5 Forgotten Atrocities from '80s Pop Culture

5

The Video to Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl"

A couple of months ago, I had to travel to West Virginia for business. After a long day of travel, including a rental car GPS that led me to the set of Deliverance II: The Rapening and some poor directions from an eyebrowless lady at the local Sheetz, I arrived at my hotel. If I tell you the concierge had a massive herpes blister, you won't believe me, but he totally did. Accordingly, when it came time to enjoy the state's nightlife, I made the obvious choice: double-bolting my hotel door, getting drunk and watching YouTube videos.

Somehow, this process lead me to Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" video, which I watched for the first time as a man. Even as a kid I knew the song was kind of an early-'60s-style throwback, but it didn't occur to me how cool that was. It certainly couldn't have been an intuitively obvious decision to sing like Frankie Valli in 1985. So kudos to you, Billy.

But the video? Sweet Jesus.

4

Laverne & Shirley in the Army

In 1982, ABC had the great idea to take the then-flailing Laverne & Shirley show and make it a cartoon -- while the real show was still on the air. Sounds hard to believe, right? What if I told you that Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams actually did the voices? It's true. What if I then said the premise was Laverne and Shirley join the army just like Goldie Hawn did in Private Benjamin -- one of the biggest comedies of 1980?

moviefone.com

"Please God, please don't let me inspire Hanna-Barbera's unholiest evil."

And what if I finished it off by explaining that Laverne and Shirley's commanding officer was a talking pig voiced by Horshack of

3

"Don't Lose My Number" -- Phil Collins

Let's get some things straight about Phil Collins: He has some amazing chops as a drummer; he has the ability to sing with tremendous range and power; he's written some terrific pop songs and, most of all, I hate him because he absolutely sucks.

Collins started as Genesis' drummer when they were a prog rock band fronted by Peter Gabriel instead of a synonym for "shameful disappointment." After Gabriel left, Collins became the lead singer and they continued to do some of their best work. Around 1978, Phil Collins realized he knew how to write pop songs, penning the somewhat cheesy, but still quite lovely "Follow You, Follow Me." Then the evil crept in. In a few years, he was writing solo albums, and though he wrote some excellent songs like "In the Air Tonight" and "Against All Odds," his vocals were getting more predictable, his arrangements simpler and his compositions, to use a technical musical term, more craptastic.

So yes, the obvious choice is to tool on Phil for "Sussudio," which is just an absolutely miserable song. But this is a column about forgotten atrocities, and fitting the bill is "Don't Lose My Number." It should be called "Billy, Don't Lose My Number," because those are the lyrics to the chorus, but, of course, that sounds a lot like Steely Dan's

Take a listen. (Oh, the video is absurd and awful, too, but I really just want to focus on the music here.)

2

AfterMASH

M*A*S*H, the television adaptation of the 1970 movie, was a staple of '70s television and one of the longest-running sitcoms of all time. So of course when that show came to an end in 1983 there had to be a spinoff. And like every good spinoff, it had to feature the three characters everyone cared the least about: Sherman T. Potter, Father Francis Mulcahy and Klinger. It would be like if The Simpsons had a spinoff with Principal Skinner, Milhouse and Disco Stu.

simpsons.wikia.com

"Disco Stu doesn't do spinoffs."

1

Howie Mandel Does the Watusi

Before Howie Mandel rose to fame as the host of a game show I'll never watch, he was Dr. Wayne Fiscus on one of the greatest shows ever on television: St. Elsewhere. St. Elsewhere was smart, moving, clever and inventive. And as if by some cosmic law requiring the attraction of opposites, Howie Mandel had a stand-up act that was none of those things. He was famous for blowing surgical balloons up on his head. And in 1987 he released a comedy song called "I Do the Watusi."

"The Watusi" asked the question: What if we took some of Howie's worst material and combined it with music that no one could possibly ever listen to? What, indeed!

Did you watch it? I know I was alive in the '80s, but I promise you I can't explain why this is supposed to be funny. You know those heartbreaking stories you hear about strokes and head trauma and mental illness where suddenly patients lose the ability to discern classical music from rock or they mistake their wife for their hat? That's how I feel watching this. I can't conceive of a time where this was classified as comedy. I know each question is a joke, but fuck, I just don't know. Hey, here's a quiz. Which of these is an actual question (joke) from the song?

What do you do when your tadpole has leprosy?

What do you do when someone puts mayonnaise on your shoulder?

What do you do when your grand piano reeks of tuna?

It was the funny one! Duh.

For more from Gladstone, check out The 5 Most Overused Jokes On the Internet and 5 Rock Radio Classics That Actually Suck.