The Level Check
Horizon Lee, born Lee Grundy, used to restock the hand-tool aisle of a 24-hour hardware superstore in Wichita, Kansas. His nightly routine included returning borrowed levels to their peg hooks, and one night he noticed that every single level in the aisle showed the same result: centered bubble, flat line. He took a photo of the display, added the caption "Even the hardware store knows," and was terminated before sunrise for violating the company's social-media policy. He considers the termination his "ordination."
He now performs with a twelve-foot trailer, a used PA, and a ninety-six-inch carpenter's level that he mounts on the trailer hitch. Between songs he conducts what he calls the Level Check: he sets the level on the hood of his car, invites the audience to look, and explains that if the earth were a spinning ball, the bubble would need to roll sideways, which it does not. The crowd usually boos, but it also chants "bubble check" when the next song starts.
His songs are three-chord pop punk with the structure of a closing argument. Each verse presents an "official story," the pre-chorus calls the official story suspicious, and the chorus repeats a flat-earth conclusion as a singable fact. He writes in a spiral notebook with diagrams of spheres crossed out and flat discs circled. He has not recorded any of these songs professionally, but he has rehearsed them so many times in his garage that his neighbor can now sing all the "bubble check" parts by accident.
