Is this a joke? from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

I was the field producer/director for this Entertainment Tonight package by correspondent Nischelle Turner about the Lifetime remake of The Bad Seed, starring and directed by Rob Lowe.

Entertainment Tonight: Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

I was the field producer/director for this package by Entertainment Tonight’s Carly Steel about the Netflix series “A Series Of Unfortunate Events,” based on the Lemony Snicket books. She interviewed Neil Patrick Harris, who plays the villain, Count Olaf, and the segment includes a time-lapse of Harris’s transformation into his character.

Kiernan Shipka Reveals How She Transformed Sabrina from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

Kiernan Shipka & Ross Lynch Talk Characters' Relationship from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

Sabrina Cast Discusses Show's Comparisons to Riverdale from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Cast Spill on Their Roles from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

The same showrunner/creator of the noir Riverdale  (originally on the CW, now on Netflix), Ricardo Aguirre-Sacasa reboot of the Archie Comics characters have now adapted a scary, horror-inflected take on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, the first ten-episode season of which debuted Oct. 26, 2018 on Netflix.

Pre-production started in February, 2018 in Vancouver and environs. Season 2 shooting finished in December 2018.

I worked as the field producer/director and interviewer for a set visit/tour with Lucy Davis (“Aunt Hilda”) and cast interviews for E!.

Seemingly out of nowhere at one of his inane rallies, the President* said this:

“I have broken more Elton John records. He seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because, you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. We do it without, like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical — the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth, right? The brain. More important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

Indeed. And the brain’s importance becomes so much clearer when any evidence of it is completely absent.

Melania Knauss Trump decided to visit a juvenile detention center for migrant children in Texas the day after her husband, President* Short-Fingered Vulgarian, signed an Executive Order overturning his administration’s policy, which he’d previously claimed was a law (it wasn’t) which he could not overturn. (Clearly nonsense.) She wore a Zara jacket from 2016 with “I really don‘t care. Do U?” scrawled on the back. Hmmm... I wonder if she could’ve been trying to communicate something. But what? And to whom? All she managed to communicate — presumably unintentionally, but maybe deliberately — was her Marie-Antoinette-like callous indifference.

Baby, You're Cold Inside from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

You really don’t care (That’s what your jacket says)

About children’s despair (The work of the sub-par prez)

So fly south and stand (Indifference is part of your brand)

Around a while (That jacket’s candid, but so vile)

Was it made by Stephen Miller? (A wretched schmendrick lacking a soul),

A notch below serial killer, and something of a subhuman troll

(And crypto-fascist schmuck)

You’re lacking a heart (Guess you had to lose that part)

Your husband’s a dunce (Could you try to be decent for once?)

Your callous disdain’s so very clear (And makes most people jeer)

The heartlessness of that jacket ensures that you are not qualified to be a human

Why are you so cruel?

’Cause baby, you’re cold inside

Yes, you’re cold and we’re told it’s ’cause your soul has been sold

You’re frosty, you’re freezy, you’re slimy and you’re sleazy, contemptible and cheesey

And freaking freezing cold

Beyonce Knowles-Carter and husband Shawn rented Paris’s Louvre museum so they could take a series of elaborate selfies in front of art they ignored — just like every other witless tourist.

Beyonce Knowles-Carter and husband Jay-Zed

Came up with a crummy new number that’s totally dead.

They shot the whole thing at the Louvre

I supposed they had something they needed to prouvre

With their witless, repetitive grouvre

They rap without moving their lips

To a lame, soggy beat that will not move your hips

They claim that they cannot believe they have made it

Is that why the whole thing is such dreadful dogshit?

They pose and don’t move before timeless artworks

They don’t look at, the ignorant, philistine jerks

Mess of selfies just like every dumb tourist

In front of the art they don’t look at — they not purists

Instead they noisily brag about all of their money

It’s crass, déclassé, kind of dumb, unintentionally funny

Beyonce’s gender-fluid, hermaphrodite — is that impolitic?

What other conclusion to her saying, “Get off my dick”?

You’ll notice Jay Zed in this video does very little

Just stands there, unmoving and mute; he’s quite non-committal

Then outside the Louvre, by I.M. Pei’s big tetrahedron

He finally deigns to attempt to get some kind of “rap” on.

Alas, it fails miserably, stupid rhymes so lame and droopy

And his meter is absent, arrhythmic and thoroughly...poopy.

For an unknown reason, he stands on a fake pony statue

And babbles more stupid, lame bullshit — not to you, but at you.

Then it’s back to his missus who wiggles or clumsily stands

In front of great art, name-checking luxury brands

And brags about having a wretchedly blinding hangover

Until, at long last, the horrid thing’s finally over.

Presumably trying to distract people from the indefensible policy of separating refugee families from one another at America’s southern border, President* Short-Fingered Vulgarian ordered a general who may or may not have been in the room at the time to create a sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, to be called the “Space Force.” The notion seems to have initially occurred while Trump was babbling distractedly at one of his inane rally-like events in May. The President does not have the authority to create any additional parts of the United States Armed Forces. That is reserved to Congress. Whether anybody on the White House staff knows that is not clear. Whether it was explained to Trump is also not clear.

The short-fingered vulgarian all loathe and fear is now squinting at “space — the final frontier.”

He thinks, with his sub-par, inadequate brain, that “space is a war-fighting domain.”

Perhaps in the movies they fight wars in space, once struggled by by proxy in that airless space,

But while rambling in May, babbling Trump veered off course:

“Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the space force.”

Of his many dumb notions, this one’s extra dense;

So dumb it could only appeal to Mike Pence.

With the mess at the border, it proved a fine ruse,

To distract folks with nonsense that’s simply “fake news.”

An ill-fashioned thought from a disordered mind,

Where the hell did he get it? Yanked from his “behind”?

Still, on Monday, quite loudly, again he endorses,

Demanding “the sixth branch of the armed forces.”

Then came this non-sequitur, sick Jim Crow sequel:

“We’re going to have the space force, separate but equal.”

So, Plessy v. Ferguson, lost in the stars?

Did not think those stars would accompany bars.

But it’s one more lame promise, one destined to fall,

Like the Muslim non-ban and the border non-wall.

No intelligent person expects he achieves it.

And why? Because “nobody even believes it.”

We learned late today that President* Short-Fingered Vulgarian sought to persuade North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to denuclearize based on the same sub-par marketing he himself is susceptible to. We can only imagine how well that went, given what the Chumpster and his trailer-producing minions think a movie trailer is supposed to look like. (And apparently there is an actual Destiny Pictures production company, something the Trump twits didn’t bother to check before using the name. The real Destiny Pictures hastily pointed out this had anything to do with them, denying any involvement in or knowledge of this, which the assembled media initially thought was North Korean propaganda when it was first shown at a Trump news conference in Singapore.)

trump trailer from Justin Smallbridge on Vimeo.

The United States, November 2016: “Oh, my God — we just accidentally elected a braying vulgarian idiot President.”

Ontario, June 2018: “Hold my beer.”

Doug Ford, no-neck dolt and older brother of dead crack enthusiast and disastrous Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, stunned everybody by winning the leadership of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party, putting the “moron” in its oxymoronic name. Then Ontario voters elected him Premier, giving the Tories 76 seats — a 36 seat majority.

Trump’s election was dismal, dismaying and scary? Oh,

Wait till you see who’s in charge in Ontario.

Why it’s no-neck Doug Ford, older brother of Rob,

The  crack-smoking mayor who's no more, the poor slob.

Doug won the election with quite a majority:

Voters embraced mental inferiority.

Doug might be a moron, but he couldn’t lose, 

Although, “I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs.”

Do you need further proof that the system is broken?

“Tonight, the people of Ontario have spoken.”

Doug promised all manner of things. Sincere? Was he!

Though there weren’t any details and the “how” was fuzzy.

Attempts at the math just made those who tried crazy;

The electorate seemed to like that it was hazy.

No sex education and one-dollar beer,

Or as dim Dougie puts it, “My friends, help is here.”

He said someone was happy his campaign was revvin’:

“I know that my brother Rob is looking down from heaven.”

Rob Ford, who made Doug Ford look worthwhile somehow?

“I’m just getting chills talking about him right now.”

King-size drug disposal? Electoral blight?

“I know Rob, he is celebrating with us tonight.”

He’s celebrating? Maybe he should explain.

“Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine.”

You have? When was that in your hundreds of bloopers?

“Probably in one of my drunken stupors.”

We can thank Rob for this, Doug? What gives? What’s the story?

“And I will be forever sorry.”

So for bearing the brunt of Doug, suffering his worst,

It's “a government that will always put you first.” 

Short-fingered-vulgarian-enabler and conscience-free presidential apologist Kellyanne Conway hove into view last week after months of invisibility to harangue CNN’s morning show viewers. Among her usual prevarications, nonsense, non-factual fabulations, flat-out mendacity, complaining and peevish whingeing, observers noticed a new tic. Ms. Conway kept coughing up rhyming phrases. We’ll never know whether she punished her keyboard to come up with them all by herself, or ordered White House communications pencil-squeezers to supply them. Her rhyming proved irresistible fodder for doggerel generators such as your humble correspondent.

Now Kellyanne Conway has found a new gambit; she’s trying to launch a new trope

A means of distracting, annoying, reacting to news of her blundering boss, the poor dope

She’s started in rhyming, poetically sliming her soundbites, responding to each new remark

Rhetorically flailing, decrying, assailing reporting by claiming it’s all “it’s lot of snark and bark.”

Short-fingered vulgarian, totalitarian, combed-over, spray-tanned misogynist punk

The dim, braying creep’ll not realize no people with brains “wanna hear this junk and this bunk.”

But real life’s intrusion is not an illusion, it’s not a “collusion delusion illusion.”

Collusion with Russia, corruption and sleaze are “the problem with the President of the United States and the Commander of Cheese.”

President* Short-Fingered Vulgarian disinvited the Super-Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles to the White House for reasons he could not explain. (First he said it was because some NFL players took a knee during the national anthem, although no Eagles knelt. Then he said it was because players could elect — as dictated by the NFL — to remain in the locker room to demonstrate their concern about social or political issues. But no Eagles players did that, either.)

Instead, White House staff quickly threw together a half-assed patriotism spasm as a replacement. Most who attended were interns and government employees. One of the elements of this pointless jingoism jubilee was a performance of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” a song that the President* demonstrably does not know the lyrics to. Of course, you probably do know the words — or you could learn these new lyrics. Either way, please sing along, won't you?

The leaders of the G7 nations came to a summit in Charlevoix, Quebec (that’s in Canada). It was more like a meeting of the G6 leaders to which a certain short-fingered vulgarian arrived late, then left early. The United States threatens tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Canada’s position has always been clear: U.S. tariffs will mean retaliatory Canadian tariffs on U.S. goods. But after leaving the summit, the Cheetoh-dusted Queens-born serial bankrupt whined via Twitter, lying that this was a nasty surprise.

The G7 gathered last week in Quebec to talk about stuff that could ruin ’em

And six of them worried about one latecomer whose blunders and gaffes could be doomin’ ’em

The host made it clear that commodities might get expensive for outfits consumin’ ’em

“The United States has moved forward with significant tariffs on our steel and aluminum.”

He expressed his dismay the Canadian way, being honest, and saying politely

That Canadians view the new tariffs askew: “Canadians, um, did not take it lightly.”

He said he’d explained that the U.S. refrained from such measures because the resulting

Disputes about trade our alliances frayed and, what‘s worse, ”It‘s kind of insulting.”

And the fuss would compound animus, would confound both of us, and that he would give no ground

We’re polite, can be kind, but push hard, and you’d find “We also will not be pushed around.”

But screwing up trade was exactly what made Trump cling tight to his asinine worldview

And a blunder so massive from this horse’s ass of a president, it’s just “what I do.”

In a fine fit of pique, the poor, petulant freak resorted once more to his Twitter technique

From his plane (Air Force One), Donnie wasn’t quite done, and “on Twitter he called Trudeau dishonest and weak.”

So, this dumbest of men, would he do it again? How’d he rate this disaster?

“On a scale of zero to ten, I would rate it a ten.”

You’re probably pretty sick of the burnt holiday chestnuts that get played and played again at this time of year. They to start earlier each time around. They still don’t appear before Halloween yet, but they reliably start a day after. Prolonged exposure to the severely narrow range of seasonal favorites doesn’t make them easier to take. It's another reminder that familiarity breeds contempt.

Music is a large part of what makes this time of the year what it is. There are carols, various secular numbers, and the Christmas album is mandatory for every musician or performer at some point in his or her career. There are some possibly well-roasted but not yet completely burnt chestnuts you can enjoy while decorating the tree, dogging eggs, mulling wine, picking at old psychological and emotional scars, seething with barely-contained fury or simply bitterly resenting family and friends.

If you’re one of few people who still plays or thinks in terms of albums, there are a couple of reliable items. The 1963 classic A Christmas Gift for you from Philles Records used to be one, but its status may have changed, given what became of Phil Spector. Enjoyment depends on grooving to the Ronettes’ work without thinking of the screwball at the mixing console. James Brown cut three Christmas LPs, and the 1995 James Brown’s Funky Christmas is a best-of distillation of all three. And, of course, there’s the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s 1965 soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, remastered in 2012, the same year it was added to the Library Of Congress’s National Recording Registry.

Whatever your seasonal soundtrack, it must include “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie,” Walt Kelly’s version of “Deck The Halls.” (Most of you sprats is prolly too young to know that Kelly write and drew a politically pointed satirical comic strip called Pogo, featuring anthropomorphic animals that lived in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp. It was the Doonesbury of its day. Among Kelly’ many achievements were his characters’  magnificent malapropisms and mangling mondegreenery they visited on well-known songs, such as “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

          Row, row, rover both

          Jetly don extreme

          Marilyn, Marilyn, Marilyn, Marilyn

          Lie fudge Esther theme

Christmas was always a big deal in the Swamp, and carols other seasonal selections featured prominently in its celebrations. Favorite numbers included “Good King Sauerkraut,” who looked out on his feet uneven, or "MacTruloff” — “Conifers stay of crispness MacTruloff sentimie a parsnip Anna Pantry.” And the one number that always came up in late December was “Deck Us All with Boston Charlie.”

Jazz vocalese trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross cut a version in 1961, but it’s really just a “churchy” take on the first verse bracketing some scatting. (Lambert, Hendricks & Ross recorded “Twisted” in 1959. Annie Ross wrote it and cut the original version in 1952. Joni Mitchell introduced subsequent generations to it by covering it on the 1974 album Court And Spark, in which Cheech Marin describes the twisted narrator as also by observing she’s also "flip city, boobie-shoobie.” Elvis Costello named one of his pre-Stiff bands Flip City after that interjection.)

“Deck Us All With Boston Charlie” is definitely preferable to the original. It’s more fun to sing, and it’s a litmus test for identifying people of a certain type; mainly, the type who know “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie,“ with all — or whatever — that implies.

Why not sing along with this crew of anonymous parlor warbler calling themselves The Walt Kelly Memorial Choir, directed (and possibly accompanied) Roger May in 1981.

Christmas is about repetition; doing the same wonderful things over and over and over every single year and calling it “tradition.” Some people aren’t prepared for Christmas until they’ve watched It’s A Wonderful Life, or hummed along with Bing Crosby’s last-gasp duet with an x-ray scrawny and coke-addled David Bowie, who intensely disliked “Little Drummer Boy” and wrote his part with the show’s musical director immediately before taping the now-iconic sequence we now get simultaneously misty over and weirded out by every year.

Even folks who don't know a plie from a grand jets won’t let December slip past without reveling again in the magic of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovshy’s Nutcracker. If you just want the hits and the hooks and don’t have an evening or matinee to spare, there’s Brian Setzer’s economical jump blues orchestral seven-minutes-and-change highlights package.

Too long? Too many instruments? Yearn to enjoy Tchaikovsky’s majestic melodies played on a tinny tack piano with eight bars of twanging surf guitar and the world’s cheapest drum kit? You want B. Bumble & the Stingers’ “Nut Rocker.”

“But this is the interweb instant age,” you moan. “I need something faster, with an edge of boozy Irish-American  menace, a nut rocker that makes me worry — just for a moment — that its title might be literal.” You need the briefest, most belligerent bar-fight version, courtesy of the Dropkick Murphys.

Still with Christmas and Irish heritage, laugh your way through the holiday with Denis Leary’s Christmas special, or shed a tear or two into your Jameson’s as the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl sing “Fairytale Of New York.”

The Guardian’ Dorian Lynskey reported 25 years after its debut about the song’s difficult two-year gestation. the BBC tried to edit the song, fearing it would offend people, excising “you cheap, lousy faggot,” eventually splitting the difference, running the tidied-up version on BBC 1 and the original, unedited, on BBC 2.

Erstwhile member of the late, lamented Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, David Wall, wrote a fine number honoring the Sons of Abraham we have to thank for practically every scrap of holiday jingle-bellery there is, every Christmas ditty.

Maybe cheer and jollity aren’t your default Christmas mode. I’m not suggesting moping and snarling. (It’s no way to get through the holidays — take it from one who knows, having wasted a number of Christmases years trying both options, singly and in combination.) But you could try some music that’s a little more low-key and reflective; not obviously Christmassy, but set in this part of the year and telling some kind of Christmas story, even a bleak, out-of-left-field one. 

Or try establishing a brand new Christmas song, and wonder, as Crow T. Robot did on Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Satellite Of Love, “how long before it becomes a standard?”