Ok. Who made this? It's genius. pic.twitter.com/EkwG2RlDel

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 5, 2020

Willamette Week‘s Matthew Singer is reporting that an 8.6 film festival screening of Kindergarten Cop in Portland has been deep-sixed over concerns that the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger crime comedy is…well, I’m not entirely sure.

The cancellation has something to do with the Ivan Reitman film being (a) too friendly to cops, which is seen as a bad thing in today’s Portland protest climate, and because (b) cops are seen as negative influencers upon kids of color in schools, especially in terms of the dreaded “school-to-prison pipeline.”

The festival is called Drive-In at Zidell Yards, and it’ll run between 8.6 and 9.27. It’s being managed by the Northwest Film Center in association with the Portland Art Museum.

The only thing I remember about Kindergarten Cop is that little kid asking Schwarzenegger’s Detective John Kimble, who’s pretending to be a teacher in order to get the lowdown on some stolen drug money, if he might be suffering from a tumor, and Arnold replying “it’s not a tumor!”

The Universal release was filmed 30-plus years ago in Astoria, Oregon. NWFC had planned to show the film “for its importance in Oregon filmmaking history,” according to a release. But Cop was yanked after Portland author Lois Leveen (“The Secrets of Mary Bowser“, a novel about a female slave who becomes a Union spy) trashed the film on Twitter, claiming that it conveys a damaging message regarding children of color and “over-policing.” Or something like that.

“National reckoning on overpolicing is a weird time to revive Kindergarten Cop,” Leveen tweeted. “There’s nothing entertaining about the presence of police in schools, which feeds the ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline in which African American, Latinx and other kids of color are criminalized rather than educated. Five- and six-year-olds are handcuffed and hauled off to jail routinely in this country. And this criminalizing of children increases dramatically when cops are assigned to work in schools.”

“It’s true Kindergarten Cop is only a movie. So are Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind, but we recognize [that] films like those are not ‘good family fun’. They are relics of how pop culture feeds racist assumptions. Because despite what the movie shows, in reality schools don’t transform cops. Cops transform schools, and in an extremely detrimental way.”

Thanks to Sasha Stone for stepping in like a good pal and swatting this miserable gnat.

I almost certainly would have suffered through Mulan if I’d seen it at a theatrical all-media screening. I’ll probably suffer a bit less watching it on a streaming feed. I’m good — indifferent — either way. Disney-fied family fare has been the bane of my existence since I turned 16 or 17.

“I’m done running from my past.”

Watch the final trailer for Marvel Studios’ Black Widow, streaming November 6 for $29.99 exclusively on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/Z6VSYLDTWz

— Disney+ ➐ (@thedisneyplus) August 4, 2020

In an interview with Gray Television Washington Bureau Chief Jacqueline Policastro given earlier today, Orange Plague said “he’s ready to step in to provide another stimulus to Americans struggling during the coronavirus pandemic.” Trump quote: “The plague came in, and it’s not the people’s fault. So we want to take care of them.” He said, according to Gray TV, that he wants to extend the $600 weekly benefit to unemployed Americans.

I distinctly recall talking about “Yosemite Sam” with a friend when I was seven or eight years old, and calling him “Yoze-might Sam”. My friend looked at me oddly and said it’s “YoSEMitty Sam…YoSEMity!”

VIRAL MOMENT: President Trump has trouble pronouncing ‘Yosemite.’ pic.twitter.com/nkMAev0udW

— The Hill (@thehill) August 4, 2020

It wasn’t as if Blake Lively hadn’t been warned about flirting with the lore of the Antebellum South.

Eight years ago certain eyebrows were raised when she and Ryan Reynolds got married at Boone Hall, a former slave plantation in South Carolina — a foolhardy thing by current standards but slightly less so eight years ago.

Roughly two years later refinery29’s Leeann Duggan posted a tut-tut piece titled “Oh, No: Blake Lively Pens An Ode To The Pre-Civil War South.” And three years ago The Daily Beast‘s Amy Zimmerman posted an article called “Blake Lively Needs to Get Woke — and Fast,” which partly referenced Preserve and the Antebellum thing.

So now Reynolds is gallantly taking a bullet for his wife, even though the slave plantation ceremony was totally her idea. This is what good husbands do, of course.

The 43-year-old actor addressed the eight-year-old controversy in an 8.4 interview with Fast Company “It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” Reynolds said. “What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy. Years ago we got married again at home, but shame works in weird ways.

“A giant fucking mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesn’t mean you won’t fuck up again. But re-patterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”

Inner Reynolds plea during interview: “Please, descendants of Pol Pot and Maximilien Robespierre…don’t come after Blake and me! We’re good family people, we have kids, we just wanna make movies and entertain and make a lot of money and have a good time. Please don’t shut us down…please.”

Does Hollywood Elsewhere need to be re-patterned? Where could I go to have it done? Are there any re-patterning specialists I can hire in the West Hollywood area?

Yes, the Boone Hall nuptials were on the insensitive side but get real — 2020 culture is a lot different than that of 2012.

Eight years ago there wasn’t this instant BLM socio-political nightmare associated with Southern plantations. 12 Years A Slave hadn’t even been filmed at that point. Eleven years before the Reynolds-Lively wedding a scene from Peter Chelsom and Warren Beatty‘s Town and Country was partly filmed on a storied Southern plantation. And Forrest Gump, of course, had been filmed on a Georgia plantation eight years before that.

I don’t know how many times I’ve used the phrase “did a tree fall on him?” but several times, I’d say. Today it actually happened to a contractor in his late 50s. I’m very sorry,

Talk about a old-school expression for sudden death. You’re walking along and suddenly a tree falls on you…instant transportation and a transfer of cosmic energy. A reminder that tomorrow is promised to no one and the only way to live is to presume that bad luck can come calling anywhere and any old time.

If I’d been sitting in that white SUV I would’ve heard the crack and snap and whoosh of the falling tree and immediately dropped to the floor. I might’ve been pinned inside for an hour or two, but I would’ve lived.

Posted at 3:22 pm today by N.Y. Daily News reporter Thomas Tracy: “A man sitting in his car in Queens was crushed to death by a falling tree early this afternoon during Tropical Storm Isaias, officials said. The massive tree came crashing down on the white-colored auto, landing across the car’s roof, on 84th Ave. near Smedley Street in Briarwood about 1 p.m.

The #FDNY with #Hatzolah are on scene of a tree that fell on a car at 143-20 84th Drive in #Queens. Hatzolah was working on a patient that was in traumatic arrest and was pronounced dead. #ISAIAS #TropicalStorm #TropicalStormIsaias pic.twitter.com/1fDQxSnUrc

— Yid Info (@YidNetwork) August 4, 2020

You think I want to clear my desk so I can see David Ayer‘s The Tax Collector (RLJE Films, 8.7)? Because I really don’t. I received a link yesterday and I’ve been avoiding it like the plague. Well, not like “the plague” but I can think of 17 or 18 activities I’d rather engage in than watch this damn thing. Six Rotten Tomatoes critics hate it. A friend says it’s “terrible.” Okay, I’ll watch it later today.

The thing that’s getting in my way is that Shia Labeouf, second-billed role as a criminal psychopath called “Creeper”, has tattooed his chest and abdomen for real (i.e., can’t be removed) as way of getting into character.

What kind of a maniac does such a thing? For the rest of his life Shia will have to look at this extravagant, absurdly dominating tat every time he gets out of the shower, and all because he happened to play a malignant monster in a minor David Ayer film.

The tattoo artist is Brian Ramirez of the Reservoir Tattoo Studio, 1154 Glendale Blvd, Echo Park, Los Angeles CA 90026 / 213.908.5249 / email: Utgbryan@gmail.com)

A 32-year gap between a married couple isn’t a problem. As long as the guy is the older party, that is. If Leila George was about to turn 60 and Sean Penn was 28, you know what people would say.

As things actually stand, George — the daughter of The Player costars Vincent D’Onofrio and Greta Scacchi, and born sometime in ’92 or ’91 (nobody’s quite sure) — is the younger, and Penn’s hitting the big six-oh on 8.17.20. They’ve been “dating” since ’16, and tied the knot last Thursday.

Marriage is not about flesh or biology, but about the complementing of spirits. As long as the guy is the older one, and as long as he’s loaded.

One problem: All things being equal, who would want to marry an older dude who smokes? Who would want to live with that awful odor?

In my heart of hearts I’d like to impose a Mississippi Burning payback fantasy upon Orange Plague, Mitch McConnell, Stephen Mnuchin and Senate Republicans who won’t budge on restoring the $600-per-week pandemic benefits. An angry crowd breaking through locked doors and beating these loathsome pricks…not killing them**, but delivering severe pain, boot-kicks, gashes, bruises, swellings, black eyes, blood trickling, etc.

Just a fantasy but if it actually happened? I wouldn’t condemn it. No one would. Some of us would cheer.

From Paul Krugman‘s “The Unemployed Stare Into the Abyss — Republicans Look Away,” an 8.3 N.Y. Times column about how “the cruelty and ignorance of Trump and his allies are creating another gratuitous disaster“:

“Around 1000 Americans are dying from COVID-19 each day…ten times the rate in the European Union. Thanks to our failure to control the pandemic, we’re still suffering from Great Depression levels of unemployment. [And] yet enhanced unemployment benefits, a crucial lifeline for tens of millions of Americans, have expired. And negotiations over how — or even whether — to restore aid appear to be stalled.”

“House Democrats passed a bill specifically designed to deal with this mess two and a half months ago. The Trump Administration and Senate Republicans had plenty of time to propose an alternative. Instead, they didn’t even focus on the issue until days before the benefits ended. And even now, they’re refusing to offer anything that might significantly alleviate workers’ plight. This is an astonishing failure of governance — right up there with the mishandling of the pandemic itself.”

“The policy proposals being floated by White House aides and advisers are almost surreal in their disconnect from reality. Cutting payroll taxes on workers who can’t work? Letting businesspeople deduct the full cost of three-martini lunches they can’t eat? Above all, Republicans seem obsessed with the idea that unemployment benefits are making workers lazy and unwilling to accept jobs.”

** “After all we’re not murderers, despite what this undertaker thinks.” — Vito Corleone, The Godfather.

The COVID death tally “is what it is”? He could restore the $600 weekly to families living on the brink but chooses not to? He offers Ghislain Maxwell a friendly shout-out but adopts a tone of indifference and hostility when asked to comment about the life of John Lewis, whom he doesn’t like because Lewis didn’t attend his inauguration or sit obediently for his State of the Union speeches?

What kind of a deranged, fact-denying, reality-challenged, sweaty-faced, foam-at-the-mouth…?

@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.” @realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.” Swan: “Why can’t I do that?”