I had a request to do a more thorough job of capping this film, as the first time though I only did Goldie Hawn. Once I got started, I realized that the Goldie images could also use an update. For those who don't remember the plot, Goldie is a Jewish American Princess whose husband dies on top of her on their wedding night. As she tells her mother-in-law, his last words were "I'm cumming." She is distraught, and is talked into joining the Army by a slick recruiter. Naturally, Army life doesn't come easy to her.

Goldie has some good cleavage and poke throughs, there is anonymous breast and bun exposure, and P. J. Soles shows most of her breasts when she is caught with a superior officer while on maneuvers. I never need an excuse to watch Goldie, but the images, I think, are a big upgrade. Maltin says 3 stars, IMDB readers have it at 6.0/10, and I will give it a C+. Goldie has done work with more serious themes (such as Swing Shift), but this film is fun.

Today's feature: the troubled production of Town & Country or, as I like to call it, Ishtar 2. Possibly the biggest money loser of all time. Budget estimates run as high as $130 million, and it grossed $7 million at the box, opening three years after photographty began. That massive budget happened despite the fact that it's just one of those New York bedroom farces with people talking indoors. I'd love to know where that $130 million went. (Other estimates place the expenditure as low as $80 million, but even so ...)  I wrote much more about it on the review page.

• Goldie Hawn. This one is really Goldie. There are several moments in the scene when you can see her face. This frame just happened to be the best look at her buns. Her butt looks great, but the nudity is an illusion. As the scene continues, you can see her panties.

• Goldie's body double. This one was obviously and deliberately done with a cutaway.

• Nastassia Kinski. Nasti looked completely gorgeous in this film, with and without her clothes. (1, 2, 3)

Encyclopedia update:

• there is a dedicated page for Nastassja Kinski. Link there through the main members' links (Encyclopedia of Naked Celebrities, K section). 
• there is now a new page for Goldie Hawn. Link there through the main members' links (Encyclopedia of Naked Celebrities, H section)

WORDS

in the following, Scoop's comments in white, other people's words in yellow

I've heard a few different people say "pacific" instead of "specific". It  really does sound strange. 'You weren't "pacific" enough.'  I've also heard "for all intents and purposes" come out as "for all intensive purposes".

As for "could/couldn't care less", I've heard quote-unquote "experts" on the radio say that "could care less" is actually justifiable because of the way  it is said. I don't remember the mumbo jumbo they used to justify it, but  I'm sure the points for that side of the argument are floating around somewhere on the internet.

Just because it is really annoying, I thought I'd include an erroneous spelling which drives me nuts because it happens so often: "loosing". Can  anyone spell "losing" properly? That goes for "lose" as well. "I hope we don't LOOSE the game" is used far, far too often. It isn't just confined to social e-mail or letters - I've seen "loosing" and "loose" in prominent  newspapers.

The point about "I could care less" is that it means the opposite of what you really want to say, but meaning the opposite of what you say is, after all, a common trope. It is the same as saying "I'm so sure", where you obviously don't mean that you agree. I guess that means "I could care less" could be OK in spoken English if uttered with dripping irony. Personally, that's how I order my bacon at Denny's- dripping with fat and irony. I even take vitamin supplements that fortify me with extra irony, and Geritol to maintain my irony-rich blood.

I think you should probably still avoid "I could care less". Even if not wrong, it is still trite, and you can think of something better to say. I find that saying "Well, fiddle-dee-dee" is always an attention-grabber.

As for "loose, lose", add that to "their, there, they're" as a Warriner's chapter that most people need to review.

That 'pacific thing is certainly annnoying, and is in the same class of unauthorized "drop the s" contractions as 'post to, as in "I was 'post to go to school, but went to the circus instead."

"Drop the s" contractions are pretty common in Texas speech. A Texas conversation might go like this:

U.T. professor: "the engine i'n't 'post to make that noise?"

Mechanic: "no, it hain't"

In fact, we don't like the letter S in the middle of a word in general, and we Texans black out Sesame Street whenever it features that letter. But that's our bidniss, and we'll handle it our own selves.

This one from Tuna:

"A personal pet peeve is people who use acronyms and have no idea what they mean:

RAM Memory (Random Access Memory Memory)
DVD Disk (Digital Versatile Disk Disk)
RSVP please (answer if you please please)
Unidentified UFO (unidentified unidentified flying object)
TCP/IP protocol (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol protocol)

Idioms are also horribly abused. A tough row to hoe becomes a tough road to hoe."

Or the idiom "we haven't gotten untracked yet", whatever that means. I don't care unless it is used by train operators.

They made the acronym mistake repeatedly in "One Night at McCool's", when Liv Tyler kept asking for a DVD, and Michael Douglas would say "no home entertainment center is complete without a DVD". Pretty sure from the context that they meant more than one disk, which is what a DVD is. I think they were talking about a DVD player. I'm just speculating here, but I guess this is confusing to people because the acronym VCR meant the player/recorder, not the medium. It's correct to say "pop this in the VCR", but not to say "pop this in the DVD".

I suppose it will be correct in time. These things change. It used to be redundant to say "scuba gear", because scuba means "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus". Apparatus implies gear. You wouldn't say apparatus gear, would you? But scuba has stopped being an acronym and is now a self-contained underwater word, so even the toughest purist will have to admit "scuba gear" is OK.

Another word I came across--"caramel", although some insist on pronouncing it "carmel" like the town that Clint Eastwood used to be the mayor of.  Or was it "Caramel by the Sea"?

Actually, in Texas we often pronounce it with two syllables, but not like the town. Accent on the wrong syllable. The town is "car-MEL", and we call the sticky stuff "CAR-mul", like the "CAR-mul-ite" religious order, or maybe we will say "CARE-mul". Or maybe most Texans just say "dulce de leche".

The WCD (Webster's Collegiate) says that "CAR-mul" is the most common American pronunciation. Second listing is "CARE-a-mul". Third is "CARE-a-mel". I suppose this word must have come to English from the Spanish "caramelo" meaning "piece of candy", and pronounced "car-a-MAY-low" (but with a Spanish "r", of course, not an American one. There's no convenient way to write a Spanish "r" in English transliteration.)

I have enjoyed the wordplay the last several Funhouses. I would like to add a simple word but one that is commonly mispronounced. The word is "wolf" and its plural "wolves". They are frequently pronounced as woof and woofs, which come from entirely different canines.

Yes, good one! I never heard this variation until I was 30-something, and I met Jennie, my second wife. I didn't even know what word she was trying to say! She grew up in southern Wisconsin where, I later learned, the pronunciation is not uncommon. I suppose it exists in many regional dialects throughout the USA

By the way, for you guys who engage in the "cardsharp" and "card shark" debate, the whole debate is a bunch of typical Urban Legend crap, easily settled with a good dictionary. In fact both can be correct and both can be wrong, depending on what you mean to say and how many words you use. A cardsharp or cardsharper (one word) is one who habitually cheats at cards. A card shark (two words) is, in various dictionaries, "one who greatly excels", "an expert card player", or "one who is especially cutthroat and crafty" or even a synonym for "cardsharp". Therefore, if you mean a really good and aggressive player, you mean a card shark.  If you mean a dishonest player, you mean cardsharp.

Omar Sharif is a card shark. Goldfinger was a cardsharp.

Both are specifically listed in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, conveniently together:

So here's your plan. Wait until you are going to be talking to some pretentious ass. Then deliberately say something like, "my cousin is such a great card player, even though he never cheats. He can keep track of every card played - he's a real card shark." Wait for the pretentious ass to tell you that you meant cardsharp, and be armed with the correct info and deflate the twit. (He will have no argument at all if you specified that your cousin never cheats). For best money-making potential, xerox the page out of Webster's Unabridged, keep it in your wallet, and use it for bar bets.

However, be advised that there is no such single word as cardshark, so if Mr Pretentious says "there is no such word as cardshark", he is right. It is a two word expression. By the way, even "cardsharp" is not listed in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). Failure to be listed in the OED tells one nothing about current use, except maybe the current use of Queen Victoria in her dotage. The OED is great for determining the usage history, and is indispensable to etymologists, but includes a very limited number of words, and doesn't always stay up to speed.  I don't really know if the English use either term. Maybe some Brits will tell us whether they have heard it locally. It came into American speech about the time of the Civil War. (First known written use in 1859, according to Webster's Collegiate)

Summary: how can each of them be wrong? 

• Card shark is wrong if you write it as one word. According to Webster's Unabridged, it really can't be wrong in oral speech, because it has both meanings.

• Cardsharp can be wrong in two ways (1) if you write it as two words (2) if you use it to mean an excellent or aggressive honest player

Frankly, I can never remember which of these is which unless I look it up. I will have forgotten it again by the time you read this, and I will probably use them incorrectly many times in the future.

Speaking of sharps ...

It is now almost completely out of use, but when I was a kid, an unctuous guy who was just too smooth would often be called a "sharpy" by my mom and her oh-too-stuffy friends, and the term would imply that the guy wasn't a regular old honest 9-to-5 kind of guy, but some kind of snake-oil salesman or a swindler of some sort. Given the "dishonest salesman" use, I always thought it kinda odd that Gillette's spokesparrot was named "Sharpie". ("Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp ... only way to get a decent shave").

I don't know if anybody else used this term, or if my mom's use was derived from her native language (Polish). She and my grandmother often used a suspiciously similar Polish word: Szarpacz (SHARP-otch. It rhymes with crotch, more or less. Polish isn't all that hard to pronounce, but it's hard to read). This is a verb which they used to mean "to prey upon" (among other things), and is a possible source of their English word. I have no damned idea how to conjugate Polish verbs, but I'll bet there's some person and tense in there that sounds a lot like "sharpy". Did anybody without Polish ancestors ever hear this term?

Another interesting fact. In about 1750, the past tense of the English verb "to be" was almost universally conjugated like this, in the speech of both the lower and upper classes.

As you can see by a quick look at the table, that was not only the universal usage, but is correct syntactically. "Was" is singular, "were" is plural. We do not speak that way today simply because Dr Johnson said we shouldn't. For whatever reason, he decided that the singular "you was" did not have the proper aesthetics for his refined ear, and changed it. Such was his level of respect that the English language eventually changed to suit him, especially after the implementation of universal schooling, which imposed his conjugation.

My favorites in this batch:

I ran across an off variation of Shape magazine today and it had these three shots in it that I thought might be worth a look. They are not nudes but two are of Janet Jackson looking pretty good and Halle Berry showing the 'little black dress' approach.