The Tale of the Church of the SubGenius

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, 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 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

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, 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 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, 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 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.

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 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. 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 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

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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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

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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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,

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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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.

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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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

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, 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.

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 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. 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 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, 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

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. 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 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 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

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 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 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,

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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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

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