End of April Memage, 70s Television Themes, and Met Gala

[shadowkat]

First things first - still rainy, cooler, and humid (because rain). But better mood for some reason or other. Maybe I slept better?

Cultural Items worth noting:

Music

Stumbled upon this interesting youtube podcast with a music nerd (they are always men for some reason?), and this is the top 10 70s Television Theme Songs (I clicked on it because the click-bait headline (they always have clickbait headlines) was "Director Told 14 year old Son to Write the Stupidest Song Became the Best TV Song Ever". That's a very long clickbait headline.

I figured out what it was before I clicked (but was curious to see if I was right), because I listened to the biography of Robert Altman. But he's wrong - it's not the director of the television show. It was the director of the film, who famously despised the television show and tried to block it. (He obviously didn't and would kick the Professor of Rock from the grave for indicating he was even remotely involved with it). He also joked that his son made more money off of rights to the song than he did from directing the film. Although, usually you just hear the composition. The reason the song is so good - is the achingly haunting composition by Johnny Mandel (who actually performed it in the film) and he turned it into magic.

Guess which song I'm talking about?

Met Gala

Looked at all the costumes, sorry fashions, today at work. ( I was bored.)
Then discussed with Art History Major - her favs were..

Louis Hamilton's Outfit







Sabrina the Ring Leader



https://akns-images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20250505/27b880bf-ebcc-4029-a4b1-02f1cec291a6_1746486557.jpg?fit=around%7C634:1024&output-quality=90&crop=634:1024;center,top



I explained to AHM and Mother over the phone tonight - that they don't wear those outfits for as long as you think. In reality, they change in a special changing area about two blocks away, get in a limo, arrive, disembark, do the big photo shoot, then enter the lobby, another photo shoot, then change and go to the party. No cameras are allowed in the Museum itself. And only a scant few journalists. So a lot of the guests have a change of clothes. Also they don't always buy the outfits - they are wearing them to display the art, then oftentimes the outfit is either donated to the Museum or a gift. It's to show off the designer - like a runway show.

AHM: So they only wear them for 15 minutes?
Me: Yup. Usually they are wearing sweats or jeans at the party. It kind of explains a lot, if you think about it.

Another tidbit worth noting? The Gala is always chaired and hosted/put on by the Editor and Chief of Vogue, Anne Wintour, who banned Trump and his entire family from the Gala in 2017.

AHM: She should have done it for life.
ME: She did.

****

Question a Day Memage

I'm behind again:

End of April

27. If you could change one thing about your appearance, what would that be?

At the moment my hair - or rather how it parts and my forehead. But I honestly don't know how I'd change it.

No, wait, my back. I'd love to ditch the curvature resulting in rounded shoulders. I want a straight spine, damn it. (It's physically impossible without surgery and just no. Besides, everyone seems to end up with rounded shoulders by their 70s and 80s.)

28. In 1761 Marie Harel was born – a French cheesemaker credited with the invention of Camembert. Are you a fan of this type of cheese?

Yes. I like cheese. It's a guilty pleasure, I admit it. And I love Camembert. The smellier the cheese, the better.

29. What’s the largest animal you’ve ever seen in person?

I've seen an giraffe in a zoo, also an elephant. But I'll go with a whale, because not in a zoo.

30. What did you do in the school holidays when you were at school?

I honestly don't remember. It was a long time ago? We didn't really do much of anything memorable? Played outdoors, I guess. I read a lot. Vacations weren't during school holidays - we tended to do them off holiday, although we did do spring break vacations - usually Florida (Keys, and Disney when I was a kid - we lived in Pennsylvania West Chester rural suburbs), and Tucson or Scottsdale Arizona and San Diego or San Fransisco California (as a teen - I lived in Kansas City Suburbs), summers - Colorado (Rocky Mountain National Park), the Lake of the Ozarks (my parents hated it - so rarely), TableRock Lake (not much better), Yellowstone National Park, Grand Tetons, but mainly Colorado. When we lived in PA? Maine, but usually just stayed home.

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

28. I don't think I've ever had Camembert. Brie was all the rage when I was in college, but I personally didn't like it.

29. Never saw a whale. The St. Louis Zoo did have one or two African elephants, and a number of Indian elephants. The biggest animals I've seen in the wild were moose (at Yellowstone.)

30. During school breaks, I mostly worked. During the summer we often took a couple weeks to visit national parks and monuments. My father didn't like cities, and wasn't crazy about spending time with his or my mother's relatives. (When my sister and her husband moved to Tucson he was fine with spending time at her place.)

Lake of the Ozarks was a terrible collection of tourist traps even before you were born. Was that why your parents hated it? I have one fond memory of it. My parents let my brother, my sister and I take a ride in a float plane there, the first time any of us flew. I was probably six years old.

[shadowkat]

28 - if you don't like Brie, you will not like Camembert, they are in the same cheese family. And pretty much the same with a few slight differences.

29. Oh, I've seen Moose (also at Yellowstone and the Great Tetons) and Bears (from a bit of a distance (again Yellowstone). But I think whales are bigger? Not certain.

I would like to go to Africa someday and see the big animals. But I can't quite afford it, and I'm slightly afraid to at the moment. Maybe once I retire.

30. " My father didn't like cities, and wasn't crazy about spending time with his or my mother's relatives."

My father was pretty much the same. The only city he liked was Chicago, and possibly Sydney, Australia. He hated New York and did not understand why both his kids moved there.

He also did not like spending time with relatives, and only visited them sparingly, and would only stay with my mother's cousins, or his brother. (He was the eldest of eleven, but only would stay at the brother who was two years younger than him - pad in Marine County, San Francisco). He'd stay at my mother's parents house, and he'd stay with her cousins, but not visit her sisters.

We also visited National Parks a lot - in the summer, and during spring break. My father loved the National Parks, he used to drive buses in a few of them during the late 1950s/early 60s.

Lake of the Ozarks was a terrible collection of tourist traps even before you were born. Was that why your parents hated it?

Yup, that's why. They also disliked Vegas and Atlantic City for the same reasons. We went there once, and that was it. My father had been a travel agent/tour guide in the early 1960s and he'd stayed at nice places and knew his way around, so he was particular. And really despised tourist traps. Also he did not like Country Music - Branson, annoyed him. He was an intellectual. Mother also despises country music, and did not like Branson. My brother drug them down there a couple of times, because he insisted on going to this religious sports camp that my father despised. My father would rant about it after we dropped him off, and on the way to picking him up, but didn't say anything to my brother about it.

[cactuswatcher]

We first went to Yellowstone about the time you were born. In those days they were not as careful about keeping the bears and tourists separated. Just about every time there was slow down on the road, there would be people feeding bears from their cars. So I saw bears coming right up to our car window. They told you not to feed the bears, but some folks did it anyway. I presume eventually some people got stupid enough to get out of the car to feed the bears, which is why they had to move the bears away into the further reaches of the park. I have a photo taken in Sequoia/Kings Canyon of a little girl next to her mother feeding deer right in front of a 'Don't Feed the Animals' sign. On the other hand there was a state park in South Dakota (maybe Custer State Park) where they had burros running wild and you were encouraged to feed them from your car. I remember a time when I went to Badlands NP in South Dakota by myself and saw a family walking up to a bison. I would have said something to stop them, but they were already so close I was afraid that if I spoke loud enough they'd hear me that would spook the bison enough to get someone hurt. They were lucky and the bison just moved away. Too many people recently think park bison are tame and get gored.

[shadowkat]

They moved the Bears sometime around the 1990s or early 00s to the more restricted and less accessible portions of the park, mainly to protect the bears from the idiotic tourists.

That said, Black and Brown Bears are prevalent in the parks - my niece's job at Sequoia was to clear Black and Brown bears out of camp sites. And my brother sees Black Bears frequently in upstate NY. But Grizzlies are mostly in the less accessible areas for their protection not really ours.

[cactuswatcher]

Right on time: Some guy got gored at Yellowstone by a bison today...

[iddewes]

I watch that music Youtuber sometimes too and had seen that one about the TV themes so I know which one it is 😉 He’s actually a really good interviewer too I think.

[shadowkat]

He's definitely entertaining.

[kazzy_cee]

Trump was banned? Love it!

[shadowkat]

Yup, Wintour really despises him. Actually pretty much everyone in NYC does. We've known who he was since the 1980s.

[cyare]

I had no idea Anne Wintour banned Trump & family for life, that's awesome :D

Camembert, so delicious <3 And holy cow, you've seen a whale! How was it? *is fascinated by them*

[shadowkat]

Awesome, and they are quite amazing creatures. The last time I saw one was some time ago though on an whale sighting tour in Maine, back in 2010, I think? Although it's possible to see them off the coast of New York now.

Yeah, I read about Wintour banning him in Vanity Fair. They sort of stated it off-hand.

[fox_in_me]

I dont know why, but i want to share with You some song, in Ukrainian, i think there should be some subtitel, in any case ill give you translation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLhOZyIBzdU

📝 Translation of the song

I Saw Steel and the Falling Sky
I saw steel and the falling sky,
Witnessed things no one should see.
I’ve felt pain worth ten lifetimes—
Mother, pray for your sons.

Faith warms the heart,
A burning desire to live.
We step into a new dawn.
Tomorrow we may not exist,
But we remember what holds us here:
The sun at our backs,
Brothers yearning to live.
Each day we fight for a chance.
We’re so young—we should be walking the earth,
Not wandering through trenches.

I saw steel and the falling sky,
Witnessed things no one should see.
I’ve felt pain worth ten lifetimes—
Mother, pray for your sons.
I saw fear in the eyes across from me,
Learned my enemy’s face well.
I’ve felt pain worth ten lifetimes—
Mother, pray for the souls of your sons.

Pray! Pray!

We march eastward,
No one asks anymore
When our families will see us again.
We stand to the death,
Defending every meter—
Our land is sacred.

Our hearts have turned to steel,
No one recognizes us now.
We’ve forgotten our past lives.
Eternal glory to those
Who defend their homes
And to those no longer with us.

I saw steel and the falling sky,
Witnessed things no one should see.
I’ve felt pain worth ten lifetimes—
Mother, pray for your sons.
I saw fear in the eyes across from me,
Learned my enemy’s face well.
I’ve felt pain worth ten lifetimes—
Mother, pray for the souls of your sons.

Pray...
Mother, pray...

29. What’s the largest animal you’ve ever seen in person?
I`ve seen whales, different types of them, in pacific, north and south atlantics, and even Mediterranean sea.

[shadowkat]

Thank you for sharing that song with me. It's also haunting, much like the MASH song "Suicide is Painless". What's haunting is how war and violence is slowly eating away at those desperately fighting. I've stood in front of War Memorials, the ones for WWII, and Vietnam, and I'm struck by the coldness of them - walls covered with names. Even 9/11's memorial at the footprints of the World Trade Center - covered with names. Thousands upon thousands of names.
Like the ones you'd see on tombstones, except no dates, just names.

I've read about War, and the closest I've come to anything like it - is 9/11 when I walked through the debris, falling from the sky. And I realized that this was nothing in comparison to what others must be going through in War Torn countries. The Ukraine, or so I was told by a Ukranian co-worker at a video game developer company way back in 2007. She had recently immigrated from the US, and while she had a heavy accent, her English was excellent, and English was her third language. She told me how beautiful it was - showed me pictures and told me that Russians had vacation homes there. Knowing that - makes what is happening over there - more than a world away - all the more painful.

You sound well-traveled?

I've seen whales in the Pacific and Atlantic, but not in the Mediterranean, which I've been to. So that's a surprise. Mostly in the North Atlantic, not so much in the South Atlantic, and in the North Pacific. They are beautiful and admirable animals.

[fox_in_me]

n my past life (or hopefully in the near future), I was a seafarer. I was lucky to see a bit of the world before everything changed.
I saw a lot of nature around the globe. In the South Atlantic, I saw many whales near the Brazilian coast. In the northern part — around the Caribbean islands, and of course near Nova Scotia — I saw many orcas. In the Pacific as well, mostly along the coasts of the U.S., Canada, and near the Panama Canal. There are strict regulations there to protect marine life, especially by limiting vessel speed.
In the Mediterranean, they mostly live in the western part, near the Strait of Gibraltar, where Atlantic weather merges with the European continent.

Yes, there are (and will be) many beautiful places in Ukraine — that’s true. I don’t believe they will all be destroyed, but I personally know that some national parks and other natural corners have already been damaged.
I belive, the nature will recover. But not the peoples.

Unfortunately, my pronounce is worster, than 3 years ago. Some people were unknown about my nationality, and didn't take into account it at all. For now I'm sure, it's need to be modified. At school I also have German, and it was easy to understand ordinary speaking, for now it totally get lost.