HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – Down in his basement, Steve Langley experiments. 

Watch him work; you may wonder if he’s seeing things down there.

“Who needs psychedelics anymore,” said Langley, who calls himself a “bubbleologist.”

“Bubbleology, as we call it, is the field of knowledge,” he said.

Langley transforms something as simple as soapy water and his bubbly personality into an awe-inspiring experience. Sure, he’s not as big as Michael Bublé, but that doesn’t exactly burst his bubble.

“It’s nice the way it creates the swirls when you blow it in the bubble,” he said, filling up a fresh sphere with vapor.

Years ago, he stumbled into the role of “soap star.”

“So it involves science, chemistry… you’ve got to learn about the soap,” Langley explained.

“This brings up a rule of bubbles: Wherever three bubbles intersect, they always form a perfect 120-degree angle,” he said. “It’s mind-numbingly cool!”

His path to what some might consider “weird science” was unconventional. He graduated from Johnson and Wales in Charlotte and wanted to be a chef at first.

“Worked at a very slow restaurant,” Langley recalled. “And so myself, one of the other cooks, ended up juggling whisks and knives.”

Disclaimer: Don’t try this at home in your kitchen.

That’s when Langley realized he’d rather toss bowling pins than salads.

Steve became a professional juggler and hit the road as one of the “Fettuccini Brothers,” traveling the world for two decades. They appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and set nine Guinness juggling records.

“The accident was we had a very successful career, ha,” he said.

That’s when Steve reinvented himself yet again, and his new passion bubbled to the surface.

“I wanted to juggle bubbles because I wanted to attempt a Guinness World Record,” he said.

As the ringmaster of the Soap Bubble Circus starring himself, Langley enjoys enthralling audiences.

“The feeling of blowing someone’s sense of bubble reality completely out of the water,” he said of the rush.

There are very few bubble entertainers out there, so Langley is a busy man. He’s even training apprentice performers to help keep up with the demand.

Just goes to show it’s never too late to clean up your act.

“There she blows!” he said, tinkering with more bubbles filled with vapor that looked like a puff of smoke.

“Ooh! It’s like Willie Nelson’s tour bus in here all of the sudden!” he said with a laugh.