One of the most dynamic performers in rock history, Freddie Mercury was the beating heart of legendary band Queen. Mercury was a trained pianist and singer with impressive vocal range. In the early 1970s, he met the musicians with whom he would form Queen. Mercury’s iconic, vibrant showmanship blended with the band’s genre-bending sound–“classical to music hall, from glitter to prog rock, eventually even making influential forays into funk and disco,” as AllMusic’s Greg Prato shared–made them both unique and undeniable.
When Queen formed, they were well aware of the multitude of meanings in their name. "It's very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid. It's a strong name, very universal and immediate. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it,” Mercury shared in an interview, according to American Songwriter.
Mercury, who was queer, was known for an energetic and theatrical stage presence, but was a private person offstage. He often waved away questions about his sexuality with a quip, if he engaged them at all. Sadly, Mercury found he had contracted AIDS in 1987. After battling the illness for some four years, he passed away in 1991. Mercury had left his mark on music and culture, however, and Queen influenced countless performers and bands that followed.
Queen also recently influenced a young man named Owen, who at four and a half years old has joined the legion of Freddie Mercury and Queen fans the world over. Owen is the son of my dear friend Alissa. Tiring of music geared toward children, she and her husband Ian decided to begin Owen’s rock education, and the one band stuck in particular. For Alissa, a part-time therapist, sharing Queen with Owen also has layers–in a time in American culture where LGBTQ+ citizens face high levels of discrimination, she sees showing him Queen concerts as a form of resistance to anti-queer messaging. Alissa is part of a generation of parents making similar decisions–enough that great figures of queer history are now embodied in books like the Little People, Big Dreams series, among others (Owen’s Freddie Mercury version is on the way to his house).
Alissa and I spoke about Freddie Mercury, freedom, and whether or not the iconic singer knew The Hulk.
How did Owen hear Queen for the first time? We're working on his rock music education in general. You can only listen to so much Kidz Bop before you lose your mind. One day, he got into the car while I was playing some heavy metal I enjoy, and he wanted to listen. We progressed through rock genres, and my husband and I made a playlist of family-friendly rock songs for Owen. That's how he heard Queen. It really grabbed him more than the other bands did. He asked to listen to more Queen and then he would ask, “Who sings this song?” And I would say, “Freddie Mercury sings this song.” And then we'd listen to another Queen song. He'd say, “Who sings this song?” And I'd be like, “Freddie Mercury again, bud! Turns out it's the same guy! Can you believe it?” [laughs] Ian and I both grew up listening to this kind of music, to Queen in particular, so we feel like it’s part of the core rock curriculum for our children [laughs].
When did you realize Owen was a fan? Once he connected the dots that the same guy was singing all the songs he liked, he said, “I would like to meet Freddie Mercury someday.” I said to him, “You know, bud, this is sad, but Freddie Mercury passed away many years ago from a disease that we have good treatments for now, but we didn't have treatments for back then. He was really meaningful to a lot of people all around the world, so it was very sad when he passed away. Unfortunately you can't meet him, but we can watch a concert of him singing.” Owen was totally down for that. Owen would tell me what song he wanted to see live and I looked up concerts for him on YouTube, like the Live Aid concert [below] and different live shows. He will still periodically ask me, “Can I watch Freddie sing Killer Queen? Can I watch Freddie sing Another One Bites the Dust?" He pays very close attention and he’s very quiet when Queen is on. I can hear the wheels turning. After he had been into Queen for a while, he would tell me a fact about Freddie Mercury that's made up, like, “Freddie Mercury knows the Hulk!” And I'm like, I don't think so...[laughs] He'll sometimes give us a song parody, like the other night, when we were all in [my daughter] Emma's room together, it was 'Another Baby Bites the Dust,' which I think just goes to say that Owen doesn't understand what it means to bite the dust [laughs]. I mean, his sister is teething, so maybe it's a very literal interpretation.
You mentioned seeing Owen’s interest in Freddie Mercury and Queen as a way to open up conversations in the future about homophobia and the AIDS crisis. Can you talk about that? It's very important to think about living in a patriarchal society and what to do if you are raising one of the potential oppressors [laughs]. How do you counter toxic masculinity and patriarchal thinking? I think one of the key pieces is making sure Owen really empathizes with and sees the humanity of people whose identities are different from his. I saw an opportunity here with him naturally gravitating towards Freddie. Freddie was so incredibly charismatic, mesmerizing, and such a showman. He really drew people in. I could see when Owen's old enough, when he’s in late elementary school or middle school, for it to be appropriate for us to talk about, what was the AIDS crisis?
There's a very powerful AIDS Memorial here in Portland. Visiting something like that, and drawing the connection between, hey, this hero you have, this musician you admire so much, and have been listening to since you were four, he died from AIDS. And he was a queer man living at a time where there was a lot of discrimination against people with his identity. We even see that discrimination happening now. It's a way to make visible the history of homophobia and discrimination against the LGBT community and things like the AIDS crisis, a natural entry point to build that empathy and talk about these things really openly within our family. Kids start to notice at some point that the world isn't fair and all people aren't treated equally. You have those teachable moments, those opportunities as a parent to talk about these things as they arise. I don't know which way public education is going to start trending in our country. If he's not learning about the AIDS crisis or Stonewall in a contemporary US history class, that's something he should know about. If he's not getting any queer history at school because maybe they're not allowed to teach it, then we need to make sure it's getting taught in our household.
File:Statue of Freddie Mercury in Montreux 2005-07-15.jpg - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org
When we were texting earlier, you said something that really struck me: “My venues to fight fascism are limited as a mostly stay at home mom, but I consider watching Queen concerts with my son a form of resistance.” Why do you feel that way? We have already seen this administration trying to erase trans people through executive orders, through cutting funding for gender-affirming care or medical care for trans youth, and that could unfortunately continue to expand and impact other communities underneath the LGBTQ+ umbrella. People in power now have a very particular point of view about what America should look like, and it doesn't include queer people. It doesn't include people who looked and dressed and performed the way Freddie did. Even ensuring your children see people like Freddie is a way of fighting against that. I also think this kind of authoritarianism goes very much hand-in-hand with a very narrow view of what masculinity looks like. As my son grows and develops his own identity as a man, being able to see a very wide variety of examples of what it means to be masculine and how masculinity can be expressed is important. People in power now want to fit everybody back into very small prescriptive boxes of, ‘this is what it means to be a man, full-stop, and this is what it means to be a woman, full-stop, and there's nothing in between.’ When I watch these videos with my son, when I watch Freddie perform, the word that comes to mind is freedom. I think in many ways a gift of the queer community to us poor straights is this reminder of what freedom looks like and that we all deserve it. That definitely moves in me when I watch these concerts with my kiddo.
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Kevin Bacon speaking at the 2014 San Diego Comic Con
Even the most beautiful relationships can have a rocky start. Kevin Bacon and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, made the news recently for their Vanity FairOscars party glow-ups, where they each posted adorable photo slideshows and videos on Instagram. On Kevin's page, he simply wrote "date night" as the description for a gorgeous picture of himself with Kyra, dressed to the nines in a black-and-white Prabal Gurung dress.
Kyra captioned her similar photo (though now outside), "Going out on a school night!" But it was an Instagram Reel that really captured their magic. With the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun" as background music, it shows Kyra displaying a table of beauty products, and her glam squad circling her with hair extensions, bronzer, smoky-eye shadows, and lint rollers for the dress. Cut to: Kevin in shorts, casually solving a jigsaw puzzle.
She continues with nails, earrings, you name it, and then back to Kevin, who is now further along on his puzzle, revealing that it's of our Solar System. But in the final shot, after all that primping on her end, the result is the same. Both Kyra and Kevin look fabulous.
Their delightful connection has caused old interviews to resurface from a time when it wasn't exactly love at first sight. At least, not for Kyra. (Kevin, on the other hand, was immediately smitten.)
In a 2008 interview with Redbook, Kyra remembers, "He definitely wasn’t my type. In fact, I vividly remember looking at his butt when he walked away after we first met and thinking, 'Well, I guess some girls like that.'" She then adds, "And now it's one of my favorite parts of his anatomy! That's probably too much information!"
But here's the cringe part: In an interview with Conan O'Brien, Kyra shares a story of a scene she and Kevin had to film together wherein he gives her a massage. She claims Kevin then said, "You know you're really tight. Have you ever had a massage? You should make an appointment to go see [this masseuse], and you know, it just so happens the massage room is in the gym, and if I happen to be finished with my workout when you're finished with your massage, maybe we can get dinner?” To which Kyra thought, "Yeah, sure, that's not going to happen. I'm not going to tell him when my massage is." Conan then replied, "Worst line ever."
Kevin, for his part, felt the exact opposite. In an interview he gave in 2011 on CNN, when asked if he knew she was "the one," he shares, "I found her, you know, really very beautiful and sexy and aloof. And I was just immediately in love with her, and she was just immediately put off by me."
But Kevin didn’t give up, obviously, and Kyra knew he was her "person" soon after. The two have continued to inspire couples for decades, proving one can go from cringe to crave very quickly.
And the best part is that their love still seems to be easy like Sunday morning. In 2018, HuffPost notednoted that Kevin once told Good Housekeeping, "Being with Kyra is so natural for me; it's the easiest aspect of my life. I know that I don't need a beach or room service to be happy."
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A guy proposed to his now-fiancée and also included a ring for her dog.
When you propose to a human, you’re also essentially proposing to that person’s pets. Marriage is kind of a package deal, right? Given that logic, it’s perfectly valid—and quite sweet—that someone popping "the big question" would extend that courtesy to their beloved's pooch.
Posting these dual proposals has become an Internet trend, and one TikTok user has gone viral for sharing their delightful footage. The clip, overlaid with the caption, "When he knows how important your dog is to you and proposes to her too," focuses solely on the canine portion of that life-changing moment: A well-dressed gentleman walks up to an excited little pup, bends down to one knee, and opens a red box to reveal a comically oversized engagement ring toy.
The dog seems pretty stoked about the whole thing, wagging her tail and carrying her new treasure to the couch. Doubling up on the adorability, the video ends with the guy picking up his new furry fiancée (furancée?), beaming an enormous smile, and giving her a smooch. Everything went well, according to the caption: "We both said yes."
The comments are predictably fantastic, with users praising the cuteness of the moment and taking the opportunity to crack jokes. "A dog got proposed to before me?!?? Imma wrap it up," someone wrote, while another chimed in with, "New standard unlocked." A supremely underrated reaction: "how does it feel that she got a bigger ring?" Even the dog food brand Pedigree seized the moment, adding, "Dog dad score just sky rocketed."
Someone offered a congrats to the video’s creator, "datelistlou," and playfully asked, "Are you sure he doesn’t love her more?" They responded, "He just might," with a flurry of emojis.
Lots of amazing, dog-related marriage proposals have been blowing up online. One, documented on Instagram, shows a Golden Retriever named Bubbles excitedly jumping over a man mid-ask, prompting the overlay text, "My dog when he thought I was proposing to him…" After the scene cuts to the real proposal, the pup looks displeased, and the text shifts: "…Vs. when he realized I’m proposing to his mom!"
Susan Baur, an 85-year-old retired psychologist, was fed up with all the trash in a Cape Cod pond where she loved to swim. She shares in an interview with AARP Online, "I started the 'Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage' (OLAUG) because I was sick and tired of swimming through trash."
Susan is a swimmer, and the ponds have been her lapping ground for years. Back in 2017, she had been swimming with friends and thought, "There's too much stuff in here." She told AARP, "We commandeered a guy in a kayak and said, 'Follow us, we're gonna hand you trash.' It was fun, and it felt good to swim and see it so clean." She adds, "Someone said we’re a bunch of old ladies against underwater garbage, and it stuck."
Since then, each summer she leads 20-30 women on dives to clean up the ponds.
What kinds of trash do they find?
People tend to use bodies of water as dumping grounds.
Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash
When it comes to what they dig out of the ponds, nothing is all that shocking anymore. Susan shares they typically find golf balls, beer cans, and even dog toys. "And then there's the really interesting stuff: garden gnomes, tires, a toilet." She thinks about it for a moment. "The toilet wins."
But it gives them a sense of adventure. "The dives are like treasure hunts for things that shouldn't be there."
Who can join the club?
Not just anyone can be a part of this Garbage Avengers team. She states very clearly, "The requirements for being a member of OLAUG are you have to be a woman over 64 and an excellent swimmer. We give tryouts every spring. Swim half a mile in under 30 minutes and be able to dive a minimum of 8 feet."
According to an interview on WGBH News, Susan is very strict about those membership rules. “There was a guy who absolutely wanted to join. I said, No. Often they’re men, very often they're not old at all, and they're quite miffed when they say, ‘But I could help. I’m stronger than you guys. I could do this.’ I said, ‘Yeah, there's nothing three women can't do.’'"
What are the women like?
Susan shares, "Many of these women have a career or even two careers. Some have lost their husband, lost their house, lost their health, and they never imagined that there would be such an adventurous next chapter in their life."
One team member, Marci Johnson (age 73), says the club gives her a sense of purpose. "Having retired, you lose that whole sense of what do you do? Who am I now? And this is something I can do and do well, and I enjoy it."
What's next?
The team has worked their magic on over two dozen ponds. And it’s not going to stop with Cape Cod. The squad is expanding "farther into Massachusetts." Susan exclaims. "There's even a woman in Southern Illinois who wants to do the same thing we're doing there."
The 1440Daily on Instagram, a daily news page, claims there are at least 30 active members in the club, with their dives helping to "support wildlife conservation and environmental preservation in one of Massachusetts' most scenic regions."
The comments on the thread are incredibly supportive. One rightfully points out that not only does this obviously benefit the ponds, but it has great health benefits for the women. "This is awesome! Plus the extra benefit of longer, healthier lives with all that swimming, coordination, and social interactions."
Susan herself is not surprised that she takes part in this but she's amazed that people have joined her. "It does not shock me at all that I'm swimming around picking up garbage. I'm just that kind of person. And when I'm 90, if I make it to 90, I’ll be swinging from trees or doing something strange and wonderful. But that these people would JOIN me, and wear orange hats and have the enthusiasm, it sets me back on my heels."
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Astronaut Terry Virts captures incredible images of the pyramids
Astronauts have the privilege of exploring space - an experience available to limited humans. While most of us may have seen images of celestial objects captured by NASA, the visuals of how man-made wonders look from space are rare. Astronaut Terry Virts got the opportunity to fly around in space, and during his time at the International Space Station (ISS), he captured a crystal-clear view of the pyramids of Giza. Making the most of his time at the ISS, he was able to take a picture of this wonder of the world, as reported by IFL Science.
The American astronaut took to X and posted a picture of the pyramids from space with a caption that read, "It took me until my last day in space to get a good picture of these!" The story behind this photo was special for Virts as he had been trying to capture one particular view for the last six months, living and working on the ISS. However, his wish was fulfilled on his last day in space.
— (@)
This incident dates back to 2015, when the American astronaut was stationed at the ISS. Being a part of The Soyuz TMA-15M mission, he had been assigned as commander for Expedition 43, which was launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and docked at the ISS. He spent 200 days in space conducting scientific experiments and spacewalks before returning to Earth, safely landing in Kazakhstan.
“I was ready to stay up there because there were still pictures I wanted to take, there were still videos I wanted to do,” Virts told Time. “If you’re an astronaut flying in space, you gotta look at that as your last flight. And so you gotta enjoy it. And I’ve got the rest of my life to be on Earth.”
Safe to say, Virts had a productive time in his seven-month mission as he snapped thousands of aerial photos of Earth and life aboard the orbiting laboratory. To be exact, Virts shot 319,275 photos, the most anyone has ever taken in space, according to a report from Greenville Journal.
His book “View From Above: An Astronaut Photographs the World" includes photos of lightning storms over the Himalayan Mountains, the ice fields of Patagonia in South America, the pyramids of Egypt, and other stunning visuals showcasing the natural beauty of Earth.
In an interview shared with Greenville Journal, Virts also talked about the importance of taking photos from space as he said, "Most people will never get a chance to visit space, so my goal with this book was to share the experience as best as I could through words and photos. I touch on launches, landings, and just about all other aspects of living in space." The American astronaut retired in 2016, putting an end to his illustrious career in NASA. His contributions to technical roles significantly contributed to NASA's mission success and the advancement of human spaceflight.
You can follow Astronaut Terry Virts on Instagram and Twitter for more space-related content. If you are interested in space travel, you can go through his book "How to Astronaut."
As a person with Down syndrome, routines are very important for Christina Cavanaugh. Nearly every day for the past 15 years, the Pocatello, Idaho resident and her mother would go to the Video Stop to rent a movie for her to watch. She became such a valued customer that new employees would be trained on how to interact with her and check out her movie choices, as Christina is nonverbal. With the advent of streaming taking over the home video rental market, it appeared inevitable that Video Stop would close. However, thanks to the store’s owner David Kraning, she can still rent movies out of a section built in the convenience shop next door.
While Video Stop has ceased all rentals, Kraning took a small selection of film titles and built a small video rental section for Christina into the adjacent K&B Kwik Stop. While the section is affectionately known as “Christina’s Corner,” a small group of other loyal customers can also rent from the collection held there. For Toni Cavanaugh, Christina’s mother, it was a relief.
Video stores are dying out due to the popularity of streaming. Photo credit: Canva
“[Christina] doesn’t understand things closing,” Toni told East Idaho News, recounting a time when another video store Christina visited closed down. “Her and I drive over and I let her get out of the car and she goes up and there’s nothing there, and the doors are locked. She still wanted to go in, and it is really heartbreaking to watch the anguish.”
Knowing how much the store meant to Christina, Kraning decided to keep the video rental business, but smaller. After seeing a corner of his K&B Kwik Stop meant for deli storage fail to take off, he decided to change it into a small video rental section.
“That area was going unused, and I thought, ‘OK, it wouldn’t be too much terrible work to just retrofit it, put some shelving in there, and move some of the movies over, and just create kind of a mini video store corner for this kid, so she still could have her normal routine that she’s used to,’” said Kraning.
David Kraning poses in his now-closed video store.Photo credit: East Idaho News
Now Christina continues her routine of picking out a movie with her mother as the staff of K&B Kwik Stop welcome them like “family,” according to the store manager Jennifer Klassen.
Getting access to physical media can be important to many people, not just folks like Christina. While streaming services are convenient, the costs to maintain subscriptions have significantly increased across the board over the years since its inception. There is also not a guarantee that the streaming service you subscribe to will keep the movies you frequently watch as a part of their library, as services like Max permanently remove titles while other streamers like Netflix and Disney+ follow suit.
While they aren’t built for big business that require growing monthly profits or answering to shareholders, the small business market is welcoming the cult-like revival of video stores for film buffs in the mid-2020s as vinyl records were for music fans in the 2010s. Many revival stores have sprouted or survived in the video rental business in recent years such as Vidiots in big city Los Angeles, California and Symsonia Video in small towns Symsonia, Kentucky. If not a brick and mortar business, local libraries have also become hubs to check out blu-rays and DVDs.
DVDs and blu-rays have become a niche product that still has a strong loyal consumer base that is in part due to folks like Christina that prefer or can afford the rental store experience or people who have become collectors of physical media and enjoy being able to have certain movies available to them without needing to pay a subscription or risk having that movie taken offline.
These shops fall into the same category as vinyl record stores, comic book shops, and action figure toy shops. While they’re no longer products widely found in big box stores like Target or Walmart, or were items sold in defunct national chains like Blockbuster, Sam Goody, or Toys R Us, there is still need for them as a function, a collector’s item, or (in some cases) an archive for media
If you have an interest in movies or film, you may want to investigate if there is a similar video store in your area to support—and maybe find community there, too.
On February 18 2025, an Iowa House subcommittee recommended passage of House Study Bill 158, a bill that would make bringing a person under the age of 18 to a drag show a felony, punishable with “up to five years in prison and a fine between $1,025 and $10,245,” the Des Moines Register reports. The bill would also fine owners of a venue where said child saw drag $10,000 for every child in attendance, and charge them with a felony as well.
According to the bill, parents whose children saw drag could also “institute a civil action for damages in the amount of not less than ten thousand dollars and up to fifty thousand dollars for each violation.” The bill would additionally bar “a state agency or public entity that receives state funds” from displaying drag performances, also at risk of a $10,000 fine per child.
And this isn’t even where the problems of the bill end. Drag is defined in the bill as “a performer who exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth through the use of clothing, makeup, accessories, or other gender signifiers.” This means that the bill could potentially outlaw classical theatrical productions like William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in which one of the female characters masquerades as a man, and it could outlaw beloved film classics like Mrs. Doubtfire, according to them. Most hurtfully, though, because the language of the bill is so broad, it could actually bar transgender people from speaking in public at all. Republicans tried to demur–Iowa Republican State Representative Helena Hayes said the bill’s ultimate language would change in the future “so there are not unintended consequences such as banning minors from art performances,” the Des Moines Register wrote, but she mentions nothing about how the language as is would affect transgender individuals. If the bill passes it could still be damning to an entire community of people, not just artistic works.
Iowans spoke out against the bill’s outrageous overreach, citing that not only was passage of such a bill a disrespectful infringement on free speech, queer and trans civil rights, and parental rights, it was also totally useless and a waste of time. “I'm really getting tired of these culture war bills that are being introduced to grab headlines when we have real work to do here and we haven't done much real work to help Iowans," House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst told the Register a few days earlier. But Konfrst wasn’t the only one. Of the 121 pages of public comments from the February 18 meeting, many shared similar sentiments from concerned Iowans.
“I oppose this bill. I am a transgender person and a drag performer. Labeling my existence as ‘adult’ is labeling my daily life as obscene and explicit. Doing this is attempting to push me and people like me out of public life and existence itself. This is injurious to so many people, including the children this bill claims it seeks to save. Please vote NO on HSB 158,” shared citizen Kayden Ellis.
“I oppose this bill because it serves no function besides hurting the trans members of our community and pandering to our country's conservative fringe. Iowa needs leaders who will actually make our lives better not just hurt an already severely victimized minority group,” citizen Grant Manwaring said.
“This is a pointless bill. Can we please focus on something more useful, like gun control or poverty? Or how about taking care of our veterans, or how about the rising cost of food maybe? Drag Queens and Drag Kings are not the problem,” citizen Lindsey Coram shared.
This is not the first time Iowans have rallied around progressive causes–we learned at the end of last year that of those surveyed about Iowa’s ban on abortions after six weeks, 59% opposed the new law, and 64% supported legalized abortion.
So there’s no guarantees for this bill, HSB 158, yet. It will still have to pass the Senate and the Judiciary Committee to become law. But if Iowa Democrats have anything to say about it, hopefully it’ll never make it there.
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Michelle Phillips famously ate a banana during The Mamas & the Papas' lip-synced spot on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' Decades later, she explained why.
Lip-syncing is probably bizarre for most musicians. The audience can tell you’re not really producing sound—often because your microphone isn’t plugged in—and the whole thing can feel a little pointless and silly. But there are actual technical reasons why some of your favorite artists were miming on national television, and it was a pretty standard practice decades ago.
Which brings us to The Mamas & the Papas, the folk-pop quartet known for their string of sunshiny hits. In 1967, they "played" a three-song medley on The Ed Sullivan Show, including a clearly lip-synced version of "California Dreamin’"—and that resurfaced footage recently went viral due to the hilarious choices of singer Michelle Phillips, who's seen peeling and eating a banana on stage. In retrospect, many media outlets and casual fans interpreted this gesture as a fruit-fueled "protest," a moment of rebellion against the studio big wigs and their lip-sync preferences. But that doesn’t seem to be quite accurate.
Before we get into that, though, let’s revisit the actual footage. "California Dreamin’" was the last song of three, and the banana move makes a bit more sense with that context in mind. During opener "Monday Monday," we see a bit more of the psychedelic stage setup, filled with swirling colors and unusual props—including a bathtub, a possible nod to the cover of their debut album, 1966’s If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears. At one point, Phillips reclines in the kaleidoscopic tub (located next to a bright-red fire hydrant) and munches on some green grapes.
The food bit is woven throughout the entire six-minute production: Phillips eats more grapes and officially peels a banana during "I Call Your Name," so she's already in full fruit mode when they segue into "California Dreamin’." She just leans into it even further, often taking bites during the vocal harmony parts and seemingly playing to the camera. The whole vibe feels playful and loose—and according to Phillips herself, nothing was too coordinated. She ate the banana basically because she wanted something to do.
AsSnopes notes, she talked about the goofy Ed Sullivan moment in a video posted on the YouTube channel of Chynna Phillips, a member of vocal trio Wilson Phillips and the daughter of Michelle and bandmate John Phillips. "It was so random, as you put it," she said of the performance, which Chynna called "iconic."
"You know, we were just lip-syncing to the song," she added. "And then I looked over and there was this plate of fruit, and there was this banana there, and so I just reached over and started peeling it, and I ate it!" Calling the decision "very spontaneous," she continued: "I looked over, and I was trying to do something with my hands, to do anything because I felt a little awkward."
So, there you have it. While the "banana take" is undoubtedly hilarious—and has become iconic in its own way—it feels a bit presumptuous to call it a "protest." After all, The Mamas & the Papas appear to have utilized backing tracks during other TV spots, including one for "California Dreamin’" in late 1966. It’s not like lip-syncing was an unusual request at the time. (That said, not every TV performance was lip-synched, even on The Ed Sullivan Show. You might remember, for example, that time The Beatles changed music history. That one was very much live.)
Also, that practice never went away. One of music’s funniest and most famous TV-miming moments dates back to the 1994 AMC Awards. During Alan Jackson's "Gone Country," drummer Bruce Rutherford simply flailed his arms around, not even bothering to hold drum sticks.
Why do artists lip-sync anyway? A lot of reasons, like illness, technical challenges, and lack of prep time. Ariel Chobaz, a prolific mix engineer, talked about this subject with ABC News’ 2020: "I've been involved in some very big broadcast shows, like the Grammys and the American Music Awards, and the time schedule is so precise. It's physically not possible to mic an entire band for every segment that comes up."
Freddie Mercury GIF by Queen
File:Statue of Freddie Mercury in Montreux 2005-07-15.jpg - Wikipedia
Kyra Sedgwick 
Kevin Bacon by David Shankbone
People tend to use bodies of water as dumping grounds.
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Video stores are dying out due to the popularity of streaming. Photo credit: Canva
