RoadBoot

RHPS as a Mystery Religion presents some diverting amusements. Consider the throwing of rice, water pistol use, and frenetic TPing of the theater. Not to mention the ritual responses and communal chanting. The actors in front of the audience bring the deities off the screen and into our presence, the vicars of the gods presenting in panoply the grand comedy of corrupt Olympus. Acolytes are even initiated through a hazing ritual, which invariably ends in some embarrassing obscenity.

To those familiar with greek societies the depths to which the proceedings descend should warrant no surprise. Shirtless o’clock is followed by pantless thirty, and by the end of the frenzied 90 minutes that is RHPS the sanctuary is filled with wet, ricy, toilet paper-covered worshippers in various states of undress and high on group mindlessness. Afterwords the priests and priestesses of the order put their clothes back on and shuffle into their cars, emotionally drained.

But of course RHPS is NOT a greek religion surrounding Hermes or some other olympic obscenity. It’s just middle america, and a metaphor for life as most of us know it. People have been finding excuses to get drunk and naked in a room full of strangers since Adam sewed himself a suit of fig leaves. And since that time we’ve been returning to regression over and over. Let’s do the time warp.

Again.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in Atlanta that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely blowing against the Peachtree Cinemas, which alone at midnight struggled to guide us toward its glowing interior.

CC and I ran toward the forbidding Temple of The Screen, holding any scrap of paper above our heads to shed the rain, which I have already mentioned was falling in torrents. I might mention it again, too, because these torrents were especially torrenty.

I take that back about the scraps of paper. I had paper, but CC had gone into an IHOP and secured a styrofoam to-go plate which he wore as a hat. Being French-Canadian, CC was so small that he had to actually get into the doggy bag, rather than put it on. Despite his relatively good shelter we both made it into the theater totally drenched.

Behold the Games! The Peachtree was full of people shooting at tv screens, banging pinballs around, and driving down rendered raceways like madmen hopped up on virtual meth. The noise was deafening in a humid sort of way, sticky persons floated around looking for friends or empty game machines, a few dressed in outlandish costumes which I assumed were references to some character or show outside my experience.

On the DDR dance pad was Dr. Frank N. Furter, looking a little slight and feminine but scary none the less. Black wig, glittery gold outfit covering bondage gear, white face paint and the red red lips, this actor was gearing up for the Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight. Tim Curry’s Mini-Me.

We watched for a while, entranced by hypnotic feet writhing across a double platform. Frank never touched the bar, although I cannot personally understand how someone could move so fast. Smoke began to arise from the machine. I cast an eye around for a fire extinguisher, just in case Frank’s feet started a DDR fire on the dance pad. I had seen spontaneous combustion before, but never in an arcade.

I leaned over to CC and raised my voice above the roar of music.

“What time is it?” I shouted.

“It’s that time,” he shouted back.

I nodded and we moved up the red carpet toward the theaters. Life-size advertisements for salacious movies leaped at us from out of the shadows or peeked from behind velvet curtains. One tried to stab me with a fork, but I fended it off with a practiced smirk.

A nice ticket-taker took our tickets. Thats what ticket-takers do. Inside theater 4 we sat down toward the front and looked around. Several costumed persons were chatting in the corners, including the colorfully posterized Dr. Furter. The actor came our way and spoke in a high, southern accent..

“You must be new here”, said the red red lips. “You got that ‘what have I got myself into’ look on your face”.

I stood, smiled, and held out my hand.

“Hello Slack,” I said.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “You made it.”

Hildegaard’s is yet another hip and trendy coffee shop, this time located in Georgia. When CC and I entered its air-conditioned interior we were assaulted by a folk singer belting out humorous ballads with a twangy accent. Dot was at a table close to the counter, reading a book.

After the obligatory hugs (human contact, ew!), CC and Dot settled into a steady rhythm of conversation. I was both confused by their seemingly parralel thought processes and worried about the wireless situation, so I borrowed CC’s computer to check my email. When I looked up, both CC and Dot had vanished.

Thinking that they had simply gone outside to escape the oppressive humor of the folk singer (M R ducks. M R not!), I scanned the bookshelf for friendly-looking covers with lots of pictures. Among the literary ghetto of buddhist tracts, stories of personal transcendence, and maps to higher spheres of thought via your personal animal guide was a slim volume titled “Dharma PunX”.

According to the jacket blurb, Str8 Edge was this dopehead in the eighties who used to graffiti the skate parks and alleyways of San Diego with his “tags”. He also did a lot of drugs from the age of ten onward. “Dharma PunX” was his autobiography; an epic tale of personal spirituality, ultimate truth, and the transcendent power of hardcore punk rock.

The author said that one of the common symptoms of opiate withdrawal is paranoia, or sometimes the delusion that one is in possession of secrets that no one else understands. This usually happens when one feels abandoned or worthless, and it is a natural defense mechanism that can be seen at work in that dude downtown with the cats who knows where all the UFOs are. He’s also the head of the CIA, I guess. That’s what he said anyway.

I was enraptured. 54 pages into an explanation of how the chakra median emits a differant aura depending on the strength of the 32nd plane’s tertiary vibrations I realized that my two companions had not returned. I took a walk, but I didn’t see them anywhere. Although the men’s room had a black urinal. I thought that was funny and utilitarian. I will definately put a black urinal in my bathroom when I get around to building that black house.

I sat down on the couch and contemplated the problem. CC and Dot had disappeared. They had been gone more than an hour.

Like a bolt of lightning the solution struck me. Pocket Universes! CC and Dot had chatted online for years, building up mental images of each other’s persons, minds, and habits. To them, the other was not an actual person but a text-based entity composed entirely of mind and feeling, the mythic tabula rasa that absorbed whatever projection the other had fabricated. When they finally met in real life the stress of conflicting realities was too much for our delicate space-time continuum, and the formerly non-existent fantasy world of cyberspace was created in a flash simply so that the online extensions of these two persons could find common ground in a physical space!

This insight was fortified when I remembered that before they had winked out of existence they had been talking in a code language made up of in-jokes and references to past conversations. The private universe that was their online interaction had enough history and culture of its own to transport them into their very own reality!

Briefly I considered how I would finish the documentary without CC, but cheered up when I realized that he had foolishly left his laptop behind. Lucky me. I gathered up our computers and walked back to the car, where they were waiting for me.

“There you are”, they said. “We were waiting for you.”

“Dudes!” I cried. “You transcended time and space! How was it?”

“There’s no point getting offended”, they said. “You could have come out and joined us anytime. It was just too loud in there.”

Can you, dear reader, believe this nonsense? Those two friends actually thought that they had spent the entire time sitting on a bench chatting about ReBoot! Here I was, witness to possibly the only multiple-person trans-dimensional journey ever, and my two cybernauts WEREN’T EVEN AWARE THAT THEY HAD BROKEN THE UNIVERSE! This was possibly the greatest scientific discovery of the past two thousand years and NO ONE even KNEW!

Only me.

While in the mountains of California - CC: “Dude, we’re in Deliveranceville.”

On blog - Sabrina: “L.Acid is officially Roland Deschain (the gunslinger) from Stephen King’s the dark tower re-incarnated. He roles his own smokes, he writes stories about questionable females in sandy places, he is a man of the land.”

On the road - L.Acid: “Poo is not bacon.”

While browsing around on The Java Hut I discovered that TCM had made a webcomic of our visit to his house. CC was surprised when I showed it to him. Reading older posts in the same thread we saw that TCM started creating models months ago. Now that’s preparation!

L.Acid’s post about our trip to see Journey Into Chaos was a bit lacking in details, so I’m going to outline what exactly happened.

L.Acid started looking online for locations that were playing Journey Into Chaos. There were none listed. So, he had the bright idea to call up the last location to play it, hoping they’d be able to tell us where it went.

He called up Moody Gardens, in Galveston, Texas. Unfortunately, they couldn’t tell us where the film had gone. Because they still had it. While on the phone, the manager for the IMAX Ridefilms at Moody Gardens offered to set it up and play it for us before their business hours. Would we be willing to do that?

What do you think?

So, we went. This conversation happened while in the Hastings bookstore in Flagstaff, Arizona. We headed East, and met Focusly on the way. Interviewed her in Dallas, and headed Southeast to Galveston. Had the worst time finding a campground, so we checked into a hotel.

We set our alarm clock for 6:00am. L.Acid forgot to actually turn on the alarm part, so we slept in. I woke up around 8:00am, wondering where the alarm was. We called the manager, left a voicemail, and went back to sleep. He called us an hour later, saying he was ready. Enter mad dash to Moody Gardens.

We got there, met the guy, and watched the ridefilm. It wasn’t as good as ReBoot: The Ride, but it was still pretty cool. Obviously, both of us were extremely psyched at our good fortune. We’ve seen both Ridefilms! And one that wasn’t even playing. It turns out that the state of Texas had outlawed older Ridefilms because they changed how violent the movement could be. So, not only was it not playing, it was illegal!

The best part was yet to come. He was showing us around the backroom, where old ridefilms go to die. They just sit there. He started looking around, and picked out a reel. He read it, turned around, and gave it to me.

It read, “ReBoot: The Ride”. We now own a legit copy of the first ridefilm, on 35mm film reel.

From: Peter Buller
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: rebootmaster2001@mung.com
Subject: Re: item request
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Hi RBM,

Sorry about the late reply, but being on the road as we are I know
you’ll understand. A shame that you can’t make the item before we get
to your place, I really wanted to have one for the trip. But I understand.

As for when we arrive at your place- it won’t be for another couple of
weeks at least. We HAD planned on going up to Kansas from Vegas, but at
the last minute I was able to track down an IMAX Ridefilm location that
still had a copy of Journey into Chaos in their closet. The staff was
happy to give us a special showing of the film, and since they were on
the Gulf of Mexico we headed on down. That’s where we are now,
chilling in a coffee shop/bar in Galveston, TX. Journey into Chaos was
pretty good, although not as exciting as the first ridefilm.

From here we will scoot through Katrina Country to the east coast, then
follow a train of locations through DC, up to NY, Montreal, Ottawa, and
back down into middle America. You will be among the last fans we visit
before heading to BC.

See you soon!
–L.Acid

P.S.
By strange coincidence we found both ridefilms inside pyramids. The
Luxor is a giant pyramid-shaped casino, of course, and so was the
Discovery Center at Moody Gardens where we dug up Journey into Chaos.
CC and I need to get Indiana Jones hats.

It is 2:30am in Galveston TX, where CC and I are staying in a hotel that could be much more expensive. CC stayed in the room to try and get our internet connection working while I went out to enjoy the windy humidity blowing in from the ocean. Before leaving I rolled two cigarettes and put them in my breast pocket.

Humid was an understatement. Precipitation didn’t fall out of the clouds so much as appear in midair, giving the illusion of rain. The wind whipped my shirt in all directions as I made my way toward the seawall, drinking the warm air and listening to the crashing surf. I tried to light a cigarette at an intersection, but the wind was too playful. Catching a glimpse of my shadow cast by a streetlamp I could see my crazy hair frizzing away from conformity, a wild profile made wilder by the knowledge that the shadow was my own. In my peripheral vision I saw a shadowy figure walking towards me down the street. I walked across the intersection against the light and avoided the two silouettes that appeared to my left. I was on top of the seawall.

“Hey mister,” called a voice. I turned and saw the shadowy figure following me across the street.

“Do you have any cigarettes left?” She could have been anywhere between sixteen and twenty-five, jeans and a billowy red shirt covering an underfed but symetrical frame.

“You can have my last cigarette” I said.

She took the white stick from my hand. “Don’t swim in the water, it stinks” she said.

“Naw” I returned. “It’s the ocean, it’s suposed to smell like that.” I began to offer her my lighter but she turned away and crouched next to a white truck. The wind was unforgiving. I walked around to the tailgate and tried to find enough shielding to light my cigarette.

“Like this!” I heard her call. I looked and saw that she had pulled her head and arms into her billowy red shirt and was successfully drawing a light inside the make-shift tent. She gave me her lit cigarette, but I could not draw the flame into my own. I gave up and realized that she had asked me a question.

“Seattle-ish” I replied. “I just got into town.”

She distributed her weight onto one leg and cocked her head up at me. “What are you doin’ down here?”

“Enjoying my self. I wanted to walk on the beach and see the water.”

“Are you staying in a hotel?” she fired off the next question as if it were a bullet. I had a mental image of myself with cross-hairs on my forhead.

“Something like that,” I said. “I cruised around for a bit looking for a campground, but of course no dice this late at night.”

“What hotel?”

I looked at her more fully now, noticing the nervous way she held her cigarette and her eager expression. I can’t remember what her eyes looked like, which means that I either didn’t look at them or she had none. I do remember that we were both staring at the ocean when I replied.

“I don’t know.” I said it with irony and humor, knowing that we were both in on the joke. She twisted her head up to squint at me as a smirk writhed across her lips.

“Are you lying?” she asked in my own mirthful tones. She was mocking me, and doing a good job.

I took a step toward the seawall to better see the dark ocean.

“Maybe,” I said, fingering my unlit cigarette. “When I was a child I was always told never to take candy from unkown persons, which engendered in me a distrust of all strangers. What were you always told?”

She blew out some smoke toward the breakers. “The same thing,” she answered without expression. “It’s raining and I’m getting wet. Thanks for the cigarette.”

I didn’t watch her walk away. A few tries later I had my cigarette merrily burning, so I walked down the seawall toward the Moody Gardens. In my mind the humid wind was a carressing pillow of air, the breath of the gods as they sing us to sleep. After a few hundred feet I found a stair down to the beach. Demeter descends to the the realm of Pluto.

Staring at the surf I smoked my cigarette and contemplated the changing seasons, and my wasted youth.

Newcastle is this tiny little town in Texas, exactly like every other tiny little agricultural town on highway 380 between Roswell and Dallas. Red bricks pave streets that are lined with dumpy little shops, each portraying advertisements for stores long since forgotten.

Roswell was too hot, the wireless situation was terrible, and the long drive from Alienland New Mexico was a seamless montage of desert, oil fields, cow pastures, more desert, red farmlands that stretched to the wide horizon, and eventuall green grass that harbinged another hot city called Dallas. Newcastle is already just a smear of memory on the long highway.

Here in Flagstaff there is a sweet little bistro called “The Campus Coffee Bean”. Hip and trendy, cool and atmospheric, with good food and great roasts, this artistically influenced coffee shop/deli has everything your intrepid heroes need to pass a pleasant evening. Including Internet. Wireless internet. PAY internet.

WHAT!!!!!! FIVE BUCKS AN HOUR FOR CRAPPY DSL, PLUS THE BILIOUS COFFEE!!?!?!?

Here in Flagstaff there is a portal to hell called the “Campus Coffee Bean”. Within the fiery nether regions of that twice-cursed (*spits*) shop of horrors is a terrible goul named “Connection Unavailable” that stomps out the eyes of would-be websurfers with unnatural and demonic delight. Five bucks an hour! Kill me now and end the suffering.

CC’s battery just died. We’re on our way to Texas to visit Focusly.