It's Always Sophie in Chicago – Issue #20
spinning and spinning
Hi friends! It’s been a weird week, as I’m going on 11 days straight of feeling extremely dizzy, and after two doctor’s visits over that time, I’ve learned I have vertigo. It’s been rough! I almost fell over when I stood up after a meeting on Wednesday! I feel like Lucille 2 from Arrested Development!
So I’ve been working from home quite a bit because most of the time the thought of hopping on a train sounds like an inevitable repeat of the time I threw up on the red line from motion sickness like a month into my freshman year at NU. 🥴🥴
Anyways, let’s get into it!
What I’ve been watching this week
Since I’ve been working from home / staying home in general a lot, I’ve been watching TONS of reality TV, including the absolutely bonkers Love is Blind. If you are unfamiliar with the show, the premise is that 15 men and 15 women go on “dates” and “meet” each other in “pods” where they can’t see each other – they can only talk to each other, separated by a frosted glass wall. They have to find the person they have a connection with, and then, before they can see each other in person, they have to GET ENGAGED. Then, the couples that matched up get whisked off to Mexico for a week to build their physical connection, then they all move into their own apartment units in the same building in Atlanta (??) to learn how to be together in the “real world,” and THEN, a few weeks later, they all have to GET MARRIED. I absolutely hate it but I couldn’t stop watching it. It was so far removed from anything I would ever do in my life and therefore super fascinating and entertaining. Is this how people who watch it feel about the Bachelor franchise??
Anyways, if you have any interest in feeling like watching a reality dating show that feels like it’s actually from a completely different plane of reality, this is the show for you! These people willingly decided to go into this “experiment” and get engaged within DAYS of “meeting” someone else. The men are boring and the women are next-level reality stars. It is the embodiment of the “are straight ppl okay” memes. (There is one queer contestant on this season, but he is… problematic.)
Anyways I can’t WAIT for the reunion special they filmed a couple weeks ago (significant timing because the actual show was filmed almost two years ago??) and see how all of these “relationships” are now. Also sorry for all the sarcastic quotation marks in this section, but if you’ve seen the show, you know why they’re here.
To mellow out my TV viewing for the week, I’ve watched several episodes of four different British reality competition shows, including one about pottery, one about garden design, one about makeup artists and one about interior design. I will be starting to incorporate British slang into my everyday vocabulary, including “crack on” and “chuffed.” Basically:
What I cooked this week
I made the same chickpeas I made last week, but the real star of my week was the very beautiful, very easy focaccia I made:
I baked it in a 9x15 cake pan so it would end up a bit thicker and I could slice it and make sandwiches (with the chickpeas!) for lunch throughout the week. It came out so well, and it’s genuinely one of the best things I’ve ever made. And it was my first time baking bread!! My inner Paul Hollywood came out this week.
What made me laugh this week
I tweeted this tiktok and it did NOT get the love it deserves!!!! uwu :3
You know exactly what this video is going to be, but it still makes me lose it everytime:
France in Europe:
Always Sophie moment of the week
Every now and then, when I get bored, I go on Tinder and update my profile with relatively new pics of myself, which is hard because I rarely take pics of myself, so I kinda forgot what was on my profile. This weekend, I matched with someone who messaged me something about Claire from the Bon Appétit test kitchen. I got excited and, thinking I’d mentioned BA in the text of my profile, replied with “Omg I love Claire!! I actually dressed up as her for Halloween last year lol.” Then I was struck with an embarrassing pang of remembering: I looked back at my profile and realized the second picture in my profile was me dressed up as Claire for Halloween last year.
What I’m reading this week
I came across this two-year-old profile of Bradley Cooper via an NYT newsletter, and NO I still haven’t seen A Star is Born, but it’s a really excellent meta-profile about the nature of celebrity and art and commerce. “Bradley Cooper Is Not Really Into This Profile” (New York Times)
There was a very funny viral tweet a few weeks ago that a lot of people (myself included) thought was real, and ended up becoming the target of a lot of internet anger, but it was only a joke tweet from a comedian. He wrote about his experience and the life and death of his viral tweet for Vulture. “My 72 Hours in a Viral Tweet Hoax: A Diary” (Vulture)
I haven’t gotten through this whole article yet, but I’ve so far enjoyed this interview with Michelle Alexander, the author of the groundbreaking The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which reaches its 10-year publication anniversary this year. “Ten Years After ‘The New Jim Crow’” (New Yorker)
That’s all folks
Thanks for sticking with me through a weird few weeks! Here’s hoping my body stabilizes sometime soon so I can sit upright without feeling like the room is spinning 🙃
For this weekend, I’m planning to watch the season 12 premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race tonight, get brunch and go to a bday party tomorrow, and deep clean my apartment and cook on Sunday. Hope you have a great weekend!!
Yours in enjoying the unseasonably warm weekend in Chicago,
Sophie