by Dave Barry
In analyzing these results, I had to make a few adjustments. For example, the Bob Dylan song “Lay Lady Lay” would have easily won as Worst Overall Song, with 17,006 votes, except that I had to disallow 17,004 votes on the grounds that they were cast by my Research Department, Judi Smith, who tabulated the votes and who HATES “Lay Lady Lay.”
To win, a song had to be known well enough so that a lot of people could hate it. This is a shame in a way, because some obscure songs that people voted for are wonderfully hideous. One reader sent a tape of a song called “Hooty Sapperticker,” by a group called Barbara and the Boys. This could be the worst song I’ve ever heard. It consists almost entirely of the Boys singing “Hooty! Hooty! Hooty!” and then Barbara saying: “Howdy Hooty Sapperticker!”
Several readers sent in an amazing CD from Rhino Records called Golden Throats, which consists of popular actors attempting to sing popular music, including William Shatner attempting “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” Leonard Nimoy attempting “Proud Mary,” Mae West attempting “Twist and Shout,” Eddie
Albert attempting “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and—this is my favorite—jack “Mr. Soul” Webb attempting “Try a Little Tenderness.” You need this CD.
But now for our results. Without question, the voters’ choice for Worst Song—in both the Worst Overall AND Worst Lyrics category—is ... (drum roll ...
“MacArthur Park,” as sung by Richard Harris, and later remade, for no comprehensible reason, by Donna Summer.
It’s hard to argue with this selection. My 12-year-old son Rob was going through a pile of ballots, and he asked me how “MacArthur Park” goes, so I sang it, giving it my best shot, and Rob laughed so hard that when I got to the part about leaving the cake out in the rain, and it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again, Rob was on the floor. He didn’t believe those lyrics were real. He was SURE his wacky old humor-columnist dad was making them up.
The clear runner-up, again in both categories, is “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I Got Love in My Tummy),” performed by Ohio Express. (A voter sent me an even WORSE version of this, performed by actress Julie London, who at one time—and don’t tell me this is mere coincidence—was married to Jack Webb.)
Coming in a strong third is “(You’re) Having My Baby” by Paul Anka. This song is deeply hated. As one voter put it: “It has no redeeming value whatsoever—except my friend Brian yelled out during the birth scene in the sequel to The Fly, in full song, ‘Having my maggot!’
Honorable mention goes to Bobby Goldsboro, who got many votes for various songs, especially “Honey.” One voter wrote: “why does everybody hate Bobby Goldsboro’s ‘Honey’? I hate it too, but I want to know why.”
Why? Consider this verse: “She wrecked the car and she was sad; And so afraid that I’d be mad, but what the heck; Tho’ I pretended hard to be; Guess you could say she saw through me; And hugged my neck.”
As one reader observed: “Bobby never caught on that he could have bored a hole in himself and let the sap out.”
A recent song that has aroused great hostility is “Achy Breaky Heart,” by Billy Ray Cyrus. According to voter Mark Freeman, the song sounds like this: “You can tell my lips, or you can tell my hips, that you’re going to dump me if you can; But don’t tell my liver, it never would forgive her, it might blow up and circumcise this man!”
Many voters feel a special Lifetime Bad Achievement Award should go to Mac Davis, who wrote “In the Ghetto,” “Watchin Scotty Grow,” AND “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me,” which contains one of the worst lines in musical history: “You’re a hot-blooded woman, child; And it’s warm where you’re touching me.” That might be as bad as the part in “Careless Whisper” where George Michael sings: “I’m never gonna dance again; Guilty feet have got no rhythm.”
Speaking of bad lyrics, many voters also cited Paul McCartney, who, ever since his body was taken over by a pod person, has been writing things like: “Someone’s knockin’ at the door; Somebody’s ringin’ the bell; (repeat); Do me a favor, open the door, and let him in.”
There were strong votes for various tragedy songs, especially “Teen Angel” (“I’ll never kiss your lips again; They buried you today”) and “Timothy,” a song about—really—three trapped miners, two of whom wind up eating the third.
Other tremendously unpopular songs, for their lyrics or overall badness, are: “Muskrat Love,” “Sugar Sugar,” “I’m Too Sexy,” “Surfin’ Bird,” “I’ve Never Been to Me,” “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida,” “Afternoon Delight,” “Feelings,” “You Light Up My Life,” and “In the Year 2525” (violent hatred for this song).
In closing, let me say that you voters have performed a major public service, and that just because your song didn’t make the list, that doesn’t mean it isn’t awful (unless you were one of the badly misguided people who voted for “The Tupperware Song”). Let me also say that I am very relieved to learn that there are people besides me who hate “Stair-way to Heaven.” Thank you. P.S. Also “I Shot the Sheriff.”
Reader Alert
This is the last section; like the first one, it’s mostly family stuff. It includes a column I wrote when my son got hit by a car, which was very scary; and one about his reaching adolescence, which veteran parents have assured me will be even scarier. There is also some important advice in here for young people, who represent our nation’s Hope for the Future. I myself plan to be dead.
The Old-Timers Game
My son got his ear pierced. He’s 12. For 12 years I worked hard to prevent him from developing unnatural bodily holes, then he went out and got one on purpose. At a shopping mall. It turns out that minors can have their earlobes assaulted with sharp implements by shopping-mall-booth personnel who, for all we know, have received no more formal medical training than is given to burrito folders at Taco Bell. And the failed Clinton administration is doing nothing.
You’re probably saying: “Don’t blame the government! As a parent, YOU must take responsibility! You and your wife, Beth, should sit your son down and give him a stern reprimand.”
Listen, that’s a great idea, except for one teensy little problem, which is that BETH IS THE PERSON WHO DROVE HIM TO THE PIERCING PLACE. This is the same woman who, when Rob was 6, allowed him to get a “punk” style haircut that transformed him in just a few minutes from Christopher Robin into Bart Simpson; the same woman who indulges his taste for clothes that appear to have been dyed in radioactive Kool-Aid.
No, Beth is not on my side in the ongoing battle I have waged with my son to keep him normal, defined as “like me, but with less nose hair.”
Now you’re probably saying: “Who are YOU to be complaining? When you were young, didn’t YOU feel you had the right to do things that your parents disapproved of?” Perhaps you are referring to the time in ninth grade when Phil Grant, Tom Parker, and I decided that pipe-smoking was cool, so we got hold of some pipes and stood around spewing smoke, thinking we looked like urbane sophisticates, when in fact we looked like the Junior Fred MacMurray Dork Patrol. I will admit that when my parents found out about this (following a minor desk fire in my room) and told me to stop, I went into a week long door-slamming snit, as though the right of ninth graders to smoke pipes was explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution.
But we cannot compare these two situations. In the case of my pipe-smoking, my parents were clearly overreacting, because the worst that could have happened was that I would have burned the house down and got cancer. Whereas I have a very good reason to object to Rob’s earlobe hole: It makes me feel old. Rob wears a little jeweled ear stud, and it’s constantly winking at me and saying: “Hey there, old-timer! YOU’D never wear an ear stud! And neither would Grandpa Walton!”
I am also being rapidly aged by Rob’s choice of radio stations. The one he now prefers is operated by one of the most dangerous and irresponsible forces on Earth, college students. I was concerned about what they might be playing, so I tuned it in on my car radio. The first song I hea
rd didn’t sound so bad, and I said to myself. “Hey! Perhaps I am still fairly hip after all!” And then the deejay came on and said, apologetically: “I realize that song was mainstream.” He said “mainstream” the way you would say “composed by Phoenicians.” Then he played a song entitled—I am not making this up—”Detachable Penis.”
Yes, college students are in on the plot with my son to make me feel old. Not long ago I was sitting on a beach near a group of male college students who were talking about a bungee-jumping excursion they had taken. They were bragging about the fact that they had leaped off the tower in the only cool way, which is headfirst and backward. They spoke with great contempt about a group of fathers—that’s the term they used, “fathers,” making it sound as though it means “people even older than Phoenicians”—who had jumped off feet-first, which the college students considered to be pathetic.
This made me feel extremely old, because I personally would not bungee-jump off the Oxford English Dictionary. My son, on the other hand, would unhesitatingly bungee-jump off the Concorde. And he’s only 12. Who KNOWS how old he’ll make me feel by the time he’s 14. What if he wants a nose ring? I won’t allow it! I’m going to put my foot down! I’m going to take charge!
I’m going to steal Beth’s car keys.
Breaking The Ice
As a mature adult, I feel an obligation to help the younger generation, just as the mother fish guards her unhatched eggs, keeping her lonely vigil day after day, never leaving her post, not even to go to the bathroom, until her tiny babies emerge and she is able, at last, to eat them. “She may be your mom, but she’s still a fish” is a wisdom nugget that I would pass along to any fish eggs reading this column.
But today I want to talk about dating. This subject was raised in a letter to me from a young person named Eric Knott, who writes:
I have got a big problem. There’s this girl in my English class who is really good-looking. However, I don’t think she knows I exist. I want to ask her out, but I’m afraid she will say no, and I will be the freak of the week. What should I do?
Eric, you have sent your question to the right mature adult, because as a young person I spent a lot of time thinking about this very problem. Starting in about eighth grade, my time was divided as follows:
Academic Pursuits: 2 percent. Zits: 16 percent. Trying to Figure Out How to Ask Girls Out: 82 percent.
The most sensible way to ask a girl out is to walk directly up to her on foot and say, “So, you want to go out? Or what?” I never did this. I knew, as Eric Knott knows, that there was always the possibility that the girl would say no, thereby leaving me with no viable option but to leave Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School forever and go into the woods and become a bark-eating hermit whose only companions would be the gentle and understanding woodland creatures.
“Hey, ZITFACE!” the woodland creatures would shriek in cute little Chip ‘n’ Dale voices while raining acorns down upon my head. “You wanna DATE? HAHAHAHAHAHA.”
So the first rule of dating is: Never risk direct contact with the girl in question. Your role model should be the nuclear submarine, gliding silently beneath the ocean surface, tracking an enemy target that does not even begin to suspect that the submarine would like to date it. I spent the vast majority of 1960 keeping a girl named Judy under surveillance, maintaining a minimum distance of 50 lockers to avoid the danger that I might somehow get into a conversation with her, which could have led to disaster:
JUDY: Hi. ME: Hi. JUDY: JUST in case you have ever thought about having a date with me, the answer is no. WOODLAND CREATURES: HAHAHAHA.
The only problem with the nuclear-submarine technique is that it’s difficult to get a date with a girl who has never, technically, been asked. This is why you need Phil Grant. Phil was a friend of mine who had the ability to talk to girls. It was a mysterious superhuman power he had, comparable to X-ray vision. So, after several thousand hours of intense discussion and planning with me, Phil approached a girl he knew named Nancy, who approached a girl named Sandy, who was a direct personal friend of Judy’s and who passed the word back to Phil via Nancy that Judy would be willing to go on a date with me. This procedure protected me from direct humiliation, similar to the way President Reagan was protected from direct involvement in the Iran-contra scandal by a complex White House chain of command that at one point, investigators now believe, included his horse.
Thus it was that, finally, Judy and I went on an actual date, to see a movie in White Plains, New York. If I were to sum up the romantic ambience of this date in four words, those words would be: “My mother was driving.” This made for an extremely quiet drive, because my mother, realizing that her presence was hideously embarrassing, had to pretend she wasn’t there. If it had been legal, I think she would have got out and sprinted alongside the car, steering through the window. Judy and I, sitting in the backseat about 75
feet apart, were also silent, unable to communicate without the assistance of Phil, Nancy, and Sandy.
After what seemed like several years we got to the movie theater, where my mother went off to sit in the Parents and Lepers Section. The movie was called North to Alaska, but I can tell you nothing else about it because I spent the whole time wondering whether it would be necessary to amputate my right arm, which was not getting any blood flow as a result of being perched for two hours like a petrified snake on the back of Judy’s seat exactly one molecule away from physical contact.
So it was definitely a fun first date, featuring all the relaxed spontaneity of a real-estate closing, and in later years I did regain some feeling in my arm. My point, Eric Knott, is that the key to successful dating is self-confidence. I bet that good-looking girl in your English class would LOVE to go out with you. But YOU have to make the first move. So just do it! Pick up that phone! Call Phil Grant.
Consumers From Mars
Recently I was watching TV, and a commercial came on, and the announcer, in a tone of voice usually reserved for major developments in the Persian Gulf, said: “Now consumers can ask Angela Lansbury their questions about Bufferin!”
As a normal human, your natural reaction to this announcement is: “Huh?” Meaning: “What does Angela Lansbury have to do with Bufferin?” But this commercial featured several consumers who had apparently been stopped at random on the street, and every one of them had a question for Angela Lansbury about Bufferin. Basically what they asked was, “Miss Lansbury, is Bufferin a good product that I should purchase, or what?” These consumers seemed very earnest. It was as if they had been going around for months wringing their hands and saying, “I have a question about Bufferin! If only I could ask Angela Lansbury!”
What we are seeing here is yet another example of a worsening problem that has been swept under the rug for too long in this nation: the invasion of Consumers from Mars. They look like humans, but they don’t act like humans, and they are taking over. Don’t laugh. We know that Mars can support life. We know this because Vice President for Now Dan Quayle, who is the administration’s No. 1 Man in the space program, once made the following famous statement, which I am not making up:
“Mars is essentially in the Same orbit ... somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.”
You cannot argue with that kind of logic. You can only carry it to its logical conclusion, which is that if there are canals, that means there are boats, and if there are boats, that means there are consumers, and apparently they are invading the Earth and getting on TV commercials.
I saw another commercial recently wherein a middle-age man gets off an airplane and is greeted by his wife, who says something like: “What did you bring back from your trip?” And the man replies: “Diarrhea.” Yes. He probably hasn’t seen his wife in a week, and the first thing out of his mouth, so to speak, is “Diarrhea.” Is this the behavior of a regular (ha
ha!) human? Of course not. This is clearly another invading consumer from Mars, just like the ones that are always striding into drugstores and announcing at the top of their lungs that they have hemorrhoids.
The worst thing is that, as Martian consumers take over, they’re starting to influence the way businesses think. I received chilling evidence of this recently from alert reader Rick Johansen, who sent me an Associated Press article by David Kalish about food manufacturers who are putting less food into packages, but not reducing prices. One example was Knorr brand leek soup and recipe mix: The old box contained four eight-ounce servings, but the new box, which is slightly larger, contains only three eight-ounce servings. The story quotes a spokesperson for the manufacturer, CPC International, as saying that this change was made because—pay close attention here—there were “a lot of complaints from American consumers that we were giving them too much in the box.”
Sure! We believe that! We believe that all over America, consumers were sitting around their dinner tables, saying, “You know Ralph, I am sick and tired of getting so much soup in a box. I’m going to write in and demand that they put less in without lowering the price.”
“Good idea!” Ralph would answer, pounding his fist on the table. “And then let’s tell Angela Lansbury about our hemorrhoids!”
No, those were not American consumers who complained to CPC International; those were Martians. Also, most product instructions are now written for Martians. Alert reader Mark Lindsay sent me the instructions for the Sunbeam Dental Water jet; under the heading IMPORTANT SAFEGUARDS is the statement—I am still not making this up—”Never use while sleeping.” Don’t try to tell me that’s for Earthlings.
And how about all those manufacturers’ coupons featuring Exciting Offers wherein it turns out, when you read the fine print, that you have to send in the coupon PLUS proof of purchase PLUS your complete dental records by registered mail to Greenland and allow at least 18 months for them to send you ANOTHER coupon that will entitle you to 29 cents off your next purchase of a product you don’t really want? Do you think anybody besides extraterrestrials ever actually does that?