Category: Greetings

The Funhouse Turns 30

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It has now been 30 years since the first primitive edition of that venerable celebrity nudity site, Uncle Scoopy’s Funhouse, appeared on (of all places) AOL. There was exactly one picture – Madonna hitchhiking stark naked. There has been a daily edition every single day since then, except for approximately a month in 2023 when I took some time off to rest and recover from kidney issues.

Thirty years is a long time. I still enjoy finding the new material, and I still enjoy writing a few jokes now and then, but I have to admit that I don’t have as much fire in the belly as I used to, and I sometimes wonder how much longer the whole thing will last. After all, my two oldest sons are old enough to play with me in the Senior Games! When the elderly people in your family are your children, you can’t help but hear that ol’ clock ticking. (No, I have no plan to stop. Why would I if I enjoy it? But there’s always something unexpected like that kidney thing.)

Other Crap seems like my new project – until I realize that even this site is old enough to drink. To be exact, it is now 23 years old. I recently tested some posts from the early 2000s, and very few of them still work. Many lead to domains for sale! What can ya say? The internet keeps evolving.

I know that many of you have been reading my blogs since the 1990s, which is amazing in itself, and I thank you all for that.

Happy Dalton Day

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Today would have been his 73rd birthday.

I’m a hypocrite on this matter. I’m forever touting the merits of Patrick Swayze when I really only care about his performance as Dalton. The rest of his career? Well, he was a terrific dancer, and Point Break is kind of a cool flick in some ways.

So there’s that.

Now back to Road House.

The author of the story and the screenplay for Road House was a man called David Lee Henry at the time, although his real name is R. Lance Hill. He’s another one of those Hollywood disappearance mysteries like Douglas Burghi. Just before Road House, he had written a film directed by Hal Ashby, starring Jeff Bridges. His novel “King of White Lady” was planned to be made into a film in 1979, with Monte Hellman adapting the book into a screenplay, and Francis Ford Coppola directing and producing! The project was abandoned, but still … Ashby, Bridges, Hellman, Frances Ford Fucking Coppola – he was brushing elbows with Tinseltown royalty.

After Roadhouse, another of his scripts was produced into a Steven Segal flick. OK, I grant that he seemed to be moving downward a bit but … there were no indications that he should be counted out.

But then he was gone.

Completely.

“King of White Lady” has been optioned more than once since then, but with no concrete results.

He was in his 40s when his IMDb credits ceased. He’s now in his 80s. We know he’s still in there fightin’ because he recently resurfaced as the plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing MGM of various improper actions involving the recent Jake Gyllenhaal remake of Road House.

It’s that time of year

Scoop, ... 16 comments.

November wraps up today, and I therefore celebrate the 29th anniversary of Uncle Scoopy’s Fun House, the venerable celebrity nudity site that began in November of 1995, and has been updated every single day since, except for approximately a month in 2023 when I took some time off to rest and recover from kidney issues.

Other Crap seems like my new project – until I realize that it is old enough to drink. To be exact, it is now 22 years old. I recently tested some posts from the early 2000s, and very few of them still work. Many lead to domains for sale! What can ya say? The internet keeps evolving.

I know that many of you have been reading my blogs since the 1990s, which is amazing in itself, and I thank you all for that. Hope you’ve enjoyed a good kick-off to the holiday season.

Now on to December and … well, we all know what comes next. In a week or so I’ll start working on the nude scene of the year, so you can offer some preliminary thoughts on that, if you care to.

Happy Thanksgiving

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Trivia:

Believe it or not, the U.S. once celebrated two Thanksgivings because of politics. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving up a week to spur retail sales during the Great Depression, according to the National Archives. Sixteen states refused to accept the change and Thanksgiving was celebrated for two years on two different dates. The decision, called “Franksgiving” by Roosevelt’s detractors, proved so unpopular the president signed a bill in 1941 making Thanksgiving officially the fourth Thursday in November.

Misconceptions:

The Pilgrims did celebrate a three-day harvest festival in 1621, experts say, but there’s no record the Wampanoag tribe in Massachusetts received an official invitation to the party, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Instead, they might’ve crashed it. The Wampanoags, historians believe, arrived ready for battle after hearing the Pilgrims shooting their guns in the air during the festivities. Historical records mention 90 members of the tribe, led by chief Massasoit, then decided to stay for the feast — later bringing the pilgrims five deer to put venison on the menu.

Wait – Booger is 71 years old?

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Happy Booger Day

This is the newest Holy Day of Obligation on the Scoopy Calendar – Curtis Armstrong’s 71st birthday.

Like all of my saints, Curtis makes any movie or show better by his very presence. He started out as the snarky sidekick in almost every single youthploitation film of the 80s: Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, Risky Business and all of the Nerds movies. His characters had names like Ack Ack and (of course) Booger. He continued his sidekicking on the Moonlighting series, supporting Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.

He later matured into more mainstream character parts, including a great job in a non-comic role in Ray as Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic records, and an important figure in the incorporation of gospel, R&B and jazz music into the mainstream.

In addition to his day job as an actor, Curtis is many other things: a game show host and a Baker Street Irregular, for example. Above all Booger is the loveable epitome of all things nerd.

But 71 years old? How can that be?


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“Trump has promised again to release the last JFK files. But experts say don’t expect big revelations”

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Today is the anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination.

President-elect Donald Trump promised during his reelection campaign that he would declassify all of the remaining government records surrounding the assassination if he returned to office.

That release is overdue, isn’t it? It’s been simmering for 61 years.

November 22, 1963. Seeing that date in writing still gives me the chills, even when the year is omitted.

It’s strange to see how unimportant that date is to younger people, even though it remains possibly the most memorable day of our lives for me and my classmates. We were just the right age – old enough to worship JFK as the eloquent, dashing young hero-President who got us through the Cuban Missile Crisis and let his adorable kids play in the Oval Office, but not old enough to be cynical about his recklessness, or his philandering, or anything else that would have shattered the myth of Camelot.

Since he was our unsullied idol, his death was elevated to a Homeric level of tragedy. He was our Achilles, the seemingly invulnerable icon somehow brought down by a cheap shot from a distant coward.

There was no relief from sadness that weekend because we were reminded of our grief by an entire nation echoing our feelings. It was the sole subject discussed by our relatives, our friends, and every talking head on every TV channel across the republic. Normal TV programming was pre-empted by made-for-grief TV. We were bathed in sorrow, immersed in our sense of loss. The limitless resonance of those feelings made that weekend more memorable than the times when I lost my parents or my dearest friends.

When November 22nd arrives, all those memories return as if they had happened last week. For those of us in the early boomer demographic, November 22nd is our generation’s day, more even than September 11th. For me, it reverberates even more than December 25th or July 4th because it is so personal, so particular to our age group and our most powerful, enduring memories.

For at least two generations, more than a century ago, April 14th was that kind of day, and then it wasn’t. I can remember that Lincoln was killed in April because it was when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, but it’s not on the top of my mind that it happened on the 14th, or that it happened on Good Friday. When I see the words “April 14th” written out, it doesn’t produce any reaction.

December 7th was once that kind of day, but the memory no longer stirs us the way it stirred The Greatest Generation. When I see “December 7th,” I immediately recognize its importance, but there’s no emotion.

November 22nd is already fading. For those too young to recall the emotions of that weekend, it’s just the day between the 21st and the 23rd. We boomers will be gone soon, and the date of Kennedy’s assassination, like that of Lincoln’s, will fade from America’s collective memory, absent even a Whitman poem to mark the month.

A site note

Scoop, ... 18 comments.

I’m not one to enforce a lot of rules about what you can and can’t say in the comments, but there is one prime directive: choose one identity and stick with it. No sock puppets.

(And worst of all, don’t use a second or third identity to agree with what you previously said. That can be especially obvious if your English is not perfect and all of your identities make the same grammatical or punctuation errors.)

Also – and this is not a rule, just a suggestion – don’t keep posting the same opinion in every thread. OK, you don’t like HBO or modern Hollywood or male nudity or some other pet peeve. We get it. Those are not baseless opinions; many others agree with you. But you don’t need to keep repeating the points. We already know how you feel.