Uncle Scoopy's world-weary musings about naked celebrities, sports, humor and other important, manly things.
Most people thought that Patel would be the next major administration figure out the door. I don’t think the markets were counting on Gabbard leaving for a completely legitimate personal reason. Patel is still considered the most likely to be gone by year’s end.
Some news reports say that her stated reason is a pretext, that she wanted out because of her opposition to the Iran attacks, and that Trump wanted her gone for the same reason.
There is a 2010 film called Dark Shields which virtually nobody has seen (no votes at IMDb, no external reviews).
But what caught my eye was the cast of characters. Check out the last name on the list.
From the comments:
This begs a question, probably not the first time it’s been asked, where did “Uncle Scoopy” come from? My guess, you once owned a Baskin Robbins?
It’s Scoop, as in a news exclusive, not as in an ice cream shape.
Just before my internet days, I was wondering around the world doing marketing analysis for various oil companies. In my reports back to the office, my serious analyses and observations were always accompanied by the reports of a fictional reporter that I created, a certain N. Robert “Scoop” Parking who supposedly traveled with me, and told of his foreign experiences through his own eyes, those of an ignorant good ol’ boy from Texas. His first name was actually No. His momma named him No Parking so he would always have a sign designating his parking space, like a big shot. Of course he was from Texas, where a double first name is required by law, so No Robert Parking became “No Bob.” When he decided he was a famous travel correspondent, ala Charles Kuralt, he needed a more distinguished name than No Bob. After all, nobody called the other guy Chuckie Kuralt. So our boy became N. Robert Parking. He added “Scoop” because he was a reporter, and that sounded like a big-time reporter name, like in his dad’s old comics. (Scoop Scanlon worked as an investigative reporter for a newspaper called the Bulletin in DC comics during the late 1930s and early 1940s.)
So that’s how N. Robert Parking became “Scoop.” Because I played first base in my softball leagues, the name seemed appropriate for Greg as well, and it stuck.
When I started my first web page, I basically lifted the name of the Fun House as a play on, and tribute to, a TV special called “Uncle Andy’s Funhouse” (Andy Kaufman), the obvious direct inspiration for Uncle Scoopy’s Fun House. That was the first time that “Scoop” had undergone the metamorphosis to “Scoopy,” and it happened only because it fit the meter in place of “Andy.”
In the first year or so, the Fun House was written by Scoop Parking in his character voice, but people have a difficult time with that kind of parody. They think that the things said ironically, in the words of a character you’re making fun of, are what you truly believe. Even Stephen Colbert had a problem with this on his old show, when he would get inundated with mail and comments from people who really believed he was an ignorant, right-wing bigot. And I don’t have the fame or subtlety of Stephen Colbert, so I just decided to drop the character voice and write as me. The old persona was soon forgotten, and I’m guessing that nobody reading these words even remembers those days, but the moniker endured.
The Scoop, like the Dude, abides.
She was most famous for having “accidentally” shot her boyfriend, Olympic skier Spider Sabich. She probably killed him in anger, but she got lucky at the trial. The prosecution bungled evidence that would have established that she was high on cocaine, and police mishandled her diary, which contradicted her claim that she and Sabich were happy together.
Even without that evidence, her jury should have convicted her of reckless manslaugher, but her jurors were not much smarter than OJ’s. Longet claimed the gun accidentally discharged as Sabich was showing her how it worked, but forensics showed that the gun was four to six feet away from him when it was fired. Moreover, they were in the bathroom, an unlikely venue for a gun safety lesson. The jury did find her guilty of negligent homicide, and she got the official celebrity jail term – 30 days, to be served on weekends when she was available!
According to SNL, she then organized her own professional skiing tournament, so she could shoot more top skiers. Accidentally, of course.
For you younger readers, SNL used to be edgy.
Long, long ago.
That ended when Michael O’Donoghue left after season three. Lorne did hire Mister Mike back a couple of times, but it was never the same. (Although props go to Will Ferrell for the 1998 Neil Diamond sketch, which was very much like an O’Donoghue concept.)
(She did no nudity that I know of)
Bill Maher on last night’s show, discussing Sean Hannity’s interview of Trump.
I don’t wanna say that Hannity lobs a lot of softballs, but today he was made an honorary lesbian.
Some of you know that I had a weird near-brush with a President of the United States. I never met the man, but in the calendar year of 1966, both Donald Trump and I were students at Fordham University. Some of my friends and acquaintances were in classes with him, or had played some sandlot sports with him, so he entered my world, but as nothing more than a drive-by mention.
The excerpt:
“The person who best symbolized my animal house years at Fordham was Fat Joe. When I was a junior, he had already graduated, but he still came by the dorms every night to drink with us, to chew the fat, and to play cards. The following year brought more of the same, presumably because he had neither friends nor options. Silly Lenny, who was my friend and Fat Joe’s former roommate, explained that Joe had not always been fat. He had been a svelte and athletic 160 pounds as a freshman, but had gained close to a hundred pounds by the time I knew him. We asked Fat Joe how he could have gained so much weight, and he attributed it all to constipation. By his own admission, therefore, he was totally full of shit. He was completely correct in that assessment.
Fat Joe used to brag to us in crudest terms about his love life, portraying escapades that would make Casanova seem like a monk.
“I know right away when a woman wants it, Wolf, I can smell it.”
We found his claims highly unlikely for two reasons.
* First, because he spent seven nights a week playing poker with us;
* Second, because he was Fat Fucking Joe.
Shortly before graduation, our conclave of animals convened to vote for the “douchebag of the year,” as we had every year. For the seniors among us, this marked our final chance to participate in this solemn and time-honored ritual, so we felt as if we were fulfilling our sacred duty to memorialize not merely that year’s biggest douche, but the biggest douche we had known in our time as comrades. Each voter had to list ten names in ranked order. The Pecker, who had arrogated to himself absolute authority as our election official, was forced to tear up Rudy Cassoutie’s ballot because Fat Joe’s name was not to be found anywhere among the ten nominees. Rudy was our chum, but he obviously had to be disqualified, given that Joe was not just a big, fat, fucking douchebag, but was the biggest, fattest, fuckingest, douchebaggiest guy in the history of Fordham University.
And that was no small achievement, given that Joe was in the same Fordham class as Donald J. Trump. ”
In the unlikely event that you enjoy this kind of crap, you can buy the book here. Fair warning. You probably expect it to be funny, and some of it is, but you probably also expect it to take nothing seriously, and in that respect you will be disappointed. It is funny and sad, as if written by Nabokov without the talent.
To be fair, I should note that Trump was not a fat guy at the time. The obesity came later. He played a varsity sport (squash!), was known even then as a solid golfer, and was said to be a total stud at many intramural sports. One classmate recalled a story of Trump punting a football 50 yards while wearing his street shoes.
I don’t think some of these things are strange at all. A few are good advice.
The Austrians in particular are pretty casual about non-sexual, incidental nudity, and I had to give my Austrian visitors some of the same tips that this link considers strange. I learned this after I had visitors from Austria who changed into their bathing suits in a public park in Texas. They did not try to go swimming naked, nor did they walk around naked, they simply took off all their clothing and put on their bathing suits in full public view. This was meaningless to them, but rather more meaningful to the nearby Texans.
There are nude beaches along the Danube. I never considered that a big deal when I lived in Vienna, and got used to seeing the naked bodies from the road, but I never got used to seeing the naked bodies ON the road. The bathers would wear their street clothing for the drive to and from the beach, park on the streets, take off their clothes while next to their cars, then lock all their clothing and valuables in their autos. This meant they were naked on the side of the street, then naked on the walk to and from the car. I always found it weird to see naked people just wandering on public streets.
And they have no prohibition against taking a pee against a tree in a wooded, public area.
Everything I described is reasonable in any sensible world, which shows you why those “strange” warnings are necessary when Austrians (and others) expect the USA to be part of the common-sense universe.
Toward the end of February, the nation’s average gas price per gallon was lower than the comparable period in any of the past three years. In just a short time, it went crazy, and is now higher than the past three years and running close to a dollar more than last year.
In March, the benchmark on West Texas Intermediate went from $67.05 to $99.53, an increase of almost 50% in one month.
Gee, something must have happened. I wonder what.
Bill Maher had a good line line on this topic. He said, “Nobody can afford gas. Gas prices are so high that Tiger Woods had to crash his bicycle.”
So it has become the Trojan War!
I thought the war with Iran meant that we would be fucked. It turns out to be the opposite.
As Oscar Wilde once said, “The only thing worse than getting fucked is not getting fucked.”
Or words to that effect.
The play, “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)” was written by Anna Ziegler. It opened at the Public Theater in March, 2026. In this contemporary feminist retelling of the Greek tragedy, Antigone has an abortion, in defiance of the law of her anti-choice uncle, King Creon.
Susannah Perkins played Antigone.
Video (not mine, of course).
The original version of Antigone was written by Sophocles about 2500 years ago, so the copyright has probably expired. That original story has nothing to do with abortion. It is as follows:
After a civil war over the throne of Thebes, two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, killed each other in battle. Their uncle Creon consequently became king. He ordered that Eteocles, who defended Thebes, receive an honorable burial, while Polyneices, who attacked the city, must be left outside to rot as a traitor.
A prophet eventually told Creon that the gods were angry with his decision to deny burial rites to Polyneices, since they had ordained those rites and they are, you know … gods. Creon ignored the prophet, which is never the smart play in ancient stories. In ancient Greece, that was the equivalent of betting on the Washington Generals to beat the Globetrotters. By the way, that prophet was the local blind man. The goddess Athena had blinded him after he accidentally saw her naked, but she offered him workman’s comp in the form of prophetic abilities. The gods would always hire the handicapped, but deaf and mute guys never got chosen as prophets because they either couldn’t hear or couldn’t transmit the divine instructions, so the blind guys got all the drachmas in the fast-paced, high-paying field of prophecy.
Creon’s niece, Antigone, sister of both slain warriors, believed that she had to follow the divine requirement to anoint her brother with burial rites. Creon thought that she should obey him instead since, as King, he was the law. He was the Judge Dredd of his own time. Antigone did not give Creon a “like” on his ancient Greek Instagram page, buried Polyneices ritually, and was arrested. Creon sentenced Antigone to be entombed alive in a cave, leaving her just enough food so that he technically wasn’t killing her, thus avoiding the wrath of the easily-duped gods.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, Antigone had been engaged to Creon’s son, who was also her first cousin. The Greek gods were not real sticklers on incest unless it involved a parent and child, in which case, hoo-boy, did they send down curses upon the offenders. You’ve heard of King Oedipus, the “Oedipal complex” guy, the original motherfucker. In another play by Sophocles, Oedipus unknowingly gave his own mom a ride on the ol’ love-log. When he figured it out, he blinded himself from the shame, and eventually went into exile. The pension system in ancient Greece was remarkably poor, even for kings, and the gods were displeased with him over that whole mother-fucking thing, not to mention the fact that he also killed his own father, so they refused to hire the blind Oedipus as a prophet. He was therefore relegated to the second-most common profession for blind guys: begging.
Well, our girl Antigone was actually the daughter of that same Oedipus, so you might say that incest … er … ran in the family, and she had no problem deciding to marry her cousin. But Antigone killed herself in that cave, which meant that Creon had simultaneously caused the death of his niece and his future daughter-in-law. Creon’s son was understandably grief-stricken to realize that his dad had caused the death of his cousin/fiancee, so he also killed himself. Creon’s wife, seeing her beloved son dead, then killed herself as well.
Creon, left alone with his own grief, started to wonder whether he may have overreacted a bit.
The ever-wise Greek Chorus ended the play by saying, “Ya think?”
I have rarely been surprised to hear that somebody was gay, but the title of this link is decent clickbait, so I thought I’d get at least one surprise. Maybe some manly mofo like Charles Bronson or Samuel L Jackson or Yogi Berra?
Wrong!
Really? Sean Hayes and Jim Parsons are gay? Who could have dreamed?
How did they miss Paul Lynde?
From the comments:
I’ve heard rumors, just rumors mind you, that Charles Nelson Riley was gay.
Also, to the author of the article on his use of the word “celebrity,” I will quite the late, great Inigo Montoya:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.