Phthursday Musings: Anybody got an '80 Cutlass wire loom?

My friend Matt is getting his floors redone, which means removing everything from the floors, which means it’s a good time to throw crap away. So I made a joke about him throwing out all of his high school paraphernalia.

That is the origin of whatever exactly this week’s horrific content is.

The next step in the joke was going to be me pleading with him not to throw out his “It’s a great day to be a Farmer!” t-shirt, complete with a picture of this guy:

But then I got sidetracked. Is there a rivalry between Farmington and Farmer City? What about all of other wacky mascots you can find in high schools across Illinois?

And in my mind this morphed into an extended riff about how they should be the Farmington Consolidators, and the mascot should either be some guy drawing a map or some guy closing the schools in the small towns in the far flung parts of the district.

And all of this somehow turned into thinking about what to write this week, and I thought about relevant music having to do with high school mascots (more on this below), and it all got increasingly silly in my head.

And then I thought about a team named the Adjustors, but how would you draw that?

But then I thought of the best team name ever: the Farmington Liquidators.

I mean, that’s terrifying.

Freshman #1: Who do we have to play next week?

Freshman #2: [looks at schedule, gasps] .. the .. the .. the LIQUIDATORS!

Freshman #1 and Freshman #2 together: Agggggh we’re gonna get liquidated!

Well, some of you know where that went.

So we had this store in Rockford, out on East State Street, called Insurance Liquidators. Apparently there were also stores in Milwaukee and elsewhere, and I even found that once upon a time Rockford had three of them. I do not really understand where the merchandise came from, but I remember the store being great fun, and especially remember the commercials having a fantastic jingle.

I simply cannot find one with the jingle, but I did find this gem from 1985. Pay close attention to the music in the background, which is roughly what you might expect if Herbie Hancock tried to sell you some summer sausage:

Perfect for gifts! Perfect for snacking! Perfect for instant parties!

BECAUSE IN ROCKFORD IN 1985 YOU COULDN’T THROW AN INSTANT PARTY WITHOUT A HEALTHY SUPPLY OF LIQUIDATED BRAZIL NUTS.

This one is of similar vintage, from Milwaukee. The music is easier to hear, and you can see how much fun people have in the store:

Six bucks! Six bucks!

In searching for more commercials YouTube recommended a different commercial posted by the same person who posted the first one above. The description was the same, except it clearly was for something different. I watched it anyway.

Let’s first get this out of the way: the very name Bionic Auto Parts makes absolutely no sense unless you are supposed to attach the parts to your own body and I’m sorry but I never saw anybody, not even at the corner of North and Kilpatrick, walking around with a goddamn carburetor for an arm…

We’re going to assume the guy on the phone is named Carl, and that the commercial accurately depicts Carl as the guy with access to the national parts network.

I have many questions.

First, why would you wear a nice sport jacket if you’re at an auto parts yard?

Second, let’s assume for the moment that this was a real live action call, not something staged. Who exactly is on the other end of the phone such that they might be able to speak for anybody? What kind of network is this?

Third, let’s make the more reasonable assumption that this was a staged call, for which Carl got dressed up. How… did they select… a wire loom as the part to reference in the staged call to the network? Did someone recommend attire to Carl?

Were there multiple takes? Did they just leave the camera in place for a long time, waiting for the right scene to magically appear?

I mean, doesn’t it look like Carl would more typically pick up the phone saying something like: Lemme have a parlay on Liquidator.

Unlike Insurance Liquidators, which has been gone for decades, Bionic Auto Parts is still at 4655 West North Avenue in Chicago. Their network is probably more sophisticated these days. I mean, I shouldn’t say that, they must have had one hell of a network in 1985 if they could easily source an ‘80 Cutlass wire loom like that.

I had to watch the commercial multiple times to figure out exactly what Carl was saying. The first time, I spit out my bite of peanut butter and raspberry preserves. The next seven times, I was trying to understand what exactly a were-loom might be. This in turn led me to look up the etymology of werewolf and it seems that the were part is believed to come from old English wer meaning man which means that were-loom is man-loom which means… it is bionic.

Carl, you are a man of many depths.

The first song about mascots that came to mind is naturally “Feed ‘em to the (Linden) Lions” by Pavement. The only live version online seems to be this one that Malkmus did a few years ago with the Jicks:

In looking it up I absurdly found reference to lyrics for “Feed 'em to the 5 Lions (Linden)”. Wait, where did the 5 come from? Well. Here’s the back cover of the Watery, Domestic EP:

The arrow somehow managed to get into metadata somewhere as a 5, instead of being understood as instructing the reader to put (LINDEN) before LIONS. And the mistake has endured for a while because many pages include the 5, and have (Linden) in the wrong place.

METADATA CAN LIVE FOREVER.

Oh, the other song I had in mind? “Academy Fight Song” by Mission of Burma!

See, not everything from the first half of the ‘80s was ridiculous.

Almost.

But not quite everything.

Freshman #2: How are we gonna beat the Liquidators?

Carl: I don’t know, kid. You need a bumper for a ‘72 Nova?

One of the weirdest phenomena of late stage capitalism is how you can get merch for shuttered stores.

You loved Insurance Liquidators? You can buy the t-shirt.

You loved Pepe Taco, the Mexican restaurant in Peoria that my wife’s uncle used to own? You can buy that t-shirt too.

Notice how both of these shirts appear to be modeled by the same woman. Imagine what a strange gig she must have.

Who’s buying these things? Who, exactly, is walking around anywhere with a Warshawsky Muffler t-shirt? In our respective cities growing up my wife and I both fondly recall going to Bishop’s buffet with our grandmothers. Do we need a t-shirt for that?

Rockford, down and out Rust Belt city, but late stage capitalism makes it possible to profit off of stores that no longer exist. Gotta love it. Whatever else you might say, the old town definitely still has hustle. It’s got so much hustle it’s even cashing in on Peoria!

Gotta admit, I’d wear the Warshawsky Muffler t-shirt.

This picture is apparently, ridiculously, from a Google street view. It’s the scene I remember, the picture of all the parts and mufflers. Mufflers for compact cars. Mufflers for trucks. Mufflers for big cars. Mufflers for foreign cars, which of course meant dressing up a muffler as Pancho Villa:

Could you imagine anyone trying to advertise for their muffler shop today by dressing up a muffler as Pancho Villa?

Rockford was supposedly one of those test markets in the 1980s. I’ve heard Peoria was too. We’d get these weird TV commercials where, to buy something, you had to send a check to a PO Box. And allegedly we’d get products in stores before other places. We heard it that Rockford’s demographics in the 1980s were almost a perfect match for the country as a whole. How could you be more of an All-American city than that?

There are a lot of people out there who disdain the way some people cling to their affinities for things like local sports teams, getting too wrapped up in it. I understand what they mean. But I think they miss something important. That shared language you can only get from visceral shared experiences - especially redundant ones like eating out and shopping - well, maybe Rockford has this thing in common with Milwaukee or that thing in common with Chicago, but the totality was totally unique. It’s where you come from, it’s what you know, and even if you want to run far away from it, it forges so much of your understanding of how Things Just Happen To Work. A muffler dressed like Pancho Villa? That might make no sense to anyone from anywhere else in the country, but so what? TV and radio jingles from 1983? They don’t even try to make earworms like that anymore. But if they did, they’d be national. They wouldn’t be ours, whoever exactly we are.

And, frankly, the more outlandish the better. You can have your Tigers and Lions and Wildcats. I’ll take the Teutopolis Wooden Shoes, the Fisher Bunnies, and the Hoopeston Area Cornjerkers any day.

Yes, it is a great day to be a Farmer, Matt. A great day indeed.

Man, though, I’d love to be a Liquidator. Winnebago Liquidators has a pretty nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Got some trochaic tetrameter going on there!

Freshman #1: Ahh, I’m not afraid of them Liquidators!

Pancho Villa: Yeah, let’s muffle ‘em!

Insurance Liquidators: Instant party!