Gorie with Jasmine & Joann -- Mickey

Dang! Choreographer-singer (she wore many more hats) Toni Basil was almost on the cusp of 40 when she came out with this 1982 megahit, "Mickey". I had never seen a New Wave form of cheerleading before and I gotta say that Basil pulled off some really fine angular moves at the beginning of the video. She was one of the reasons that I got into music videos way back when.

OK, now let's take things ahead by several years. One of the major ingredients that keeps the engines of variety shows running is the comedy teams with weird names that have kept coming out of the woodwork (or Osaka). One of the more successful teams is Garage Sale (ガレッジセール) which had its beginnings in 1995 from the Osakan comedy-producing emporium Yoshimoto Kogyo. Composed of Hiroki Kawata（川田広樹）and Gori (ゴリ), I knew Garage Sale specifically for their "Enjoy Play" shtick which they used to enter the stage. Apparently, the guys came up with a techno mix as you can see above. Gori is the first one to pop out in front of the camera.

Let's go even further. Although I never saw the show, there was a late-night Fuji-TV comedy-variety show starring a number of comedy teams called "Wannai R&R" (ワンナイR&R...One-Night Rock'n Roll) (2000-2006). Garage Sale was one of the combi, and from the hilarity, there was a character born on the show which featured Gori in drag under the name of Gorie Matsuura（松浦ゴリエ）. Her backstory was that she was the buxom younger sister of real-life aidoru Aya Matsuura（松浦亜弥）. As for her looks, I can say that after seeing her, I actually found Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie a bit more attractive.

Anyways...the character got an even bigger boost in her profile when in September 2004, Gorie got together with tarento Jasmine Allen and Joann Yamazaki to provide their own cover of "Mickey". Although Gorie got top billing, it sounds like Jasmine and Joann did most of the vocal heavy lifting for the song whose Japanese lyrics were provided by the Gorie Bika Iinkai（ゴリエ美化委員会...The Gorie Association for Beautification）. To give credit where credit is due, the song was originally created by Michael David Chapman and Nicky Chinn.

Well, before you could say "runaway hit", the song sold over 100,000 copies in its first week of release and went Platinum. Hitting No. 1 was a foregone conclusion and it did so for two straight weeks. By the end of the year, it was the 10th-ranking single for 2004. Ahhh...Japanese pop culture, you gotta love it.