It is the 25th anniversary of Uncle Scoopy’s Fun House!

(Well, it might be today. It was in November of 1995. So let’s say today, since I happened to think of it.)

That’s a long time. It started in Bill Clinton’s first term. That’s a lot of editions – somewhere around 9000. I’m not sure how many editions there were in 1995 and 1996, because I couldn’t write it every day back then. I was traveling internationally in those 14.4 modem days, and there were plenty of places with no internet connections, or connections so slow they were useless. I tried, but I just couldn’t write my crappy little “e-zine” in relatively remote and primitive places like Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea and Indiana.

Sorry, Hoosiers. I’m just fuckin’ witcha.

But we have published an edition every day, seven days a week, for the last 23 of those 25 tours around the sun. I say “we” because three other people besides me have published the daily fun house, although I have contributed in some way every day. On the days when I didn’t assemble the page, I contributed a column, or links, or movie reviews and/or collages.

For trivia buffs, the other three guys who assembled and wrote the front page:

  • Tuna, now deceased, a computer professional from the San Francisco area, who only wrote about 15 pages at the very end of 1999, but contributed his comments and collages to thousands of pages. (He created about 100,000 collages.) In addition to  celebrity imaging, and running a hosting service, he was a brilliant photographer.
  • The Realist, an infrequent contributor, but an avid fan and a neighbor of mine in Austin, who left Texas to become an Ivy League assistant professor in the frozen north. He wrote the page for about a month when I was traveling with my two youngest kids. I don’t hear from him any more. It has been fifteen or twenty years since our young genius left for the north, so I suppose he is probably a full professor by now.
  • Scoopy Jr., my oldest son, another Austinite, who wrote the daily page for about three years (close to 1000 pages) while I concentrated exclusively on movie collages and reviews.

As for this page, Other Crap, it’s a real Johnny-come-lately by my standards. It has only been around for 17 1/2 years!

From inside another thread:

I wonder if Brainscan and other digital artists know about new tools like “Gigapixel AI” and “DAIN” using AI to upscale old video … particularly the big implications of “remastering” VHS/laserdisc/web dl’s of rare erotic/softcore features:

overview

Gigapixel AI video

DAIN

——–
From the comments:

A Digital Conversion Miraculously Clarifies a Historic 1896 Film, “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station” to Look Like It Was Shot Yesterday

Final list:

Aimee Garcia, Lucifer s4e6
Aimee Lou Wood, Sex Education s1e1
Alexa Demie, Euphoria s1e1
Alicia Vikander, Earthquake Bird
Alison Brie, GLOW s3e3
Amber Heard, London Fields
Anna Paquin, The Affair s5e1
Anya Chalotra, The Witcher s1e3, s1e5
Arienne Mandi, The L Word Generation Q, s1e1
Ashley Gallegos, The L Word Generation Q, s1e1
Bella Heathcote, Strange Angel s2e3-5
Betty Gilpin, GLOW s3e4
Cara Delevingne, Carnival Row s1e3
Carla Gugino, Jett s1e5
Caroline Vreeland, Red Handed
Charlotte Hope, The Spanish Princess s1e1
Chloe Dykstra, Diminuendo
Christie Herring, Bloodline
Cleo Pires, Legalidade
Dakota Johnson, Suspiria
Debora Nascimento, O Olho e a Faca
DeWanda Wise, She’s Gotta have It s2e1, s2e5, s2e9
Dira Paes, Divine Love
Dora Madison Burge, Bliss
Elena Anaya, Jett s1e2
Ella Purnell, Sweetbitter, s2e1
Ellen Page, My Days of Mercy
Emily Browning, American Gods s2e5
Emily Browning, The Affair s5e1
Emily Meade, The Deuce s3e3
Emma Appleton, Traitors
Erin Moriarty, Driven
Freya Mavor, Twice Upon a Time, s1
Gaite Jansen, Jett s1e2-3
Hanni Choi, Warrior s1e7
Hannah Murray, Charlie Says
Ilfenesh Hadera, She’s Gotta have It s2e1
Irene Jacob The OA, s2e5
Isabelle Grill, Midsommar
Jemima Kirke, Untogether
Jessica Barden, Scarborough
Joanna Vanderham, Warrior, s1e1
Jodie Turner Smith, Jett s1e6
Julianne Moore, Gloria Bell
Julia Schlaepfer, Charlie Says
Julie Ann Emery, Catch 22
KaDee Strickland, Grand Isle
Karla Crome, Carnival Row s1e1
Kate Mara, My Days of Mercy
Katee Sackhoff, Another Life s1e8
Kathryn Hahn, Mrs. Fletcher s1e2
Kelli Berglund, Now Apocalypse s1e1
Kiki Sukezane, Earthquake Bird
Kinsey Wolanski, Slasher Party
Kristen Stewart, JT LeRoy
Logan Browning, The Perfection
Mackenzie Davis, Terminator: Dark Fate
Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Deuce s3e3
Maisie Williams, Game of Thrones s8e2
Manon Pages, The Demonologist
Margaret Qualley, Donnybrook
Margarita Levieva, The Deuce, s3
Mariana Nunes, Divine Love
Marsha Stephanie Blake, Luce
Maura Tierney, The Affair s5e1
Melissa Barrera, Vida s2e5
Mishel Prada, Vida s2e3
Monique Parent, Cuck
Noemie Merlant, Curiosa
Olivia Cheng, Warrior s1e1
Olivia Luccardi, The Deuce s3e1
Paula Beer, Never Look Away
Paulina Gaitan, Diablo Guardian, s2
Phoebe Tonkin, Bloom
Rachel Griffiths, Total Control s1e3
Rosanny Zayas, The L Word Generation Q, s1e1
Roxane Mesquida, Now Apocalypse s1e1
Ruby O Fee, Polar
Saskia Rosendahl, Never Look Away
Scottie Thompson, Crown Vic
Seychelle Gabriel, Get Shorty, s3
Simona Brown, Kiss Me First
Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria s1e1
Tamzin Merchant, Carnival Row s1e7-8
Toni Duclottni, Dolemite is My Name
Virginie Efira, Sibyl
Yetide Badaki, American Gods s2e8

Results here.

As per my previous warning, I banned a user from commenting today because he was using multiple identities. The extra identities are generally known as “sock puppets” in internet parlance. (I guess I actually banned nine users, since that’s how many different identities he was using to post.) He had already been using eight different identities at the time I issued the general warning to stop. At one point, he had used three different identities in the same thread.

Not only did he not heed the warning, but he created another new identity!

You will notice that some previous threads will seem confusing with all of his comments expunged, since some of your responses will disappear when the “parent” comment disappears. I figure it doesn’t matter since people almost never go back to review old threads anyway.

To repeat: I don’t care what kind of opinions you post, as long as they are civil, but stand in there and defend them as yourself rather than hiding behind sock puppets.

The Fun House site was born in November of 1995. The first edition contained only one naked celebrity – the iconic picture of Madonna hitchhiking naked. When the site hit ten years of age I thought it was unbelievable enough, but 24 is an entire lifetime – long enough for a newborn who came into the world when I began the site to have finished grad school, perhaps to have married and sired children of his own. The Fun House is three years older than Google, nine years older than Facebook and YouTube, eleven years older than Twitter.

Uncle Scoopy’s Fun House has been updated every day since it began. To my knowledge, it is the longest-running blog on the internet to be updated every day. That is not to say the longest running in my category, but in ANY category. Those very primitive early editions are lost like tears in the rain, but the back issues that are still available date back to April of 1998 (when they were still primitive) – and even that goes back to before the dawn of Google!

Other Crap is a mere child compared to the Fun House. (Well, it is literally a child of the Fun House. Before it became an independent site, Other Crap used to be a part of the daily Fun House blog, as were the Ballpark and the Movie House.) It appears to me that the oldest Other Crap posts date back to June, 2003, so it is a mere 16 years old, younger than Google, but still older than Facebook, YouTube or Twitter!

Tempus fucking fugit, man.

Note to commenters:

“A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term, a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who spoke to, or about, themselves while pretending to be another person.”

Wikipedia

Stick to one identity, please.

Just like the situation with the Russians from that troll farm in St. Petersburg, it is possible to see where your posts come from, especially if you don’t even make an effort to hide them through a VPN or something. If you have two identities posting from the same computer, stop that. I’m not going to out those of you doing that (the rest of you can probably guess already), and nobody makes you use your real name, but try to have some backbone and stick up for yourselves. And above all, do not type a comment under one name and then have one of your sock puppets say something like “good point.” That is entirely lacking in integrity.

From the comments:

“FYI – I don’t know if you know this, but Imgur’s policy can be worked around easily. Right click on whatever direct link it is, and simply paste that direct .png link into the address bar in a new tab in your browser. No account necessary. Hope that helps.”

“Or just right click the url and open in new tab. Even easier with mobile. Just click, hold, and open in new tab.”

“No need to go through the extra steps of opening a new tab, and then of copying and pasting the link there. All you need to do is add “.png” to the original link as it appears in your original tab.”

I’m still going to avoid them when possible, and try to warn you when the link is too good to pass up, but cut me some slack, cuz I screw up now and then.

One of our visitors led us to this, which explains imgur’s new policy Bottom line: they will not support NSFW subreddits, and they will not support any NSFW images without requiring a log-in.

I reckon that means I will stop messing with imgur images. I’ll keep an eye on Reddit to see what they do, and I’ll also look around for other hosts with a minimum of bullshit.

You may have seen that 2160p videos, aka 4K videos, are starting to appear more and more often in The Fun House and elsewhere.

If you are frustrated by playback on VLC and elsewhere, join the club. I’ve read every tip on the internet for playing 4K on VLC, and there are many of them, but none of them worked for me. The videos would stutter, or the video playback would stop while the audio continued, or the audio and video would be out of synch, or the playback would just freeze. I just assumed that my old but trusted computer just didn’t have the necessary processing power.

Then I got frustrated, and ambitious to try other solutions. It turns out that Media Player Classic handles any 4K video with ease. MPC is an extremely light-weight, open source media player, which unfortunately, runs on Windows only. It supports all common video and audio file formats. I’ve had it sitting on my computer for years, but rarely used it, because VLC always did the job. Until now.

However …

Since the MPC itself comes with no native 4k playback ability, you will have to install the K-Lite Codec Pack before you can play 4K videos with it. This is a breeze. MPC uses very little processing power and, once you install K-Kite, handles 4K like a dream. It is the cat’s pajamas. (And it also takes good 3840×2160 screenshots using ALT-I.) I tip my cap to the open source guys who keep MPC and K-Lite up to speed and gain nothing from doing so!

Perhaps some of our contributors will offer other solutions for other operating systems.

UPDATE 2: “If you’re using iOS, grab the app ‘Infuse’ — it handles the files without issue.”

OR

“I have the VLC mobile app installed and use that to watch them when using phone/tablet. It’s slightly inconvenient because VLC opens to play the file and then you have to exit it to get back to the browser but it works (i.e. it doesn’t just play in the browser like with desktop).”

OR

“I always just choose to ‘show desktop version’ in the android Chrome app, and they work.”

(Thanks for the tips, everyone!)

UPDATE: Other Solution. I’ll just use both the direct link and the container file when I can find it.

==================

Original post:

I wasn’t aware that gfycat was using a format incompatible with mobile. Thanks for telling me. I won’t link to any more of those .webm files unless I also offer an alternate.

(Too bad, because they look great on a computer, and – because it is a direct link to a media file – they contain no bullshit links or pop-ups.)

To anyone who gets them downloaded, can’t play them, and knows how to rename files: they are just simple .mpg files. There is no trick to them. You can rename them .mpg or .mp4 and they should play fine.

On my desktop computer: (1) they play automatically on the internet in Chrome with no special plug-ins; (2) when I play them from a file on my hard drive, I just set Media Player Classic or VLC as the default “open with” and they will play without being renamed; (3) when I load one to the Fun House, which is extremely rare because there is usually a better version available with sound, I rename them .mpg so that they should work universally.

As far as mobile goes: Weird!

I normally use an emulator to simulate Android phones as well as two common iPhones, and these links play fine on all three. Just now I switched to a different emulator, and again everything worked fine.

They are just .mpg files with a proprietary extension, so you’d think they would be playable by anything that can play .mp4s. You can probably set your mobile device to interpret them properly. One viewer offered: If you’re using iOS, grab the app “Infuse” — it handles the files without issue.