House hearing interrupted by sound from ‘Galaxy Quest’ and the Village People

A year after Zoom hearings became an everyday reality for much of America, technical glitches are still tripping up Congress.

A hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development on Monday was interrupted and briefly recessed by audio of the Village People’s “In the Navy” and the audio of the movie “Galaxy Quest”

The committee continued holding the hearing with the movie and song playing in the background for nearly 20 minutes before subcommittee Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat from Ohio, was forced to call a recess to fix the technical difficulties.

“We’ve been informed that we have to take a brief recess now because we’re having technical issues,” Kaptur said. “And we’re going to be briefly recessing for a second here, let them address those and we’ll be back very quickly.”

“Sorry to do this, this hasn’t happened before, but it’s a new age,” she said.

To their credit, members were able to continue testifying while the movie track and music played in the background. During the testimony of Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, a character in the movie could be heard cheering, “Never give up!”

The hearing later resumed but was somewhat less interesting without the heroic music playing.