I was riding on a concrete slab
Down the river of useless flab
It was such a beautiful day
I heard a witch doctor say
I’ll turn you into a toadstool

I’m looking for the joke with a microscope…

Welcome back, gang! Let’s continue our Halloween Day celebrations with a little lesson in cosmic fate.

Today’s lecture is about Repo Man, both the 1984 Alex Cox movie and the theme song from punk legend Iggy Pop. And neither of which is about tangible horror. No monsters, no fangs, no blood, no jump scares. None of that.

What Repo Man does have is something far more insidious: the brutal, uncaring weirdness of the universe kicking your door down, slapping you with a parking violation, and towing your entire life away to an impound lot that may or may not exist in three dimensions.

Oh do I have your attention now? Good!

Repo Man finds Iggy Pop fronting post-punk alt-rock cynicism with a grin that looks like it has bitten a few extraterrestrials in its time. The groove is twitchy and predatory, like a rumbling V8 that reeks of super-unleaded nihilism. The guitars scrape across your skull like fluorescent streetlights flickering above a crime no one will ever report.

The Men in Black will see to that. Hey, we got a callback to our first song of the season, Blue Oyster Cult’s Take Me Away.

Iggy offers no rationalizing or explanation whatsoever. Truth is irrelevant. No one is innocent. We’re left with nothing but surveillance helicopters, government goons, and a cosmic shrug screaming nothing in particular.

There’s something delightfully paranoid in the way Repo Man moves. It accelerates as you run in panic from government goons, simultaneously being reckless enough to feel like you’re running toward them. This is a panic attack you can pogo-stick to.

Because Repo Man is Halloween through the cracked windshield:

Everyone suspects you.
No one likes you.
And someone, somewhere, wants your brain for reasons never explained.

Happy Halloween. Watch your back. Watch your car. But if it vanishes, well, possessions are part of the problem anyway.

I will see you one final time, tonight, before sundown.

Now I’ll tell you who I am
I’m a Repo Man
And I’m looking for the joke
Yeah I’m looking for the joke
I’m looking for the joke
Looking for the joke with a microscope…