Bepler's music set "Ren" in motion. From different directions under the freeway, ranks of a Southern California marching band descended on the lot playing a funereal symphony on snare drums, bass drums, cymbals, tubas, and bugles that echoed in somber surround sound across the car lot. "When I first arrived at the site, I was shocked at how loud it was," Bepler remembers. "I mean it's a few yards away from the I-5! It's really beautiful, and I think having the musical groups physically approach from afar, their sound emerging from the din, worked nicely." After playing Bepler's composition, the band raced up the driveway to the upper deck and formed two neat rows in front of the audience. Suddenly a badly wrecked lime-green 1967 Chrysler Imperial appeared-the very one that had starred in Cremaster 3 (2002). Cremaster's amputee star Aimee Mullins lay half-buried on the car's roof, while smashed into the trunk was a demolished port-a-potty, with its gigantic white septic ball sticking out of the back like the abdomen of a spider. The car was hauled with ropes to the lower lot by 50 greased-up men looking like California day laborers; there it soon traded places with a gleaming gold Pontiac Firebird inside the glass showroom. Inside the group drummed on specially built Chrysler logo "pentadrums," then Oaxacan singer Lila Downs sang a dirge from the balcony with a mariachi band.

Here the real death orgy began: An excavator, fitted with a special head called a "Slashbuster," began to grind through the Imperial's hood, chassis, and finally, the port-a-potty. Metal flew against the windows, flames spit from the engine, and the septic ball erupted with harsh-smelling port-a-potty contents. The Cremaster 3 icon was reduced to wreckage. Afterward, in a garage, the Firebird was covered with a plastic sheet, Madagascar roaches were released, and the naked sex-performer Mouse marched the entire crew in a procession through a gate.

Any questions?

Plenty. But Barney's experiments don't come with easy answers. Was it the 1967 Chrysler Imperial or the entire Cremaster series that was passing into the afterlife here? Or was it the symbolic death of American car culture? The only thing clear was that we were having a good time as Barney cemented his return to live performance. And although many of "Ren's" symbols still belonged to his familiar iconography, new themes and imagery emerged. "I have been wanting to work with a drum and bugle corps for some years now," Bepler noted. "Matthew likes them, too. Some of the ideas of ‘Ren'-the ideal American West, ceremony, passage, devotion, ferocity, conformity, youth-made the band a perfect match for the project."

It was a strange ritual, sleaze meeting sublimity, as American myth and Egyptian lore hooked up at a car dealership amid the strip malls of Southern California for a violent, otherworldly sound and image-scape. For one evening, nearby Disneyland found dark competition in Barneyworld. Most of us preferred the "Ren" ride.