We had one of those super-intense spring thunderstorms Monday evening. One minute I was talking to a friend in his back yard, the next I was thinking I probably didn’t need sunglasses anymore, the next a cloudburst with serious straight-line winds was upon us. It didn’t last long, but managed to take a bite out of my friend’s neighbor’s tree. Split it down the middle. As I left he was dragging the branches to the curb.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I called out the car window as I backed out.
“So am I,” replied.
Then it was home to scan the outfits at the Met Gala. My interest in fashion is pretty much entirely as a spectator these days, although I appreciate an opportunity to get a little dressed up. And I’m of two minds on the Met Gala, the fundraiser for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, held the first Monday in May. It is considered the absolute peak of the season for fashion, even more so than the Oscars. After this, Hollywood stars, models and other professional pretty people are free to dial back the Ozempic and fuck off to Greece until the Emmys in September.
And it’s a night for fashion, pure fashion, all stops out. Avant garde? Oh yes, this is the night for it. And in recent years, it seemed there was no limit to how far people were willing to go to dress to the annual theme — this year, it’s “Costume Art.” And here’s where the two-minds thing comes in. One mind says sure, why not, fly your freak flag, choose something outrageous, bold, creative. And the other says, don’t be ridiculous. The line between outrageous/bold/creative and ridiculous is almost invisible. The other thing the other hand says is, keep in mind while this is fashion, it’s still clothing, and clothing has to work with the human body, not against it. You should be able to walk in it, and maybe even sit down. If your whole ensemble is suitable for only one pose, you’ve crossed the line. This, for instance, was unquestionably on-theme, but thoroughly ridiculous:
That’s Heidi Klum, by the way, who throws a Halloween party every year where she does stuff like this, but appears to like it too much.
Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Bezos paid $10 million to be official co-sponsors of the event. Here’s what Mrs. B wore:
Supposedly she’s playing off John Singer Sargent’s “Portrait of Madame X,” The dress is pulling across her midsection, her boobs look like they’re struggling to escape and she had to be helped up the steps because it was so tight around her legs, but sure, Madame X, who was also said to be a relentless social climber. Where’d you get it, Macy’s?
Ultimately, I agree with Tom and Lorenzo in Cosmo, about this particular dress they observed:
As the wife of one of the richest men in the world, an over-the-top display might have invited blowback. Still, the whole look is a little basic, too tight, and doesn’t really fit either the art or the high fashion vibe of the evening. She looks like she’s at some high-roller gambling event.
Or Mar-a-lago, I’d add.
What else, today? Oh, how about a progress report from the yard? Three views
Three views, from roughly the first of March, April and May. It’s been a chilly spring, o it’s a bit behind its usual glory. But you can see why we long for this season so much, at this latitude. It was a long, cold winter. They all are, but this one in particular.
Gretchen said on May 6, 2026 at 2:58 am
That silhouette doesn’t look like it could be achieved with just a corset. Back in the day women used to have their lower ribs removed to achieve that tiny waist. Is that what’s going on here?
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alex said on May 6, 2026 at 6:42 am
A pneumatic rack like hers would make Donald Trump’s waist look small. It would probably help to surgically add a few ribs to support the weight.
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Suzanne said on May 6, 2026 at 8:48 am
Fashion as art AND plastic surgery. I look at Mrs Bezos and think of the Twilight Zone episode in which a beautiful woman is getting reconstructive surgery to make her look acceptable to society and in the end, we are shown that the faces of acceptable society look very much like pigs.
Also this:
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2026/05/05/trump-backed-candidates-romp-to-wins-in-indiana-senate-races/?emci=708f543f-a848-f111-8ef2-000d3a14b640&emdi=e13824ed-3e49-f111-8ef2-000d3a14b640&ceid=333678
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alex said on May 6, 2026 at 9:19 am
I guess five bucks a gallon is all Biden’s fault too. Talk about getting high mileage out of your whipping boy.
Many of the local races still have yet to be called this morning. Still, I’ve never seen so many right-wing kooks getting primaried by right-wing kooks who spend tons of outside money on advertising that tells us nothing except that the incumbents are liberals and RINOs when anyone with two brain cells to rub together should know better.
Alas, we’re gonna be stuck with an even worse legislature than the damnable one we already had, never mind that we didn’t get redistricted into oblivion.
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Icarus said on May 6, 2026 at 9:40 am
There is some logic to grabbing a Republican ballot in the primary and choosing the lesser of two evils. If they are both equally bad, you had to pick the one you feel the democratic candidate can defeat in the general election.
My Quora Answer has gotten 3K upvotes and a whole lot of hate comments from MAGA and Trump supporters.
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Julie Robinson said on May 6, 2026 at 10:41 am
Gretchen, I wondered the same thing. The whole thing has an ick factor for me.
We’re in NYC, well Newark at the moment. Have tickets for three shows and won a lottery for cheap seats. I can feel the big city adrenaline kicking in.
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Dorothy said on May 6, 2026 at 10:42 am
Suzanne if my memory is right, that part was played by Donna Douglas, a.k.a. Ellie May Clampett, right?
I worked the polls yesterday and two things of note happened. First, some gal (born in 1994 I was told) threw a hissy fit when she had to pick a political party at the booth when she began to fill out her ballot. You do this lined up with the way you are registered to vote, a fact she wasn’t acquainted with, obviously. She yelled and yelled, ripped up her blank ballot, and threw it on the floor while she stormed out the door. Sure wish I was a fly on the wall when she went somewhere and told this story and was informed by someone how primary elections work.
On a sadder note, one of the ladies working the front desk got a call from one of her sons. He’d been unable to reach his dad for a couple of days so they called police for a wellness check. The man was found dead in his home. He was the ex-husband of the woman working the desk, but they’d been married for 21 years and she was quite distraught. She left immediately and came back a few hours later to pick up her lunch bag and a jacket.
We were steadily busy at the voting location, but for me and my fellow Paper Ballot Judge, we only had two people come to our table all day. The first one happened around 3:45 PM and the second one (6:55 PM) was a 94 year old woman who had lost her Ohio ID and still wanted to vote. Her son and d-i-l brought her in, and I offered to put in a call to St. Anthony to find her ID in the next four days so her vote would count. Good thing I had lots of great conversation with fellow poll workers. Otherwise that 5:30 AM to 8:30 PM shift would have been REALLY long.
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alex said on May 6, 2026 at 12:13 pm
Well I’ll be fucking goddamned…
How did I not know this before? I can claim dual citizenship in the U.S. and Hungary and then choose to live in any E.U. nation. I may just have to opt for it.
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Deborah said on May 6, 2026 at 1:03 pm
I think I read a few years back that Mrs. Rich as Fuck Bezos did have some ribs removed to cinch her waist. Also that she arrived at the Gala sans her Mr. He’s apparently trying to sell his wildly outrageous yacht because he’s upset how much negative attention it’s getting. They’re both so disgustingly out of touch with us normals, they’re beginning to find out, but they don’t care.
I keep thinking of that scene in the movie Brazil where the woman is getting her face sretched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zYREwD9e6U
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Scout said on May 6, 2026 at 3:44 pm
Mrs Bozos (see what I did there?) looks like she’s more tarted up for an appearance at Mafia-a-Lago than the Met Gala. What is with these weirdos with more money than god spending it hand over fist to look like circus freaks?
We had a record breaking heatwave that lasted most of March. A lot of snowbirds flew the coop early only to be greeted with record breaking cold where they summer and now we’re having the fabulous temperate spring weather we didn’t get in March. Climate change: it’s for real.
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jim said on May 6, 2026 at 4:14 pm
alex #8: I just yesterday looked up the details since both maternal grandparents were born in Hungary. The tough part is you have to pass a Hungarian language literacy test.
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Peter said on May 6, 2026 at 4:17 pm
Alex, that’s not the only benefit you get from EU citizenship:
– your EU passport makes going through customs really fast, especially at those US spots in Ireland/UK.
– you can legally have an account in an EU bank. Getting an account in an Austrian bank is almost as good as a Swiss bank account, and with Fearless leader in charge over here, is more stable.
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Scout said on May 6, 2026 at 4:20 pm
While my ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, they arrived too many generations ago for me to be able to get dual citizenship. Which sucks. #NotProudToBeAnAmerican
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David C said on May 6, 2026 at 5:11 pm
Same here. Patrilinneal line arrived in 1638. The closest immigrant is my maternal grandmother’s grandparents who came from Ireland.
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Julie Robinson said on May 6, 2026 at 5:36 pm
Canada has basically said that if you have any ancestors born in Canada, you are already a citizen. My great grandmother was born there when her parents, who were a mixed race couple, were seeking an accepting place. So I would only have to track down her birth certificate, fill out forms, and of course pay some fees.
But I don’t want to live in Canada. I don’t ever want to live in winter again. And I don’t want to be far away from my family. Besides, someone has to be around to bail out my daughter when she is inevitably arrested at a protest.
We saw The Lost Boys, wowza, and are going to Ragtime tonight.
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alex said on May 6, 2026 at 6:37 pm
Hungarian language literacy test? Guess I’m fucked then. I was just discussing it with my brother and dad as a backup plan for if/when this country goes full Nazi. Doubt I could wing it if I took one of those Babel courses.
But what about that stock market. Today’s my new highest high ever. I should cash it in and deposit it in an Austrian bank even if I’m not living there.
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Sherri said on May 6, 2026 at 7:56 pm
My ancestors were already in the part of Tennessee I grew up in by about 1800, so my only chance of dual citizenship is to buy it.
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Sherri said on May 7, 2026 at 12:49 am
This long Texas Monthly article goes into the long and on-going history of the Southern Baptist Convention’s refusal to address sexual abuse, including the abuse perpetrated by the man most responsible for what the SBC is today and its close relationship with the GOP, Paul Pressler. Pressler is dead now, but his legacy is very much alive.
In addition to the sexual abuse, I was struck by Pressler’s white supremacy, learned from his grandfather Townes.
Edgar Eggleston “E. E.” Townes was a Baylor University trustee who cofounded the South Texas School of Law and authored the original charter for the Humble Oil and Refining Company, a major part of what is now Exxon Mobil. He was Pressler’s hero—one half of the “most genuine and outstanding Christian couple” he’d ever known. “We held the same values and had the same motivations and priorities,” Pressler wrote in his memoir.
In the forties, Townes led a renegade political movement called the Texas Regulars that sought to use loopholes in the Democratic Party’s structure to deny President Franklin Delano Roosevelt a fourth term and rescue the party from the elites whom they accused of betraying grassroots voters and values. They were fighting, Townes once said, for the “great cause” of “Jeffersonian democracy, states rights and white supremacy.”
Pressler also compared his battle to take over the SBC to Gettysburg, only this time “the right side won.”
I was never shocked that Southern Baptists overwhelmingly supported Trump, because I understood that their real values were about white supremacy and authoritarianism.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/quiet-collapse-southern-baptist-convention/
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ROGirl said on May 7, 2026 at 6:00 am
The evolving look of LSB over the years.
https://www.aol.com/articles/lauren-sanchez-plastic-surgery-mar-160102900.html
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Icarus said on May 7, 2026 at 9:44 am
FWIW today marks my 57th spin around the sun. My MILs bday was earlier this week and with mother’s day approaching, we’re doing some type of group party this weekend. Nothing big, just ordering take out or delivery to avoid cooking.
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Deborah said on May 7, 2026 at 10:36 am
Happy birthday Icarus. Yes spinning around the sun, but don’t get too close.
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Jeff Gill said on May 7, 2026 at 12:52 pm
Sherri, on Xwitter the author of the Texas Monthly piece on Pressler, @RobertDownen_ noted:
“One of many things that didn’t make it into my story: As far as I can tell, the last time Paul Pressler involved himself in SBC business was in 2016, when he angrily tried to argue against a resolution that denounced the use of the Confederate Flag.”
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Sherri said on May 7, 2026 at 2:14 pm
And, Jeff, I’m sure he and people around him would have said that there wasn’t a racist bone in his body. They don’t think of themselves as racist, they just think there wasn’t nothing wrong with Jim Crow. Everyone should know their place, and if their place happens to be on top, well, that must be the way God wanted it.
And God must have wanted him to have all those young men and boys, to relieve the pressures of being such an important man.
God is very convenient when you create him in your image.
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alex said on May 7, 2026 at 2:22 pm
God is very convenient when you create him in your image.
And very squicky when Trump creates him in his. Even the evangelicals are up in arms about his “doctor” meme.
Finally a beautiful day and I don’t know what to do with it. Take my new camera out and find interesting subject matter? Work on my yard, where weeds are fast surpassing my perennials in height and girth? Whatever it is I decide, I’ll need to be able to do it in white pants without getting filthy because I don’t feel like changing.
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Brandon said on May 7, 2026 at 3:01 pm
Sherri, did you grow up in a Southern Baptist church, or was it a similar denomination?
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Dorothy said on May 7, 2026 at 3:28 pm
Happy birthday, Icarus! My husband’s birthday falls on Mother’s Day this year. That date was also my parents’ anniversary – wed in 1944. They could celebrate right up to the one in May 2005 but Daddy died three months later. Our son is taking us out tomorrow night to celebrate Mother’s Day and the birthday, and I’m cooking on Saturday so we’ll have back to back nights to celebrate all the fun stuff.
ALSO – 51 years ago this Saturday was the night my nephew Bill was born. We came home from the prom and my dad had put this large poster taped to our front door: IT’S A BOY!!! He was my parents’ second grandchild. I can’t believe I have a niece and a nephew in their 50’s.
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4dbirds said on May 7, 2026 at 3:32 pm
Happy birthday Icarus. Same b-day as my sister.
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Sherri said on May 7, 2026 at 4:44 pm
I grew up in Southern Baptist churches, Brandon. My parents still are Southern Baptist.
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Sherri said on May 7, 2026 at 5:09 pm
Memphis, TN is one of the largest majority Black cities in the US. Thanks to John Roberts, it has now been divided into new Congressional districts to make sure that those Black voters won’t represent a majority in any of those districts.
But John Roberts is sad that we think he’s political.
Oh, and Memphis is still being patrolled by National Guard troops.
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Mark P said on May 7, 2026 at 11:00 pm
Roberts is not political, he’s racist from way back.
I’m currently on my way back home to Georgia after visiting friends in Denver. We had five or six inches of snow over Tuesday night. It was in the 70’s today, warmer than back home.
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