Friday Five: 10.09.26

Happy Friday, my friends! We've reached the end of another week, and in this new blogging universe, that means it's time for a fresh list of my current obsessions. 

What will I be into this week? Cool trendy music you've never heard of? Arthouse cinema? Three Chicago things and two of the most mainstream pieces of media you can think of? Read on to find out.

1. Great British Bake Off. I could not let my first favorites post of Bake Off season go by without singing the praises of England's greatest export (sorry, The Beatles). A large portion of my current mental wellbeing rests on GBBO being on Netflix. I've been delighted as always with the season so far, especially with Nigella and her bizarre insistence that every pastry on this show needs to be saltier. Early favorite contestants include my redheaded queen Molly and the overachieving Tom, who A) will win and B) not for nothing, has the most stunningly androgynous face in Bake Off history. He is apparently a hairdresser, and I need to kiki with him while he gives me the annual two inches of split end removal that I call a haircut.

2. Lincoln Square Apple Fest (and the discourse around Lincoln Square Apple Fest). If you don't live in Chicago, you missed a fantastic miniature news cycle last weekend. Apple Fest is a self-explanatory street fair held on the north side of Chicago every October for about 300 years. Because it promises tasty seasonal treats and a fun afternoon of wandering through charming artistan tents where normally there would be only cars, it is — duh — very popular. Yet this year, the people of the internet decided its crowds were essentially the kind of punishment doled out at the Hague. Guys...it was a street fair on a sunny-and-70-degree weekend! It was busy in a completely foreseeable way! You can read about the discourse. You can watch videos about the discourse. But you can also take my word for it as a person who went this year and had a perfectly lovely time: you should just go. Top tips if you venture out to the Ap Fest next year:

• Go before noon. Crowd problem solved. 
• Take the bus. No sardine-can train platform when you take my beloved #50 bus!
• Get the apple apple baked cheese from Baked Cheese Haus (only $5 for a big ol' slab of sweet, charred cheese on a stick; I am very proud of myself for not going back for seconds and thirds) and the apple cider donut pie from Bang Bang Pie & Biscuits (don't worry, it'll be back next year, because if it isn't I will send them twice-daily complaint letters until they are forced to cave). 

3. The public library branch at the Obama museum. I went to the Obama Presidential Center this week thanks to a ticket I had the foresight to buy four very long months ago, and there is much to say about it. Most of that I'll spare you for now, BUT! The library. The actual regular public library! I love that they have this on their campus, and I wish I lived close enough to make it my regular branch. Great views, enticingly strong possibility of seeing famous people, and the hilarious option to make checkouts resulting in a sentence like, "Oh yeah, I've read 50 Shades of Grey — I borrowed it from Barack Obama."

4. Chicago's North Shore. Two weeks ago, I was obsessed with the concept of Colorado. This week, I've narrowed and localized and am obsessed with Chicago's North Shore suburbs. Having grown up in a place where "rich" meant "able to shop at Abercrombie a couple times a year," the lives of truly rich people are fascinating to me — and there is no shortage of fascinating wealth on the North Shore. I want to hate it, but listen, these people have AD-looking houses in walkable communities centered on historic town squares and train access. Sometimes we hate because we kind of love. Two North Shore things that are particularly top of mind for me as a person with dangerously close walking access to the UP-N train:

• Writers Theatre, Glencoe. Incredibly cool-looking theatre with creative programming choices and a building by Jeanne Gang, Chicago's reigning architecture she-king. Located seconds from the train station and in the center of a painfully charming downtown. If they would let me work there, I would pay them. 
• Lake Forest. Yep, the whole town. I spent a delightful overnight here this week (at their even more delightful English-country-inn-themed hotel) and will be thinking about this darling little village for a long while. If you go, say hello to the woman at the fancy-girl shop Valentina who was already playing Christmas music on October 8.

5. Zara Larsson. I've been on a Zara Larsson streak for months at this point, thanks to the undisputed album of the summer (not hearing arguments on this), Midnight Sun. My Larsson fandom (dare we call it...Larssony?) got a second wind this week though thanks to her episode of Las Culturistas, during which the boys explain Jimmy Buffett to her and her Swedish brain is so broken by the idea of him that she literally asks if they're making up a character to trick her. Watch the ep, stream "Hot & Sexy," and keep the Euro Summer alive.

See you next week!

My Favorite Chicago Restaurants

If you've had a conversation with me at any point in the past few years, it has probably turned at some point to the topic of where to eat in Chicago. Chicago is one of America's great food cities; I am one of America's great food eaters; it comes up. 

To launch my Thursday Dive series, then, I thought I'd start by diving into Chicago's best restaurants. The list below contains my personal favorites, informed by twelve years of professional food writing and seven years of living full-time in Chicago and paying its chefs to feed me as often as I can. If you're visiting Chicago and need recommendations, if you're local and looking for new spots, or if you're simply nosy and want to know what my taste is like, this list is for you. 

If you read this and find yourself hungry for more — ha, ha, teehee — worry not. I plan to make lots more Chicago food content here going forward, from where to take your meat-and-potatoes parents to where to eat in Andersonville, my beloved home neighborhood (and one that I've spared you my full opinions on in this first, city-wide list). For now, though, enjoy this guide to Chicago's very best eats.

#1 in My Heart and On This List: El Che 

The best dining experience I have ever had was at the Chef's Counter at West Loop steakhouse El Che. There are plenty of places in Chicago to have a tasting menu, but this one — where you sit at two little chairs on the edge of the kitchen, with the expeditor shouting out orders to your left and the fire of the parrilla grill roaring just beyond your plate — is special. When we went, the chef-owner himself brought out our ten or so courses and talked us through each one, chatting about the moments from his childhood in South America that inspired each dish. The experience was unforgettable, and the food — steak, lobster, bone marrow, sweetbreads — divine. 

It's hard to find a direct-reservation option for the Chef's Counter online these days, but it's worth inquiring to see if you can book it. If you can't, though, the standard dining room will hardly do you wrong. Come hungry, and if you're sitting at the counter, come in a tank top: this is a real "you are in the kitchen, be prepared to handle the heat" situation.

Dinnery Places

Fiya. My most visited restaurant in Chicago, we go to this place constantly not just because it is five blocks from our house, but also because it is so good. They're a Middle Eastern / Levantine restaurant with a giant wood-fired oven in the middle of the dining room. Get as much pita as you can possibly consume. Drag it through the hummus with lamb. Thank me. Andersonville 

ROOP. Formerly known as ROOH until they realized there's a Roux in Hyde Park that made that too confusing. Fine-dining Indian; excellent. West Loop 

Alla Vita. My hottest Chicago dining take is having this as my favorite sceney Italian restaurant instead of the much more obsessed-over Monteverde. Monteverde is fabulous, but the food at Alla Vita is very comparable and in a restaurant that's much, much easier to get into. Make this your spot. Get the orange blossom and taleggio table bread, which is the best bread course in the city. West Loop 

Creepies. A more recent opening that is absolutely worth its extensive, national hype. Vaguely Frenchy bistro; do not skip dessert. West Town 

Tre Dita. Best place in town to feel like a celebrity and also maybe see one. Extremely swanky Italian (by Chef's Table alum Evan Funke) in the very beautiful St. Regis overlooking the river. 10/10 for views, pasta, and yes, bread once again. That Weird Bit Between the Loop and Lake Shore Drive That Is Legally Called "New Eastside" 

Duck Duck Goat. My personal favorite restaurant in the Stephanie Izard cinematic universe. Very good sit-down-dinner Chinese; surprisingly affordable when shared with friends. Get the green beans, which Stephanie Izard is a wizard with. West Loop

Sun Wah. Speaking of Chinese, if you live in Chicago and have not yet been to Sun Wah, congratulations, you played yourself. This place is technically classified as "Hong Kong-style barbecue," but you don't need to know that to know it is delicious. Many great dishes, but if you want to feel like a king, do the pre-ordering required to get yourself the whole Peking duck. They carve it up tableside, so, dinner and a show. Uptown 

Honorable Mentions

Avec (Middle Eastern, West Loop, famous and deserves it); Bar Mar (seafood, Loop, my personal favorite restaurant interior in town, complete with giant octopus light fixture); Bavette's (steakhouse, River North, fabulous); Brasero (steakhouse but Latinx, West Town, fantastic sister restaurant to El Che); Giant (New American I Guess, Logan Square, eat outside in the secret gorgeous backyard!); Il Carciofo (Italian, West Loop, yes I like Italian a lot, get over it); John's Food & Wine (Also New American Whatever That Means, Lincoln Park, recently named best restaurant in the country by Food & Wine and pretty deserving tbh, especially for ~vibes~); Mi Tocaya (upscale Mexican, Logan Square, great); Rose Mary (Croatian, West Loop, excellent)

Lunchy Places

Publican Quality Meats. The Publican is lovely for sit-down meals too, but personally, I'm here for the sandwiches. The savory, herb-buttery jambon beurre (and a chocolate chip cookie for good measure) has gotten me through many a stressful lunch break. West Loop 

Al's Beef. My personal favorite of the great Chicago Italian beefs (though this is a strong opinion loosely held; I welcome attempts from other beefs to usurp the title). Get it dipped if you want to be a structurally-unsound psycho like me. Various 

Sfera. My Sicilian grab-and-go boo thang. Arancini, panini, and pizza (pizzi?) are their holy trinity of menu items and all are great. Guy Fieri came here on Triple D and, as a nearby neighbor of this restaurant, I have never felt prouder. Edgewater 

All Too Well. Described at more length in last week's blog, this is the sandwich shop of the gods. West Loop, Lincoln Park 

El Rincon de Fabio. Phenomenal Venezuelan food inexplicably located in the heart of Asia on Argyle. It is worth enduring their uncanny valley of AI-generated menu photos to consume their arepas. This is also a delivery favorite in our house. Uptown  

Pizza

Milly's Pizza in the Pan, Milly's Pizza in the Pan, Milly's Pizza in the Pan. A truly fantastic independent pizzeria serving a sort of deep-dish/pan-pizza hybrid. Being online when they open daily orders at 8 a.m. will benefit you in the somewhat Sisyphean task of securing one of their beloved, when-they're-out-they're-out pies. Writing this makes me want to order a Milly's pizza today. Lakeview, West Town 

Pizza Lobo. Slinger of some frankly giant pies available whole or by the slice. Lots of fun toppings and specialty pizzas, plus immaculate vibes both in their pub-y interior and on their enormous front patio, which is the best in Andersonville. This is an A'ville stan account, so we will not be acknowledging their other locations. Andersonville, Some Other Irrelevant Hack Neighborhoods 

Bungalow by Middle Brow. Speaking of vibes, this brewery and natural winemaker that is also a homemade-sourdough pizza joint has it, obviously, in spades. Major bonus points for the get-it-yourself soft-serve machine on site. Logan Square 

Spacca Napoli. The most authentic (and repeatedly award-winning) place in town for true Neapolitan-style pies. All are great, but the sleeper GOAT is the Pistacchio, with fior di latte, sausage, and pistachio cream instead of tomato sauce. Trust me that you should try it. Ravenswood 

Little Treats (Broadly Defined) 

Lost Larson. My personal favorite bakery. Vaguely Swedish, so Scandi treats like cinnamon rolls and cardamom buns are done very well. Strangely though for a sweets girl, my top item here is the cheddar kale scone. It is giant; it is delicious; it is often my lunch. Andersonville, Wicker Park 

Lickity Split. Three-flavors-a-day frozen custard for when you can't get to Sycamore in Logansport and would rather eat local than go to Culver's. A truly delicious treat, and their A'ville location is a block away from a well-stocked Chicago Public Library branch, setting the stage for an unbeatable one-two punch of Little Goodies The Girlies Like. Andersonville, West Rogers Park 

Publican Quality Bread. If reading this list has taught you anything, it should clearly be that I am passionate about bread. Publican is the best source in town for gorgeous loaves of it, which in my book absolutely counts as a little treat. Get it from their bakery or one of their many stockists — a list which also conveniently serves as a tidy guide to which local market owners have the best taste.

GoodFunk. A delightful little natural wine bar with a longgg list of strange wines that you will look cool ordering and drinking, plus a wonderfully moody atmosphere. The downtown location is lovely on its own or as a post-dinner pairing with the aforementioned Bar Mar, located a few doors down. Loop, West Town 

A New Dawn for The Domerberry

Hello, friends and readers. It's been a long few months since I published here, but with the weather finally acceptable again (read: under 70 degrees), I'm feeling invigorated — and ready for a new, more dedicated chapter. I've been on a hot streak of networking and trying to build up my writing roster these past couple months, and the more I meet writers and do things that feel worth writing about, the more interested I've become in just publishing things on my own. 

Don't get me wrong: I am still very much a full-time freelance writer Available For Hire™️. But I also fancy a return to my roots. Life was better in 2011, was it not? We cannot recapture the recession-in-the-rearview, stomp-hey-music-listening millennial optimism of the era, but we can blog like we did back then — and that's what I'm thinking of doing.

My loose plan is to publish once a week, in two formats. Every other Friday, I'll drop my "Friday Five": five things, big or small, that I'm obsessed with at the time. On the alternating Thursdays in between, I'll publish a "Thursday Dive": a deeper dive into a thing I love, hate, or simply feel like ranting about. I have long thought of myself as an influencer in my own deluded mind, and this is an attempt to make it a teensy bit official. These posts will span the subjects I've always loved and written about here — books, music, general lifestyle — and the things that (lest we forget) I do actually cover professionally, like travel and food. Want to know my favorite Chicago burgers? You might see that here. Itching to get your hands on the apocryphal Dublin travel guide I occasionally share if people ask very nicely? This might be the place. Consider this my fun-but-authoritative free space for publishing the lifestyle tips and tricks I hand out in my day job, with a few less pitching-and-commissioning strings.

Since today is Friday, I'm launching this new era of The Domerberry with a Friday Five. Enjoy this glimpse at the benevolent bugbears currently occupying my brain space — and come back next week to kick off the Thursday Dive with an oft-requested list: my favorite Chicago restaurants. 

The Friday Five: 09.25.26

My obsessions du moment

1. Theming my entire life around the fact that it's fall. If you've been here a while, you know — and if you've met me even once, you can probably guess — that fall is my favorite time of year. The weather is dreamy, the leaves turn all fun, and there are endless possibilities for my favorite thing: sticking to a theme. I am the person who wore pink to Barbie, green to Wicked (parts one and two), and a bustier to see Moulin Rouge on tour (apologies to the elementary-school-aged child seated next to me for having parents who somehow did not foresee this). I prepared for a rodeo trip this summer by making a six-hour country playlist and reading a cowboy romance novel. If it's fall, then, you bet my daily life is showing it. How, exactly? Well: 

a. Books. 'Tis the season for witch books and slasher novels, folks. I've read almost nothing in the past month that isn't fall-themed, and while I can't say these are all great works of literature, I can say that Feel the Bern is a Vermont-in-autumn-set mystery novel where the amateur detective is Bernie Sanders. I believe this speaks for itself.

b. Candles. This is obvious but bears repeating. If you walk into my house between August and Advent and it doesn't smell like you've fallen into a vat of mulled apples, I have done something wrong. For the record, my favorite fall candle is Spiced Cider by Capri Blue for Anthropologie. Bury me with this so I can huff the cloves for all eternity.

c. Food. If you think I'm cooking from any source but my soup-themed Pinterest board this fall, you are out of your mind.

2. All Too Well (and not the one you're thinking of). Yes, Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" is a masterpiece (and, as it happens, a great fit for my fall theme; see "scarf"). But the All Too Well I'm currently obsessing over is a sandwich shop. If you are in Chicago — or randomly Naples, Florida, where they have their other location — you need to eat at this place. I've spent eleven years chasing the high of my time in Dublin, when there were so many worldbeating sandwich shops that I hardly went a day without a life-changing sando. Nowhere has lived up to it since, Chicago included, but this place gives me some hope. They make their own schiacciata bread (foccaccia but thinner and sandwichier) and stuff it with some truly A-grade fillings. There's the Bombay Chulet, with Indian chili crisp and spicy fig on top of turkey and prosciutto. There's the perfectly named "...I Make You Lamb," with shredded lamb, feta, and chimichurri. If they had an outlet closer to my house, I would be 80% bread by now. 

3. Colorado. I recently booked a vacation to Aspen (it's in December; send me your recs), and it has me fantasizing about all things Colorado. I would looove to step on a crunchy leaf out there while gazing up at a canopy of aspens. I'll miss fall this year, but that won't stop me from fantasizing, especially about these travel-writery tidbits: 

a. Hotel Jerome, Auberge Collection. The most swankified hotel in Aspen, according to me and many, many other basic white women. Moody mountain lodge vibes; 130 years of history; a price tag that we will not be discussing at this time. 🙏

b. The Winter Park Express Train. Amtrak runs a train every winter that gets you from downtown Denver to the literal base of a ski mountain in under three hours. This is one rare, isolated instance of us being a proper country. 

c. DIVA at the Denver Art Museum. They have an exhibit opening next month that's A) comprised solely of costumes and artifacts related to the great pop divas, and B) built in conjunction with the V&A, which anyone with taste knows is the best museum in London. I envy all who get to go.

4. Applesauce cake with brown butter frosting. As Logansporters of a certain age may be aware, one of my old choir- and school- and churchmates is now a highly aspirational family and home influencer. I live for her posts; my mom lives for her posts; if you're reading this, there's a good chance you live for them too. This week (in keeping with obsession #1), I decided to try out her recipe for applesauce cake with brown butter frosting. Oh...my God. The recipe said you'd likely have extra frosting, and she suggested you just bake up another cake the next week to use it up. I wrote this off immediately as something I would never put forth the effort to do, but this thing was so good that I might actually bother. The cake is moist and warm-fall-spice-y (and comes together in what felt like 10 seconds in a single bowl, which is a huge plus), and the frosting is, to speak plainly, the best thing that has happened to me since at least the first Trump administration. Brown butter really is That Girl, and you should make frosting with her at your earliest convenience. 

5. The new Taylor Swift songs. You know I couldn't publish today and not talk about them. Yes, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore is here, and I have of course been listening to the new tracks on repeat. With one exception, I like them. "Patient Zero" is a good concept, well executed except for opening hook being a note-for-note copy of "Wait for Me" from Hadestown. "Pink Clouding" is fun; "Babylon" is nice. And then, well, there's "Cleveland!" With nothing but the purest love for my friends from the Cle, this song is a mess. Cleveland is fine! We love that our girl is happy! But this is the first big love song from Taylor Swift after her wedding. The greatest lyricist of our generation just gave us "I have an important announcement to make" and "this - is - the - love - of - my - life." It is not her best work. But I guess I'd be phoning it in at the office too if I were newly married to a man large enough to throw me around like a sack of flour and who will retire before 40 as a multimillionaire. Good for you, girl. Good for you.    

See you next week!

My Transplant Era Media Menu

If you somehow have found your way to this blog without also knowing my whole business via Facebook, let me catch you up: 

Hi. I'm Sarah. My boyfriend has had cancer for the past two and a half years, and two months ago exactly, he was admitted to the hospital for the Big Honkin' Process™️ of a bone marrow transplant. In his case, this meant one month inpatient and one month convalescing under 24/7 watch at the apartment we'd rented near the hospital downtown. 

It also meant a lot of downtime. 

So what's a girl to do with that time, besides worry and stress-bake and take baths and work (yes, mother, I worked this whole time too!!!)? Read and watch things, of course. And I wouldn't be me if I didn't tell you about it. 

This isn't my entire media diet for YTD, nor will it cover my partner's whole recovery, since there is still a long road of quarantined, non-normal time to come. But this is the entire survey of books, TV, comedy, notable magazines, and movies I took in during February and March: the two-month downtown transplant era. My top favorites and recommendations are marked with a star (★). If you want more quantified reviewing than that, IDK, go follow me on Goodreads and convince me to get a Letterboxd.

Without further ado: my things!

Books

Lock Every Door, by Riley Sager. If you ever have cause to move briefly into a downtown high-rise to care for a loved one, I highly recommend starting a book on day one of said move about a girl who undergoes horrors after moving briefly into a downtown high-rise. Also, the twist at the end of this was bonkers. 

Big Fan, by Alexandra Romanoff. ★ My first time reading an 831 Stories novella, and it was great! Washed-up pop star + government-employee girlboss of my Obama-era career dreams = surprisingly successful romcom pairing.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens, by Ina Garten. ★ An iconic memoir by an icon. If Paris is the first place I go after my quarantine lifts, blame this book.

Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan. ★ Stepped out of my usual populist genre fiction lane to read some actual prose. As affecting as advertised.

The Woman in Suite 11, by Ruth Ware. Not as good as its predecessor (The Woman in Cabin 10). This character must stop accepting invitations on luxury trips. 

Save Me the Plums, by Ruth Reichl. The Ina book set me off onto a food writing kick, starting with this one from the famed final editor of Gourmet magazine. Bring back 2000s magazine culture STAT!!!

Anatomy of an Alibi, by Ashley Elston. Elston's debut was one of my top books of 2024, so this sophomore outing was an auto-buy. This one wasn't quite as good as the first IMO, but I still eagerly await her next. 

With a Vengeance, by Riley Sager. I tend to like Sager, but this one got a little ridiculous. For recent fiction in the "railway whodunit" genre, I prefer Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, by Benjamin Stevenson. 

Monsieur Pamplemousse, by Michael Bond. I stumbled on a recommendation of this in an old issue of Gourmet and rented it immediately, thanks to my best friend, the Chicago Public Library. Detective novel where the detective is a reviewer for a Michelin-style restaurant guide. His sidekick is his sentient dog, Pommes Frites. The setting is a five-star hotel and restaurant in the French countryside. There are hijinks. And the author wrote Paddington! Thoroughly charming.

Ingredienti, by Marcella Hazan. Cookbook-adjacent guide that walks you through how to buy, store, and use the best of various Italian produce, pantry, and deli ingredients. Has me very excited for farmer's market season. 

Magazines Worth Mentioning

British Vogue. It is criminal that Anna Wintour's replacement has effectively stopped publishing U.S. Vogue in print. If we all buy enough issues of the British version from U.S. stores, will they get the hint?

Town & Country. If you have never read this magazine, you have to pick one up. Its audience and its subject matter are both just "extremely rich people," and the things it therefore recommends are absolutely cuckoo. Just trust. 

Gourmet. ★ I'd already read one book back in January (All Consuming by Ruby Tandoh, highly recommend) that praised the Internet Archive back catalog of old Gourmet issues. Reading Ruth Reichl's book prompted me to finally go explore them, and as advertised, they are a delight. A must-browse if you are a foodie or a fan of vintage magazine culture.

COMEDY

Chris Fleming: Live at the Palace. I'm a simple woman. I see Chris Fleming, I click. 

Sarah Sherman: Sarah Squirm Live + In the Flesh. RIP to the people who know her only from SNL and turned this on expecting a nice, family-friendly, not appallingly body horror-filled comedy special. For those of us who knew what we were getting into, though, great. 

Caleb Hearon: Model Comedian. Perfectly good. I'll stick to only engaging with his content when his podcast has on someone I'm a fan of.

Las Culturistas: Feb. 4 Episode feat. Sarah Sherman (YouTube Version). ★ Funniest 100 minutes I've seen in the past two months.

TV 

The Olympics. God smiled on us when he timed Patrick's transplant to start on basically day one of the Winter Olympics. I am an Olympics obsessive; I watched many hours; pairs ice dancing is my new passion.

Bridgerton Season 4. Another highly fortuitous bit of timing. A charming season IMO! Mrs. Bridgerton's "I am the tea you will be drinking" arc had me standing up out of my seat screaming (positive) at her.  

The Diplomat Season 3. Do you guys watch this? You should be watching this.

Schmigadoon. ★ OH MY GOD. I don't have Apple TV, so I never had access to this until I arrived at the quarantine apartment and discovered the smart TV there was logged into it. This series was created for me personally, and I will be recommending it to every theater person I know until the day that I croak. Knowing that a third, "Into the Schmoods"-themed season is storyboarded out but unmade makes me want to burn down a house.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. Not as good as the creator's other show, the no-flaws, masterful, I-have-watched-it-four-times-in-full Derry Girls. But if you want more Irish Content, this will do. 

Coldwater. Do you want to watch something really, really stupid? Would you like to see Andrew Lincoln vacillate wildly between "action hero" and "man so bizarrely emotionally messed up that you cannot tell if the writers are joking"? If so, give this thing a go, I guess.

Being Gordon Ramsay. BRB, finagling reservations for all five of his Bishopsgate restaurants.

Pluribus. ★ Vince Gilligan has done it again. This is genuinely powerful IMO and deeply thought-provoking. I might have to get Apple TV whenever the second season comes out.

The Burbs. Baby, she's Keke Palmer. This is a comedic mystery series featuring a band of unlikely suburb friends including not only Keke but Paula Pell and Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows. It's a delight! Dig out your Peacock password and go watch it.

The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. Whoever thought of casting Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe as co-leads deserves a Nobel Prize. 

Rooster. For some reason this is shot like a prestige drama, but what it actually is is a hilarious sitcom that would be comfortably at home amid 30 Rock and friends. If you have HBO, watch it. 

Neighbors. Speaking of HBO, only they could produce the full-frontal-filled avant garde masterpiece that was the finale of this show's first season. Come for the amusing neighborly fighting (and the Kokomo episode!!), stay for a finale that combines elderly nudists, the Catholic Church, OnlyFans, and a sprinkle of acid-trip editing into one of the best TV episodes of the year so far. 

Jeopardy! Obviously we watch this daily, and while most of our usual weekly watching I've left off this list, I'm including Jeopardy! because I need you all to tune in and watch Jamie Ding. He is the last pure thing left in this world, and I want him to win one million dollars. 

Movies 

People We Meet on Vacation. ★ A DELIGHT. Emily Henry should be president of the United States, or at LEAST should have adaptations that play in theaters. WE WOULD ALL PAY TO GO!!!

The Wrong Paris. Charming! The "child star to straight-to-streaming romance heroine" pipeline is one of the only good things our contemporary media ecosystem has produced.

Honey Don't! Seriously, don't. 

Luckiest Girl Alive. Note to Netflix: Books with an extremely heavy (and extremely central!!) sexual assault AND SCHOOL SHOOTING plotline should maybe not be made into straight-to-streaming thrillers that are promoted as casual popcorn flicks. 

GoldenEye. This was my first time watching a Bond film. It has vindicated my choice to not watch any of them before now.

Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere. Oof. Chat, are we cooked?

Materialists. ★ Really good. I'm glad I didn't see it at release time when the "this looks like a romcom, why is it not a romcom" discourse was so loud, because this didn't need to be a romcom — it's interesting and well done in its own lane. Did it make me burst into tears? Yes, but it was on Valentine's Day in the hospital with my cancer-stricken boyfriend, so, like, grain of salt.

One Battle After Another. Good! They promoted this as too much of an action movie I feel like, because it really was funnier and less shots-and-explosions-y than that. Benicio del Toro really great. Haim sister also a nice touch — always enjoy pointing at my screen and saying, "Hey, a Haim!" Still think Sinners was better.

What have you been watching and reading? Let me know! See you the next time I remember this blog exists.

The Domerberry's Best of 2025

Another year has come and gone, and as always, I have spent it having opinions. It's no secret if you know me that I think all people should share their favorites at the end of each year, just as Obama does unprompted every December. I've shared my favorite books online for the past couple of years, but this year I decided to expand. 

My favorite books aren't the only things you did not ask for that I plan to make your problem. I also have favorites in other media, in travel and dining, in miscellaneous life — and I want to discuss them. I want you to read these because I do think I have good taste that you might enjoy (and because I'm clinically addicted to attention), but most of all I share because I want to yap. Did you read or watch or consume something on this list? Is there something here you think is insane? It would delight me if you reached out to chat about it. These are my Las Culturistas Culture Awards, and you are my readers, Kayteighs, publicists, and finalists — but also my friends. 

Read on for my favorite and best things of the year. Catch you in the next one!

Best Books

Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll
The Guest, by Emma Cline
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier 
Manacled, by SenLinYu
The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman

This was a slow reading year for me, but this is my small, un-ordered group of five-star books. A warning: Manacled is a novel-length Harry Potter fan fiction decidedly for adults only; do not attempt unless you are ready for the amount of freak that that entails. An endorsement: The Guest is the second Emma Cline that's earned an immediate five stars from me (the other being her debut, The Girls); I highly recommend either. A lament: Yes, it bothers me that Richard Osman here ruins my streak of almost never recommending books by men. 

Best Film & TV

Sinners 

The Hunting Wives 

Taskmaster 

In order, these are: 1) the best movie of the year and it's not close (two very sexy Michael B. Jordans! spooky stuff! important musical motif!); 2) a terrible, delightfully gay red-state murder drama whose second season I EAGERLY await; and 3) a British celebrity game show, available for free on YouTube in its entirety, which Patrick and I became obsessed with this year — and which strangely also involves Richard Osman.

Best Restaurants 

Il Carciofo, Chicago

Tre Dita, Chicago

Creepies, Chicago 

Fore Street, Portland, Maine 

Dish That's Been GOATed This Year When Restaurant Dessert is the Vibe 

Ice cream / gelato / sorbet. 

I generally think of myself as someone who prefers cake or other baked goods when choosing dessert out at a restaurant, but this year I have been on a hot streak of ordering just wittle baby ice creams. I've had a peach sorbet that was delicious; a gianduja gelato that tastes exactly like Sycamore chocolate custard (that was at Il Carciofo and you should go get it); a delightfully cozy spiced apple cider sorbet; a baguette-flavored soft serve...the possibilities are endless. I cannot recommend enough that you go out to eat and tell the server at the end, "Can I just do the [little frozen treat]?" So dainty. So good. 

Best Hotel 

Casa de Sierra Nevada, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico 

Most Adorable Airport 

Savannah-Hilton Head Island 

Songs from Eurovision You Should Really Be Listening To 

"Hallucination," from Denmark 

"Baller," from Germany

"Bara Bada Bastu," from Sweden 

"Espresso Macchiato," from Estonia 

The first two of these are unironic bangers. "Hallucination" is a great enough pop song that I listen to it alongside the other pop girlies as if it is not from Eurovision at all, and "Baller" is essentially Berghain techno music for people raised on Radio Disney (read: me). 

The latter two of these are Eurovision comedy songs for the ages. "Espresso Macchiato" is even mostly in English! Just trust me and go listen to them. 

Worst Day of the Year 

The day when my local Italian deli got evicted. Those paisans not paying their rent is RUINING MY LIFE.

Best Day of the Year

Chicago pope day. Duh.

Best Chicago-Area Hospital Amenity 

The robot smoothie vending machine in general surgery waiting at UChicago.

I am something of an expert in this niche field by now, and trust me, the coolest visitor-facing item in any Chicago hospital is the machine at UChicago where you can command a robot to make you a smoothie in front of your eyes. It takes an uncomfortably long time, but you're in surgery waiting — what else do you have to do? 

Best Thing to Spend $15 On

Fancy chocolate bars that really should only cost $5 but which you will happily pay triple that for, because you deserve a little treat.

My personal favorites are "Block Party Brownie" by the excellent Seattle-based chocolate company Maeve, and "Butter Biscuit" by Meurisse. They're Belgian and almost 200 years old. Really I should be paying them even more!

  

Best Place to Say That You Are Going 

The fishmonger. 

There's a great independent fishmonger in our neighborhood, and I never feel like more of a pretentious nightmare (positive) than when I am talking about shopping there. I have actually shopped there a total of two times, but my God, what a rush it is to say you're thinking of stopping by the fishmonger once or twice a week. So unnecessary. So Nordic. You must go — or at least talk about it.

Young People Things That Maybe I'll Get Into Next Year 

Funky little pimple patches

K-Pop Demon Hunters 

Young People Thing That I'm Glad We're All Leaving Behind 

Labubus. 

That's all, folks. Happy new year!

Examine the Goop Gift Guides With Me

As obvious as this may sound, there are few things I love more in this world than a gift. I love giving them, I love receiving them — I just find it a delight to be on either end of the process of thinking about a person you love, then getting them something that you think will brighten their day. 

I also love seeing the stupid stuff that rich people get up to. 

This week, then, contained my own personal Best Time of the Year: the moment when Goop releases its annual holiday gift guide. Gwyneth Paltrow can always be relied on to suggest truly nutso things to indulge in, so, for the past several years, I have religiously trawled her Goop guides to see just how ridiculous her gift ideas can get. Will she recommend a $12,000 gold candle snuffer? A private jet trip you can only access by signing away the naming rights to your firstborn child? 

I must know — so when I saw the 2025 guide this morning, I dove in. As is usually the case, there are some items on here that I can actually understanding wanting: a luxury hotel stay, a cashmere sweater, etc. But most are, per Gwynnie custom, insane — and, this year, I decided they call for a blog post. 

Goop organizes its gift guide into categories: gifts for a hostess, gifts for men, etc. So I will review the items in the same way. I'm skipping over plenty of stuff entirely: the Wellness guide (either you can buy that stuff at Walgreens or you don't need it), the Under $100 guide (most of it's reasonable), the jewelry (we get it, necklaces cost more than a car sometimes), and most travel experiences (because again, this is what people should spend their riches on). But, for the rest of the list, I have thoughts. Read on to see what they are. 

The "Forward to Your SO" Guide 

Goop has done this guide nearly since the beginning, and I have to say, Gwyneth and I have very different definitions of "gifts to ask for from your partner." My "Forward to Your SO" gift list is the same list I send to anyone else who needs it, with maybe, like, 3% more spice. Is one of the romance novels on my list slightly hornier than the others? Guess I'll ask my boyfriend for that one instead of my sister. Job done. 

Villa in Antibes, €64,000/night. Goop says this one is perfect "for the couple who likes to travel with friends." At nine bedrooms, you could squeeze 18 friends in here, but it would still cost them €3500 per night per person!!! If a friend group exists that's open to this, I honestly don't want to know.

Vintage Shell-Shaped Butter Dish, $450. Gwyneth calls this "the gift that says 'I love you butter than anyone.'" If you love me butter than anyone, buy me actual butter. My regular Kerrygold is like $7 a pack now, so a high-end butter like a Bordier is literally a luxury item. Just get me that! Step away from the single-use kitchen tool that is probably held together with asbestos and lead!

Vespa in Primavera Red, $5,799. My only note on this was "kind of sick tbh," and you know what, I stand by it. Live your Lizzie McGuire Movie dreams. 

Anya Hindmarch Pills Box, $450. I need you to know that there are no fewer than three pill organizers in this gift guide. Why are they so obsessed with pillboxes? Why is this one on the romance guide? Does this have to say "Penelope's Prescriptions" on it like the one shown in the photos? I do not need the TSA thinking I stole my prescription meds from some woman called Penelope! 

The Beauty Gift Guide 

Aire 360 Ceramic Air Styler Blowout Kit with Carrying Case, $299. On the one hand, my brain is exactly broken enough to think this is a decent price for a high-end, multi-use hair tool. On the other hand, the only tool I use on my hair is an $18 Conair dryer I bought at Walmart in 2015. *shrug* The duality of woman.

Vintner's Daughter Active Botanical Serum, $740 for 100 ml. I genuinely don't know what this is. Why are we even considering spending $740 for a skin product packaged in a hay-filled box that looks like the manger Jesus was born in? IS that the manger that Jesus was born in? That would at least explain the price tag!

Coquille Mirror, $2800. Nothing says "eat the rich" like a three-inch-high hand mirror that costs more than my monthly rent. 

Louis Vuitton Cosmetic Lipstick Pouch, $605. I want to be very clear that this is a bag only large enough to hold one tube of lipstick. It is two inches high by four inches long. YOUR LIPSTICK DOESN'T NEED ITS OWN BAG! WHAT ARE WE DOING????

Aventis Comb, $126. Do no one else's hackles raise upon reading the phrase "made from horn"? Are we doing poaching here? I have concerns. 

Reiki Infused Energy Head Spa Session, $555. I can't lie to you: I would spend my money on this if I were rich and stupid. I went to a head spa for the first time this year and loved every relaxing minute of it, so that plus some dubious healing work that should allegedly make me feel refreshed and like slightly more of a functioning human being? You Gooped me, gal. 

The Men's Gift Guide 

Theragun Mini 3.0, $219.99. If we did not already have something very similar to this in our home, this would be probably the item from this list that I would be likeliest to buy. One's muscles do be hurting sometimes, and $220 is a sum I could actually envision spending to fix it. Congrats to Gwyneth on a Genuinely Good Idea!! 

Tread Portable Pizza Oven, $549.99. I am instantly suspicious of the word "portable." Please set your own home on fire with your crazy oven box. Do not endanger my life by bringing it to mine. 

The Teppanyaki, $449. This is stupid. No one needs to own this. I would buy it.

Springbok Shaving Set, €1118. Again, girlypop, arrrrre we doing poaching? There are a weird number of animal horns in this gift guide! I have concerns! 

Ram Desk Lighter, $753. A) Animal horn round 3. What are we doing? B) This is a flammable shofar that you can't even use as an instrument. Do not like. 

Force of Nature Meats Ancestral Blends Box, $218. I shouldn't be surprised that the beef tallow organ meat people have come for Goop, yet somehow I am. If your man is the kind of person who'd enjoy this, I do not like your man. 

Walden Cold Plunge Concept, $15,000. This looks like something my veterinarian grandfather would have used to bathe and/or euthanize animals in 1955. Also, why is it called a "concept"? It physically exists. On paper it has a purpose. I think we're past the point of it being "a concept" and into the realm of it being "a thing." For $15,000. 

Porsche Ice Driving Experience, price upon request. Come onnnnn, tell us what it costs! How much are rich people paying to *checks notes* drive a quarter-million dollar car at racing speeds across terrain that regularly causes accidents even among four-wheel-drive vehicles moving at 30 miles per hour? You know, I think the orcas that keep sinking billionaires' yachts came up with this. 

Louis Vuitton Babyfoot Foosball Table, price upon request (pictured). This looks like a Monsters Inc. character who matriculated to Monsters U from a tony private boarding school in Switzerland. I'll take two. 

The Bon Vivant's (Host's) Gift Guide 

The Seasonal Diffuser Set, $216. I promise you can get this at Walgreens for $39.99. 

Noma Taste Buds Membership, $790. A quarterly delivery of funky inventions from Noma's test kitchen, this again falls into the category of "things I would buy if I were rich." Would my taste buds probably be too boring to enjoy most of them? Yes. Would I get them anyway? Absolutely. 

Starry Starry Night Winter Candle, $175; Not a Creature Was Stirring Candle, $125; Pasta Water Candle, $70. A candle is a great host gift. If I invited you to my home and you showed up with a candle priced up to, say, a splurgey $50, I would say wow, thank you so much, I love you. If you showed up to my house with a candle priced over $100, I would say girl, why did you not give me that money in cash? I am too poor to consider a candle a good use of a literal dinner-and-a-show amount of money! Oh, and if you came to my house with a candle that smells like pasta water, I would kick you out. 

Brunello Cuccinelli Playing Cards, $930. You know, we actually don't criticize rich people enough. 

Tilda Ash and Kindling Bucket, $395. This looks like a toilet. If someone takes a poo in this (or the $1300 firewood basket that goes with it) and now you're stuck dealing with that in your home, I'm sorry but you deserve it. 

Hermès Jukebox, price upon request (pictured). In theory there's a fairly fine line between this and the aforementioned Monsters Inc. foosball table, but in practice, I love that and I hate this. There is whimsy here, but it has been corrupted. Burn it in a fire. 

The Pleasure Seeker's Gift Guide 

First of all, it's always felt to me like this should be the one that you "forward to your SO." It's the slutty gift guide! Who else are you sending it to, your mom? If so...yikes! 

Kiki de Montparnasse Advent Calendar, $1285. There is no advent calendar in the world worth $1285. And if there were, it certainly wouldn't be a sex calendar! If you're enough of a godless freak to be counting down the days to Christ's birth with a gift box full of sex aids, at least have the decency to make it yourself by just writing down different sexual favors on paper and putting them in a package you bought yourself at the craft store. You do not need to spend money on this! 

BonBon Originals Signature Tin, $65. We're really stretching the limits here of what I know Gwyneth means by "pleasure seeker," but I can't lie to you, those gummy fish are good. Go ahead and get this one for your mom — just don't tell her where you found it. 

Tomentosum Geranium Candle, $284. If you ever have the audacity to buy a $284 candle, it had better be the size of a 40-gallon drum. 

East Album Loving You, $460. I need you to know that this is an empty photo album. Rich people have to be stopped!!!

Never Have I Ever Game, $35. What the hell, sure. 

Joue Avec Moi Dice Set, $780. First of all, Kiki de Montparnasse truly is some kind of psyop convincing women they need to spend the equivalent of a small country's GDP in order to be sexy. You don't. Step away from the French lingerie. And second of all, these are just three little dice with sex ideas on them! Someone is selling this at Urban Outfitters right now for $25. If you see everything going on in the world and still think this is a good thing to spend $780 on, you do not deserve to see heaven.  

The Traveler's Gift Guide 

Long Haul Toiletry Bag, $690. A toiletry bag: fine gift for a traveler. This toiletry bag: stupid. Remember, you are a normal person. Whoever you're buying this for, at fanciest, probably carries an Away clamshell carryon that costs $300 and carries a full week's worth of belongings. Their current toiletry bag is a Clinique freebie that their mother got with the purchase of two skincare items in 2006. Upgrading it should, at maximum, cost you 40 bucks. 

Folding Beach Cart, $399. Is this what beach carts cost? Having no cart-needing children (and indeed rarely going to the beach), I don't know what one would normally pay for this. I worry it may in fact be $400, and I'm too afraid to Google it. 

7-Day Pill Compact, $26. I say this as the partner of a cancer patient: How many boxes do you need to store your pills??? If Gwyneth Paltrow reveals in six months that she's secretly dying of something, the absolute glut of pillboxes in this gift guide will have been our first clue. 

The Comb Keychain, $42. Setting aside the fact that this costs ten times what a comb should, I, uh, don't really want to do my hair with a comb that smacks against my front door or my car dashboard every time I use my keys. Either my travel brush can come with a case, or I can wait until I get home. 

Fieldbar Drinks Box, $229. You don't need to spend $229 on a cooler, but this one is cute. It arbitrarily passes the test for "luxury item Sarah finds acceptable." I will not be taking questions. 

Loro Piana Passport Cover, $600. If you have enough money to consider dropping $600 on a piece of leather to put your passport in, could I suggest that you instead give it to me, a person who could buy two full months of groceries with that amount of money? Thank you! 

Lymphatic Onesie, $198. Go into your closet, put on the skinny jeans and going out tops you wore to your college bar in 2012, and you will achieve the same head-to-toe compression effect that this garment does for absolutely free. Save your money and put it instead toward 1/3 of a passport cover! 

Happy gifting, my friends. 

Domerberry Album Review: The Life of a Showgirl

Greetings, my Swiftie countrymen. Did you think you'd gotten through a Taylor Swift album rollout without a Domerberry post? Were you assuming I'd broken free of the Faustian deal binding me to release a thousand-word essay in exchange for each new set of Taylor tunes? 

If so, my friends, you were wrong — I was just slow and lazy this time. 

In truth, I can't let a Taylor album pass me by without taking the chance to yap about it — and, with The Life of a Showgirl, there is much to yap about. 

If I'd written this post based on my actual first-few-listens impressions, it would be a very different post than what you're going to read today. Taylor had given us a lot to get excited about before this album dropped: the visuals (the endless mother-bleeping visuals), the podcast chatter, the tracklist, even some preview lyrics. With all that taken together, I was expecting a shiny, flashy, dance-pop album. It's no secret here that I worship at the altar of Swedish hitmakers — let us not forget I flew to Sweden basically just to visit the ABBA Museum — and I expected that my boi Max Martin would, in concert with Taylor, produce a showgirl-worthy hits album for the ages. 

And that's...not really what we got with this. The first thing I heard from this album, bizarrely, was "Wi$h Li$t," when it came on via shuffle in an Uber on release morning — and my prevailing reaction was, "Oh no." That one, of all tracks, I expected to be a particularly brash, fun pop number (two dollar signs in the title!), but instead it's a slow jam about suburban heterosexuality! Imagine my dismay. 

The rest of the album, once I got to listen, was similarly jarring in its departure from expectations. There were songs I liked, but none were what I expected, and it took me a while to patch over that dissonance. 

Today, with a week of listens under my belt, I can tell you that I do quite like the album (with a couple of notable exceptions). It's certainly not the dud that I feared it was when I first heard "Wi$h Li$t," and which some corners of the internet still seem to believe it is. It's just a record with a marketing problem — and a reminder that this era of promo photos and pre-release teasers can come with a downside if what's promised doesn't match what's delivered.

With all that discussed, it's time for my traditional rundown of Tracks For Which I Have Strong Feelings or Good Jokes. Happy reading, my friends, and happy showgirling. 

The Fate of Ophelia. Good song, but, uh, little dark! Before you met famous himbo Travis Kelce, you were going to kill yourself? Feels strong to me, but hey, I guess I don't know the life of a showgirl. 

Opalite. Do you hear that? It's the sound of collegiate a capella singers everywhere foaming at the mouth over the "I can bring you lo-o-ove" buildup at 3:10. You know what though? It's a great song — let the children have it. If the Undertones had sung this in Washington Hall in the early 2010s, I would've gone feral. 

Eldest Daughter. LET DOWN. As an eldest daughter (factually and spiritually), this was my most anticipated song on the album, because I frankly expected it to have the swaggering energy she gave to "Father Figure" instead. Discovering that this number is in fact a sad girl ballad was the second-most depressing thing about this album. 

Ruin the Friendship. And here we have the most depressing thing! I shudder to imagine what the people of O'Hare saw on my face when I figured out that the protagonist here is deceased (RIP, king). My boyfriend put it best at the end of this song when he said, in the voice of Travis Kelce, "Taylor, I'm scared. Can we go back to the songs about our dicks now?" 

Also, in case there are any teenagers reading this, I have to say: This song is bad advice! The track record for high school friendships is much better than for high school sweethearts, and also, kissing someone who isn't expecting to kiss you is sexual assault! Sometimes it's okay to not do what Taylor says! 

Actually Romantic. Having a nemesis is one of life's great joys, and this song knows it. Anyone who's too upset about Charli XCX to enjoy this song is allergic to fun. 

Wi$h Li$t. Well, folks, we've found it: the point where I stop relating to Taylor Swift. The idea behind this number is romantic — I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings, for instance — but the delivery of it here is giving trad wife. If my options are block full of children or Real Madrid contract, sign me up for soccer camp. And leave those dollar signs out of this! 

Wood. Brave statement ahead: This is the best song on the album. People really lost it when this song came out because of what a "departure" it was for the typically buttoned-up Taylor Swift, but I don't think it is! This is Taylor being horny, but in a very Taylor way. She whispers "thighs" like it's a cheeky secret. She says "the curse on me was broken by your magic wand" — a winking lyric that she would absolutely have written at 20 when she was publishing "Enchanted" and, behind closed doors, writing "I can see you up against a wall with me." On top of that, this song isn't just thirsty for the sake of it. It tells a real, lyrically consistent story: I used to rely on all these superstitions, but I don't need to anymore because I have a love story that makes its own luck. Taylor could have written this song at any point in the last 20 years; she just needed age — and a partner she trusts — to actually put it out into the world. 

Yesterday alone, I probably listened to this album 10 times (thank you Taylor for hearing the criticism that TTPD was too damn long). I am grateful for new Taylor music in a year that's been slow on new albums that interest me. But, next time, I'll have to remember to not put much stock in whatever promo seems to suggest. Sometimes the girl just wants to put on hot little outfits and do a photo shoot, connections to the music of the album be damned. And you know what? That's show biz, baby. 

In Defense of The Suburbs

If you've ever spoken to me for more than ten minutes, you'll know that I generally hate suburbs. This is partly for all the reasons that it's currently en vogue to be anti-suburb — their spatial inefficiency, their whiteness, their terrible houses — and partly because I'm such a bad driver that my body basically shuts down if I spend too much time away from public transit.

Today, though, I am not here to complain about suburbs. Nay; for once in my life, I'm here to praise.

Because sometimes, friends, you need a suburb. Sometimes, you just have to turn off your pandemic-atrophied walking legs and have someone shuttle you around to malls, Top Golfs, and chain restaurants. 

I was reminded of this recently on one of the semi-annual jaunts that my boyfriend and I take to the suburbs, living as we do near the northern edge of the city. On this particular journey, we got exotic by suburban standards and had K-BBQ for dinner — not exactly the Red Lobster and Cheesecake Factory fare we usually go for, but still satisfyingly suburban given that this meal cost $29 per person for a literal all-you-can-eat meat feast. The city limits of Chicago contain many wonderful things, but bottomless bulgogi for under $30 is typically not among them. 

You know what else the city of Chicago barely has? Bath and Body Works. Freakin' Old Navy. Listen, I lurrrve my little walkable neighborhoods packed with small businesses, but sometimes you need a bottle of Peach Bellini hand soap and a pair of shorts that cost $15. Did I, just yesterday, take a 30-minute round-trip walk because I wanted to buy the new hot romance book from my local bookseller instead of the chain store I had literally seen it in hours before? Yes, I did. But that does not make me immune to the charms of rolling up to a shopping mall and knowing that, within 200 feet, you can find novels, nail polish, sporting goods, parkas, and pet supplies from a series of chain stores whose inventory you've had memorized since the Bush administration. 

Another perk of the suburbs are the kinds of giant, flourescent-lit businesses you can only fit into a town with irresponsibly low population density. Do you think they could fit a Medieval Times into midtown Manhattan? Could downtown LA support 300,000 square feet of IKEA? The answer (until urban planners in this country get far more creative) is no — and that's a key consideration one must make before declaring that suburbs should be yeeted off the planet. 

The reason that Patrick and I found ourselves in the 'burbs last week was just such a weird, giant business. The suburbs of Chicago, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis have one chain that is frankly unlike anything else I've ever encountered. It's called Sybaris, and — avert your eyes now, relatives and colleagues who know the place by its seedy reputation — we are obsessed with it. 

Sybaris Pool Suites is, to put it euphemestically, a couples' hotel. It's there for sex. But that is not why we've gone there three times in the last four years. We go for the pools. This place is a hotel where every room has a private pool in it.* Some of them have waterslides. Do you know how bananas that is as a concept? Do you know how much space that requires? A hotel like that could only exist in the suburbs, and because of that, Patrick and I will always have at least one reason to schlep ourselves to Northbrook. 

[*Note: Technically, some rooms only have hot tubs, but if you're booking those, you're a deviant. Truly why are you choosing this place if not for the pools?!]

If you need more convincing on the merits of Sybaris, then hey, twist my arm, I'll give it to you. The rooms also have massage chairs. The decor is three parts wood paneling and one part screenprinted palm-tree mural. There are no windows. The place gives 1970s basement in every way, yet it is also consistently the best-cleaned hotel I've ever stayed in.

I should really be on Sybaris' payroll at this point for the number of friends I've recommended the place to (now including you, I guess, dear reader who did not ask for this). But Sybaris should be on the payroll of these suburbs, for reminding us all that you don't need culture to have a good time; you just need a big, dumb swimming pool in a town a few miles up the highway.

Domerberry Album Review: The Tortured Poets Department

Hello, friends. Did you miss me? 

It's been a while since I fired up the ol' Domerberry, but you and I both know why I'm here today. Taylor has a new album, and as I am beholden to my twelve-year-old Swiftian bargain, I simply must review it. 

I'll tell you, folks — I was excited for this one in a way that the album didn't entirely live up to. The "tortured poetry" idea intrigued me, as a former emo kid currently embroiled in what I think Satan himself would call a tortured era. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, please ask around among our mutual friends until you get there. IT WILL BECOME OBVIOUS ONCE YOU KNOW.) But this album...didn't give me much torture! 

It was torturously long, of course. On no planet did we need 31 songs of this. But, apart from the length, the torture I detected was spotty — visible at times, especially in the back half, but interspersed with a lot of things that read more as just slightly sadder Midnights songs or numbers that displayed not so much torture in the writer's mind as a desire to torture M*tty H*aly. 

(Footnote on Matty, by the way: I had genuinely forgotten that Taylor dated this man until people started talking about him after this album leaked. Not a great sign for how engaged I'd be with this content!) 

I've only gotten through this five-day-long album a couple times so far, so I think I'll need more listens and more brain space to truly make a judgment on something this sprawling. But, as always, there's no need to let the half-formed nature of my opinion stop me from sharing it loudly and firmly on the internet. So let us begin! 

The Tortured Poets Department: “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist" is the strangest lyric she's ever written, even if it is a joke. No further comment.

Down Bad: Yes to this! I've addressed before on this blog the way I cringe when Taylor Swift swears, given how false it tends to sound coming from her terminally wholesome face. But, on this one — where, mama, she is SWEARING — it worked for me. To go briefly into Uncharacteristically Earnest Confession Mode, I am myself down bad for my partner, and given the large, biological villain threatening to ruin that for us at the moment, I really resonated with the anger behind this one. As Spring Awakening taught us years ago, sometimes you just need to toss out eighteen F-bombs in one song.

So Long, London: Congratulations to every college kid currently studying abroad in London for the weeks of pensive window-gazing they'll get out of this as their semester winds to a close next month.

But Daddy I Love Him: She really dragged us to hell with the chorus on this one. On first listen, no exaggeration, my jaw FELL when I heard, "I'm having his baby" — and then the woman says, "No I'm not, but you should see your faces"?!?! You got me there, gal. This one in general is quite good, though it has to be said: "sanctimoniously performing soliloquies" has the exact superfluous-big-words energy of "frozen fractals all around,” and girl that is not the Disney song you were trying to reference here.

Florida!!! (feat. Florence + The Machine): Early contender for my favorite on the album, which is the first time the words "favorite" and "Florida" have ever coincided in my world. My explanation here is vibes-based and simple: This really just sounds like a Florence song, and Florence is great! I love this one, even if it does have the people of Destin catching strays over seemingly nothing.

loml: Listen, is this a bad song? No. But, with that simple little piano part and the eye-rolling mic drop of the final line, is it the song I would absolutely have chosen to perform at my high school talent show? Yes. 

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart: Hoooooooooooooo baby. It is wildly unoriginal for me to say I saw myself in this one — me and every other girl on Twitter, right? — but I most assuredly did. As with "Down Bad," I have a slightly different reason to identify with it than what Taylor was writing about, but there is little better metaphor for my last six months than a half-manic woman metronomically hitting her marks on stage while her life burns down in the background. Writing both your grandmothers' obituaries in one week while at your boyfriend's hospital bedside? Baking cookies for chemo nurses while working two jobs? 🎶🪩 I cry a lot, but I am so productive! 🪩🎶

The Black Dog: Taylor Swift has been to Logansport, confirmed.

So High School: A lot has been said about the truly horrific lyric, "you know how to ball / I know Aristotle," but I need to draw everyone's attention to the next one, which is, "touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto." [stares directly into camera] Please don't, actually! 

The Albatross / I Look in People's Windows / Peter / The Bolter: Listen — a lot of this back half blurs together for me. My bedtime is 9 p.m., and Taylor made me stay up far past that on two consecutive nights to get listens in on this album around my work schedule. However, my hazy memory recalls these four as especially good tracks from the Folklorish indie genre I rarely want from Taylor but like having an emergency playlist of anyway, just in case it rains and I want to be sad. So thank you Aaron Dessner and sometimes Jack Antonoff for producing that; you may now, please, PLEASE, both leave so the next album can reflect the producing interests of literally anyone else.

Thanks for reading, friends and enemies! If you need me in the next month, I’ll be in my house, listening to this album I just roasted on nonstop rotation.

Domerberry Album Review: Midnights

Dear Reader, 

At times in my blogging career, the expectation that I would review every Taylor Swift album has felt like a burden. It's an entirely self-imposed one that I could ignore at any time, of course — and oh, I have (lookin' at you, Evermore) — but still. Taylor is not my #1 favorite artist, as controversial as that may be. And as blogging has faded increasingly into more college-days relic than active, current hobby, it has sometimes felt unappealing to dust off the ol' DB just for a TSwift review. 

With Midnights, that reluctance is gone. Folklore and Evermore were fun experiments, and while this record does have its echoes of the Album That Must Not Be Named (Reputation. It's Reputation.), it mostly gets back to good, old-fashioned pop Taylor — and that is a thing worth blogging about.

If Lover was happy pop Taylor, Midnights is it-is-what-it-is pop Taylor. The album isn't sad per se; that's what the last two were for. But it is heavy. Throughout my first listen — which I did, in fact, stay up late for, thanks to the head start afforded to me by living in Central time — I was struck by how mature it sounds. Not only has Taylor's physical voice matured over time (something we can track most acutely by listening to Taylor's Version re-records of numbers we're used to hearing a teenager sing), but her themes have matured, too. She alludes to disordered eating on this album and to mistreament by an older lover. She talks about high people in ways that imply she's actually been around some. She centered the whole record around insomnia, for Christ's sake, a move that seemed mature even before the music came out, considering that Taylor's cat-lady persona seems more the type to be in bed by 9 than to be up all night agonizing over her struggles and flaws. 

Let's be clear: This album is still commercially ear-wormy pop, and it's still Taylor giving us what she knows we want, which is to have a whole lot of fun when we listen to her. But it's Taylor as an adult, and a pretty actualized one at that — just like we, her age-mate fans, are becoming. 

Of her recent albums, Lover has traditionally been my favorite, but Midnights is giving it a run for its money. Now, that's not an official declaration. (After all, as one of those aforementioned adults, I had to log into my job this morning at 9, and after staying up til midnight for my first listen, I could only squeeze in one more pre-work pass after getting my mandatory several hours of sleep.) Even from my limited listening, though, I can tell this album is special, and I am delighted to walk with you through its highlights.

Lavender Haze: She starts us off with a catchy one, folks, and one that reveals several new ways in which Taylor the Celebrity Is Just Like Us. First off, there's her interest in the color lavender. Hi, fellow girlies who had pastel purple childhood bedrooms! Secondly, there's her dis-interest in marriage. I assumed she was into the concept after "Paper Rings," but this number tells us that she and Joe are just fine unmarried, thankyouverymuch. As someone who's been with her boyfriend-not-husband almost as long as Taylor's been with hers, I agree: one-nights and wives are the only kinds of girls people see — and what a shame. 

Anti-Hero: Quick brag here: I started my second listen at 6:53 a.m. today, and therefore, I got to Anti-Hero at the exact moment that its video was premiering on YouTube. I popped over to the Tube, naturally, and wow, that vid was a delight. Put John Early in more things! 

Oh, and yeah, the song's great too or whatever. If you don't relate to "it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me," I have bad news: You are, in fact, the biggest problem.

Snow on the Beach: This song having a jingle bell backing track is Taylor giving us the Christmas song we all wanted with "'Tis the Damn Season" but, like, very thoroughly did not get. 

Midnight Rain: It's been established on this blog that my cheap behind uses the free version of Spotify. Because of this, I'm used to deeply discordant ads blaring at me in the middle of albums, and I cannot lie to you, that's what I thought this song was when it started. Taylor's gettin' a little sonically weird, people! She's also once again getting anti-bride, and while it is a bit "okay, we get it," I'm on board. Neither Taylor nor I have ever heard of gender roles.

Vigilante Sh*t: GUYS. Guys. 

From the first line — "draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man" ?!?!?!?! — I was obsessed with this one. It's perfect. The sultry slow-jam vibes are perfect, the rage is perfect, the sudden and inexplicable pivot to crime reporting is perfect...everything is. I'd describe my fashion lately as more "dressing for a sweatpants convention" than "dressing for revenge," but this makes me want to change my ways. For, like, maybe an hour. With this edgy-lite track, she really fed all of us who worshipped emo bands in high school while also being too scared to enter a Hot Topic.

The only problem here is that Taylor (rudely) released this too late for it to be included in the "Diana on the warpath" season of The Crown coming next month. After all, if Taylor is positioning herself as the current queen of revenge dressing, it's possible only because the onetime actual princess of it is no longer alive.

If this is not your favorite song on the album, you are wrong, and I'm not sure that we can be friends. 

Bejeweled: This is just a really nice, catchy little number. I'm very into it, particularly the lyric suggesting that "I don't remember" is an acceptable, not-unhinged way to answer the question, "Do you have a man?" It's not a manifesto of badassery like the last track, but it's fun — and it gives a delightful bit of retroactive lore to Taylor's (already frankly iconic) dress from this year's VMAs.

Karma: Remember when people theorized that Disney made a movie called Frozen so people would stop seeing results about Walt cryogenically freezing himself if they Googled "Disney frozen"? This song is Taylor's version (Taylor's Version™️) of that. For those who don't know, there's a rumor that Taylor has an unreleased stray album called Karma, which was written around the same time as Reputation. And now, here she comes with a song called "Karma." HMMMM. 

Her bury-the-rumor cause is aided by the fact that this song is a bop. It's fun to listen to, it has fun lyrics, and I envy the kids who can dance to this at their college parties this weekend. Can't wait to...dance to it at my 10-year college reunion, I guess. *insert the sound of my creaking, ancient bones*

Mastermind: She had me in the first half. I was listening to this and thinking, "What if you told me you're a mastermind?" Girl, we know! We been knew! I truly was baffled at the concept that her Machiavellian scheming could be a secret to anyone, even if I did love that she was addressing it so openly. But then — classic Taylor the Storyteller — she gave us that twist at the end where it turns out the guy she's addressing knew all along. That, my friends, was more like it, and it proved once more that our girl Tay truly is the mastermind she claims to be. 

Bonus Tracks: It should surprise no one that I did not stay up late enough for Taylor's "3 AM chaotic surprise," so I've had less time to digest the bonus tracks than the original 13. But we need to address the instant scorched-earth classic "Would've, Could've, Should've." First of all, J*hn M*yer is Public Enemy No. 1 (you're off the hook for now, Gyllenhaal), and we need an oral history of his Taylor-related misdeeds, stat. Second, though, let's say this: Notre Dame kids will think that this song is made for them, because religion. They are wrong. It is made for people who are three years out of Notre Dame and have finally encountered their first romantic partner who is either A) an atheist or B) a jerk, but like a secular one, not a jerk who hides behind "I go to daily Mass" nice-boy energy like their exes. This is for the good girls who've been exposed to someone bad, with all the complicated baggage that entails. It is...frankly an extremely dark piece of writing hiding in the guise of a catchy pop tune. Pair this with Sam Smith's Unholy for a double feature exploring all the frontiers of your Catholic guilt.

In summary, folks, Taylor has done it again. This album is banger-filled, it's emotional, and it's adult — just like her and just like us. I can't wait to keep playing it as I go about the business of my 30-year-old-lady life: the parts where I'm working on intimidatingly prominent newspaper journalism and the parts where I'm sitting in my apartment reading two witch-themed romcoms in the span of one October. As Tay Tay would tell us, it's all about balance.

 

Domerberry Album Review: Chromatica

Oh, I'm sorry — were you expecting something else here today? Did you come here looking for a review of another volume of sad songs by a soft girl in the woods from me, a notoriously woods-averse girl who is soft only in ways pertaining to body fat? 

Honey, no. The new Taylor album is one moderately inventive "Goodbye Earl" reboot, one decent bluegrass number plucked from a discarded Sweet Home Alabama: The Musical soundtrack, and 13 other songs that will make a fine replacement for Mumford & Sons someday when I'm looking for a rainy-mood album that, instead of reminding me of my carefree days as a college student abroad in Britain, calls to mind the worst year in modern human history. What a treat! 

What we will be discussing today, my friends, is not Evermore but another album. One that represents a return to form for a beloved pop artist instead of a turn away from it. One with the ability to lift you out of your quarantine depression instead of spiraling you so far into it that you become a sentient cross-stitch of a cursive swear word. 

We will be discussing Chromatica. 

For those who do not know, Chromatica is the sixth album of Academy Award-winning recording artist Lady Gagá. Released in May after a seven-week delay brought on by the misguided belief that seven weeks would be enough time for the whole coronavirus distraction to blow over, it is a dance-pop album with three separate orchestral intro tracks and appearances by Elton John and the megastar girl group Blackpink. It is lightly alien-themed. What more could you want? 

I am the rare Gaga fan who generally enjoyed her countryish Joanne era, but Chromatica marked a triumphant reprisal of the weird, disco-centric Gaga we all know and love. To use a Swiftian metaphor, it was like the relief of hearing Lover after two years dealing with Reputation. "That was fine," we thought, "but thank God she's back." 

For me, the album also carried personal resonance. Thanks to the thin walls in my old apartment and the gays with interesting piercings who lived in the unit above me, Chromatica was my version of Italian people singing to each other from their balconies. I played this record constantly in the month of June, and so did they. As it slowly dawned on us all how long we might remain in lockdown, thumping Gaga beats provided an unspoken social connection, reminding me that, if I couldn't spend time with people, at least there was Stefani Germanotta to share. 

That same thing happened two months later with "WAP," but here on this God-fearing family blog we will pretend that it did not. 

So without further ado, let us travel to the planet Chromatica, one off-kilter club banger at a time. 

Stupid Love: Do you like to dance? Do you want to watch a music video where the premise is essentially Legends of the Hidden Temple in space? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then Chromatica's lead single is for you. This number took me straight back to the days when my dormmates and I would stay up late learning Born This Way choreography — and that, my friends, is a good place to be. 

Rain On Me (with Ariana Grande): We are immeasurably blessed to have gotten albums from both of these women in 2020, and unsurprisingly, this center of the Chromatica/Positions Venn diagram may be the best of the two-album bunch. The first shining, post-COVID day when I get to dance to this song in a club will be the happiest day of my life, and I will not apologize for nor recant that statement if/when I eventually get married. 

Free Woman: Much like Lady Gaga, I was not single when this came out and am not single now, but this song makes me feel like I am. It's a female empowerment anthem. It's fun to sing. It is the reason my top song in Spotify Wrapped this year was finally something cool instead of an obscure duet from a Pasek and Paul musical.

Fun Tonight: This is an upbeat dance song about how much fun the narrator is not having, featuring the lyric "this moment's hijacked my plans." Could there be a better theme song for this hell-year? Despite your best efforts, Taylor "Sad Girl" Swift, no there could not. 

[Side note: those four songs are tracks 3-6 on Chromatica, and had Gaga released nothing but those, she still would have had the best pop album of the year. I said what I said.]

Chromatica II: Twitter is full of jokes about how great this song is for leading into any number of other songs or activities, and that's fine. But I contend that you haven't truly appreciated "Chromatica II" until you've heard it on a Spotify Free account that transitions straight from those anticipatory final chords into an overly enthusiastic commercial for Chex Mix. Give it a try sometime.

Sour Candy (with Blackpink): If I ever decide to become a K-pop stan, blame this.

Babylon: When I say Weird Gaga is back, y'all, I mean back. This finale song is a voguing number about a gossip battle, featuring a gospel choir, set in ancient Mesopotamia, and it is still a bop. I would say that your faves could never, but genuinely, I would like to see them try.

To be clear, Evermore is a fine album, just like Folklore was. It certainly proves that Taylor Swift can do Bon Iver even though Justin Vernon could not do Lover. Taylor deserves credit for that, and she is getting it, all over God's green internet. 

But when I listened to music this year, it was because I wanted to sing loud and dance at my desk like I'm at one of those (what's that word again?) parties. Lots of pop girls helped in that effort, but in my opinion, none did it better than my one true queen: Mother Monster.

Domerberry Album Review: Folklore

Well, friends, you asked for it — seriously, people really do ask — and now the time has come. Taylor Swift has an eighth album, and I, her indentured fangirl with a blog that gets dusted off for use once a year, have a new product to review. 

I'll start with this: Folklore is great! It's definitely my new favorite Sufjan Stevens album! 

As a Taylor Swift album, though, my feelings on it are mixed. Don't get me wrong — it is undoubtedly one of her best creative works so far. The lyrics are back to absolute peak Taylor, the songwriting is superb, and the whole thing is an astonishingly good first foray into a genre that she's never touched before. The fact that she whipped the album up during a pandemic and the global shutdown of nearly all industries makes it even more impressive. But it isn't quite to my taste. I prefer the happier, poppier Taylor that Lover epitomized so well last summer — so, while Folklore is great, it's unlikely to unseat her prior albums on my list of personal favorites. 

Oh, and she's doing the lowercase-only thing again. Whatever. We'll be ignoring that here, to no one's surprise, and looking forward to the day when both Taylor and Ariana Grande realize that capital letters are not the enemy.

For now, though, let's get to reviewing some songs in album order so we can all the more quickly make our way to "Betty." 

The 1. Ahhh. I already told one person this, but truly, when I hit play on this song on Thursday night, it took me exactly eight seconds to have my eyes closed, my chin on my hands, and a closed-lip grin on my face like a smiley baby at a photoshoot. This is a charming little number, and one of the few on the album that doesn't sink me into a dark depression. Cool! 

The Last Great American Dynasty. On my first couple listens to this song, I was unimpressed. I didn't like the "Taylor Sings About Rich Old Ladies" genre when she tried it out with that Kennedy song eight years ago, and I didn't figure I'd like it now. But this one is a bop! And it's about one rebellious, socially-shunned woman giving way to another! I can get behind this. Please inquire if, inspired by this song, you would like to join me in dyeing someone's dog green as a prank.

Exile (feat. Bon Iver). Listen. Did I nearly throw my computer across the room when this song started and the voice issuing forth was some ~dude~ instead of Taylor? Yes. But have I turned out to actually enjoy it? Also yes. "You're not my homeland anymore / So what am I defending now?" is a real gut-punch of a lyric and, coincidentally, also what I plan to adopt as my life's mantra when I someday manage to move from the United States to a country that believes in science. 

Mirrorball. You know that TikTok where the girl is wholesale sobbing but still busting out a choreographed dance? That's me listening to this song, which is technically about a disco, but in a sad way. 

August. This album should have come out exactly one week later, and this song is why. You give us one song with Instagram caption potential, and it's about a month that hasn't started yet? Taylor. Come on.

Illicit Affairs. Zero Taylor Swift fans in history have been involved in illicit affairs. Taylor Swift has not been involved in an illicit affair. But this song has made chain-smoking, jilted mistresses of us all. I do want to scream, "Don't call me kid, don't call me baby!" I've totally done drugs that only worked the first few hundred times! (Disclaimer for my mother and the FBI agent inevitably monitoring my activity online: given that I can't even handle beer, that is very clearly false.) This number has some of the best storytelling on the album in my opinion, and that bridge is Taylor's Golden Gate. Mainline this song. 

Invisible String. The ultra-rare happy Folklore song emerges once more! This too is a charming little number, and I became a human :') emoji when I noticed that someone doing a Twitter thread of "Folklore songs as Mamma Mia" described this one with a picture of Donna and the Dynamos. I don't know about a golden thread connecting romantic partners, but I sure felt my invisible strings being pulled on Thursday night when texts from friends about this album started pouring in. I'm interpreting this number as a friend love song, and I want more of those. 

Mad Woman. Guys, did you know that Taylor says the F-word on this album? A lot?! This angry piece has the best F-bomb of T. Swift's career, and my jaw truly fell on the floor when I heard it. I will not rest until there is merch based on that line. 

Peace (presented out of order for what will soon be obvious reasons). Setting aside the fact that this song references Taylor one day having children — an inevitability that extremely-childless me is NOT ready for — I found this song to be one of Tay Tay's best ruminations yet on her current relationship. You have mentioned, Taylor, that dating you is sewww hard, given that you're a paparazzi-ridden hot person. You mentioned it on "Ready For It." You mentioned it on "The Archer." But, in this instance, the straightforward question format drove it home in a really genuine, simple way.

A bonus advantage to this song is its rich array of potential rhyming parodies. Stay tuned for the Weird Al spin-off for lactose intolerant people, "Would it be enough if I could never give you cheese?" 

Betty. TOP FIVE TAYLOR SONG OF ALL TIME. Maybe top three. I love that this can at least be interpreted as queer, I love that it throws a bone to Kaylor truthers, I love that it's old-school Taylor with a guitar — I just love it. Whatever they paid that harmonica player, it wasn't enough. The American national anthem will probably be cancelled sooner or later, and when it is, I propose "Betty" as a replacement. 

On a serious note, I want to make clear that this album ("Betty" excluded) makes me sad. The sound of it is bleak and moody, the lyrics even more so, and frankly, extra sadness is not what I need in this no-good, very bad year. I'm going to continue listening to Folklore, but I'll probably take breaks from the darker corners of the record — and, if you're feeling at-capacity for bummerdom, I'd suggest you do so, too. The album will still be there next year when we can leave our houses and see our friends again. And in the meantime, you can always go back to laughing at Reputation. 

Overall, though, I'm thrilled that our benevolent queen gifted us with new music. What a piece of news to wake up to in the middle of this summer from hell! The last time I was surprised with Taylor news this good was 2015, when I won tickets to a concert of hers via Tinder (yes, really). I was job-hunting then just as I am now, and the surprise joy of that 2015 ticket win was followed a few days later by the extra joy of a job offer. Let us hope history repeats itself this year, and that when it does, the new job is signficantly less depressing than this new album. Fingers crossed!

Adios 'til the next album, readers. Don't forget your masks.