Good evening, kibitzers!
We have lovely summer weather here today, but it looks like we'll be back in the 90s with high humidity this week. But it's not too bad, with no scorching droughts, floods, fires, tornadoes, or category 5 hurricanes. I hope you're all staying safe.
updateMany people in the Caribbean are not safe. Denise Oliver Velez has a diary here detailing the work of World Central Kitchen, and in the thread Pogoatty has some links to further worthy donations.
So, a funny story. As I mentioned at the beginning of Debate Hell, I suddenly changed my plans for tonight's KTK. There was something to change, too, because I was watching a very calming YouTube channel called SS Marigold. It's a type of YouTube where a person does calming things in their charming, perfectly tidy home with very little sound except for quiet ASMR-type sounds. To enjoy it, you have to be prepared to accept without skepticism that this person lives in the kind of home you usually only see in magazines (he often describes it as “shabby”). But it's a good story, isn't it? Who doesn't want to take a vacation every once in a while in their nice, serene life? I happily started organizing my diary in a plain text document, as I often do to reduce my vulnerability to losing diary drafts.
The SS Marigold is a small '70s houseboat, moored to a pier on a big lake in northern Illinois or Wisconsin. It has cicadas. It's inhabited by a woman with two cats and a carefully curated collection of midcentury pieces (which to us older folks just look like childhood flotsam, but I think this house is the result of a more planned process).
On her channel, she quietly embraces the change of seasons through decorating, cooking simple meals, creating container gardens, and shooting moody nature footage—all very comforting, peaceful, and relatively trivial activities, the kind of things I love when the real world starts to panic.
So after watching all the videos and choosing a carefully curated group from them, I saved the links in a text document, wrote a description, then opened a new DK draft and started pasting. And lo and behold, the SS Marigold video is not embeddable! I rarely run into that situation so I didn't think to check. So here's what I'm going to do: I'll link to a few anyway so you can heal if you like. Then I'll add a bunch of boat-themed music so you can add it to your favorites.
Episode 1: Preparing for fall includes planting fall flowers, baking zucchini and carrot muffins, and making chicken casserole for dinner. When she makes something, she usually puts the recipe in the notes on her YouTube page, and that's true here too. [8:02]
Episode 6Christmas: putting up lights and decorations, decorating with cranberries, making coconut chicken curry. [9:47]
Episode 17It's spring! The deck and pier are filled with potted vegetables, herbs and flowers, tempting salads and trendy cocktails. [13:21]
Episode 18Plus spectacular deck gardening, a sunset canoe ride, cheese corn fritters for lunch, and more fancy cocktails. The white cat decides to eat a cicada, but the cicada isn't interested. [13:47]
It's time for music! Crosby, Stills and Nash: Southern Cross (Official video, from the 1982 album) Nikko again) [3:54]
Hughes Corporation: Stir things up (Dutch TV show Top PopJune 1974) [3:15]
Tatiana Eva Marie & Avalon Jazz Band: La Mer (Across the Sea Original French lyrics [3:29]
Fats Domino: When my dream ship comes home (Venue unknown, 1956, featuring tenor saxophonist Herb Hardesty) [2:24]
heart: Dreamboat Annie (location unknown, circa 1977) [2:42]
Playing for a Change: Otis Redding's Dock of the Bay (This 2011 recording pays tribute to the two lead vocalists, Roger Ridley and Grampa Elliott, both of whom are now deceased, but at the time of the video's release, only Ridley was still deceased). [4:14]
Styx: Let's set sail (Winterland, January 1978) [9:01]
Harry Belafonte: Jamaica farewell (The Ed Sullivan ShowJune 1956) [3:41]
To jakedog: Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band: A Port (Miami Marine Stadium, 1986, video) Live by the BayA steel drum solo by the band's drummer, Robert Greenge. [7:13]
Finally, although not exhaustive, Ship of Fools Section: According to Google's AI search results, there are between 6 and 16 songs with that title. (I think the smaller number is the number written and performed between the 1960s and 1980s.) Given the context of this diary, it seems like a perfect song for a major feature, but that's really for another diary.
World Party: Ship of Fools (Official Video, 1987) [3:52]
Robert Plant: Ship of Fools (Madison Square Garden, New York, May 1988) [5:46]
Grateful Dead: Ship of Fools (Rich Stadium, Orchard Park, NY, July 1990) [8:00]
I'm torn between worrying that explaining the jokes would be unnecessary and make them less funny, and worrying that no one would understand what I'm talking about. Please ignore this glossary of joke explanations if you find them unnecessary.
