From the 19th century.

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I suppose this Hallmark version of Christmas never existed. It’s one of those memory implants, like the ones in Blade Runner. We seem to share a common delusion – or maybe it’s a common hope.

The reality of the holiday makes me happy and sad. I think I said all I had to say in my 2006 review of the film Joyeux Noel

Human societies seem to have some common rules, one of which is that the young men must kill or be killed for whatever causes the old men have brainwashed them to believe. This is a movie about one of the few times in our history when the warriors told their overlords to stuff it, if only for a moment. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1914, during the first sacred holiday of the first world war, the trench warriors set aside their rifles, ignored their orders, and walked into the no-man’s land to celebrate Christmas with their enemies.

As the film pictures it, the Germans first put Christmas trees up just above their sight lines, with signs that said “you no shoot, we no shoot” or “Merry Christmas.” Then the Scots brought out their ubiquitous bagpipes and played Christmas carols. The French broke out their champagne. The men shared pictures of their loved ones. They roasted some pigs together for Christmas dinner, and their chaplains held Christmas religious ceremonies. They cleared no-man’s land of the rotten corpses, buried their fallen comrades, and helped their enemies to do the same. When they had cleared away their dead, they played soccer where the bodies had been strewn.

This movie is a fictionalized account of the events of those two days. Peace broke out in many places along the lines, but this story centers on three lieutenants who commanded about a hundred men near a small French village, as well as two German opera singers who were there to lift the men’s morale. While the fictional portions are not especially compelling, and the historical details are not entirely accurate, the film is poignant because the basic non-fictional core is so powerful that it hides any flaws in the film’s fictional overlay. I suppose one could make a better movie on the same subject, but this is a very good movie indeed. It was nominated for the foreign language Oscar as well as the corresponding BAFTA. Don’t let those nominations create an image in your mind of a typical foreign film. Most of the dialogue is in English, and anything important which is not in English can be understood without sub-titles, since it involves many men communicating to one another without a common language. I watched the film this morning, on Christmas Day. If you can do that and keep your eyes dry, you’re a much tougher hombre than I am. You may not even be human.

If the part of the movie which shows the Scots wearing their kilts and carrying their bagpipes in the frozen trenches seems to stretch your credulity, let me offer a story which, while it does not prove that such a thing did happen, shows that it could have. I had a girlfriend from Central Asia who used to be a mountain-climbing guide in that region. If you have ever climbed, you know that you do not want one extra ounce of weight on your person. If you can make it up and down a mountain with two crackers and a vitamin pill, you do not want to add a third cracker. Every yard up the mountain seems to double the weight of the load. Yet one of her tourists insisted on carrying bagpipes up a Central Asian mountain so he could play them at the summit!

The real-life aftermath of the unpremeditated Christmas truce was shock among the high commands of the opposing nations. Nothing could be more disastrous for the world’s sense of proper order than to have young men of opposing countries declaring their comradeship and refusing to kill one another. Why, it’s downright socialist! Generals on both sides declared this peacemaking to be treasonous, and all the lingering goodwill generated by the spontaneous outbreak of peace had been completely quashed by Easter of 1915, when the men would again resume the unquestioned killing of one another on behalf of their common God, who had apparently issued the two sides contradictory orders. Before Armistice Day in 1918, an entire European generation was lost. Some thirty million young men would return to their homes wounded. Their mothers would be envied by the ten million others whose sons did not return at all.

In a time when many young men are still dying for old men’s causes, it gives some hope to look back on that Christmas of 1914 and recall the foot soldiers who proved that, despite all indications to the contrary, we do have brotherhood within us, if only we reach for it.

Festivus is not the most important holiday on my calendar. Number one would be Shatmas (Bill Shatner’s birthday), followed by Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day, followed by Salieri Day. Those are the High Holidays.

But there is also room for celebration elsewhere – so I share some holidays with other faiths, like today’s exercise in Costanza worship, and maybe Zorro Asstrionism, the day when we pray to Saint Sargeant Garcia.

If you are in a place that is not ravaged by war or terrorism, rejoice and give thanks.

If you have a full belly and a warm place to sleep, rejoice and give thanks.

If your loved ones are healthy and happy, rejoice and give thanks

If you are in NATO shipping things to Ukraine, rejoice and give tanks.

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I’m giving more thanks than usual this year because, around last March and April, I did not foresee waking up in another November, but here we are, on the 28th anniversary of Uncle Scoopy’s Fun House. So above all, if you are alive and can still laugh and appreciate the sight of a beautiful naked woman, rejoice and give thanks.

It is so named in honor of the greatest role of my favorite living character actor (since Wilford Brimley died), and my fellow Longhorn, the F man himself, F. Murray Abraham. He won an Oscar for playing the cunning, Machiavellian character of Antonio Salieri, “the patron saint of mediocrities,” and possible poisoner of Mozart. Today is Abraham’s birthday, so happy 84th birthday, you magnificent, Mozart-killing bastard.

To celebrate this special holiday each year, in honor of Abraham’s memorable representation of the sycophantic and hypocritical Salieri, we take this time to honor our loved ones publicly and to their faces, but then to betray them behind their backs and take credit for their achievements.


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“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

As far as we know, the “Salieri killed Mozart” legend is total bullshit, as is just about everything else people think they know about Salieri. (The New Yorker covered the modern misperception of Salieri with an excellent and detailed article.)

Just a few years after Salieri’s death, Pushkin wrote a short play («Моцарт и Сальери») that gave a public, artistic airing to an idea that previously had been merely a rumor in intellectual circles – that a jealous Salieri had poisoned Mozart. The great Pushkin was a brilliant wordsmith, the Shakespeare of the Russian language, some say the very creator of modern Russian, but he was no historian, and was also a hot-headed ass whose own character flaw was … (wait for it) … jealousy. In English we often use the expression “fatal character flaw” with no regard for the literal meaning. In Pushkin’s case, his propensity for jealousy was indeed fatal. (He died in a duel involving his wife’s flirtations, or lack thereof.) Although Pushkin undoubtedly pictured himself as Mozart, the crass interloper in courtly society who was somehow blessed with an immeasurable genius unattainable by the Tsar’s favorites, his version of Salieri is a rather obvious subconscious representation of himself, a man so consumed by jealousy that he was willing to kill his rival.

Pushkin’s accusation would undoubtedly have exited the 20th century as an obscure piece of literary and historical trivia, but the idea that Salieri may have poisoned Mozart was resuscitated and cemented into our modern consciousness in the 1970s. The culprit was “Amadeus,” a celebrated play that became Oscar’s “Best Picture.” As a result of the popularity of that story, many people believe the legend today, notwithstanding a complete lack of any factual or logical basis for that belief. In reality, all of Mozart’s closest friends and associates continued to associate cordially with Salieri after Mozart’s death, and none seem to have suspected Salieri of foul play.

Mozart and Salieri were rivals, to be sure. That rivalry even included a head-to-head battle during an opera composition competition held by Emperor Joseph II in 1786. Mozart lost that competition. Contrary to the entire basis of Amadeus, it was actually Mozart who was the envious one. He was jealous of Salieri’s success, and of Salieri’s position as the emperor’s favorite. This was no literary fabrication, but was based on the hard evidence of Mozart’s own words, as expressed in letters to his father.

Wikipedia picks up the story:

In the 1780s, while Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father Leopold wrote in their letters that several “cabals” of Italians led by Salieri were actively putting obstacles in the way of Mozart’s obtaining certain posts or staging his operas. For example, Mozart wrote in December 1781 to his father that “the only one who counts in [the Emperor’s] eyes is Salieri”. Their letters suggest that both Mozart and his father, being Austrians who resented the special place that Italian composers had in the courts of the Austrian nobility, blamed the Italians in general and Salieri in particular for all of Mozart’s difficulties in establishing himself in Vienna. Mozart wrote to his father in May 1783 about Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the court poet: “You know those Italian gentlemen; they are very nice to your face! Enough, we all know about them. And if [Da Ponte] is in league with Salieri, I’ll never get a text from him, and I would love to show him what I can really do with an Italian opera.” In July 1783, he again wrote to his father of “a trick of Salieri’s”, one of several letters in which Mozart accused Salieri of trickery.



Vaguely related anecdotes:

1. The F in F. Murray Abraham doesn’t stand for anything. His name is Murray Abraham, but he thought that sounded undistinguished and pedestrian, so he added an initial to make him sound special. He chose F in particular in honor of his dad. In theory, it should be written without the period, since F is just F and not an abbreviation, but he spells it with the period.

2. The great genius’s name, the part between the Wolfgang and the Mozart, was not Amadeus at all. In birth it was Theophilus. His baptismal certificate reads: “Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.”

Theophilus is Greek for “beloved of God.” Amadeus is simply a direct translation of that expression into Latin. Mozart himself used the French, German and Italian translations at various times. (Amadé, Gottlieb and Amadeo, respectively.) He generally signed his compositions “Wolfgango Amadeo.” A benefit concert for Mozart’s family was held in Prague on December 28, 1791, billed as “Concert in memory of Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart.” His earliest biographers also used Gottlieb as a middle name. As far as we know, Mozart never once referred to himself as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, although he did jokingly sign correspondence in pseudo-Latin as Wolfgangus Amadeus Mozartus. Somehow, in the 19th century, Mozart’s little jest became his posthumous reality.

The weirdest variation of all appears on his marriage registration, where his name has been mysteriously Anglicized to “Adam” – Wolfgang Adam Mozart! Scholars assume that is a misspelling of “Amadé.”

3. Tom Hulce played Mozart in the film version of Amadeus. If he were cast today, he could play Steve Bannon.

It is Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day in the Year of Our Shatner 92.

A repeated word of warning for those who attend: do NOT try to smuggle giant pink penises into Japan from other countries. In addition to the fact that you would face the dire legal penalties for giant penis smuggling (imagine Midnight Express, except with giant penises), there are simply good reasons why you should not do so.

  • First of all, they would not be sacred. Only giant pink Japanese penises have been blessed. That would be like trying to pass off a bottle of Ozarka from 7-Eleven as Holy Water in the Vatican.
  • Second, the Most Honorable Japanese Department of Agriculture and Giant Genitalia is concerned that introducing a new strain of giant pink penises into their eco-system could cause the native strain to mutate or die out. It’s the same reason why you can’t take frogs to Australia.

The main thing to remember is that there is simply no need for you to take such a risk. There are plenty of giant pink Japanese penises to go around, and that means a fun day for one and all.

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On a serious note –

Amid all the merriment, we should never forget the true meaning of Giant Pink Japanese Day.

As one commenter noted last year:

“Maybe Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day means a little bit more.”

Hemingway once wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” The same is true of Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day, for no matter where we roam, there is always a Giant Pink Japanese Penis inside all of us.

When I made my trip to Russia in 2013, I wrote a novel. Yes, that was a very stupid way to pass my time when I had traveled to St. Petersburg with a beautiful young woman, but I had to deal with a severe moral crisis, and I did it in the way I know how.

My indecision about that relationship led me to examine the first 23 years of my life, and I suppose I learned a lot about why and how I trapped myself in a terrible situation. I had an unusual life between ages 3 and 23, I would say it was completely unique (as far as I know), and I suppose all of that may explain why I am always so timid about so many things. My mom and dad are gone, and I have never shared the details of my early childhood with anyone, not my best friends, not my ex-wives, not my children, so before I wrote this novella, none of the incidents existed except in my memory. Now at least they are on the record.

I will not claim to be James Joyce, but I can spin a yarn purty fair, and I have some pretty good ones to spin. I finished the work off in this week of illness by adding an epilogue.

There’s no Uncle Scoopy material except for my customary tip o’ the hat to Romy Schneider, so don’t expect any discussions of sex and nudity. It’s really kind of a sad story. There are also some laughs and there was a lot of fun in my life, but I always ended up getting humiliated in some way – physically, sexually, financially. After a few anecdotes, you’ll get the idea that they never seem to have a happy ending. I was like the Moll Flanders of Howdy Doody fans.

Anyway, those of you who basically know me because we’ve been sharing these blogs for decades may be interested to see what I was like in my years growing up in Catholic schools, which I never wanted to go to and my parents never wanted to send me to. I think you can guess that I have few kind words for the Catholic Church or its representatives.

Here is the link. (Blaise Sparrow is me.)

My tentative timetable is to resume the Fun House on Saturday, when I no longer have to take my antibiotics.

The drugs are doing their job. I am symptom-free at the moment, but the cure is almost as bad as the disease. This is one harsh drug. The list of side-effects is “all of the above,” and the rules I have to follow are unreal. Some examples: no exposure to daylight (perfect drug for ailing vampires); no antacids of any kind; no dairy products; no caffeine.

Anyway … Saturday. Maybe.

Well, I can’t tell you that I’m ready to run a marathon, but I’m more optimistic. Unfortunately, the infection is still in my system so I’ll be having good days and bad until that is solved. I may or may not be posting because although I feel great now, I felt like I might die just three hours ago, and I may feel that way again in three more.

Many thanks for all the kind words and well-wishes you guys wrote.

—–

I learned that there are certain benefits to a forced vacation:

1. I’m an old fart who literally had not taken a day off for something like 9,000 consecutive days. Maybe a rest was due. Preferably not an eternal one.

2. My other obsession besides my websites is my lively career in senior athletics. I don’t know if any of you follow my Facebook page under my real name (you really should not because it is as boring as a Terrence Malick film festival), but if you do, you know that I finally won my personal grand slam last year – a medal in the singles events of all four “racket sports” in the Senior Olympics. Pickleball is considered a racket sport even though no rackets are involved. I guess that’s because it’s basically badminton + tennis + a whiffle ball. Anyway, I play several hours every day, so I chew Ibuprofen like M&Ms, and my legs still ache all the time. My left knee is so painful I can’t walk up the stairs some days. Well, guess what? Turns out that two weeks of doing nothing has completely restored my legs. So I guess that’s a silver lining.

3. Also, it turns out that dyin’ is a great way to lose weight. I’m back to my youthful shape.

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Anyway, be sure to keep supporting the guys who bring me traffic:

Popoholic, the complete optimist, my main man. How can you not love him? He never met a woman unworthy of at least four exclamation points! The internet can by a dark road to travel, and that makes his enthusiastic site a refreshing way-station.

Drunken Stepfather, the complete opposite of Popoholic – cynical and sometimes outright mean. I don’t know if I ever agree with his rants, but since he’s obviously writing in a character voice, I’m not sure whether he agrees with his own rants. (He writes several other sites, and they are quite straight. DS is his “bad as I wanna be” project.) Many of you dislike him, but he’s a guilty pleasure for me. Sorry to admit it guys, but he often makes me laugh, and sometimes I even have to admit he has a good point. I’m not sure if you know it, but celebs are only a portion of that site’s raison d’etre. DS truly manages to assemble an uncanny collection of videos for his special themes. Given the time he spends updating his other blogs, he must live on a planet with longer days

When a woman wears a see-thru, Hot Celebs Home does’t run one pic of the event. He’ll have every possible pic. Really a thorough guy.

The Nip-Slip is also into swanky bullshit events, but he digs really deep to find events I’ve never heard of.

I don’t need to tell you what The Booby Blog and The Booty Source are all about. The names kind of give them away.

Celeb Stalker doesn’t make many posts, but the ones he makes are huge – like 900 pics + some vids


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My thoughts today, as I celebrate Christmas in warmth and comfort, are with the people of the Ukraine as they shiver in darkness, and with the terrified young soldiers on both sides of that battle line. That leads me to recall the great Christmas Truce of WW1.

Human societies seem to have some common rules, one of which is that the young men must kill or be killed for whatever causes the old men have brainwashed them to believe, but there were a few times in our history when the warriors told their overlords to stuff it, if only for a moment. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1914, during the first sacred holiday of the first world war, the trench warriors set aside their rifles, ignored their orders, and walked into the no-man’s land to celebrate Christmas with their enemies.

Peace broke out in many places along the lines, involving many men communicating to one another without a common language. As the story goes, the Germans first put Christmas trees up just above their sight lines, with signs that said “you no shoot, we no shoot” or “Merry Christmas.” Then the Scots brought out their ubiquitous bagpipes and played Christmas carols. The French broke out their champagne. The men shared pictures of their loved ones. They roasted some pigs together for Christmas dinner, and their chaplains held Christmas religious ceremonies. They cleared no-man’s land of the rotten corpses, buried their fallen comrades, and helped their enemies to do the same. When they had cleared away their dead, they played soccer where the bodies had been strewn.

The real-life aftermath of the unpremeditated Christmas truce was shock among the high commands of the opposing nations. Nothing could be more disastrous for the world’s sense of proper order than to have young men of opposing countries declaring their comradeship and refusing to kill one another. Why, it’s downright socialist! Generals on both sides declared this peacemaking to be treasonous, and all the lingering goodwill generated by the spontaneous outbreak of peace had been completely quashed by Easter of 1915, when the men would again resume the unquestioned killing of one another on behalf of their common God, who had apparently issued the two sides contradictory orders. Before Armistice Day in 1918, an entire European generation was lost. Some thirty million young men would return to their homes wounded. Their mothers would be envied by the ten million others whose sons did not return at all.

As I write this on this Christmas Day in 2022, when many young Ukrainian and Russian men are still dying for old men’s causes, it gives me some faint hope to look back on that Christmas of 1914 and recall the foot soldiers who proved that, despite all indications to the contrary, we do have brotherhood within us, if only we reach for it.

“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

Shakespeare, Henry V (Act IV, Scene III),

It was on October 25th in 1415 that Henry V of England led his troops to a resounding victory over France at Agincourt, although the English were greatly outnumbered (perhaps 4-1; estimates vary), and fighting on French territory. Making victory even less likely was the fact that his troops were basically on foot, forced to confront armed and mounted knights.

Henry had one important thing on his side – longbows. He had some 5,000 archers and they had plenty of arrows. He also had the ideal setting for his archers to confront the French cavalry. The battlefield was a narrow, muddy opening between two dense forests, basically the worst possible conditions for the French attacks. The mud impeded the French advances, while the dense woodlands made it impossible for the French to create flanking or rear attacks. The terrain basically funneled them into direct charges, straight into hail after hail of English arrows. The horsemen who successfully approached the English lines found that the archers were protected from cavalry charges by sharpened, outward-facing stakes. In the narrow opening afforded them, with piles of bodies to their rear, dense forests on either side, and thousands of well-sheltered English longbowmen in front of them, the French could neither charge nor retreat effectively. It was less a battle than a slaughter. The English were merciless. Historians estimate that the archers fired at least a hundred thousand arrows that day, perhaps as many as a half-million. The piles of French bodies were so high that it was difficult to identify exactly who did die that day. Some of their wives had to find out over time, simply from the fact that their husbands never returned. The bloodshed didn’t even end with the eventual French retreat. The English killed the vast majority of their prisoners, sparing only those of the very highest ranks. Henry even ordered the killing of some men worth ransoming.

Here is a concise description of the action:

Per Wikipedia:

“The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. The list of casualties, one historian has noted, “read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation”. Among them were 90–120 great lords and bannerets killed, including three dukes, nine counts and one viscount, also an archbishop. Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable, an admiral, the Master of Crossbowmen, Master of the Royal Household and prévôt of the marshals. 3,069 knights and squires were killed, while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle “cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society. Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendôme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre.”

In contrast, Shakespeare contended that the English casualties amounted to 29 men, of which 25 were commoners.

(Cough. Cough.)

OK, that was a bit of bullshit, let’s call it chauvinistic exaggeration by the Bard of Avon. He was not a historian, but a literary man sucking up to the English monarchy. The English probably lost about 300-400 men, but only a small number of those were magnates. Exaggeration aside, it was one of the greatest military successes in human history, since it not only destroyed a numerically superior force and most of its key officers, but it humbled and weakened France so completely that within five years the French royals had declared that the English Henry was the heir to the French throne!

(He would die about two years after that agreement without ever having sat on that throne.)

More important than any of that to us today is that the victory inspired one of Shakespeare’s best monologues, as cited above and shown below. Ol’ Shakey often used his monologues to deliver melancholy, philosophical ruminations about the fragility of life, but this was different. It was a stirring call to action for country and brotherhood.

Jefferson was invited to attend a celebration of the nation’s 50th birthday, but he was not well enough to travel. He responded to the invitation as follows:

“Let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of the rights of man, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

In an amazing coincidence, John Adams and Jefferson, co-signers of the Declaration of Independence, rivals, second and third presidents of the nation, died on the same day – and that day happened to be the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence! Their deaths, 196 years ago today, left Charles Carroll as the last living co-signer of the Declaration. (He would live six more years, to age 95.)

Have a good 4th!

You can keep your bowl games and your In Memoriam segments. The best way to celebrate a New Year is to look at the best nude scenes from the previous one.

We’ve had ups and downs over the years. There have been spectacular years like 2014, when Alexandra Daddario, ScarJo and Margot Robbie all graced us with their full-frontal debuts. It was such a good year that I had to expand the list to 25 scenes in order to include some great scenes like Elizabeth Olsen in Oldboy. And there have been total duds like 2008, when lower frontal nudity had almost been declared extinct.

In general, 2021 was one of the best years overall for the quality of the nudity, but not for the familiarity of the performers. There was no great full-frontal standout from a big name or in a familiar production, so nothing matched the three performances I mentioned from 2014, but there is not a dud in the top ten, and our voters generally gave the great scenes the recognition they deserved, from the biggest releases to the most obscure foreign films. As I re-watched the scenes this week, I was again dazzled by the beauty of Vivi Koenig, the full-blown insanity of Agathe Rousselle and Daria Polasik-Bulka, the masterful writing and photography featuring beautiful Lea Seydoux, the incredibly lengthy exposure of Odessa Young, the dedication of Sarah Shahi, the unearthly figure of Sydney Meyer, the daring of Maryse Miege … and that’s just a sample. Some of those, and other brilliant scenes, couldn’t even crack the top 20. In fact, there are some great nude performances that didn’t even make it to the final poll: Paulina Gaitan and Daphne Patakia come to mind immediately.

I rarely give in to the “popularity contest” aspect of the competition. In general, I try to seek out a truly meritorious scene rather than a popular favorite. In my typical process I would have voted for Odessa Young or Daria Polasik-Bulka, but this year I didn’t vote with my head. I let other body parts determine the selection, and I realized that Sydney Sweeney creates as much of a stir in me as she does in everyone else. I joined many of you in giving her a record-breaking victory, in which she garnered as many votes as the next four choices added together.

Here is the 2021 recap, including a link to brief film clips from each of the winners.

Here is a list of the top tens from the entire Scoopy era (1995-2021, the lifespan of the site), with links to the full recaps for each individual year.

Here is a mini search engine that goes through all of the lists (and nothing else).

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For reference:

Here is the final numerical tally from the 2021 voting.

Here are the results of the semi-final poll, which determined the candidates in the final selection. It’s kind of interesting to see how the list differed from the final results. Some mediocre scenes, like Daddario in The White Lotus, got a lot of attention when people could offer an opinion on every scene, but when voters were forced to name only their very favorite scene, the so-so entries fell by the wayside, replaced by … well, by great scenes worthy of being called the best of the year. (Note: three late entries or omissions were added to the final poll. One of those, Odessa Young in Mothering Sunday, deservedly made the top ten!)

Here is the original list of nominees, with links to pics and/or clips from every performance.

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And most important, let’s all have a happy new year and a happy nude year in 2022. Thanks to all of you for participating in the poll, and for reading the “other crap” that appears here every day.

No, I’m not in Hawaii. Just wishing I was.

Elsewhere:

Joyeux Noël

Frohe Weihnachten

God Jul

Feliz Navidad

С Рождеством

Merry Christmas

Those are the only ones I know by heart. (And I don’t really know much French, but that one is commonplace.)

The Norwegians really have a gift for minimalism. (“God jul”). I loved to watch old American movies in Olso with Norwegian subtitles. There’d be a cowboy movie where the sheriff would deliver some prolix exhortation like “Let’s vamoose, boys, and cut ’em ornery varmints off at the pass,” and it would be translated into Norwegian as “Kom.”

I found the opposite in Italy. A film character might say, “Why not?” and the Italian equivalent would require a full page of translation, followed by an ellipsis, with the translation continued on the next slide.

And, of course, your lusted ones as well as your loved ones. May they never meet on this most sacred of holidays.

Well, OK, maybe National Orgasm Day is not more sacred on the Scoopy Calendar than Shatner’s Birthday or Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day. That’s debatable, depending on which specific branch of Scoopianity you subscribe to. It’s like Christians arguing whether Easter is more sacred than Christmas.