New Radicals – "You Get What You Give" (1998)

You’re in harm’s way

I’m right behind

Tootsie was a 1982 film that starred Dustin Hoffman as an unsuccessful actor who disguises himself as a woman to try out for a role on a soap opera.  He gets the part and quickly becomes a big star.

My main problem with the movie was that Hoffman’s character broke up with the character portrayed by Teri Garr in order to pursue Jessica Lange’s character.

Teri Garr and Dustin Hoffman

If you ask me, any man who would pick Jessica Lange over Teri Garr is an idiot.

*     *     *     *     *

I had a somewhat similar reaction to Enough Said, a 2013 movie starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini as two divorced people who meet at a party and start dating each other.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think that Gandolfini – a guy who seemed to be more than a little shell-shocked by the nasty way his ex-wife had treated him – would have had the nerve to ask out a woman as attractive as Julia Louis-Dreyfus after one very brief meeting.

It would have helped if the director had cast Catherine Keener (who portrayed Gandolfini’s ex-wife) in Louis-Dreyfus’s role.  I don’t think Gandolfini would have been intimidated by Keener, who generally comes across as somewhat vulnerable and a little unsure of herself – making her a much better match for Gandolfini’s somewhat insecure character.

Catherine Keener

The suits who greenlighted the movie probably insisted on having Louis-Dreyfus in the starring role and Keener assigned to a lesser part because they thought Louis-Dreyfus was hotter.

Likewise, the suits behind Tootsie presumably thought Jessica Lange circa 1982 was more desirable to men than Teri Garr.

Suits are stupid.

*     *     *     *     *

Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois formed the New Radicals in 1997.  The duo released only one album – Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed, Too – before breaking up, but continued to write songs together.

Brisebois had quite a career as a child actress.  She was a member of the original Broadway cast of Annie, and later appeared in All in the Family and Archie Bunker’s Place as the young daughter of Edith Bunker’s alcoholic cousin, who was taken in by the Bunkers when her father abandoned her.

Click here to watch the official music video for the song, which was filmed at the Staten Island Mall.

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Castaways – "Liar, Liar" (1965)

Liar, liar, pants on fire

Your nose is longer than a telephone wire

(I didn’t realize that was what they were singing.  Did you?)

No one knows for sure when or where go-go dancing originated.

Some people say go-go dancing was invented at the famous Whiskey a Go Go club, the Sunset Strip nightspot that opened its doors in January 1964.

At the Whiskey a Go Go

But others say the Whiskey a Go Go took its name from go-go dancing, which was already popular when the club opened.  

Most go-go dancers wore minidresses and knee-high, high-heeled go-go boots – usually white in color:

*     *     *     *     *

Until recently, my favorite go-go dancer was Teri Garr.  Teri is best known today for her comic roles in movies like Young Frankenstein, Mr. Mom, and Tootsie:

Sooooo cute!

(Dustin Hoffman’s character in Tootsie actually preferred Jessica Lange to Teri.  Un-f*cking-believable.)

But she got her start as a dancer, appearing in no fewer than nine Elvis Presley movies, including Roustabout:

Teri Garr dances as Elvis sings

Later, she put on go-go boots and shook her moneymaker for the viewers of Shindig!, Hullabaloo, and the greatest of all rock ’n’ roll concert movies, The T.A.M.I. Show.  (Woodstock?  Fuhgeddaboutit!)

Teri Garr gyrates as the Supremes
perform in "The T.A.M.I. Show"

*     *     *     *     *

But then I saw It’s a Bikini World, the last of the beach party movies that were ubiquitous at the drive-ins the mid-1960s.  

The original title of that movie was The Girl in Daddy’s Bikini.  (One simply does not name a movie The Girl in Daddy’s Bikini.) 

It’s a Bikini World was directed by a woman and had a feminist plot line.  It featured musical performances by the Animals (who did “We Gotta Get out of This Place”), the Toys, the Gentrys, and the Castaways – a group from Minneapolis-St. Paul whose one and only hit is today’s featured song.

Tommy Kirk and beach-movie veteran Deborah Walley starred in the movie, which Kirk later described in language unbecoming a child actor who had appeared in Old Yeller, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor, and several other Disney films:

It was . . . one of the worst pieces of sh*t that I've ever been in in my life.  I can't believe that I could be so stupid.  Poor Deborah Walley, poor me.

*     *     *     *     *

“Liar, Liar” is one of the very best one-hit-wonder garage-band singles of the sixties.  (It’s right up there with “96 Tears,” “Nobody But Me,” and “Talk Talk.”)

Everything about it is perfect – from the organ intro to the falsetto singing to the fact that it clocks in at only 1:52 in length.

If “Liar, Liar” is sheer genius, “Liar, Liar” accompanied by a go-go dancer in It’s a Bikini World is sheer genius squared. 

No white go-go boots?  No problem!  Click here to see what I mean.

(I haven’t been able to find out the name of the dancer in that film clip, but she deserved the Best Go-Go Dancing Oscar for 1967, when the movie was finally released.  It had been shot in 1965, so it looked and sounded a little dated when it finally hit the theaters.)

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.