The Knights of the Auto Order Proudly Present: The Auto Body Estimate: Vol. II, #76, October 2007

Sometimes it’s tough when the public at large embraces something that was previously part of your own private little corner of pop culture. I can sympathize with someone who was a big fan of a little-known LP called Outlandos d'Amour in 1978, and can imagine that it was a bit disappointing when the Police became so popular soon after. It’s not quite as bad as getting used to sharing your girlfriend with other guys, but it is only somewhat milder a betrayal.

And it’s for this reason I promise that the Auto Body Experience will never become huge: because I care about YOUR feelings. We routinely turn down large sums of money for anything that might promote our group to a larger audience. Uh huh.

Well, anyway, our friend Rick Risch wonders if this same thing is about to happen with senior citizens embracing instant messaging. Rick imagines that these are some of the first acronyms they’ll adopt:

ofps! - oh for Pete's sakes!
yds! - you don't say!
wwwta? - what were we talking about?
dyhwd? - did you hear who died?

I’d probably want to include ifaicgu (I’ve fallen and I can’t get up) and btdmrltcctya (Boy they don’t make records like the Carpenter’s “Close to You” anymore), but maybe that’s just me.

At the risk of turning this Estimate into a bad parody of the Family Circus comic strip where Bil Keane’s son Billy (aged 7) takes over for the week, Rick has other things on his chest as well: his favorite Muzak moments. In the early 80s Rick worked at the Knollwood Mall Musicland:

“It was very early for the mall, maybe 6:30 am - I had the entire place to myself so I decided to walk around and enjoy the strangeness of a completely vacant shopping mall when over the sound system came the most incredibly limp Muzak version of Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi -- you know, ‘they paved paradise and put up a parking lot’. The entire experience was quite surreal – and I know surreal is overused, but in this case it really applied: the garish lighting, the consumer goods, the aloneness, the music - very special.”

My special Muzak moment happened at the Brainerd McDonalds. I remember one morning, as a sophomore, having breakfast with my dad, and being a bit uncomfortable seeing older kids eating without their parents, when my dad asked loudly if I needed to go to the bathroom before we left. But I digress, because it probably was a different morning at the same McDonalds when I heard the Muzak version of Look What They’ve Done to my Song.

Rick won’t be filling in for me when the Auto Body Experience plays at the Eagles Club on Friday, October 12, nor will we be playing Muzak versions of our songs (at least not intentionally). As usual, we’ll start a little after 9 PM as soon as the fabulous Front Porch Swinging Liquor Pigs clear the stage. Please join us as we welcome Jason Weismann as our “official” new saxophonist. If Friday nights work for you, be advised this is our last Friday night at the Eagles until next year – we’ll be doing different wacky stuff in November and December.

We hope to see you there and to hear of your Muzak moments. If you can’t make it, please email those moments to us.

Love, Scott Yoho, Grand Pooh Bah, Knights of the Auto Order

Return the Estimate Index...