The world is an oddly serene place when you’re streaking across the salt at 400 mph.

You’ve wrestled your car, if that term applies to a 2,000-horsepower missile, into something approaching submission. The skull-rattling, vision-blurring vibration smoothed out somewhere around 300 mph, so you can see clearly again. It’s still a rough ride — you are moving 586 feet per second, after all — and noisy as hell. But, like the eye of a storm, it’s eerily calm.

“It’s very loud, but it’s very quiet because you’re tuned in,” said Amir Rosenbaum, who currently holds two land speed records and is no strange...

Finn and his magic dog Jake get surreal in Pendleton Ward's all-ages acid fantasy, Adventure Time.
(Images courtesy Cartoon Network)

For adults, Adventure Time’s animated acid fantasy wobbles hilariously between psychedelia and subversion. Yet kids can still enjoy the show’s juvenile hijinks about a boy and his dog mystically adventuring in the onomatopoetic land of Ooo.

That impressive versatility has allowed Adventure Time, created and written by Pendleton Ward, to rake in award nominations and ratings success like so much zombie candy.

But what hallucinatory origins give Adventure Time its...