After two years of lobbying, wrangling, polling, contests and whatnot, the Seattle NHL franchise owners unveiled the name they’ve chosen for their puck-slapping posse.

Walt Disney World reopens even as new cases of coronavirus spike in Florida. Remember: it’s a people trap run by a mouse.

Wondered why this movie was so extravagantly praised when it was released. Stanley Kubrick’s dying four days after finishing the five-year ordeal of making it probably had a lot to do with that. Reviewers ascribed all manner of important themes and depth and seriousness to the picture that is nowhere in evidence in this overwrought exploration of, uh, the marriage of Nicole Kidman and Li’l Tommy Cruise (staring at Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from the cover of People magazine with their dead eyes) or Kubrick’s impressions of an obscure 1926 novel, possibly. But maybe a two-hour-and-forty minute movie just wasn’t the right form for the material. Maybe it could’ve worked better as a half-hour sitcom. You make the call.

What was supposed to be a triumphant return to campaigning in Tulsa, OK was an embarrassment as only 6,200 people showed up to a venue with a capacity of 19,000. After the “event,” President* Short-Fingered Vulgarian returned to the White House, video of which demanded suitable musical accompaniment.

Please give generously, won’t you? Without your support, irretrievably stupid, talentless people will make videos of their hideous, inexcusably expensive McMansions featuring their hired friends while not giving a nickel or any assistance to anybody fighting or affected by covid-19.

“Hey, hey, counterfeit fake — history wants you, they made a mistake.”

—They Might Be Giants

—

The daily White House coronavirus briefings would be a lot more useful if only the adults in the room who know what they’re talking about did the talking without interruptions from President* Short-Fingered Vulgarian and his mealy-mouthed minion, Marshmallow Mikey.

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.