Things That Made Me Smile This Week
3 min readFeb 6, 2021
- I was vaguely aware of the sea shanties going viral on TikTok thanks to Because News but I wasn’t totally paying attention until an industry newsletter informed me the story was part of TikTok’s marketing campaign in the UK. With the video right there, I finally caught up to the internet. So here I am, sitting on my floor having a good cry over such a sweet moment on the internet with strangers (it’s everything those weird beginning of the pandemic videos celebrities made wanted to be and failed at being). Like I wasn’t even mad at the bass drop. And then google truly broke me. This pirate-y Scottishman, Nathan Evans, got a record deal with Polydor after they saw his video. Here’s the list of artists that have had records released by Polydor. He’s in good company.
- Listening to L’Oreal Thompson Payton talk with her college roommate, Dore of A Taste of Amore, about how sharing food with friends is an expression of love during a IG Live of Shrimp Scampi for Two. They spoke about returning to school with food from their families, to share with their roommates. And it reminded of me of my dad’s intense need to give me food throughout this pandemic. He spent the spring and summer of 2020 very concerned for my food supplies and would kindly drive a bag of random food once a week to me. I live roughly 75 minutes away. It was not a small gesture. We couldn’t hangout, share a meal, and yell about the Mets but he could drop off my favorite hot sandwich from a pizzeria 30 minutes out of the way (making his total drive 125 minutes). Food is love.
- I recently decided to get Discovery+, the bundle of Food Network, Cooking Channel, HGTV, DIY Network, and their true crime selection was hard to pass up. There’s a lot, so of course I spend 80% of my time watching the Guy Fieri content. I managed to find my way to House Hunters: Comedians On Couches. Dan Levy (the American one) and Natasha Leggero are joined by a guest comedian and they group watch an episode of House Hunters over Zoom and make The Jokes™. It’s great fun and a bit of second hand cringe. But there’s On the Rocks in Atlanta which is just an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish. It’s a Black couple with two men and they really showed the realities of what buying a home can do to a relationship. It’s the most relatable unrelatable content HGTV has ever aired.
- I follow a lot of Canadian creators on Instagram. Maybe it’s their soothing accents. Maybe it’s just the excessive posts about snow. There’s a lot. And they recommend each other and yeah, suddenly the spam bots aren’t sure where I am and I am flooded with Canada themed spam. I’ve been following Alicia McCarvell for about four months after listening to her interview about being bigger than your partner with Sarah Nicole on The Papaya Podcast. Alicia has built her platform around body positivity, her relationship with her husband, and putting good out into the world. It’s always a lovely break from my day to watch her stories. And well, as someone who’s gotten unsolicited comments about her weight, this Reel really speaks to me.
- The romance genre is a mostly lady dominated one in the book world, both in the authors and consumers of the books. And some times there are moments where I’m like “hmm there was no man, Mr. Google and Mr. Reddit were too busy, to ask…?” Because the men are so oddly written, but Eliza MacArther is lending her husband to those with questions in this amazing highlight. We start off strong with someone asking if the male version of “she breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downward” and it just continues from there. For Science!
