MOONSHiiNE [waiting for a love that never comes]

From Spike Jonze directed vbs.tv, I give you an Americana special:

Moonshine:

LINK!!

"A QUEST FOR WHITE LIGHTNING IN SOUTH CAROLINA

The Gullah people are the descendants of slaves in South Carolina's Sea Islands who earned their freedom by being immune to malaria and therefore able to survive in the depths of the coastal swamps where the white man couldn't go. A hundred years ago they were still safe in their own little world, speaking a unique mix of English and the languages their West African ancestors spoke and practicing all sorts of zany African folk customs.

Then modernity crashed in on them. Now the few clinging to the tattered shreds of their traditions are basically nothing more than field-trip fodder for local students. The rest have faded into the woodwork of general poor black culture, with a couple interesting vestiges of their glory days. For instance, they can still bang out a mean batch of moonshine.

Two of the guys from the Black Lips used to travel up from Atlanta to help build houses for the poor folks in the area and had met a couple weathered old Gullah partiers who turned them on to the local brew, which they claim kicked their asses and then some. When we found this out, we decided it was imperative to head down and sample this hooch before it was gone for good.

Much like John Voigt and those other Atlanta guys in Deliverance, we arrogantly assumed it was going to be a cakewalk. We'd waltz on in there with our cameras and fancy sneakers, dazzle them with our refined speech and genteel bearings, then blow their asses off with the most off-the-chain swamp party moonshine has ever fueled. What actually followed was a Southern odyssey of epic proportions. We were taken to the porch of a million-year-old distiller who just left the biz, ferreted away to a terrifying compound in the middle of the woods where the black version of Buffalo Bill makes his own shine, fed chicken feet and a variety of other delicious Southern treats, chased off a farm by a truck full of angry rednecks, and abandoned by our local guide.

Left to our own devices, we wound our way down twisty back roads in the Lips' rickety old tour van, stumbling upon unforeseen wonders like a two-story skate park, ginormous trees, ginormous spiders, and a perfect juke joint so untouched by time you'd expect to see zombie Robert Johnson tumble out of the bathroom with a needle in his decaying arm...

And somehow, magically, in spite all of the insanity, in the end it all worked out. We left the islands blind drunk on some of the roughest tasting hooch any of us had ever gulleted.

THOMAS MORTON"