late lunch, splitting a Thai vegetarian pie, which was both delicious and savory. At home, I took a nap.
Earlier in the weekend, I had asked my younger son if he wanted to try to cook something new, and he showed me a recipe for grilled chimichurri chicken with couscous. That morning, while I was busy editing my excerpt, he had thoughtfully marinated the chicken with garlic, pepper, salt, oil, oregano, cilantro, and parsley, chopped up in the KitchenAid. In the evening, we added the leftover marinade to the couscous along with crumbled feta and diced baby tomatoes. I sliced some cucumbers up as a side dish. It was delicious! The chicken came out juicy, the marinade was tangy, and even my older son — a couscous skeptic who, like me, tends to prefer his food plain — was won over.
The only downside was that while we were cooking, the family bikers — who are still feverishly collaborating on the bicycle — had set up shop in the kitchen, so my younger son and I had to weave around them as if we were in the garage at Pep Boys. In the evening, I finished the edit, celebrating with a mini Tofutti ice-cream bar from the freezer.
Monday, June 10
Keeping track of my food is making me remember weird food habits from my past. I used to eat ginger snaps with three or four chocolate chips on them as a late-night snack, in my 30s — a good idea, undeniably delicious. I experimented with bizarre toppings on granola in college, including mushrooms from the salad bar, inexcusable. I also had this disgusting habit of dipping rye bread into Diet Coke as a teenager. Although maybe that’s delicious? I should try it now.
Made coffee and school lunch. Ate Cheerios with a sliced banana and skim milk, then did a podcast interview with a cool host, a former Real World/Road Rules star. In the afternoon, I’m signing books at the Strand, so before heading to Manhattan on the R, I ate a hard-boiled egg and had another slice of Swiss on a thick Wasa cracker. I was still hungry, though, so I raced into Pret-A-Manger for a chicken burrito, then gobbled down half of it before signing the books. (Signing books was a surprisingly intense experience! I scrawled a little picture of a TV inside each copy while chatting with a Strand employee who harbors fantasies of producing reality shows for Bravo.) When I was done, I scarfed the second half of the burrito. I really dislike eating this way, crouched on a stoop and wolfing down takeout while passing NYU students shoot me alarmed glances, but at least I’m full.
I raced back on the R to do another podcast. I’m not complaining — I’m lucky to get all this book promo! — but even for an extrovert, this week has involved a surplus of talking, on top of the fact-checking and multiple tiny (but valuable!) New Yorker-ish decisions about word use. Also, on Thursday I’m taping an interview on NewsHour in Washington, D.C., a prospect that honestly terrifies me: I have to purchase a sleek TV outfit, get my nails done, fix my hair.
Everyone else was out when I got back, so I ate a banana and a bowl of chopped mango (the precut stuff from the supermarket.) Then I biked to Alchemy for a weekly drinks gathering with friends, where we talked about Vinson Cunningham’s book Great Expectations and the upsides of Cleveland. At the bar, I had a Victory beer (they didn’t have Stella on draft) and ate a plate of French fries. A banana, a Stella, some pre-chopped supermarket mango, and a plate of French fries is perhaps not an ideal dinner, but it hit the spot.
Tuesday, June 11
Clive made coffee and lunch. Today, I have two podcasts — with Vogue and a podcast called History Nerds — plus emails, fact-checking, that manicure, and an appointment with the eye doctor, since I broke my usual glasses and don’t want to wind up blind on my book tour. Aiming for efficiency, I boiled the water, put the oatmeal on simmer, then hopped in the shower, figuring I could eat it after I got dressed. Unfortunately, I mistimed everything and by the time I finished up the podcast, Clive and my older son had eaten the majority of my oatmeal, so I made scrambled eggs with spinach, onions, and cheddar cheese, then punished them by documenting their betrayal in print.
After procuring a new RX for glasses and a black gel manicure, I ate my usual leftovers: white rice, the last of the salmon, fresh spinach, chopped onions, and melted Swiss cheese. I have a feeling that adding cheese to a bowl that includes salmon is a bad thing, culinarily, but I don’t want to lie. I’m feeling a bit jittery, having dropped my iPhone on the pavement. I’m still worried about finding clothes for TV (I spent the day in plaid pajama pants and a black T-shirt, including during my eye-doctor appointment.) I am out of Hü chocolate. Luckily, I live three doors from a bodega, so I got another Diet Coke and Pocky sticks.
After a fun interview with the History Nerd podcast, I found the boys finishing dinner: My older son (the non-cook!) had made them both hot dogs and corn on the cob. I wasn’t hungry, so when Clive texted me from Freddy’s, a local bar, where he was meeting his songwriting partner to talk about recording their songs, I went to join them; I didn’t have a Stella because I had a headache, but I had yet another Diet Coke. (Diet Coke is starting to feel like a problem.) Clive ordered tater tots coated in gluey squeeze cheese, salsa, and bacon, which was too much for me — instead, I ate popcorn at home later on.
My eating habits had broken down, but I was looking forward to Wednesday, when I’d do three interviews, then be rewarded with the best meal of the week: Because my sister-in-law and brother-in-law were visiting, we had reservations at my favorite local restaurant, Piccoli Trattoria, a deceptively low-key Italian joint that serves organic handmade pasta. We became devoted customers just before COVID, eating takeout on the stoop in mid-winter to help keep it afloat. I’ll be having my usual: black spaghetti with crab meat, scallion, lemon, and Calabrian chile. Highly recommended!
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Alan Sytsma , 2024-06-21 12:00:51
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