doco-tour-log-003

Most of the day was spent in preparation for the rapture, or rather for the horror show that life on Earth was sure to become for those of us left behind. Even so, the flash mob rioting around the gas station on the edge of town set our nerves on edge. People screamed, groaned, laughed, and wept crumpled on the sidewalk in glittering sequined dresses. They crowded the register demanding cigarettes and lottery tickets. 

We had just rained down brimstone on the 321 Local, an unassuming gem of a venue with a headbanging sound system and a tightly knit family of employees, friends, and bandmates who come out to every show, every night, unless, of course, it's the rapture. It was our idea to stop by the gas station on the edge of town for late night snacks, but they jumped in with both feet, ducking the hopeless and homeless and sheriff's deputies with practiced ease. 

Then they took us back to their campfire, burning outside an old plantation house further out of town. It was like Forrest Gump's house in Mad Max's world. The whole crew of bartenders, band members, and punk rock fashionistas were gathered, wisecracking, trading war stories, checking the perimeter for zombies. Then Ryan lit his arm on fire with the gasoline. 

For the final launch of space shuttle Endeavor, the sleepy bayside town of Titusville was overrun by a swarm of amateur photographers, science club adherents, rocketry enthusiasts, and people driven by a sense that it must be important, this penultimate space launch, this next to last mission of exploration before the military takes over once and for all. Endeavor did indeed perform four DOD experiments (simplex, rambo-2, maui, andseiti) during her last flight, but they all were overshadowed by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 2. AMS2 can detect dark matter, which theoretically holds the universe together, anti-matter, a necessary byproduct of the theoretical Big Bang, and strangelets, wherein strange quarks in place of the usual up and down quarks result in superheavy isotopes of known elements. 

We drove across Florida in the dead of night, stopping in Orlando for overpriced gasoline at 4:30 AM. As the ghostly grey of dawn accrued on the trees and tangle of the swamps that surround Cape Canaveral and Titusville, we became ensared in heavy traffic on the narrow secondary roads leading to the world's most famous spaceport. The nerds had beaten us. A local in a very unofficial looking hat offered to let us park in the CVS parking lot for $20. We decided to park at a distance and hike to the water. 

There is no sound at first, just a flash and a plume of white exhaust expanding outward in all directions. Then the massive orbiter, a white dot on the orange dot of the external fuel tank, is lifted upon a pillar of fire atop a pillar of cloud rising thick and fast toward the lumpy egg crate mattress of cloud cover. Then the noise washes over you, building as waves of energy from different altitudes reach your ears simultaneously,and just when you think your eardrums will burst, it's over. The flight commander, Captain Mark Kelly, says "Call acknowledged" to mission control on the local AM station, and you know they made it. 

Key West

The road does not, in fact, go on forever. It dead ends in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, 90 miles from Cuba, on an island known to the tourists as Key West. This remote fishing town slash naval base might, as the legends say, rest on a vortex of mysterious energy that brings out the glorious chaos in everyday life, like Sedona or Mesa Verde, or it might just be a seafaring outpost on the edge of the world where crazy things happen sometimes.

To get there you cross the Overseas Highway, a hundred mile bridge connecting the mainland to Key Largo to an arc of barrier islands including Bahia Honda, a state park with white sand beaches and snorkling with pufferfish, stingrays, elkhorn and star coral, to Big Pine Key, with the blue hole and it's freshwater lens, to the iguanas at least seven feet in length on Sugarloaf Key. 

You finally arrive and Duval street is a wild mockery of Bourbon street, no holds barred burlesque shows, drag shows, strip shows, and cover bands around every corner, $10 all you can drink liquor in every bar. Some fat local fisherman in a costume walks to the center of the street and blows a conch shell, calling the drunken masses to him like the pied piper. We knew it was not going to end well. We survived. 

The campus of Florida Southern College is a temple of education designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Envisioned as a series of esplanades slicing through orange groves and joining together at inspiring summits of logical housing, inviting learning forums, and uplifting religious fellowship (FSC is Methodist to this day,) it is quite possibly the best untapped skateboarding video terrain in the world. On the day we rode bikes through it, the largest water dome in the world was turned off to save water. 

Once again we melted faces at Evolution Records, a last remaining stronghold of retail vinyl where Robert puts on shows and sells concessions just to survive. Goodnight Neverland wore these spooky feather and bone totems in their hair and sang about loneliness in harmony, and Ratham Stone rocked out in a radio friendly way. 

Then late night we climbed up through the trapdoor onto the unfinished balcony stage above the concession stand and sculpted some blues and soul jams with a piano, drums and tremelo electric guitar, and Robert told us the story of the flood after the great No Name Storm, when he went door to door in a rowboat evacuating the folks who lived at lower elevation. 

Knoxville Tennessee

In the hop garden behind the warehouse at the Terrapin Brewery, a disused loading dock has been converted into a stage to host live music during brewery tours and tastings. Beer snobs, epicureans, and regular townsfolk que up for the latest concoction, one a Tupelo Honey flavored 11% ABV wheat beer called Gamma Ray, and experience the legendary wealth of the Athens music scene while their dogs retrieve frisbees across the four acre lawn. Our plan was to draw people who had been drinking all afternoon at the tasting to the 10PM show at the downtown venue. 

Max Eve opened for us at the Rye Bar, which is down some treacherously steep stairs from Clayton Street. He's a one man Trans Siberian Orchestra, conducting an ephemeral continuum of looping guitar tracks, percussive slapping, power chords, picking patterns, self-harmonizing metallic walk ups, and glassy wobbling slide downs all glimmering on the edge of existence. Of course, it's impossible to stay perfectly in time, even when playing to fresh samples of his own design, hence the need to cycle old loops out and introduce new ones. 

We ate exquisite Georgia style pig with Mild Elrod's sauce at Jot Em Down BBQ, and we forgave their simplified view of North Carolina style, because everyone thinks their own personal recipe is the best, after all. And we found out that you can't really get My Chemical Romance unless you print out the lyrics and read along while listening to the album. I still haven't tried it.

Baltimore Maryland