A galactic gala

One minute she was serenely sipping a Blue Moon, and the next she was making a phobic getaway. “Maybe we’ll just move on,” Kay Meek of Bakersfield called to her friends, as a cloud of white fog inched up her legs. “It feels so ... bizarre!”

She didn’t have far to go for another freaky experience at the Space Age-themed cocktail party launching the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame Gala. Nearby, Ursula, a shapely robot bedecked in silver lame, intrigued guests with eerie lines such as “We know what you’re thinking” and “We’ve been watching you for years.” Not to mention that a drone in a surgical mask branded Meek, along with hundreds of other guests, with a bar code as she entered the party -- on a black carpet.

Martians had landed at the June 27 benefit for Music Matters, the music education program of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. that serves more than 85,000 children each year. There were cryonic beings, “frozen” inside plastic cylinders, and morphing alien forms -- think women enshrouded in white fabric and writhing atop pedestals. Even the food had an outer-space twist, with tidbits presented on skewers poked into melon “planets.”

Turns out the theme had nothing to do with the gala dinner -- served up in Hollywood Bowl boxes -- or the show, which featured performances by Hall of Fame inductees Roger Daltrey, Patti LuPone and the Smothers Brothers. “Every idea we threw out for this party turned out to have some political issue associated with it,” said gala Chairman Eric Bernt. “So we went with a retro space theme because we knew, unless aliens landed, we wouldn’t offend anyone.”