Tuesday

Contact junior by writing junior@scoopy.com. Contact Scoopy by writing unclescoopy@msn.com. Contact Tuna by writing tuna@scoopy.com Send submissions to scoopy@scoopy.net

To see and use all the Funhouse features, you need Netscape 6.+ or MSIE 5.+.

• Netscape 6.2.2 is available free for download or on CD.
• MSIE 6.0 is available free.

Jamón Jamón (1992), translated Ham Ham is a Spanish sex farce that gives new meaning to the words bad taste and over the top. In short, I loved it. The story centers around Penélope Cruz in her first nude role. She is daughter of the woman (Anna Galiena) who runs the local cathouse/cantina, works in the men's underwear factory owned by the richest family in town, and is pregnant by the son of the factory owners. He promises to marry her, but his domineering mother, Stefania Sandrelli, will do anything to prevent the marriage. She hires underwear model/ham factory worker/wanna-be bullfighter Javier Bardem to seduce Cruz. Things are not nearly that simple however. Seems Cruz' fiance has been using her mothers services for years, as had his father before him, and Sandrelli falls for Bardem. All this wackiness, and we haven't even mentioned nude midnight bullfighting, or running to Cruz' house naked when they are caught.

IMDB readers have this at 6.5 of 10. As near as I can tell, it enjoyed a limited US release, and is available in the US and UK on VHS. Ebert is enthusiastic at 3 1/2 stars, but Berardinelli was luke warm at 2 stars. I have to love any film that shows breasts several times from a very young Penélope Cruz, breasts from Anna Galiena, and bush from Stefania Sandrelli, is full of sex and outlandish humor. The only bad news is that the DVD transfer could have been better, If the genre is foreign sex farce, this one is a B-.

Movies:

You have to give Warner Brothers a tip of the hat for commitment. They hoped to make Cindy Crawford a star, and they didn't try to sneak her through in a minor role in a no-budget indy, ala Porizkova in Thursday. Instead, they gave her the romantic and action lead in a $50 million dollar movie, despite her complete lack of acting experience. They might have made a better decision to deposit her in a $10 million dollar picture, spend a million on acting lessons for her, and pocket the other $39 mill. Fair Game is an actioner with lots of very impressive explosions, stunts, computer gimmickry, and helicopter shots, but no soul at all, and very little brain. It responded to the $50 million investment with only $11 million at the box. They also might have gotten more people into the theater with a couple of nice clear nude scenes instead of all the teases. For example, she manages to take several showers in this film without showing any flesh. When she finally gets her shirt off, it is in a moving boxcar, at night. Bah, humbug.

• Cindy (1, 2)

Other crap:

1. Great reference site - all the most commonly misheard and missung song lyrics.
2. Sort of an interesting addition to the "what did we know before 9/11" discussion. This is a government report from September 1999, archived in the Library of Congress, which says: "Al-Qaida's expected retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile attack against al-Qaida's training facilities in Afghanistan on August 20, 1998, could take several forms of terrorist attack in the nation's capital. Al-Qaida could detonate a Chechen-type building-buster bomb at a federal building. Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House"
3. Quoted from today's issue of : The Smoking Gun   When Playboy playmate Elisa Bridges died in February, the magazine posted an online tribute to the 28-year-old, noting that the "entire Playboy family" was "stunned and saddened by this terrible loss." Playboy claimed that Bridges, who was Miss December 1994 and has appeared in scores of subsequent special issues and videos, died of "natural causes."  Turns out that was not quite accurate. In fact, the Los Angeles coroner concluded that Bridges's death resulted from "acute intoxication" from heroin, methamphetamine, Demerol, and Xanax.
4. My personal hero, Joe Bob Briggs, has created the world's most complete list of nicknames for breasts.
5. We've been talking about some of the strange choices in John Cusack's career, including two consecutive total suckfests (Serendipity and America's Sweethearts). Apparently, he is moving back into risky choices again. His next starring vehicle is a film about the young, fun-loving Adolph Hitler. This article calls it Springtime for Hitler without the irony. In all fairness, it is a serious movie about how Hitler developed his anti-Semitism, and is scheduled for a Christmas release. (Note: Cusack does not play Hitler, but rather Hitler's art teacher)

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that I inexplicably determined there might be something of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Back to "Crazy Love", this time it's Bo Zena who is forced to have sex with her boyfriend while the native tribe watches.

• Bo Zena, topless (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

For our "Babes in Bondage & Peril", something a little different today....Back in the sixties & seventies Detective Magazine covers were a place for us to see scantily clad beautiful women in bondage or peril sadly those days are no more. We present an assortment of magazine covers from days gone by.

• Assorted babes in bondage (1, 2, 3, 4)

J.Lo's Queer Moment
Superstar Jennifer Lopez's gay pals got a huge kick out of her playing a lesbian assassin in her new movie. J.Lo says her friends immediately wanted to know all they could about her character in Gigli. Lopez says, "They were like, 'What kind? Are you a lipstick lesbian? Are you hard-core?' And I was like, 'I'm just going to play her like an average person.' I guess in a way I'm having my queer moment."

Also today...a photo of Cameron Diaz. You'd probably like her outfit...

BIRTHDAYS - (Almanac/Wireless Flash)
Cher turned 56 Monday. Cher denies that she only dates younger men, saying she'd date an 80-year-old, but older men never ask her out.

* Why settle for Cher when you can have Anna Nicole Smith?

* An 80-year-old could ask her out, and she wouldn't raise an eyebrow...But then, she CAN'T raise an eyebrow. MP<

Scoop, in another episode of that same short-lived series, Canadian actress Teri Austin (formerly of "Knot's Landing", and recently featured in the Fun House for "The Vindicator") did what I believe was the only clear topless scene of her career. Any chance that the 'capper who did The Felicity Huffman 'caps also has Austin's scenes?

-J

Subject: Infomercial babe:

Scoop, does anyone out there have 'caps of Darla Haun, the informercial hostess from Tony Little's Gazelle Freestyle late night informercial?

I know, I know... that informercial is just as dreadful as Tony himself... but Darla is a dream to watch. I've checked her bio at the IMDb and is says that she has done a couple of skin flicks. Can you help?

Jr's reply.
Yup, I know who you're talking about, and yes, she's quite a hottie. We do have three collages of her topless, showing her bum, and some frontal exposure in scenes from the movie "Married People, Single Sex" (1993) (She was credited as Darla Slavens and is listed in Volume S of the Naked Encyclopedia).

She also has a credit for the Skinemax movie "When Passions Collide", but I could not find any 'caps of her from that one in our archives.