October 7, 2021 • 52 mins
The Church of the SubGenius is a religion, but really a parody of religion. Learn all about this group of weirdo outsiders in today's episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's over there wandering around in
circles and this is Stuff you should know, the podcast
about Church of the SubGenius at Long Last. When did
(00:27):
you become acquainted with the Church of the SubGenius Um.
I had a group of friends that walked on the
otter side of life, darker side of life, less, you know,
less serious side of life. I'm not sure. Um in
the nineties, and there was one guy who was big
time into the Church of the SubGenius Um. What happens right, Yeah,
(00:50):
that was my first introduction. Then I actually came across
UM the Hour of Slack on Georgia Tech Student Radio
once uh in the early two thousands and radio I
never got into it though. Are you actually like a
secret sub GENII? No, the same as you. I had
a friend in college, a very influential friend actually, who
(01:15):
turned me onto a lot of different things as I
was just getting into college and exploring different ways of
life and thought patterns and uh and sure sticks my
buddy Jason. He turned me onto a lot of things
in life and I've been able to tell him so,
which is always a nice thing. And Bob Dobbs in
(01:37):
the Church of sub Genius was one of them. Yeah yeah,
And like if you might not be utterly familiar with
the Church of the sub Genius, but I bet there's
a pretty good chance that a lot of stuff you
should know listeners are at least familiar with it without
even being fully aware of what it is. But there's
a very very famous, uh picture of a clean cut,
(02:01):
mid century middle aged dude with a pipe clenched in
his teeth and almost like a um Patrick Bateman psychotic
look on his face, like almost Bateman meets word exactly, Yes, Chuck,
I don't think anyone's ever put it better than that.
And that is Jr. Bob Dobbs, who is the High
(02:24):
Profit of the Church of the SubGenius. And he has
popped up everywhere from the background. At Peebe's Playhouse, there
was a Sublime record that had him on there. Um Like,
he shows up all over the place. It's almost like
code um And so you probably have seen it, even
if you're not familiar with the Church of the SubGenius.
That's called the Dobb's Head right, gathered from clip art,
(02:48):
which we will see. It's kind of one of the
fun in jokes about a pseudo religion, a satire and
parity of religion, and it's you know, it was formed
by two guys. We'll get into the history, but I
have a sort of a favorite definition, and I know
you do, and maybe we'll just read both of them.
Mind comes from Steve Davis of the Austin Chronicle and
(03:12):
he said this in the late seventies. The Church of
the SubGenius was intended as a dogmatic antidote to a
re emergent mediocrity, embracing an aesthetic and confluence with evolving
new wave sensibilities and tropes in music, film, and pop culture.
It was an end joke with a half serious punchline.
(03:32):
Very nice. That was great And what at yours was
from Ed the Grabster himself. People kind of put it nicely,
also from the Austin Chronicle. Yeah, so Ed said that
it's that the best way to explain to the church
is it is a joke. But to get the joke
you have to see that it isn't really a joke
at all, but it's actually getting at harrowing truths about
(03:53):
the world, not bad, ed not bad. So the whole
thing pretty scared at a little bit. I think so too.
It's hilarious and cute, but the whole thing is that
it is a parody of a religion, a parody of
a cult, a UFO sex cult, if you want to
get technical. Um it's a it's an absurdest in joke.
(04:16):
And the whole thing is one big in joke made
up of like millions of tiny little in jokes that
anybody in the church can kind of generate and create.
But it's all kind of hung on the skeleton of
this um, this doctrine of the prophet Bob Dobbs, who
is this the world's greatest salesman, um, who is basically
(04:39):
carrying out the will of an alien god who may
or may not love us or the subgenia as they're
called in plural, And like either it sucks you in
immediately and you're like, I want to know more about
this because this is hilarious or repulses you because it
(04:59):
is making fun of everything that you hold. Dear, there's
not a lot of middle ground, although I would count
myself as somebody in the middle ground to tell you
the truth. That was so awesome, Chuck, nicely done. Yeah,
what I just did there. And you'll see this at
a lot if you watch the documentary, if you see
any YouTube footage of people from the sub Genius Church
(05:22):
hanging out at one of their uh de vivals. They
don't call them revivals and call them de vivals. They
will do this thing where they kind of juggle their
throat with their hand as they sort of did this
weird chant. And I didn't find much information on that specifically,
but I did see them doing it all over the place. Well,
it is a huge, huge rabbit hole, and as we'll see,
(05:44):
like some people accidentally take it seriously and that's not
the right thing to do at all. That is, that
is a um that is an mentally unsound thing to do.
That's not what the intention is or anything like that.
The intention is is to basically point out how just
warped our consumer culture is. And it made a lot
(06:04):
more sense than the eighties before our culture ended up
becoming the parody that the Church of the SubGenius was
was carrying out. Yeah, it had. It had a very
mad magazine vibe. Uh. You know something I know that
you and I both grew up loving and cherishing, and
I could see, like, you know, if if that's something
as mainstream as you want to liken it too to
(06:26):
help people understand. It's almost as if Mad Magazine started
a religion and ALFREDY Newman was the God and it
was all just one big joke about consumer culture and uh,
and then if people end up taking it seriously, you
can really see why, like that would be a very
strange thing, Like, of course ALFREDY Newman is not God,
(06:47):
and of course Bob Dobbs is not God or the prophet.
But uh, these two guys founded this this kind of
funny joke religion in the late nineteen seventies because they
were like my into dudes, and what started as a
joke grew into a I guess a mini phenomenon. I
don't know, man, I think it's a major phenomenon. I
(07:10):
would say major as far as cult, classic or cult
phenomena go. And also we should also, I think we
should preface all this, if it's not too late, to
all of the Church of the Subgenious members out there,
past and present, um and future. Um. This is one
of those things where like if you explain what makes
(07:30):
something funny. It is like, that's the least funny thing
you can do. So if we trapes into that just
by virtue of explaining things, we're sorry. I know, because
it is a fun kind of cool thing that was
created for people that felt like they were on the
outside of things, for for outcasts and weirdos who didn't
(07:50):
fit in necessarily. They found common ground before the Internet
by writing letters back and forth to each other. They
kind of had the Internet through pin and paper in
these d vivals. And we have Douglas st Clair Smith
and Steve Wilcox to thank for this. Yeah, the original
outsider weirdos. That's right. Uh, you may not know him
(08:13):
by that name. If you're familiar with the Church of
the SubGenius, you know them as Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond.
And these were two guys, like I said, who were
Uh they were in Texas. I think Philo grew up
in a religious family but uh and had a really
good childhood. It wasn't some like stifling situation, but he
(08:35):
was always sort of didn't quite fit in and felt
like the outsider at school and was seeking outsider culture.
And whereas Uh Staying was I think he described himself
in the documentary as secular humanist scientists. In his upbringing,
um super liberal family, whereas uh, well I'll keep on
(08:57):
to Colin Wilcox, whereas Philos was um more conservative to
be sure. But they found common ground when a friend
introduced them. They said, you both love comic books, you
both love Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Get together and
you might have a new friend. And they were immediate friends. Yeah. Yeah,
they definitely hit it off, in part also because they
(09:18):
both kind of just felt like they didn't really fit
into Dallas, Texas at the time. That help. One of
the other things they really had in common was a
love of, like earnest bona fide extremist pamphlets, right, they're fun, Yeah,
whether it's extremist religious groups, extremists like um, you know, uh,
(09:39):
like white supremacist groups, which I'm sure Dallas, Texas in
the seventies had quite a bit of like anybody who
was just kind of off the rails and was trying
to recruit other people to be off the rails with them,
and and made a pamphlet about that. These guys would
collect it and relish it, and um. That also included
(10:00):
remember the jack Ship tracks in the Satanic Panic episode.
They were huge into that. I had a huge influence
on them as well, those comic strips about how somebody
you know, um had sex before marriage and now they
were burning in hell kind of stuff like that. They
took all these things together and they kind of use
them as the basis for this outlook on the world,
(10:22):
which is humans are totally nuts in a lot of ways,
and then even more than that, they can be dangerously
nuts when they try to foist or impose their own
crazy thoughts onto you and make you behave a certain
way because of their crazy thoughts. That that's the danger
that comes out of modern life. And I think that's
(10:43):
one of the things that really stuck out to them
and the thing that drove them to kind of kind
of try to fight that however they could. Yeah, I
have to say I see the appeal of what they did, because, uh,
if you remember a few years ago, this is quite
a few years ago now, our buddy Joe Randazzo and
I wrote a TV pilot together about a um a
(11:07):
scientology esque religion, and it never went anywhere. We even
had a few pitch meetings and nothing happened with it.
But in writing that script, we had to create our
own religion for that pilot. And you can't just say, well,
let's just call it this and it's whatever, like you
have to really kind of explore the tenants of it
and make it a real thing. And we did that,
(11:28):
and I made a pamphlet. Joe and I made it together,
and I kind of put it together, and we brought
the pamphlet to the pitch meetings and it I'll send
you one sometime. It's really funny. Our our religion was
called bin Riism, and it was like numbers, this numbers
based kind of scientology thing. But it was so much fun.
And all I could think about when these two guys
(11:49):
got together in nineteen nine and hatch this idea was, Yeah,
it's a lot of fun to create a phony religion,
even for a screenplay. Yeah, And they were deaf to
really inspired by um l Ron Hubbard and his success
at basically founding scientology based on some science fiction ideas
that he had and then becoming rich. There was a
(12:11):
famous quote attributed to L. Ron Hubbard that you can't
get rich writing science fiction, but you can get rich
by writing or by founding your own religion and so
so we should be really careful here. They weren't inspired
by l Ron Hubbard in the sense like they wanted
to take advantage of people. I think they were more
fascinated by the fact that there are plenty of people
(12:33):
out there who will buy into this, and I think
they kind of wanted to explore that, not not in
any kind of like it's weird, it's the whole thing
is kind of a cynical It comes from a cynical
place where you just have to be cynical to to
be to be critical enough of society to see it
for what it is. But it's also like a very
(12:55):
humanist group as well, where like they're not trying to
hurt you, they're not trying to exploit you. They definitely
come off as superior a lot of times, especially if
you're not in on the joke, because that makes you,
by definition, part of the butt of the joke. Yes,
but for the most part, they're not. They're not like
(13:15):
a group of people who like hate or despise other people.
I think they're fascinated by the fact that that kind
of stuff exists, and they're also fascinated by just how
um conformist the average person is without even thinking about it. Um.
So uh, they were fascinated, I guess, is the way
to put it. By l Ron Hubbard and his success
with Scientology. And there was another quote that was attributed
(13:38):
to Staying. I don't know if it was in the
documentary that came out recently or not, but he basically said,
if we figured that if Jim Jones can get nine
people they kill themselves, we could get nine people to
send us a dollar. And they kind of wanted to
toy around with that and see, you know if that
was the case, not to exploit people, but just to
kind of see I think if there was anybody else
(14:00):
out there, they're kind of shouting into the wilderness. And
the way that you told them that you were out
there was to mail in a dollar and say, give
some of your pamphlet. Yeah, and here's the deal. Staying
it looks like, by all accounts, is generally made his
living doing this over the year. He's he's not gotten rich.
It's not a Scientology thing where it's like and send
(14:21):
me a hundred more dollars and we'll give you another thing.
It's really just sort of mail us some money and
we'll send you our comedy goods in the mail. Yeah. Like,
and he still stuff's envelopes and he still sends pamphlets
and CDs and literature today. It's like, you know, it's
like paying for a Mad magazine or something, but it's
(14:41):
just done from this guy's house. Yeah. I also get
the impression that the far and away the vast majority
of the people who understand the Church of SubGenius for
what it is when they send money, and they're sending
it out of like gratitude for what you're staying and
um Philo have built together. That's that's what it is.
They're not being duped in any way. They're in on
(15:01):
the joke. They're just showing their support by um shoveling
money towards those guys. All right, I think that is
a great preamble. You're either turning off your Hi Fi
system now, or you're or you're intrigued by what's to come,
and we'll talk about uh the night at all hatched
right after this. Alright, so these guys are hanging out,
(15:51):
it's they didn't have I think Philo was the one.
He always had a pretty decent job. He kind of
had a okay career, and he always wanted to There
were times where he kind of dropped in and out
of his involvement because he did have a decent career,
but he always supported it, whereas Staying was all in
(16:12):
from the beginning and didn't have a ton of prospects
for work. But they were hanging out and they were
like kind of wondering why they, you know, didn't have
more and why they weren't as successful as they thought
they should be, and Staying said, you know, we aren't geniuses.
You know, we must be subgeniuses. And he says in
the documentary he was like, that's the moment. It was
literally like a lightning bolt out of the sky that
(16:34):
hatched this idea. So they kind of took all their
interests and all these weird pamphlets and weird UFO cults
and pseudo religions and New Age beliefs, and they made
the original pamphlet. Uh spent sixty dollars on this original pamphlet,
and we're just leaving him at dry cleaners and stuff
like that until Stag's wife got mad and she was like,
(16:55):
that's a lot of money for us. At least send
this to some publishers and see if you can do
something with this. So they sent it to every publisher
under the sun and got rejected by every every publisher
under the sun. But um, it's pretty funny that later
they did end up having a fairly successful book. But
(17:16):
early on book publishers didn't know what to do with
these guys. Yeah, and you can understand why if you've
ever seen what's called pamphlet number one now, which is
part of the church doctrine. This is like the Sacred Writings.
The The idea is that Um Ivan Stang is the
sacred scribe who took down the words of Bob Dobbs.
And by the way, Bob Dobbs, the Bob is always
(17:38):
in quotes, not just when you say j R. Bob Dobbs,
like even if you say Bob Dobbs or even just Bob,
it's always in quotes. That's how you write his name. Um.
And that Bob was getting his divine inspiration from Jehovah one,
that alien overlord that that runs earth. Um. And this
(17:59):
was kind of like the conceit of the pamphlet, and
the front of the pamphlet said things like the world
ends tomorrow, and you may die in all caps. Um
it asked, Uh, do people think you're strange? Do you? Um?
I know, I love that one. There was another one
that said eternal salvation or triple your money back. So like,
(18:20):
these are the things on like on and in the pamphlet,
and they're they're going around to publishers being like, hey,
you want to you want to give us some money
for this, So of course everybody said no. The most
astounding thing is that eventually somebody actually said yes, I
think McGraw hill. Yeah. And then this was much later
when they finally did get their book published, after they
(18:40):
had quite a following and the sort of writing was
on the wall with these, you know, fairly successful gatherings
in live shows. But um, yeah, the book came later.
Early on they got together and started, uh, just as
buddies getting on the CB radio and doing and this again,
this was like you would get on the internet today.
By then it was the CB and they would do
(19:02):
these sort of parody voices. Um basically hatched what was
the beginnings of what would end up being the hour
of Slack radio show, which is ninety minutes long. Part
of the joke, and people started hollering back at them.
He said they were trolls. Before they were trolls, you
were kind of trolling people on the c B. And
(19:22):
then other people would troll back and call them, uh, pinks.
And that's where the notion of pinks or pink boys
came up. And pink boys they kind of flipped it.
In the church of the SubGenius. Pink boys are the others.
They're the squares. They're the ones who just follow along
and go to their nine to five job and spend
(19:43):
their consumer money and you know, uh and on catalog
items and anyone else outside is a pink or a
pink boy. Yes, but but there's a distinction between uh, say,
people like you and I. An actual died in the
little pink ball ways, the kind of the like middle
manager types who are like not only fully bought into
(20:06):
the con, the great con that's going on, they actually
like like almost violently defended in its existence. And it's
it's rightness. Um, those are those are pinks. There are
reparable There's nothing that's ever going to help them, and
they're genuine humans. Now, there are plenty of sub genii
out there who don't know their subgenii they haven't been
(20:26):
exposed to the church, they've never seen a Dob's head.
Maybe whatever reason, they're they're not aware that they're a
SubGenius yet. And if you're a true SubGenius, then you
have YETI blood coursing through your veins. Now, if you're
an actual SubGenius, that means that you are a of
YETI heritage. Who is who has basically become aware of
(20:47):
the teachings of Bob and are now actively um working
against the conspiracy and exploiting pink Boys anytime you get
a chance, because again, they're they're hopeless. They're they're never
going to be converted because they don't have any YETI
blood in them, right. Uh. And to reiterate, I don't
know if I kind of just tossed it off earlier,
(21:08):
but Bob Dobbs is a piece of clip art. Literally,
that face that you see was a piece of clip
art from clip art catalog. And they loved clip art
because it was free, and a lot of their early
stuff was just collage from clip art that they had found.
And this was from a clip art catalog. And now
it's you know, one of the you know, arguably one
(21:29):
of the most famous pieces of clip art there is, Yeah,
and I don't know if it was a joke. It's
so hard to tell, um what's a joke and what's
not because they play everything so straight. Yeah, they're in
character basically. Yeah, but that I saw on one of
their websites that they said, reminder, this is ah, this
is this is a trademarked piece of art now as
part of like the SubGenius copyright SubGenius. So I don't
(21:51):
know if they actually did copyright. I could totally see
them doing that in real life. Um, or if they
were just joking about it. Either way, Yeah, it's kind
of great. So I think we probably can't go any
further without explaining this concept of slack. I mentioned that
the radio show is called The Hour of Slack and
(22:12):
kind of the major I guess philosophy and tenant of
their religion is us this concept of slack. Are you
having trouble describing it? No? I mean they even say
in the documentary it is not even to be described
that they can't even describe it. So whatever we do
is going to be our own attempt. Uh. Slack is
(22:34):
different for every person, but the the definite idea is
what you think which is being slack like kind of
but not just being lazy. Having everything you need in
life and being content while giving up as little as
possible exertion wise, Yeah, exertion wise exactly, like like having
done as little as possible to actually attain it. Um,
(22:56):
that's one definition of slack for sure. Um. The point is, like,
I think it's one of those things where you um,
or what is not slack is easier to recognize than
what is slack. And I'll give you an example of
something that happened today. Okay, because I've been thinking about this,
I'm like, how are we going to define slack? So? Um,
(23:20):
I knocked over the toilet brush behind the the toilet
in my bathroom, right, and you know, like the little
drippings that end up in like the toilet brush holder. Yes,
they spilled out on the floor. Those are the worst drippings,
the worst drippings. I would have rather spilled like like
like raw pork juice onto my floor than those drippings.
(23:42):
And they're bad drippings, right. So I spent the next
ten minutes not only like cleaning up those drippings, and
I mean like cleaning it up like there's there's some
floor missing. Now I scrubbed it so hard, and then
also cleaning the holder for the scrub brush before I
put everything back. And this is a totally unintentional, totally
(24:02):
avoidable thing for me to be doing. That took up
ten minutes of my life. I did not want to
be doing it. It It was gross, it was yuck, and
I realized, this is the this is the perfect example
of what is not slack. It's the conspiracy. It was
the conspiracy that probably had something to do with it,
But the point was, like I was doing something I
didn't want to do, and I was doing it. I
(24:26):
was getting no reward from it whatsoever. I was a
little stressed out about it. It was not slack. So
slack is the opposite of that. It's where things are
going your way. Uh, It's where you are content and happy.
And that doesn't necessarily mean you have everything in life,
like all the trappings of life. It very frequently doesn't
mean that. Instead, it's just whatever it is that makes
(24:47):
you content. And because it it's undefined herble, that means
that it's up to every sub GENII to define what
is slack for them. Yeah, and the conspiracy is are
the things that prevent you from achieving slack. Originally, I
think the conspiracy was literally like the man that kind
(25:07):
of thing, But it evolved over the years to the
point where one of the guys in the documentary said
it evolved to you know, it was like when it
rained really hard on a day you were going to
do something like, that's the conspiracy. It's things I think
conspiring against you. That toilet brush knocking over, that's definitely
the conspiracy because it prevented you from, I guess, taking
(25:30):
your your mid morning nap, right and the under the
teachings of of Bob, the conspiracy is actually an acronym
for clicks of normal secretly planning insidious rituals aimed at
controlling you. That's a good one, I agreed. And then
under the doctrine like this is an actual group who
(25:50):
they don't know what slack is, but they know it exists,
and they're bent on stealing as much of it as possible,
and they start stealing it from everybody, Pinks and Yettie.
From the moment, you're worn um and so it's up
to you to um to steal it back to get
as much slack as you possibly can. But the problem
with the conspiracy is they're the ones running the show
(26:11):
here on Earth. They're the ones who are behind consumer
culture UM, and they've created this illusion that that what
what normals and pinks um and uh non subgenia yetti
who haven't figured themselves out yet UM buy into as
life is all just this vast consumer conspiracy UM and
(26:34):
that uh, they'll they actually offer what appears to be slack,
but it's like false slack is what they call it. Yeah,
it's manufactured slack. So it's like, um, the SubGenius wicki
as awesome, and they give examples of UM like pre
planned recreation UM, like days off from work that you
(26:57):
earn or are given like these or this is all
false slack, Like it's somebody else deciding what your slack
is and you're buying into it. And that is the
that is not slack. Slack is you have to decide
what slack is, right, And there's original slack. We're all
born with original slack, according to the Church, and the
conspiracy chips away at that slack or sells you false
(27:19):
slack over the years to degrade your your natural slack
that you're born with. And then there's also involuntary slack,
which is my favorite slack. And this is like if
you if you lose your job or something, if you
get fired, this is just involuntary slack. Uh, that Bob
is sending your way to force you to take a
(27:42):
little time off. Yeah. I saw a video from I
guess two thousand nine or ten, and it called the
Great Recession the Great Slack Session, and it basically said,
like the financial markets have melted down, and I had
like this real dramatic music. Um of millions of people
are out of out of work. No one has a
(28:03):
clue about what to do about it. Victory is at hand. Um.
There's one other thing I want to say about slack. Two. Um,
there are basically two groups, two approaches or philosophies as
far as slack is concerned. And I think it's pretty
interesting that, like the the whole concept has gotten this far.
(28:24):
It's it's evolved into something. And I think this is
a really good example of what happens with the church's teachings.
Like these guys just wrote some crazy stuff like back
in the seventies, eighties, even into the nineties, and then
other people who kind of vibed on it came along
and expanded it like I read I read an essay
on the scissors of Sight and apparently that's mentioned off
(28:45):
handedly and uh and pamphlet at number one, and somebody
wrote a whole essay about how they're still trying to
figure out what those are and they think it's from
a crystal in Atlantis, and um, it was just just
like that's just what they do. It's almost like they're
putting stuff out there as like thoughts starters for other
people's creativity to kind of sprout from. But anyway, the
two um, the two paths for slack has kind of
(29:09):
split between these two groups, the Rewardians and the emergent tiles, right, yeah,
and the emergent tiles are getting their slack because they're
getting the things done that they kind of feel like
they want a need to get done, but it's under
a deadline from someone else. But then they have their
slack and then the Rewardians don't think. This is more
(29:30):
like tell of Steve stuff. Did you ever see that movie? No,
I need to, though I'm well aware of it. Sort
of that was sort of that guy's deal. He he
was just like he had this life philosophy and he
would have really fit in with these with these folks,
with the rewardians, They basically like slack off all the time,
don't do any work until you absolutely have to write.
(29:51):
I think there's quite a bit of pot involved every
day kind of thing. Sure, Um, that wouldn't surprise me.
And that's what I think most people would think of
when they think of like slack king, Like, yeah, that's
what you do when you're slack. You don't work, You
sit around, you smoke pot. You're like never put on
pants or anything like that, and you're just having the
time of your life as long as like that's what
you want to do. Um, emergentise you're like, no, no,
(30:11):
there's another way to do this. Like I feel really
good about accomplishing something about like setting a goal and
meeting it about but that's my goal. Like I want
to learn how to climb a mountain, So I'm gonna
go learn how to climb a mountain and climb that mountain,
and during that whole process, I'm slacking, Like that's my
(30:32):
slack um. So those are kind of like the two
ways of doing it. And apparently the two groups kind
of pity each other and think they have it completely backwards.
But the point is is neither group is right or wrong,
because it's all up to the individual. What your slack is.
I mean, what these guys really they it was. It's
such a time and place thing. They were born out
of this sort of spirit of the Mary Pranksters, sixties
(30:54):
counterculture kin kis kind of thing. But they came along
at a time where that had been bulldozed over and
the eighties were being born, which was about as anti
you know, sixties counterculture vibe as you can imagine. But
these guys still had that sort of fun, playful idea
(31:14):
and you know this this was their invention. I just
I always think it's just so fun and so cool.
I every time I see a UM D vible or
a live show, I absolutely do not want to be there,
but I think it's awesome. It was. I liken it
too when I saw um Spinal Tap in concert. They
(31:36):
actually toured when I was in college and I was
such a fan of the movie. And when they played
the Fox Theater and we all went and I had
it was not fun at all because it was like
it was funny as a movie, but you're this rock
and roll show that is supposed to kind of be funny,
but but there were also people that were really getting
into the rock and roll and I didn't know. I
(31:57):
was stuck in between worlds. I didn't know how to feel.
And when I was watching these SubGenius live shows, I
was kind of like, oh, that's like spinal Tap live.
I don't want to be there, but I'm glad people
are enjoying it. Yeah, it's kind of like, um yeah,
and do they are enjoying it? The people who go
to those are are genuinely having like the time of
their lives, Like that's their time to like just like
(32:19):
just be themselves as much as they ever have in
their lives. Um. It's almost like I would compare it
to um a uh, like a meeting of the Juggalos,
a comic con, and like Guar Show all mixed together.
That's what the devivals these days kind of seem like,
(32:41):
just based on what I've seen on the internet. Yeah,
that's good. I like it. And if you're if you
think this is all really dumb, then you probably would
not like their motto. They have a lot of sayings
and mottoes, but they're chief one that they kind of
yell out at these Uh, devivals is fum if you
can't take a joke, or if they can't take a joke, right,
And I mean it's right there like there. It's amazing
(33:04):
to me that some people took this too seriously because
the motto is literally, this is a joke, right, Yeah,
And it is really kind of like this concerning because
like if you do take it seriously, like you really
have to go to great lengths to to get past
all the winks, the nods, the absurdity of everything. It
(33:24):
suggests that there's like you're you're you're more so off
than the average cult member because you're actually taking a joke.
Colt as a cult. It's like when fight Club got
too serious you started blown up buildings and stuff. Yeah,
I think so, except there was no violence involved in
the Church of the sub Genius. Now they're they're peaceful.
(33:46):
It's right because they're all stoned. Yeah, I think a
lot of them are. I think a lot of them
are like the Frank's Appa types, or they're just weird
and they have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol
or anything too, you know, those are they they were
born with original stoned. Uh. Yeah, that's exactly right. Drugs.
Apparently Frank Zappler was a real jerk to people who
did drugs, Like he had that cafe or restaurant or
(34:08):
club or whatever, and he would like kick you out
if he thought you were on pot um. That's that's conspiracy. Yeah,
he was a little pink from what I can tell. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
And you said also, if this kind of stuff seems
weird to you or whatever, or you don't like it, like,
that's a pretty like fairly normal reaction. It doesn't mean
(34:30):
there's anything wrong with you. But one of the reasons
that that it might make you feel a little wobbly
or a little shaky, or like you're missing something, or
like you're being made fun of. That kind of weird
feeling in your stomach is because you probably are being
made fun of. Like if you're not in on the joke,
like I said earlier, by definition, you're you're part of
the butt of the joke. You're a member of that
(34:52):
that group. Um and if you actually are actively getting
offended at what they're saying and doing, because one of
the one of the threads of humor that they very
frequently use is bad taste, shock value. Um, like like
just basically the opposite of PC, Like they really don't
care for PC very much. Um. And if you're deeply
(35:13):
offended by this stuff and you actually like respond to it, um,
there you're actually kind of proving their point that you
are maybe a little two wrapped up in this culture
that they're that they're basically saying, like this, this is
a fraud. This is all a fraud. And and like
you're you're proving that that there's problems with it by
(35:34):
getting mad at something where you know, at a joke.
Basically yeah, and you know, before you start feeling too
sorry for these people because they're being made fun of
his like squares who aren't hip to the joke and
don't get the joke. I mean, the original reason this
was started was because these very people were outcast and
being bullied by those very people to begin with. So
(35:58):
let's say your break man, we'll talk about out some
of the lower points in the Church of the SubGenius
that have happened across the years. Huh, let's do it. So, Um,
(36:37):
if you went to a devible, one of the things
you would find, Chuck is, especially an early one, is
a lot of like put on preaching, like evangelical mock preaching.
But the what the guy's doing is like doing a
fire and Brimstone preacher bit, but what he's saying is
espousing you know, bob stuff about you know, if the FM,
(36:59):
if they can't take a joke or um, you know whatever, um,
And that like doesn't sit very well usually with people.
But also it never really sits very well with me
because it's obnoxious even in its real form, and it's
super obnoxious when it's like mocked. Because that's why I
wouldn't want to be there. Yeah. Yeah, And and the
anti music is another reason. That was the next thing
(37:21):
I was gonna get to is like, if you, if
you are not super into this and probably on a
pretty decent amount of acid back in five for four, um,
you the anti music would probably turn you off to
I know, I don't like it at all either. Yeah.
It's basically the idea is that they would get a
bunch of instruments and you could just do whatever you
want with them, and and the ideas that you're not
(37:44):
you can't play these things. These are not skilled musicians
or not even musicians at all, and uh, they would
just make noise with them, and you know, when watching
the documentary, you get the idea from some of them
that it's it's sort of like the drums cole that
finally everyone gets in synchronicity for a minute, you're like, oh, okay,
(38:05):
something just happened. Uh. That would happen occasionally, apparently with
the anti music, is that it would coalesce at a
certain point. Or maybe that was a drugs talking, but
basically it's a bunch of people making a lot of
awful noise and screaming. Yes. Um. There was actually a
time during the d at at d Vibles, I think
during the nineties maybe where a schism in the church developed.
(38:31):
Um was very much planned. Yeah right, so um. The
idea was so that one of the big parts of
the one of the tenants of the churches there the
like the world's going to end eventually on X day,
and X Day was originally slotted for July, and that
came and went and there were no UFOs um driven
(38:52):
by sex goddesses to come whisk off the sub genii
to plan at x to to live out the rest
of their eternity parting um and then but the fact
that this was coming along this the church decided like,
we don't know what's going to happen to the Pinks
after that, so we need to decide. And the schism.
(39:14):
Schism was formed between people who said, well, there'll probably
be sub subgenia who want to stay and rule the world,
and we can just let them rule the Pinks from
there on out. And then the other group said, no, no, no,
all the Pinks are going to be slaughtered on next day.
There won't be any Pinks left. And apparently this um,
this this differing opinion on basic church doctrine, like was
(39:37):
a thread that was carried on for a very long time.
It was and I think we just need to be
really clear. A schism was written into the script of
the Church of the sub Genius. It was nothing formed.
It was they wrote a hell basically into their wrestling show.
Uh with Papa Joe Mama, who was the leader of
the holocaustles who believed um and again all in jest,
(40:01):
but he believed like go out and shoot the rich basically,
like kill these people. And I think it was staying
was the leader of the Evangelicals, which was, yeah, let's
just make enslave them basically and keep them alive. And um,
two things here first of all, and that they they
eventually had a big show in the eighties, kind of
(40:22):
jumping back, uh in San Francisco. They had had these
sort of small tent d vivals with a hundred people,
and then in San Francisco they booked this theater for
two nights, nine theater for two nights, and we're like,
we don't really know if we can do this, and
they had set builders and set designers and it became
a real actual thing. The news covered it, and they did.
(40:42):
They covered it, and they they had a fake assassination
of Bob. Bob finally came out, he walked out on
stage and then bang, he was immediately shot. But apparently
they started doing this a lot Bob had. You know,
Bob had many many lives and could be killed over
and over again assassinated. Um, So there was that. And
then after Stay, judging from the documentary is is when
(41:03):
it seemed to like kind of go bad and not
go bad, and that everybody really started believing and it
became this really scary thing. But it sort of lost
its judge a little bit, and there were some people
and I think one person specifically even went up to Staying.
I don't know if it was the X Day. I
(41:25):
think San Francisco, Okay, And um, he was, you know,
obviously someone who needed some real help because he thought
this was all real. Uh. Was was livid that it
wasn't being taken seriously and that people were laughing. And
that's when Staying was like man like, kind of this
(41:46):
was bound to happen. But it also made him sad
because I never wanted anything like this and that was
the reason why. So like the documentary that was made
by Sandy K. Boone Um, who was involved in few
other pretty pretty great documentaries recently, including Tower, I don't
think it's the Tower, just Tower, the one about the
(42:08):
the Charles Whitman, the shooting at the University of Sections
back in the sixties. Oh, it's amazing. So I remember
Waking Life that that whole thing link Letter did with
the animation. They did that for this documentary and it
really like had a yes. So Um, she was involved
in that as well, But she made this documentary apparently
(42:28):
her late husband was like what a great adherent and
in the trips of the SubGenius, and she made it
also kind of as an ode to him as well. Um.
But in it Stang in Filo break character and like
they hadn't broken character for thirty something years, right, Like
they've done interviews, Uh, they've like like print, TV radio,
(42:49):
like they've done the radio show. They've like written tons
of books. Um, they just don't break character. That's just
part of their jam. And for this document or they did,
and they said the reason why at least Stang said
the reason why he did, um was because they're kind
of getting on in years and he wants to make
sure that it's perfectly clear before he dies that this
(43:12):
is a joke and that everybody knows it was a
joke and it's always been a joke, and there's like
you need to take it as a joke so that
it doesn't accidentally turn into something like scientology down the
down the line. Yeah, he said, you watched it, right, Yeah. Yeah,
I didn't watch it right before this. I saw it
several months ago. Yeah, he said, Um. And this kind
of sums it up in the way that it makes sense,
(43:34):
but it doesn't. And this is in relation to that
that guy who really came up to him and other
people that really thought it was real. He said, we
wanted we always wanted to trick people, but we didn't
really want to trick people, right, Yes, that's what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying. They were fascinated by the fact
that people could be tricked, yea, and they wanted to
explore that and make fun of it, and they invited
other people to explore it and make fun of it.
(43:56):
But it wasn't too hurt anybody that they were They
weren't actually trying to exploit anybody. Like the idea of
having having you become a part of become a member,
sending your dollar, become or dained buying all that sales
stuff was to point out that that's what was going
on in the real world, you know. Yeah, And this
(44:17):
sort of came to a head um in the nineties
when they it was just after Columbine. They had a
live show planned in Boston and Papa Joe Mama, who
was again there sort of scripted heel agent provocateur, got
on a think of radio show and somehow reference Columbine.
It was a little unclear. I think he blamed Columbine
(44:39):
on the Church of the SubGenius. Was that what it was? Okay?
Because I couldn't quite tell what the reference was, but
it was clear that that was over the line for
for both Philo and Staying, and the show was originally
canceled by the theater, and then a real church, I
think like an Episcopal church stepped up weirdly and said
you can have it at our church, and then they
(45:01):
got bomb threats and they said, well, now I guess
we can't do that, and then I think they ended
up having it in a like a public park or something.
But that was sort of like where it. You know,
the nineties weren't too kind to the not just like
the numbers, but you know, once the Internet was born,
and that was like really when the consumer culture and
(45:22):
the Internet boom happened for real, it was just so
antithetical to the Church of the SubGenius. It seemed to
kind of fade away um until later on when the
Internet kind of helped revive it again. So my take
is that the the what really kind of let it
down hill, not to say that there's like like not
(45:43):
to say that it's it went downhill on its own
like that just just the world changed, yeah, and there
was there like the world became the parody. Not it
wasn't like straight any longer it was just a joke,
but that was real life out So you can't satirize
something that is the satire that you're coming up with.
(46:04):
There's just no way to do it. No, that's absolutely right,
and that's you know, America change quite a bit in
the last like twenty years, and that the like what
do you like how you just can't You can't satirize
something when it becomes this weird version of itself that
you were using before it encroached on your turf kind
of thing, you know. Yeah, and then the last like
(46:28):
ten minutes of the documentary sort of focus on the
Trump administration and these fringe groups that started online there
saying this crazy made up stuff, and uh that really
puts a hurting, like you said, on something like the
Church of the SubGenius Um as far as being and
their their numbers were never huge, but uh, I get
(46:48):
the idea from watching it that's staying still has people
that right in that still send him some money. He
told one funny joke about getting a payment upon receipt
envelope that like he had to pay two dollars to
even open this thing, and he was all perturbed about that,
and there was a thousand dollars in cash, and he
took half of it and immediately took it to a
(47:10):
sick friend. Like that's the kind of guy he is.
So that's cool. Yeah, he struck me as that as well.
But he's still you know, paying his mortgage stuff and envelopes.
Well yeah, because I think like if you go back
and you read the original books and you know, even
still I was reading like the wikia that explained all
of the different stuff, um is hilarious and like totally
(47:30):
worthwhile and still applies today. Um. Like it's like in
a in a certain way, it's timeless even though it
screams Reagan era, you know, but the the it's still
it still makes sense because we still have like a
consumer driven culture that is that has a lot to
do with gender norms and conformity and um, exploiting people
(47:52):
for their labor. Um, Like all that stuff is still
going on. So the original stuff still still stands and
still holds. Yeah, and they you know, Mark Mothers bab
of Divo and um, I can't remember the other guy's name,
and Divo, they were way into it. Pin Gillette, Nick Offerman,
Richard link Ladder, Paul Rubens pee Wee Herman's playhouse had
(48:12):
a Bob Dobbs on his big wall collage. These were
all people that were attracted to it. It was a
lot of dudes, of course, But they do interview a
few of the women in the original group that said, like,
we were outcasts and we wanted to meet these weirdo
guys and this is where we did it. Like we
went there because it was mostly guys and you know
when we could meet these these dudes, but it was
(48:35):
very male oriented, and um, I don't know, I just
like I said, I never I always had fun reading
about it and hearing about it, but never wanted to
get too involved just because I too much of a pink.
I guess, yeah, yes, it is a lot of fun
to read about, for sure. Like there's a lot of
stuff out there on the internet to read, um, and
(48:56):
this is like it I encourage. Yeah, there's there. It's huge.
It's an enormous, huge rambling um. Like what do you
call a group of beliefs in scripture and doctrine mythos?
I guess, yeah, cannon, that's what I was looking for.
There's a huge, extensive cannon and it's a lot of
(49:16):
fun especially the older stuff. Some of the newer stuff
is not that funny because it's and I mean new,
I mean like mid two thousand's, the mid aughts kind
of stuff started to really lose its sense of humor.
Some people lost their sense of humor and got real
serious about it. The eighties and nineties stuff is hilarious. Um.
I strongly recommend going to read. Uh an Explanation of
(49:40):
the Male to Female Discrepancy in the Church of the
SubGenius by Reverend Nancy Regalia. Um. And yeah, well, I
don't think that was in the book. That was just
supplemental stuff. It was an essay explaining it. But it
also is more like a kind of a call to
arms for those girls who never felt like We're always
(50:01):
recognized that they were kind of being forced into certain
gender roles and did never feel good about it. Um.
She she had it quote, it's it's not enough to
simply burn your brawls. Why stop there burn a few
bridal boutiques in city Hall while you're at it. It's
just it's good. It's a good essay for sure, totally
worth reading. So, yeah, there's a lot more to say
(50:23):
about the Church of the sub genius. But we'll just
leave it to you. I feel like we should just
part with it's a joke. It is a joke. Ultimately,
it's a joke, and take it as that. Okay, and
you got that down. You've got some YETI and you
pink boy maybe? Uh? And since I called Chuck a
pink boy, it's time for a listener mail. Uh. Keeping
(50:46):
it short and sweet. Here with a quick correction from
a new listener. Hi, guys, I'm a very new listener
and I love what I've heard so far. However, just
three episodes in about the Magna Carta, one of you,
off handed suggested that William the Conqueror was a beloved
English king because the annexed Normandy after the Battle of Hastings.
That's pretty much backwards, guys. He was a Norman king
(51:08):
who conquered England at that battle. Williams story would make
a great episode. That is from Scott scatter Good in
su on the Korea. Well, Scott, since you're new, you
obviously don't know that most of the viewpoint that we
give on stuff you should know is from the Vikings viewpoint.
So we had it right, Okay, good? Uh, Scott, scatter Good.
(51:31):
What a great name, right? Yeah? What happens if you
scramble Scott around? Scatters Good? Uh? If you want to
get in touch with this like Scott did, you can
send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
(51:53):
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's over there wandering around in
circles and this is Stuff you should know, the podcast
about Church of the SubGenius at Long Last. When did
(00:27):
you become acquainted with the Church of the SubGenius Um.
I had a group of friends that walked on the
otter side of life, darker side of life, less, you know,
less serious side of life. I'm not sure. Um in
the nineties, and there was one guy who was big
time into the Church of the SubGenius Um. What happens right, Yeah,
(00:50):
that was my first introduction. Then I actually came across
UM the Hour of Slack on Georgia Tech Student Radio
once uh in the early two thousands and radio I
never got into it though. Are you actually like a
secret sub GENII? No, the same as you. I had
a friend in college, a very influential friend actually, who
(01:15):
turned me onto a lot of different things as I
was just getting into college and exploring different ways of
life and thought patterns and uh and sure sticks my
buddy Jason. He turned me onto a lot of things
in life and I've been able to tell him so,
which is always a nice thing. And Bob Dobbs in
(01:37):
the Church of sub Genius was one of them. Yeah yeah,
And like if you might not be utterly familiar with
the Church of the sub Genius, but I bet there's
a pretty good chance that a lot of stuff you
should know listeners are at least familiar with it without
even being fully aware of what it is. But there's
a very very famous, uh picture of a clean cut,
(02:01):
mid century middle aged dude with a pipe clenched in
his teeth and almost like a um Patrick Bateman psychotic
look on his face, like almost Bateman meets word exactly, Yes, Chuck,
I don't think anyone's ever put it better than that.
And that is Jr. Bob Dobbs, who is the High
(02:24):
Profit of the Church of the SubGenius. And he has
popped up everywhere from the background. At Peebe's Playhouse, there
was a Sublime record that had him on there. Um Like,
he shows up all over the place. It's almost like
code um And so you probably have seen it, even
if you're not familiar with the Church of the SubGenius.
That's called the Dobb's Head right, gathered from clip art,
(02:48):
which we will see. It's kind of one of the
fun in jokes about a pseudo religion, a satire and
parity of religion, and it's you know, it was formed
by two guys. We'll get into the history, but I
have a sort of a favorite definition, and I know
you do, and maybe we'll just read both of them.
Mind comes from Steve Davis of the Austin Chronicle and
(03:12):
he said this in the late seventies. The Church of
the SubGenius was intended as a dogmatic antidote to a
re emergent mediocrity, embracing an aesthetic and confluence with evolving
new wave sensibilities and tropes in music, film, and pop culture.
It was an end joke with a half serious punchline.
(03:32):
Very nice. That was great And what at yours was
from Ed the Grabster himself. People kind of put it nicely,
also from the Austin Chronicle. Yeah, so Ed said that
it's that the best way to explain to the church
is it is a joke. But to get the joke
you have to see that it isn't really a joke
at all, but it's actually getting at harrowing truths about
(03:53):
the world, not bad, ed not bad. So the whole
thing pretty scared at a little bit. I think so too.
It's hilarious and cute, but the whole thing is that
it is a parody of a religion, a parody of
a cult, a UFO sex cult, if you want to
get technical. Um it's a it's an absurdest in joke.
(04:16):
And the whole thing is one big in joke made
up of like millions of tiny little in jokes that
anybody in the church can kind of generate and create.
But it's all kind of hung on the skeleton of
this um, this doctrine of the prophet Bob Dobbs, who
is this the world's greatest salesman, um, who is basically
(04:39):
carrying out the will of an alien god who may
or may not love us or the subgenia as they're
called in plural, And like either it sucks you in
immediately and you're like, I want to know more about
this because this is hilarious or repulses you because it
(04:59):
is making fun of everything that you hold. Dear, there's
not a lot of middle ground, although I would count
myself as somebody in the middle ground to tell you
the truth. That was so awesome, Chuck, nicely done. Yeah,
what I just did there. And you'll see this at
a lot if you watch the documentary, if you see
any YouTube footage of people from the sub Genius Church
(05:22):
hanging out at one of their uh de vivals. They
don't call them revivals and call them de vivals. They
will do this thing where they kind of juggle their
throat with their hand as they sort of did this
weird chant. And I didn't find much information on that specifically,
but I did see them doing it all over the place. Well,
it is a huge, huge rabbit hole, and as we'll see,
(05:44):
like some people accidentally take it seriously and that's not
the right thing to do at all. That is, that
is a um that is an mentally unsound thing to do.
That's not what the intention is or anything like that.
The intention is is to basically point out how just
warped our consumer culture is. And it made a lot
(06:04):
more sense than the eighties before our culture ended up
becoming the parody that the Church of the SubGenius was
was carrying out. Yeah, it had. It had a very
mad magazine vibe. Uh. You know something I know that
you and I both grew up loving and cherishing, and
I could see, like, you know, if if that's something
as mainstream as you want to liken it too to
(06:26):
help people understand. It's almost as if Mad Magazine started
a religion and ALFREDY Newman was the God and it
was all just one big joke about consumer culture and uh,
and then if people end up taking it seriously, you
can really see why, like that would be a very
strange thing, Like, of course ALFREDY Newman is not God,
(06:47):
and of course Bob Dobbs is not God or the prophet.
But uh, these two guys founded this this kind of
funny joke religion in the late nineteen seventies because they
were like my into dudes, and what started as a
joke grew into a I guess a mini phenomenon. I
don't know, man, I think it's a major phenomenon. I
(07:10):
would say major as far as cult, classic or cult
phenomena go. And also we should also, I think we
should preface all this, if it's not too late, to
all of the Church of the Subgenious members out there,
past and present, um and future. Um. This is one
of those things where like if you explain what makes
(07:30):
something funny. It is like, that's the least funny thing
you can do. So if we trapes into that just
by virtue of explaining things, we're sorry. I know, because
it is a fun kind of cool thing that was
created for people that felt like they were on the
outside of things, for for outcasts and weirdos who didn't
(07:50):
fit in necessarily. They found common ground before the Internet
by writing letters back and forth to each other. They
kind of had the Internet through pin and paper in
these d vivals. And we have Douglas st Clair Smith
and Steve Wilcox to thank for this. Yeah, the original
outsider weirdos. That's right. Uh, you may not know him
(08:13):
by that name. If you're familiar with the Church of
the SubGenius, you know them as Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond.
And these were two guys, like I said, who were
Uh they were in Texas. I think Philo grew up
in a religious family but uh and had a really
good childhood. It wasn't some like stifling situation, but he
(08:35):
was always sort of didn't quite fit in and felt
like the outsider at school and was seeking outsider culture.
And whereas Uh Staying was I think he described himself
in the documentary as secular humanist scientists. In his upbringing,
um super liberal family, whereas uh, well I'll keep on
(08:57):
to Colin Wilcox, whereas Philos was um more conservative to
be sure. But they found common ground when a friend
introduced them. They said, you both love comic books, you
both love Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Get together and
you might have a new friend. And they were immediate friends. Yeah. Yeah,
they definitely hit it off, in part also because they
(09:18):
both kind of just felt like they didn't really fit
into Dallas, Texas at the time. That help. One of
the other things they really had in common was a
love of, like earnest bona fide extremist pamphlets, right, they're fun, Yeah,
whether it's extremist religious groups, extremists like um, you know, uh,
(09:39):
like white supremacist groups, which I'm sure Dallas, Texas in
the seventies had quite a bit of like anybody who
was just kind of off the rails and was trying
to recruit other people to be off the rails with them,
and and made a pamphlet about that. These guys would
collect it and relish it, and um. That also included
(10:00):
remember the jack Ship tracks in the Satanic Panic episode.
They were huge into that. I had a huge influence
on them as well, those comic strips about how somebody
you know, um had sex before marriage and now they
were burning in hell kind of stuff like that. They
took all these things together and they kind of use
them as the basis for this outlook on the world,
(10:22):
which is humans are totally nuts in a lot of ways,
and then even more than that, they can be dangerously
nuts when they try to foist or impose their own
crazy thoughts onto you and make you behave a certain
way because of their crazy thoughts. That that's the danger
that comes out of modern life. And I think that's
(10:43):
one of the things that really stuck out to them
and the thing that drove them to kind of kind
of try to fight that however they could. Yeah, I
have to say I see the appeal of what they did, because, uh,
if you remember a few years ago, this is quite
a few years ago now, our buddy Joe Randazzo and
I wrote a TV pilot together about a um a
(11:07):
scientology esque religion, and it never went anywhere. We even
had a few pitch meetings and nothing happened with it.
But in writing that script, we had to create our
own religion for that pilot. And you can't just say, well,
let's just call it this and it's whatever, like you
have to really kind of explore the tenants of it
and make it a real thing. And we did that,
(11:28):
and I made a pamphlet. Joe and I made it together,
and I kind of put it together, and we brought
the pamphlet to the pitch meetings and it I'll send
you one sometime. It's really funny. Our our religion was
called bin Riism, and it was like numbers, this numbers
based kind of scientology thing. But it was so much fun.
And all I could think about when these two guys
(11:49):
got together in nineteen nine and hatch this idea was, Yeah,
it's a lot of fun to create a phony religion,
even for a screenplay. Yeah, And they were deaf to
really inspired by um l Ron Hubbard and his success
at basically founding scientology based on some science fiction ideas
that he had and then becoming rich. There was a
(12:11):
famous quote attributed to L. Ron Hubbard that you can't
get rich writing science fiction, but you can get rich
by writing or by founding your own religion and so
so we should be really careful here. They weren't inspired
by l Ron Hubbard in the sense like they wanted
to take advantage of people. I think they were more
fascinated by the fact that there are plenty of people
(12:33):
out there who will buy into this, and I think
they kind of wanted to explore that, not not in
any kind of like it's weird, it's the whole thing
is kind of a cynical It comes from a cynical
place where you just have to be cynical to to
be to be critical enough of society to see it
for what it is. But it's also like a very
(12:55):
humanist group as well, where like they're not trying to
hurt you, they're not trying to exploit you. They definitely
come off as superior a lot of times, especially if
you're not in on the joke, because that makes you,
by definition, part of the butt of the joke. Yes,
but for the most part, they're not. They're not like
(13:15):
a group of people who like hate or despise other people.
I think they're fascinated by the fact that that kind
of stuff exists, and they're also fascinated by just how
um conformist the average person is without even thinking about it. Um.
So uh, they were fascinated, I guess, is the way
to put it. By l Ron Hubbard and his success
with Scientology. And there was another quote that was attributed
(13:38):
to Staying. I don't know if it was in the
documentary that came out recently or not, but he basically said,
if we figured that if Jim Jones can get nine
people they kill themselves, we could get nine people to
send us a dollar. And they kind of wanted to
toy around with that and see, you know if that
was the case, not to exploit people, but just to
kind of see I think if there was anybody else
(14:00):
out there, they're kind of shouting into the wilderness. And
the way that you told them that you were out
there was to mail in a dollar and say, give
some of your pamphlet. Yeah, and here's the deal. Staying
it looks like, by all accounts, is generally made his
living doing this over the year. He's he's not gotten rich.
It's not a Scientology thing where it's like and send
(14:21):
me a hundred more dollars and we'll give you another thing.
It's really just sort of mail us some money and
we'll send you our comedy goods in the mail. Yeah. Like,
and he still stuff's envelopes and he still sends pamphlets
and CDs and literature today. It's like, you know, it's
like paying for a Mad magazine or something, but it's
(14:41):
just done from this guy's house. Yeah. I also get
the impression that the far and away the vast majority
of the people who understand the Church of SubGenius for
what it is when they send money, and they're sending
it out of like gratitude for what you're staying and
um Philo have built together. That's that's what it is.
They're not being duped in any way. They're in on
(15:01):
the joke. They're just showing their support by um shoveling
money towards those guys. All right, I think that is
a great preamble. You're either turning off your Hi Fi
system now, or you're or you're intrigued by what's to come,
and we'll talk about uh the night at all hatched
right after this. Alright, so these guys are hanging out,
(15:51):
it's they didn't have I think Philo was the one.
He always had a pretty decent job. He kind of
had a okay career, and he always wanted to There
were times where he kind of dropped in and out
of his involvement because he did have a decent career,
but he always supported it, whereas Staying was all in
(16:12):
from the beginning and didn't have a ton of prospects
for work. But they were hanging out and they were
like kind of wondering why they, you know, didn't have
more and why they weren't as successful as they thought
they should be, and Staying said, you know, we aren't geniuses.
You know, we must be subgeniuses. And he says in
the documentary he was like, that's the moment. It was
literally like a lightning bolt out of the sky that
(16:34):
hatched this idea. So they kind of took all their
interests and all these weird pamphlets and weird UFO cults
and pseudo religions and New Age beliefs, and they made
the original pamphlet. Uh spent sixty dollars on this original pamphlet,
and we're just leaving him at dry cleaners and stuff
like that until Stag's wife got mad and she was like,
(16:55):
that's a lot of money for us. At least send
this to some publishers and see if you can do
something with this. So they sent it to every publisher
under the sun and got rejected by every every publisher
under the sun. But um, it's pretty funny that later
they did end up having a fairly successful book. But
(17:16):
early on book publishers didn't know what to do with
these guys. Yeah, and you can understand why if you've
ever seen what's called pamphlet number one now, which is
part of the church doctrine. This is like the Sacred Writings.
The The idea is that Um Ivan Stang is the
sacred scribe who took down the words of Bob Dobbs.
And by the way, Bob Dobbs, the Bob is always
(17:38):
in quotes, not just when you say j R. Bob Dobbs,
like even if you say Bob Dobbs or even just Bob,
it's always in quotes. That's how you write his name. Um.
And that Bob was getting his divine inspiration from Jehovah one,
that alien overlord that that runs earth. Um. And this
(17:59):
was kind of like the conceit of the pamphlet, and
the front of the pamphlet said things like the world
ends tomorrow, and you may die in all caps. Um
it asked, Uh, do people think you're strange? Do you? Um?
I know, I love that one. There was another one
that said eternal salvation or triple your money back. So like,
(18:20):
these are the things on like on and in the pamphlet,
and they're they're going around to publishers being like, hey,
you want to you want to give us some money
for this, So of course everybody said no. The most
astounding thing is that eventually somebody actually said yes, I
think McGraw hill. Yeah. And then this was much later
when they finally did get their book published, after they
(18:40):
had quite a following and the sort of writing was
on the wall with these, you know, fairly successful gatherings
in live shows. But um, yeah, the book came later.
Early on they got together and started, uh, just as
buddies getting on the CB radio and doing and this again,
this was like you would get on the internet today.
By then it was the CB and they would do
(19:02):
these sort of parody voices. Um basically hatched what was
the beginnings of what would end up being the hour
of Slack radio show, which is ninety minutes long. Part
of the joke, and people started hollering back at them.
He said they were trolls. Before they were trolls, you
were kind of trolling people on the c B. And
(19:22):
then other people would troll back and call them, uh, pinks.
And that's where the notion of pinks or pink boys
came up. And pink boys they kind of flipped it.
In the church of the SubGenius. Pink boys are the others.
They're the squares. They're the ones who just follow along
and go to their nine to five job and spend
(19:43):
their consumer money and you know, uh and on catalog
items and anyone else outside is a pink or a
pink boy. Yes, but but there's a distinction between uh, say,
people like you and I. An actual died in the
little pink ball ways, the kind of the like middle
manager types who are like not only fully bought into
(20:06):
the con, the great con that's going on, they actually
like like almost violently defended in its existence. And it's
it's rightness. Um, those are those are pinks. There are
reparable There's nothing that's ever going to help them, and
they're genuine humans. Now, there are plenty of sub genii
out there who don't know their subgenii they haven't been
(20:26):
exposed to the church, they've never seen a Dob's head.
Maybe whatever reason, they're they're not aware that they're a
SubGenius yet. And if you're a true SubGenius, then you
have YETI blood coursing through your veins. Now, if you're
an actual SubGenius, that means that you are a of
YETI heritage. Who is who has basically become aware of
(20:47):
the teachings of Bob and are now actively um working
against the conspiracy and exploiting pink Boys anytime you get
a chance, because again, they're they're hopeless. They're they're never
going to be converted because they don't have any YETI
blood in them, right. Uh. And to reiterate, I don't
know if I kind of just tossed it off earlier,
(21:08):
but Bob Dobbs is a piece of clip art. Literally,
that face that you see was a piece of clip
art from clip art catalog. And they loved clip art
because it was free, and a lot of their early
stuff was just collage from clip art that they had found.
And this was from a clip art catalog. And now
it's you know, one of the you know, arguably one
(21:29):
of the most famous pieces of clip art there is, Yeah,
and I don't know if it was a joke. It's
so hard to tell, um what's a joke and what's
not because they play everything so straight. Yeah, they're in
character basically. Yeah, but that I saw on one of
their websites that they said, reminder, this is ah, this
is this is a trademarked piece of art now as
part of like the SubGenius copyright SubGenius. So I don't
(21:51):
know if they actually did copyright. I could totally see
them doing that in real life. Um, or if they
were just joking about it. Either way, Yeah, it's kind
of great. So I think we probably can't go any
further without explaining this concept of slack. I mentioned that
the radio show is called The Hour of Slack and
(22:12):
kind of the major I guess philosophy and tenant of
their religion is us this concept of slack. Are you
having trouble describing it? No? I mean they even say
in the documentary it is not even to be described
that they can't even describe it. So whatever we do
is going to be our own attempt. Uh. Slack is
(22:34):
different for every person, but the the definite idea is
what you think which is being slack like kind of
but not just being lazy. Having everything you need in
life and being content while giving up as little as
possible exertion wise, Yeah, exertion wise exactly, like like having
done as little as possible to actually attain it. Um,
(22:56):
that's one definition of slack for sure. Um. The point is, like,
I think it's one of those things where you um,
or what is not slack is easier to recognize than
what is slack. And I'll give you an example of
something that happened today. Okay, because I've been thinking about this,
I'm like, how are we going to define slack? So? Um,
(23:20):
I knocked over the toilet brush behind the the toilet
in my bathroom, right, and you know, like the little
drippings that end up in like the toilet brush holder. Yes,
they spilled out on the floor. Those are the worst drippings,
the worst drippings. I would have rather spilled like like
like raw pork juice onto my floor than those drippings.
(23:42):
And they're bad drippings, right. So I spent the next
ten minutes not only like cleaning up those drippings, and
I mean like cleaning it up like there's there's some
floor missing. Now I scrubbed it so hard, and then
also cleaning the holder for the scrub brush before I
put everything back. And this is a totally unintentional, totally
(24:02):
avoidable thing for me to be doing. That took up
ten minutes of my life. I did not want to
be doing it. It It was gross, it was yuck, and
I realized, this is the this is the perfect example
of what is not slack. It's the conspiracy. It was
the conspiracy that probably had something to do with it,
But the point was, like I was doing something I
didn't want to do, and I was doing it. I
(24:26):
was getting no reward from it whatsoever. I was a
little stressed out about it. It was not slack. So
slack is the opposite of that. It's where things are
going your way. Uh, It's where you are content and happy.
And that doesn't necessarily mean you have everything in life,
like all the trappings of life. It very frequently doesn't
mean that. Instead, it's just whatever it is that makes
(24:47):
you content. And because it it's undefined herble, that means
that it's up to every sub GENII to define what
is slack for them. Yeah, and the conspiracy is are
the things that prevent you from achieving slack. Originally, I
think the conspiracy was literally like the man that kind
(25:07):
of thing, But it evolved over the years to the
point where one of the guys in the documentary said
it evolved to you know, it was like when it
rained really hard on a day you were going to
do something like, that's the conspiracy. It's things I think
conspiring against you. That toilet brush knocking over, that's definitely
the conspiracy because it prevented you from, I guess, taking
(25:30):
your your mid morning nap, right and the under the
teachings of of Bob, the conspiracy is actually an acronym
for clicks of normal secretly planning insidious rituals aimed at
controlling you. That's a good one, I agreed. And then
under the doctrine like this is an actual group who
(25:50):
they don't know what slack is, but they know it exists,
and they're bent on stealing as much of it as possible,
and they start stealing it from everybody, Pinks and Yettie.
From the moment, you're worn um and so it's up
to you to um to steal it back to get
as much slack as you possibly can. But the problem
with the conspiracy is they're the ones running the show
(26:11):
here on Earth. They're the ones who are behind consumer
culture UM, and they've created this illusion that that what
what normals and pinks um and uh non subgenia yetti
who haven't figured themselves out yet UM buy into as
life is all just this vast consumer conspiracy UM and
(26:34):
that uh, they'll they actually offer what appears to be slack,
but it's like false slack is what they call it. Yeah,
it's manufactured slack. So it's like, um, the SubGenius wicki
as awesome, and they give examples of UM like pre
planned recreation UM, like days off from work that you
(26:57):
earn or are given like these or this is all
false slack, Like it's somebody else deciding what your slack
is and you're buying into it. And that is the
that is not slack. Slack is you have to decide
what slack is, right, And there's original slack. We're all
born with original slack, according to the Church, and the
conspiracy chips away at that slack or sells you false
(27:19):
slack over the years to degrade your your natural slack
that you're born with. And then there's also involuntary slack,
which is my favorite slack. And this is like if
you if you lose your job or something, if you
get fired, this is just involuntary slack. Uh, that Bob
is sending your way to force you to take a
(27:42):
little time off. Yeah. I saw a video from I
guess two thousand nine or ten, and it called the
Great Recession the Great Slack Session, and it basically said,
like the financial markets have melted down, and I had
like this real dramatic music. Um of millions of people
are out of out of work. No one has a
(28:03):
clue about what to do about it. Victory is at hand. Um.
There's one other thing I want to say about slack. Two. Um,
there are basically two groups, two approaches or philosophies as
far as slack is concerned. And I think it's pretty
interesting that, like the the whole concept has gotten this far.
(28:24):
It's it's evolved into something. And I think this is
a really good example of what happens with the church's teachings.
Like these guys just wrote some crazy stuff like back
in the seventies, eighties, even into the nineties, and then
other people who kind of vibed on it came along
and expanded it like I read I read an essay
on the scissors of Sight and apparently that's mentioned off
(28:45):
handedly and uh and pamphlet at number one, and somebody
wrote a whole essay about how they're still trying to
figure out what those are and they think it's from
a crystal in Atlantis, and um, it was just just
like that's just what they do. It's almost like they're
putting stuff out there as like thoughts starters for other
people's creativity to kind of sprout from. But anyway, the
two um, the two paths for slack has kind of
(29:09):
split between these two groups, the Rewardians and the emergent tiles, right, yeah,
and the emergent tiles are getting their slack because they're
getting the things done that they kind of feel like
they want a need to get done, but it's under
a deadline from someone else. But then they have their
slack and then the Rewardians don't think. This is more
(29:30):
like tell of Steve stuff. Did you ever see that movie? No,
I need to, though I'm well aware of it. Sort
of that was sort of that guy's deal. He he
was just like he had this life philosophy and he
would have really fit in with these with these folks,
with the rewardians, They basically like slack off all the time,
don't do any work until you absolutely have to write.
(29:51):
I think there's quite a bit of pot involved every
day kind of thing. Sure, Um, that wouldn't surprise me.
And that's what I think most people would think of
when they think of like slack king, Like, yeah, that's
what you do when you're slack. You don't work, You
sit around, you smoke pot. You're like never put on
pants or anything like that, and you're just having the
time of your life as long as like that's what
you want to do. Um, emergentise you're like, no, no,
(30:11):
there's another way to do this. Like I feel really
good about accomplishing something about like setting a goal and
meeting it about but that's my goal. Like I want
to learn how to climb a mountain, So I'm gonna
go learn how to climb a mountain and climb that mountain,
and during that whole process, I'm slacking, Like that's my
(30:32):
slack um. So those are kind of like the two
ways of doing it. And apparently the two groups kind
of pity each other and think they have it completely backwards.
But the point is is neither group is right or wrong,
because it's all up to the individual. What your slack is.
I mean, what these guys really they it was. It's
such a time and place thing. They were born out
of this sort of spirit of the Mary Pranksters, sixties
(30:54):
counterculture kin kis kind of thing. But they came along
at a time where that had been bulldozed over and
the eighties were being born, which was about as anti
you know, sixties counterculture vibe as you can imagine. But
these guys still had that sort of fun, playful idea
(31:14):
and you know this this was their invention. I just
I always think it's just so fun and so cool.
I every time I see a UM D vible or
a live show, I absolutely do not want to be there,
but I think it's awesome. It was. I liken it
too when I saw um Spinal Tap in concert. They
(31:36):
actually toured when I was in college and I was
such a fan of the movie. And when they played
the Fox Theater and we all went and I had
it was not fun at all because it was like
it was funny as a movie, but you're this rock
and roll show that is supposed to kind of be funny,
but but there were also people that were really getting
into the rock and roll and I didn't know. I
(31:57):
was stuck in between worlds. I didn't know how to feel.
And when I was watching these SubGenius live shows, I
was kind of like, oh, that's like spinal Tap live.
I don't want to be there, but I'm glad people
are enjoying it. Yeah, it's kind of like, um yeah,
and do they are enjoying it? The people who go
to those are are genuinely having like the time of
their lives, Like that's their time to like just like
(32:19):
just be themselves as much as they ever have in
their lives. Um. It's almost like I would compare it
to um a uh, like a meeting of the Juggalos,
a comic con, and like Guar Show all mixed together.
That's what the devivals these days kind of seem like,
(32:41):
just based on what I've seen on the internet. Yeah,
that's good. I like it. And if you're if you
think this is all really dumb, then you probably would
not like their motto. They have a lot of sayings
and mottoes, but they're chief one that they kind of
yell out at these Uh, devivals is fum if you
can't take a joke, or if they can't take a joke, right,
And I mean it's right there like there. It's amazing
(33:04):
to me that some people took this too seriously because
the motto is literally, this is a joke, right, Yeah,
And it is really kind of like this concerning because
like if you do take it seriously, like you really
have to go to great lengths to to get past
all the winks, the nods, the absurdity of everything. It
(33:24):
suggests that there's like you're you're you're more so off
than the average cult member because you're actually taking a joke.
Colt as a cult. It's like when fight Club got
too serious you started blown up buildings and stuff. Yeah,
I think so, except there was no violence involved in
the Church of the sub Genius. Now they're they're peaceful.
(33:46):
It's right because they're all stoned. Yeah, I think a
lot of them are. I think a lot of them
are like the Frank's Appa types, or they're just weird
and they have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol
or anything too, you know, those are they they were
born with original stoned. Uh. Yeah, that's exactly right. Drugs.
Apparently Frank Zappler was a real jerk to people who
did drugs, Like he had that cafe or restaurant or
(34:08):
club or whatever, and he would like kick you out
if he thought you were on pot um. That's that's conspiracy. Yeah,
he was a little pink from what I can tell. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
And you said also, if this kind of stuff seems
weird to you or whatever, or you don't like it, like,
that's a pretty like fairly normal reaction. It doesn't mean
(34:30):
there's anything wrong with you. But one of the reasons
that that it might make you feel a little wobbly
or a little shaky, or like you're missing something, or
like you're being made fun of. That kind of weird
feeling in your stomach is because you probably are being
made fun of. Like if you're not in on the joke,
like I said earlier, by definition, you're you're part of
the butt of the joke. You're a member of that
(34:52):
that group. Um and if you actually are actively getting
offended at what they're saying and doing, because one of
the one of the threads of humor that they very
frequently use is bad taste, shock value. Um, like like
just basically the opposite of PC, Like they really don't
care for PC very much. Um. And if you're deeply
(35:13):
offended by this stuff and you actually like respond to it, um,
there you're actually kind of proving their point that you
are maybe a little two wrapped up in this culture
that they're that they're basically saying, like this, this is
a fraud. This is all a fraud. And and like
you're you're proving that that there's problems with it by
(35:34):
getting mad at something where you know, at a joke.
Basically yeah, and you know, before you start feeling too
sorry for these people because they're being made fun of
his like squares who aren't hip to the joke and
don't get the joke. I mean, the original reason this
was started was because these very people were outcast and
being bullied by those very people to begin with. So
(35:58):
let's say your break man, we'll talk about out some
of the lower points in the Church of the SubGenius
that have happened across the years. Huh, let's do it. So, Um,
(36:37):
if you went to a devible, one of the things
you would find, Chuck is, especially an early one, is
a lot of like put on preaching, like evangelical mock preaching.
But the what the guy's doing is like doing a
fire and Brimstone preacher bit, but what he's saying is
espousing you know, bob stuff about you know, if the FM,
(36:59):
if they can't take a joke or um, you know whatever, um,
And that like doesn't sit very well usually with people.
But also it never really sits very well with me
because it's obnoxious even in its real form, and it's
super obnoxious when it's like mocked. Because that's why I
wouldn't want to be there. Yeah. Yeah, And and the
anti music is another reason. That was the next thing
(37:21):
I was gonna get to is like, if you, if
you are not super into this and probably on a
pretty decent amount of acid back in five for four, um,
you the anti music would probably turn you off to
I know, I don't like it at all either. Yeah.
It's basically the idea is that they would get a
bunch of instruments and you could just do whatever you
want with them, and and the ideas that you're not
(37:44):
you can't play these things. These are not skilled musicians
or not even musicians at all, and uh, they would
just make noise with them, and you know, when watching
the documentary, you get the idea from some of them
that it's it's sort of like the drums cole that
finally everyone gets in synchronicity for a minute, you're like, oh, okay,
(38:05):
something just happened. Uh. That would happen occasionally, apparently with
the anti music, is that it would coalesce at a
certain point. Or maybe that was a drugs talking, but
basically it's a bunch of people making a lot of
awful noise and screaming. Yes. Um. There was actually a
time during the d at at d Vibles, I think
during the nineties maybe where a schism in the church developed.
(38:31):
Um was very much planned. Yeah right, so um. The
idea was so that one of the big parts of
the one of the tenants of the churches there the
like the world's going to end eventually on X day,
and X Day was originally slotted for July, and that
came and went and there were no UFOs um driven
(38:52):
by sex goddesses to come whisk off the sub genii
to plan at x to to live out the rest
of their eternity parting um and then but the fact
that this was coming along this the church decided like,
we don't know what's going to happen to the Pinks
after that, so we need to decide. And the schism.
(39:14):
Schism was formed between people who said, well, there'll probably
be sub subgenia who want to stay and rule the world,
and we can just let them rule the Pinks from
there on out. And then the other group said, no, no, no,
all the Pinks are going to be slaughtered on next day.
There won't be any Pinks left. And apparently this um,
this this differing opinion on basic church doctrine, like was
(39:37):
a thread that was carried on for a very long time.
It was and I think we just need to be
really clear. A schism was written into the script of
the Church of the sub Genius. It was nothing formed.
It was they wrote a hell basically into their wrestling show.
Uh with Papa Joe Mama, who was the leader of
the holocaustles who believed um and again all in jest,
(40:01):
but he believed like go out and shoot the rich basically,
like kill these people. And I think it was staying
was the leader of the Evangelicals, which was, yeah, let's
just make enslave them basically and keep them alive. And um,
two things here first of all, and that they they
eventually had a big show in the eighties, kind of
(40:22):
jumping back, uh in San Francisco. They had had these
sort of small tent d vivals with a hundred people,
and then in San Francisco they booked this theater for
two nights, nine theater for two nights, and we're like,
we don't really know if we can do this, and
they had set builders and set designers and it became
a real actual thing. The news covered it, and they did.
(40:42):
They covered it, and they they had a fake assassination
of Bob. Bob finally came out, he walked out on
stage and then bang, he was immediately shot. But apparently
they started doing this a lot Bob had. You know,
Bob had many many lives and could be killed over
and over again assassinated. Um, So there was that. And
then after Stay, judging from the documentary is is when
(41:03):
it seemed to like kind of go bad and not
go bad, and that everybody really started believing and it
became this really scary thing. But it sort of lost
its judge a little bit, and there were some people
and I think one person specifically even went up to Staying.
I don't know if it was the X Day. I
(41:25):
think San Francisco, Okay, And um, he was, you know,
obviously someone who needed some real help because he thought
this was all real. Uh. Was was livid that it
wasn't being taken seriously and that people were laughing. And
that's when Staying was like man like, kind of this
(41:46):
was bound to happen. But it also made him sad
because I never wanted anything like this and that was
the reason why. So like the documentary that was made
by Sandy K. Boone Um, who was involved in few
other pretty pretty great documentaries recently, including Tower, I don't
think it's the Tower, just Tower, the one about the
(42:08):
the Charles Whitman, the shooting at the University of Sections
back in the sixties. Oh, it's amazing. So I remember
Waking Life that that whole thing link Letter did with
the animation. They did that for this documentary and it
really like had a yes. So Um, she was involved
in that as well, But she made this documentary apparently
(42:28):
her late husband was like what a great adherent and
in the trips of the SubGenius, and she made it
also kind of as an ode to him as well. Um.
But in it Stang in Filo break character and like
they hadn't broken character for thirty something years, right, Like
they've done interviews, Uh, they've like like print, TV radio,
(42:49):
like they've done the radio show. They've like written tons
of books. Um, they just don't break character. That's just
part of their jam. And for this document or they did,
and they said the reason why at least Stang said
the reason why he did, um was because they're kind
of getting on in years and he wants to make
sure that it's perfectly clear before he dies that this
(43:12):
is a joke and that everybody knows it was a
joke and it's always been a joke, and there's like
you need to take it as a joke so that
it doesn't accidentally turn into something like scientology down the
down the line. Yeah, he said, you watched it, right, Yeah. Yeah,
I didn't watch it right before this. I saw it
several months ago. Yeah, he said, Um. And this kind
of sums it up in the way that it makes sense,
(43:34):
but it doesn't. And this is in relation to that
that guy who really came up to him and other
people that really thought it was real. He said, we
wanted we always wanted to trick people, but we didn't
really want to trick people, right, Yes, that's what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying. They were fascinated by the fact
that people could be tricked, yea, and they wanted to
explore that and make fun of it, and they invited
other people to explore it and make fun of it.
(43:56):
But it wasn't too hurt anybody that they were They
weren't actually trying to exploit anybody. Like the idea of
having having you become a part of become a member,
sending your dollar, become or dained buying all that sales
stuff was to point out that that's what was going
on in the real world, you know. Yeah, And this
(44:17):
sort of came to a head um in the nineties
when they it was just after Columbine. They had a
live show planned in Boston and Papa Joe Mama, who
was again there sort of scripted heel agent provocateur, got
on a think of radio show and somehow reference Columbine.
It was a little unclear. I think he blamed Columbine
(44:39):
on the Church of the SubGenius. Was that what it was? Okay?
Because I couldn't quite tell what the reference was, but
it was clear that that was over the line for
for both Philo and Staying, and the show was originally
canceled by the theater, and then a real church, I
think like an Episcopal church stepped up weirdly and said
you can have it at our church, and then they
(45:01):
got bomb threats and they said, well, now I guess
we can't do that, and then I think they ended
up having it in a like a public park or something.
But that was sort of like where it. You know,
the nineties weren't too kind to the not just like
the numbers, but you know, once the Internet was born,
and that was like really when the consumer culture and
(45:22):
the Internet boom happened for real, it was just so
antithetical to the Church of the SubGenius. It seemed to
kind of fade away um until later on when the
Internet kind of helped revive it again. So my take
is that the the what really kind of let it
down hill, not to say that there's like like not
(45:43):
to say that it's it went downhill on its own
like that just just the world changed, yeah, and there
was there like the world became the parody. Not it
wasn't like straight any longer it was just a joke,
but that was real life out So you can't satirize
something that is the satire that you're coming up with.
(46:04):
There's just no way to do it. No, that's absolutely right,
and that's you know, America change quite a bit in
the last like twenty years, and that the like what
do you like how you just can't You can't satirize
something when it becomes this weird version of itself that
you were using before it encroached on your turf kind
of thing, you know. Yeah, and then the last like
(46:28):
ten minutes of the documentary sort of focus on the
Trump administration and these fringe groups that started online there
saying this crazy made up stuff, and uh that really
puts a hurting, like you said, on something like the
Church of the SubGenius Um as far as being and
their their numbers were never huge, but uh, I get
(46:48):
the idea from watching it that's staying still has people
that right in that still send him some money. He
told one funny joke about getting a payment upon receipt
envelope that like he had to pay two dollars to
even open this thing, and he was all perturbed about that,
and there was a thousand dollars in cash, and he
took half of it and immediately took it to a
(47:10):
sick friend. Like that's the kind of guy he is.
So that's cool. Yeah, he struck me as that as well.
But he's still you know, paying his mortgage stuff and envelopes.
Well yeah, because I think like if you go back
and you read the original books and you know, even
still I was reading like the wikia that explained all
of the different stuff, um is hilarious and like totally
(47:30):
worthwhile and still applies today. Um. Like it's like in
a in a certain way, it's timeless even though it
screams Reagan era, you know, but the the it's still
it still makes sense because we still have like a
consumer driven culture that is that has a lot to
do with gender norms and conformity and um, exploiting people
(47:52):
for their labor. Um, Like all that stuff is still
going on. So the original stuff still still stands and
still holds. Yeah, and they you know, Mark Mothers bab
of Divo and um, I can't remember the other guy's name,
and Divo, they were way into it. Pin Gillette, Nick Offerman,
Richard link Ladder, Paul Rubens pee Wee Herman's playhouse had
(48:12):
a Bob Dobbs on his big wall collage. These were
all people that were attracted to it. It was a
lot of dudes, of course, But they do interview a
few of the women in the original group that said, like,
we were outcasts and we wanted to meet these weirdo
guys and this is where we did it. Like we
went there because it was mostly guys and you know
when we could meet these these dudes, but it was
(48:35):
very male oriented, and um, I don't know, I just
like I said, I never I always had fun reading
about it and hearing about it, but never wanted to
get too involved just because I too much of a pink.
I guess, yeah, yes, it is a lot of fun
to read about, for sure. Like there's a lot of
stuff out there on the internet to read, um, and
(48:56):
this is like it I encourage. Yeah, there's there. It's huge.
It's an enormous, huge rambling um. Like what do you
call a group of beliefs in scripture and doctrine mythos?
I guess, yeah, cannon, that's what I was looking for.
There's a huge, extensive cannon and it's a lot of
(49:16):
fun especially the older stuff. Some of the newer stuff
is not that funny because it's and I mean new,
I mean like mid two thousand's, the mid aughts kind
of stuff started to really lose its sense of humor.
Some people lost their sense of humor and got real
serious about it. The eighties and nineties stuff is hilarious. Um.
I strongly recommend going to read. Uh an Explanation of
(49:40):
the Male to Female Discrepancy in the Church of the
SubGenius by Reverend Nancy Regalia. Um. And yeah, well, I
don't think that was in the book. That was just
supplemental stuff. It was an essay explaining it. But it
also is more like a kind of a call to
arms for those girls who never felt like We're always
(50:01):
recognized that they were kind of being forced into certain
gender roles and did never feel good about it. Um.
She she had it quote, it's it's not enough to
simply burn your brawls. Why stop there burn a few
bridal boutiques in city Hall while you're at it. It's
just it's good. It's a good essay for sure, totally
worth reading. So, yeah, there's a lot more to say
(50:23):
about the Church of the sub genius. But we'll just
leave it to you. I feel like we should just
part with it's a joke. It is a joke. Ultimately,
it's a joke, and take it as that. Okay, and
you got that down. You've got some YETI and you
pink boy maybe? Uh? And since I called Chuck a
pink boy, it's time for a listener mail. Uh. Keeping
(50:46):
it short and sweet. Here with a quick correction from
a new listener. Hi, guys, I'm a very new listener
and I love what I've heard so far. However, just
three episodes in about the Magna Carta, one of you,
off handed suggested that William the Conqueror was a beloved
English king because the annexed Normandy after the Battle of Hastings.
That's pretty much backwards, guys. He was a Norman king
(51:08):
who conquered England at that battle. Williams story would make
a great episode. That is from Scott scatter Good in
su on the Korea. Well, Scott, since you're new, you
obviously don't know that most of the viewpoint that we
give on stuff you should know is from the Vikings viewpoint.
So we had it right, Okay, good? Uh, Scott, scatter Good.
(51:31):
What a great name, right? Yeah? What happens if you
scramble Scott around? Scatters Good? Uh? If you want to
get in touch with this like Scott did, you can
send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
(51:53):
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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