What a cheerful way to open a Monday. Take your smiles where you can get them, and here’s one served up on a ruffled, joyous platter: Janelle Monae dressed as a one-woman self-conducted Pride 2018 parade float. She’s picking up what Lena Waithe laid down, and I LOVE it, and I hope she turns out to be just one link in a chain rather than the omega of it.

BET Awards 2018

And of course I had to show you a close-up of her purse, which I’ve decided is a tiny model of the UFO that brought Her High Holy Awesomeness here to show the sorry Earthlings what’s what, and she can open it up and talk to her cohorts — like Evie on Out of this World with her bedside table crystal — and report back about whether she’s made inroads in whipping us all into shape.

[Photos: InstarImages.com]