Cantankerous exes (George Clooney, Julia Roberts) fly to Bali for an almost shotgun-like wedding between their daughter Lili (Kaitlyn Dever) and some local smoothie (Lucas Bravo). Ol Parker‘s Ticket to Paradise is treading a familiar romcom path, but HE approves of Parker and Daniel Pipski‘s snippy, snappy dialogue.

Two months ago I noted how the shrimp-sized Dever (5’2″) is way too short to be the daughter of Clooney and Roberts (5’11 and 5’8″ respectively). I also pointed out that she doesn’t bear even the FAINTEST resemblance to her on-screen parents….not even a little bit. I’m sorry but tallish parents almost never produce Hobbitt-sized children. I’ve stood next to Clooney three or four times so don’t tell me…he’s at least 5’10 if not 5’11.

Whether or not President Donald Trump tried to grab the wheel of a Presidential SUV on 1.6.21 in an attempt to steer the vehicle toward the U.S. Capitol is a matter of…what’s the expression?…small potatoes. Ditto whether or not Trump grabbed “the clavicles” of Secret Service guy Bobby Engel, the head of his security detail. It’s an amusing story and obviously indicative, if true, of Trump being subject to angry, dopey, volatile behavior, which many people have observed and commented upon for years.

But over the last 24 hours Team Trump has focused on Cassidy Hutchinson‘s second-hand recollection of this episode as an attempt to call her credibility into question. There are some out there who actually believe that Hutchinson lied yesterday…”lied“! Soldiers in the pro-Trump attack machine are calling her “Amber Heard II” and “Jussie Smollett.” But there isn’t a hint of fanciful logic supporting the idea that Hutchinson made this up out of whole cloth.

Hutchinson was told this story, she said, on 1.6.21 in the White House office of Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato, and in the presence of Engel, who was “sitting in a chair, just looking somewhat discombobulated and a little lost,” Hutchinson said.

Here’s the pertinent transcript:

LIZ CHENEY: “And was Mr. Engel in the room as Mr. Ornato told you this story?”

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: “He was.”

LIZ CHENEY: “Did Mr. Engel correct or disagree with any part of this story from Mr. Ornato?”

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: “Mr. Engel did not correct or disagree with any part of the story.”

LIZ CHENEY: “Did Mr. Engel or Mr. Ornato ever after that tell you that what Mr. Ornato had just said was untrue?”

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: “Neither Mr. Ornato nor Mr. Engel told me ever that it was untrue.”

The N.Y. Times is reporting that “Secret Service officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, [have] said that both Mr. Engel and Mr. Ornato would dispute that Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of the car or that Mr. Engel was struck.”

Plus The Daily Beast is reporting that the Secret Service was never contacted by the Jan. 6 committee ahead of Hutchison’s testimony.

So what gives?

It would appear that either (a) Hutchinson is half-fibbing, or (b) Ornato and Engel are half-fibbing. But c’mon, no bullshit…what are the odds that Hutchinson would invent the SUV story?

Hutchinson said under oath that Ornato told her the particulars and that Engel was there listening and that Engel didn’t at that moment dispute Ornato’s account. If she was flat-out fabricating Hutchinson could be 100% certain that these guys would step up and say so. Does it make the slightest bit of sense that she would invent this story? To what possible end? She knew she would be immediately busted if she lied, and she’s not apparently the delusional or psychotic type so why would she invent this wild tale?

This is Rashomon, apparently. Check with the ghosts of Akira Kurosawa and/or Martin Ritt. Either Hutchinson is some kind of shifty, side-stepping liar in this instance, or she’s 100% dead certain that Ornato told her about Trump grabbing the wheel and then grabbing Engel’s throat, and has honorably passed this along to the best of her recollection.

Ornato and Engel…who knows? They’ve either persuaded themselves that this particular tale wasn’t passed along quite this way, or perhaps that it’s better for the sake of their own careers and/or the Secret Service’s reputation to dispute the story.

Salon‘s Igor Derysh, posted on 6.29: “Multiple officials who disputed parts of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson‘s testimony to the Jan. 6 committee were seen by some in the Trump administration as the president’s ‘yes men,’ according to Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who wrote a book about the agency last year.”

I know that it makes no sense at all for Hutchinson to have fabricated the story. What half-sane person would recite a FLAT-OUT LIE on national television, knowing full well that the guy she claimed had told her the story in the first place (plus the guy it happened to and who overheard the original telling) would step right up and call her bluff?

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If you’re going to throw plates and food at the wall, you can’t be petty about it. You can’t do it like a three-year-old, pounding on your high chair and tearing your bib off. You have to do it like a gorilla, and the meaning behind it can’t be “whaaah….you’re not being loyal to me!” The meaning has to be “I’m throwing plates of food in order to assert my alpha dominance…Huey Long said ‘every man is a king’ and I’m the king around here.”

It also helps if the plate thrower is young and muscular and throbbing with brute sexuality. It isn’t quite the same if he’s fat and jowly and in his mid ’70s.

Incidentally: I’ve never done that “yanking a tablecloth” thing without disturbing the dishes and cups and cutlery atop it. One reason being that I never trusted my ability to pull it off. Nor have I ever seen it performed live.

Gawker‘s Fran Hoepfner posted this story around noon today. I laughed immediately, but why didn’t Hoepfner speculate about the kind of movie that Barbie might be, as I did a day or two ago?

Seven days ago Jordan Ruimy reported that Woody Allen “is close to shooting his next film in Paris, possibly in October. It’s said to be a darker drama in the same vein as Match Point [with a] French- and English-speaking cast. There are no additional plot details, or a title for that matter.

“This would be Allen’s 50th film as a director” — and possibly his last, according to what the 86-year-old Allen told Alec Baldwin earlier today — “so you know that he’ll want to knock it out of the park.”

Two hours ago Deadline reported similar news — shooting in Paris in the late summer or early fall — after listening to the Baldwin-Allen interview. But without any mention of the forthcoming film having any alleged Match Point-like similarities.

No discussions of the notorious Dylan Farrow incident that allegedly occured in August 1992, and no mention of HBO’s Allen vs. Farrow doc that explored that incident, and no mentions of Baldwin’s horrible Rust incident that resulted in the accidental death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Just wave it through, let it go, to each his own, fine with me, etc.

Imagine being so hung-up and plugged-up and Trumped-up that you, an XX chromosone person, actually approve of poor double-X-ers being put between a rock and a hard place if they happen to decide that being pregnant isn’t a viable option.