The massive Beirut explosion looked like an A-bomb detonation in early 1950s Nevada or Utah, or somewhere in the South Pacific. Apologies to Variety‘s Manori Ravindran, but it reminded me of the montage of nuclear blasts at the end of Dr. Strangelove. We think we have it bad here in the States. Well, actually we do, but not as bad as those poor people who were covered in blood and stumbling around in Beirut yesterday. Ghastly.

In Episode 2 of Spotify’s “The Michelle Obama Podcast,” the former First Lady says that she’s “dealing with some form of low-grade depression” because of the pandemic, racial strife and the “hypocrisy” of the Trump administration.

That’s me — I’ve been low-grade glooming since last March.

Obama tells NPR‘s Michele Norris about her “emotional highs and lows,” and how “exhausting” and “dispiriting” it is to assess endless episodes in which people of color has been hurt or killed. Her depression is “not just because of the quarantine but because of the racial strife…spiritually, these are not fulfilling times, [and] this has led to a weight that I haven’t felt in my life, in a while.”

But not a single word about the increasingly annoying Portland and Seattle protests (to what end?), or about cancel culture or the unwillingness of Democrats to stand up to the Khmer Rouge. Wokesters are not universally admired out there. There’s more to what ails this country than what Michelle mentioned,

Deadline‘s Justin Kroll is reporting that in the wake of playing Mr. Rogers, a Naval Commander in Greyhound, a 19th Century news carrier in News of the World, an ailing inventor in BIOS and Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrman‘s Elvis, Tom Hanks is “zeroing in” on playing Geppetto in a Robert Zemeckis’ live-action retelling of Pinocchio for Disney.

My first thought was that this is like the 70-year-old James Stewart (to whom Hanks has often been compared) starring in The Magic of Lassie (’78).

HE advice to Hanks: I realize Zemeckis isn’t a hack, but never default to family-friendly stuff in your emeritus years. You were doing so well with Greyhound, News of the World and Elvis, and now this. Life is short — keep it hard and real and tell the truth. Play William S. Burroughs. Play a randy university professor who’s sued for sexual harassment by a student. Use your best-liked-actor reputation to play misunderstood “bad guys.”

Kroll: “Although insiders say negotiations are very early, we hear that after reading the script, Hanks has reached out to Zemeckis to let him know he wants to do the film. Disney has always longed for Hanks to play the woodcarver, having approached him years ago when Paul King was attached to direct. That deal was never made, but given Hanks and Zemeckis’ long-standing relationship going back to when they both won Oscars for their work on Forrest Gump, this seems more likely to move forward.”

Startling currents of denial and obfuscation are contained in an 8.5 Hollywood Reporter piece by Lacey Rose, “Jurnee Smollett Is Ready to Own Her Power With HBO’s Buzzy Lovecraft Country: ‘I Don’t Apologize’“:

For the first time Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey) has spoken about the “2019 controversy” swirling around her brother Jussie Smollett.

That’s actually fudging things as her brother’s “controversy” isn’t a matter of unfair gossip or shaky allegations but a six-count indictment of Jussie by a Cook County grand jury, which pertains to Smollett making four false police reports about a hate crime that he allegedly enacted against himself on 1.29.19.

Jussie and Jurnee Smollett.

The “controversy” also includes a 6.12.20 decision in which a judge struck down Smollett’s claim that his February charge violated the principle of double jeopardy.

Jurnee maintains her brother’s innocence in the THR interview. She says “it’s been fucking painful, one of the most painful things my family’s ever experienced — to love someone as much as we love my brother, and to watch someone who you love that much go through something like this, that is so public, has been devastating.”

Jurnee’s implication is that Jussie’s difficulties aren’t of his own making. Life is so unfair, she’s saying, but thank God Jussie is strong enough to handle it — strong enough for the whole family! Or words to that effect.

“I was already in a very dark space for a number of reasons, and I’ve tried to not let it make me pessimistic,” Jurnee continues. “But everyone who knows me knows that I love my brother and I believe my brother.”

Note the sequence — Jurnee (a) loves Jussie and therefore (b) believes him.

Jurnee contends that her support for her brother hasn’t hurt her career. “We are blessed to have a community of people who know him, and know that he wouldn’t do this,” she says. “I mean, fuck, man, I look at him sometimes and I’m like, ‘He’s so strong.'”

Jurnee translation: “Industry people understand that family loyalty always comes first, and that I have no choice but to say I believe Jussie. They get it. They know what I have to say and do. And at the end of the day, none of this shit is on me.”

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