July 26, 2025 • 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 this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
I've chosen our October twenty twenty one episode on the
Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's a neat little romp.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Through what started out as a couple of guys who
like pamphlets and turned a whole generation, well some percentage
of a whole generation, and the interesting people skeptical of
anything someone is trying to sell them on. As you
can hear from this intro, it's kind of difficult to describe,
so just enjoy listening to the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
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 the Church of the SubGenius at Long Life.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
When did you become acquainted with the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I had a group of friends that walked on the
odd side of life, darker side of life, less you know,
less serious side of life. I'm not sure in the nineties,
and there was one guy who was big time into
the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
What happens, right, man? That was my first introduction.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Then I actually came across the Hour of Slack on
Georgia Tech's student radio once like in the early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
And record radio.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I never got into it, though, Are you actually like
a secret SUBGENII?
Speaker 4 (01:42):
No, same as you.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
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 pattern and uh and shirm sticks.
(02:04):
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 and
the Church of SubGenius was one of them.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, yeah, And like you might not be utterly familiar
with the Church of the SubGenius, but I'll 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 picture of a clean cut, mid
(02:36):
century middle aged dude with a pipe clenched in his
teeth and almost like a Patrick Bateman psychotic look on
his face, like.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Almost Bateman meets word Cleaver exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
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 to the SubGenius, and he has
popped up everywhere from the background. At Peewee's Playhouse there
was a sublime record that had him on there. Like
he shows up all over the place. It's almost like code.
(03:14):
And so you probably have seen it, even if you're
not familiar with the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's called the dobs Head.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Right, gathered from clip art, which we will see. It's
kind of one of the fun d jokes about a
pseudo religion, a satire and parody of religion, and it's
you know, it was formed by two guys.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
We'll get into the history, but.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I have a sort of a favorite definition, and I
know you do, and maybe we'll just read both of them.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Mine 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 waves in abilities and tropes and music, film and
pop culture. It was an in joke with a half
(04:05):
serious punchline.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Very nice. That was great.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And what you yours was from Ed the Grabster himself.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
You can kind of put it nice.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, also from the Austin Chronicle. Yeah, so Ed said
that it's that the best way to explain 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.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Not bad, Ed, not bad.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
So the whole thing Christ get scared a a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
To get technical.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It's a it's an absurdist 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.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
But it's all kind kind of hung on.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
The skeleton of this this doctrine of the prophet Bob Dobbs,
who is the world's greatest salesman, who is basically carrying
out the will of an alien god who may or
may not love us, or the Subgenie as they're called plural,
(05:23):
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 and tell you the truth. That was
(05:45):
so awesome, chuck nicely.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, what I just did there, And you'll see this
in 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 devibe they don't
call them revivals, they call them devibles.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yeah, they will do this thing where they kind of.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Juggle their throat with their hand as they sort of
did this weird chant. Yeah, and I didn't find much
information on that specifically, but I did see them doing
it all over the place.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
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 that is a 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
(06:39):
more sense than the eighties before our culture ended up
becoming the parody that the Church of the SubGenius was
carrying out.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yeah, it had.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It had a very mad magazine vibe. You know something,
I know that you and I both grew up loving
and cherishing, and I could see, like, you know, if
that's something as mainstream as you want to liking it too.
To help people understand, it's almost as if Mad Magazine
started a religion and Alfred y Newman was the God
(07:08):
and it was all just one big joke about consumer culture.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Then if people end up taking it seriously, you can
really see why, like that would be a very strange thing.
Of course, ALFREDY Newman is not God, and of course
Bob Dobbs is not God or the prophet. But these
two guys founded this kind of funny joke religion in
the late nineteen seventies because they were like minded dudes,
(07:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
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 SubGenius members out there,
past and present. This is one of those things where like,
if you explain what makes something funny, right, it is like,
(08:07):
that's the least funny thing you can do. So if
we trapes into that just by virtue of explaining things,
we're sorry.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
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 precisely, Yes, for outcasts
and weirdos who didn't fit in necessarily. They found common
ground before the Internet. Yeah, by writing letters back and
forth to each other. They kind of had the Internet
through pen and paper and these devivals And we have
(08:39):
Douglas Saint, Clair Smith and Steve Wilcox to thank for this.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, the original outsider weirdos.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
You may not know by that name. If you're familiar
with the Church of the SubGenius. You know them as
Ivan Stang and Filo Drummond. And these were two guys,
like I said, who were they were in Texas? I
think Philo grew up in a religious family but and
had a really good childhood. It wasn't some like stifling situation,
(09:09):
but he was always sort of didn't quite fit in
and felt like the outsider at school and was seeking
outsider culture.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
And whereas Stang.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Was I think he described himself in the documentary as
secular humanist scientists and his upbringing super liberal family. Whereas well,
I'll keep onting to Colin Wilcox, whereas Filos was more
conservative to be sure. But they found common ground when
a friend introduced them, they said, you both love comic books,
(09:42):
you both love Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Get together
and you might have a new friend. And they were
immediate friends.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah. Yeah, they definitely hit it off.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
In part also because they both kind of just felt
like they didn't really fit into Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
At the time.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
That helps.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
One of the other things they really loved had in
common was a love of like Earnest bona fide extremist.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Pamphlets, right, they're fun.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, whether it's extremest religious groups, extremeist like you know,
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 made a pamphlet about that. These guys would collect
(10:31):
it and relish it, and that also included a member
of the Jack Schick tracks in the Satanic Panic episode.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
They were huge into that.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I had a huge influence on them as well, those
comic strips about how somebody you know 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 used them as the basis for this
outlook on the world, which is humans are totally nuts
(11:00):
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
(11:21):
to kind of try to fight that however they could.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, I have to say I see the appeal of
what they did, because if you remember a few years ago, god,
this is quite a few years ago now, our buddy
Joe Randazzo and I wrote a TV pilot together about
a scientology esque religion and it never went anywhere. We
(11:45):
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. You have
to really kind of explore the tenets of it. It
a real thing. And we did that, and I made
a pamphlet. Joe and I made it together, and I
(12:06):
kind of put it together, and we brought the pamphlet
to the pitch meetings, and I'll send you one sometime.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
This is really funny.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Our religion was called Binarism, and it was like this
numbers based kind of scientology thing.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
But it was so much fun and all I.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Could think about when these two guys got together in
nineteen seventy nine and hatch this idea was, Yeah, it's
a lot of fun to create a phony religion, even
for a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, And they were definitely inspired by 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.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And so.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
We should be really careful here. They weren't inspired by l.
Ron Hubbard in this 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 right, 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
(13:17):
kind of a cynical It comes from a cynical place
where you just have to be cynical 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
(13:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Of the joke.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yes, But for the most part, they're 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
can foremost the average person is without even thinking about it.
So they were fascinated, I guess, is the way to
(14:08):
put it, by l Ron Hubbard and his success with scientology.
And there was another quote that was attributed to Stang.
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 hundred
people that kill themselves, we could get nine hundred people
to send us a dollar. And they kind of wanted
to toy around with that and see, you know, if that
(14:29):
was the case, not to exploit people, but just to
kind of see I think if there was anybody else
out there, they were 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.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Yeah, and here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Stang.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
It looks like, by all accounts, has generally made his
living doing this over the year.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah it worked.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
He's not gotten rich.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
It's not a scientology thing where it's like and send
me one hundred more dollars and we'll give you another thing.
No sort of mail us some money and we'll send
you art comedy goods in the mail. And he still
stuffs envelopes and he still sends pamphlets and CDs and literature.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Today.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
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 saying and Filo have built together. Yeah, 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
(15:39):
shoveling money towards those guys.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
All right, I think that is a great preamble. You're
either turning off your Hi Fi system now you're or
you're intrigued by what's to come, and we'll talk about
the night at all hatched right after this. All right,
(16:24):
So these guys are hanging out, it's nineteen seventy nine.
They didn't have I think Filo was the one. He
always had a pretty decent job. He kind of had
an 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
(16:47):
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 Stang said, you know, we aren't geniuses. You know,
he 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.
(17:10):
So they kind of took all their interests in all
these weird pamphlets and weird UFO cults and pseudo religions
and New Age beliefs, and they made the original pamphlet,
spent sixty dollars on this original pamphlet, and we're just
leaving him at dry cleaners and stuff like that until
Stang's wife got mad and she was like, that's a
lot of money for us. At least send this to
(17:33):
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 publisher under the sun. But
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.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
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, and this is like the Sacred Writings.
The idea is that 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,
(18:14):
not just when you say JR. 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, and
that Bob was getting his divine inspiration from Jehovah one,
that alien overlord that that runs Earth. And this was
kind of like the conceit of the pamphlet. In the
(18:36):
front of the pamphlet said things like the world ends
tomorrow and you may die in all caps. It's asked,
do people think you're strange? Do you?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I know? I love that one.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
There was another one that said eternal salvation or triple
your money back, So like, these are the things I
like on and in the pamphlet, and they're they're going
around to publishers being like, hey, 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.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And 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 and live shows. But yeah,
the book came later. Early on they got together and
started just as Buddies getting on the CB radio and
doing and this again, this was like you would get
(19:33):
on the internet today. Back then it was the CB,
and they would do these sort of parody voices. Basically
Hatch 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
(19:54):
were trolls. You were kind of trolling people on the CB,
and then other people would troll back and call them 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
(20:15):
and go to their nine to five job and spend
their consumer money and you know on catalog items and
anyone else outside is a pink or a pink boy.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yes, but but there's a distinction between say, people like
you and I and actually died in the wold pink boys,
the kind 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 defend it
(20:47):
in its existence and it's its rightness. Those are those
are pinks, They're irreparable. There's nothing that's ever going to
help them, and they're genuine humans. Now, there are plenty
of subgenii out there who don't know they's so genii.
They haven't been exposed to the church, they've never seen
a Dob's head maybe whatever reason, they're not aware that
they're a SubGenius yet. And if you're a true SubGenius,
(21:10):
then you have YETI blood coursing through your veins.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Now, if you're an.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
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 working against the conspiracy
and exploiting pink boys anytime you get a chance, because again,
they're hopeless. They're never going to be converted because they
(21:36):
don't have any Yetti blood in them.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Right, And to reiterate, I don't know if I kind
of just tossed it off earlier, but.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Bob Dobbs is a piece of clip art.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
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. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, And I don't know if it was a joke.
It's so hard to tell what's a joke and what's
not because they play everything so straight.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
They're in character basically.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, but that I saw on one of their websites
that they said, reminder, this is a this is this
is a trademarked piece of art now as part of
like the SubGenius or copyright SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
So I don't know if they actually did copyright I
could totally see.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Them doing that in real life, or if they were
just joking about it. Either way, Yeah, it's kind of great.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
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 intenet of their religion is.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
It's this concept of slack.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Are you having trouble describing it.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
No.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
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. Okay,
Slack is different for every person, but 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
(23:23):
as possible exertion wise.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, exertion wise exactly, like having done as little as
possible to actually attain it. That's one definition of slack
for sure. The point is, like, I think it's one
of those things where you or what is not slack
is easier to recognize than what is slack. And I'll
(23:45):
give you an example of something that happened today, Okay, okay,
because I've been thinking about this, I'm like, how are
we going to define slack?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I knocked over the toilet brush behind the toilet in
my bathroom, right, okay, And you know, like the little
drippings that end up in like the toilet brush holder.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yes, they spilled out on the floor.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Yeah, those are the worst drippings.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
The worst drippings.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
I would have rather spilled like like like raw pork
juice onto my floor. Than those drippings, they're bad drippings, right,
bad dripping. 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.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Now.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
I scrubbed it so hard and then also cleaning the
holder for the scrub brushs 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
was gross, it was yuck, and I realized, this is
the this is the perfect example of what is not slack.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
It's the conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
It was the conspiracy that probably had something to do
with it. But the point was is 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. It's where you are
(25:12):
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's undefinable, that
means that it's up to every SUBGENII to define what
is slack for them.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
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,
(25:54):
I gotcha. It's things I think conspiring against you. That
toilet brush knocking over definitely the conspiracy, right, because it
prevented you from, I guess, taking your your mid morning nap.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Right, and the under the teachings of Bob, the conspiracy
is actually an acronym for clicks of normals secretly planning
insidious rituals aimed at controlling you.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
And that's a good.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
One, I agreed.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
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 yetti from the moment you're born. And so
it's up to you to to steal it back, to
get as much slack as you possibly can. But the
(26:42):
problem with the conspiracy is they're the ones running the
show here on Earth. They're the ones who are behind
consumer culture, and they've created this illusion that that what
what normals and pinks and uh non subgenia YETI who
haven't figured themselves out yet buy into as life is
(27:04):
all just this vast consumer conspiracy and that they actually
offer what appears to be slack, but it's like false
slack is what they call it.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, it's manufactured slack.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So it's like the SubGenius wiki as awesome, and they
give examples of like pre planned recreation, like days off
from work that you earn or are given like these
are this is all false slack, Like it's somebody else
deciding what your slack is and yeah, buying into it.
(27:40):
And that is the that is not slack. Slack is
you have to decide what slack.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
And then there's also involuntary slack, which is my favorite slack.
And this is like if you lose your job or something,
if you get fired, this is just involuntary slack that
Bob is sending your way to force you to take
a little time off.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I saw a video from I guess two thousand and
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 it had like this real
dramatic music of millions of people are out of work.
No one has a clue about what to do about it.
(28:40):
Victory is at hand. There's one other thing I want
to say about slack.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Two.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
There are basically two groups, two approaches or philosophies as
far as slack is concerned. And I think it's pretty
interesting that the whole concept has gotten this far. It's
of all 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
(29:11):
other people who kind of vibed on it came along
and expanded it. Like I read an essay on the
scissors of Sight and apparently that's mentioned offhandedly and pamphlet
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 it
was just just like, that's.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Just what they do.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
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 paths for slack has kind of
split between these two groups, the Rewardians and the emergent tiles, right.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Yeah, And the emergent tiles are getting their slack because
they're getting the things done that they kind of feel
like they want and 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 two of Steve stuff. Did you ever see
that movie?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
No, I need to though I'm well aware of it.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Sort of that was sort of that guy's deal.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
He was just like he had this life philosophy and
he would have really fit in with the 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.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I think there's quite a bit of pot involved everyday
kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Sure, that wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And that's what I think most people would think of
when they think of like slacking, Like, yeah, that's what
you do when you 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. Emergentis you're like, no, no, there's another way
to do this. Like I feel really good about accomplishing
(30:51):
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 going to go learn
how to climb a mountain and climb that mountain, and
during that whole process, I'm slacking, Like that's my slack.
So those are kind of like the two ways of
doing it, and apparently the two groups kind of pity
(31:12):
each other and think they have it completely backwards. But
the point is neither group is right or wrong, because
it's all up to the individual.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
What your slack is.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
I mean, what these guys really it's such a time
and place thing. They were born out of this sort
of spirit of the Mary Pranksters, sixties counterculture kin keezy
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
(31:42):
counterculture vibe as you can imagine. But these guys still
had that sort of fun, playful idea, and you know,
this was their invention. I just I always think it's
just so fun and so cool. I every time I
see a devible or a live show, I absolutely do
not want to be there, no, but I think it's awesome.
(32:05):
It was I liken it to when I saw 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 at this rock and roll show that is supposed
(32:25):
to kind of be funny. 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.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, It's kind of like yeah, and dude, they are
enjoying it. The people who go to those 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. I love it.
It's almost like I would compare it to a like
(33:04):
a meeting of the Juggalos, a comic con, and a
guar show all mixed together. That's what the Divibles these
days kind of seem like. Just based on what I've
seen on the internet.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Yeah, that's good. I like it.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
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 mottos, but they're chief one
that they kind of yell out at these devibles is
FM if you can't take a joke, or if they
can't take a joke, right, And I mean.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
It's right there there.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It's amazing to me that some people took this too
seriously because the motto is literally, this is a joke.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Right yeah, And and it is really kind of like
disconcerting because like if you do take it seriously, like
you really have to go to great lengths to get
past all the winks, the nods, the absurdity of everything.
It suggests that there's like you're you're more soft than
the average cult member because you're actually taking a joke
(34:07):
cult as a cult.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
It's like when fight Club got too serious, you started
blowing up buildings and stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, I think so, except there was.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
No violence involved in the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Now they're they're peaceful.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
It's right, because they're all stoned.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Yeah, I think a lot of them are.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I think a lot of them are like the Frank
Zappa types, or they're just weird and they have nothing
to do with drugs or alcohol or anything too, you know.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
Those are they were born with original stoned.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yes, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
It requires no drugs.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Apparently, Frank Zapple was a real jerk to people who
did drugs, Like he had that cafe or restaurant or
club or whatever, and he would kick you out if
he thought you were on pot.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
That's conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, he was a little pink from what I can tell.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
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 now. But
one of the reasons 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
(35:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
You're a member of that group.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And if you actually are actively getting offended at what
they're saying and doing, because one of the threads of
humor that they very frequently use is bad taste shock value,
Like it's just basically the opposite of PC, Like they
really don't care for PC very much. And if you're
deeply offended by this stuff and you actually like respond
(35:51):
to it, you're actually kind of proving their point that
you are maybe a little too wrapped up in this
culture that they 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.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
We're you know, at a joke.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Basically, yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
You know, before you start feeling too sorry for these
people because they're being made fun of as 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.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Right, So let's take a break, man, We'll talk about
some of the lower points in the Church of the
SubGenius that have happened across the years.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Huh, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
So if you went to a dvible, 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 the guy's doing is
like doing a fire and Brimstone preacher bit. Yeah, but
what he's saying is espousing you know, Bob stuff about
(37:33):
you know, if the FM, if they can't take a
joke or you know whatever, 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.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
That's so I wouldn't want to be there.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
Yeah, And the anti music is another reason.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
That was the next thing I was going to get
to is like, if you if you are not super
into this and probably on a pretty decent amount of
acid back in like nineteen eighty five or four, the
anti music would probably turn you off too.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I know, I don't like it at all either.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
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 the ideas that you can't play
these things, these are not skilled musicians or not even
musicians at all, and 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 sort of like
(38:34):
the drum circle that finally everyone gets in synchronicity for
a minute. You're like, oh, okay, something just happened. 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.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yes, there was actually a time during the at Devibles,
I think during the nineties maybe where a schism in
the church.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Developed was very much planned.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, right, So the idea was so one of the
big parts of the one of the tenets of the
church is there the like the world's going to end
eventually on X day. And X Day was originally slotted
for July fifth, nineteen ninety eight, and that came and went,
and there were no UFOs driven by sex goddesses to
come whisk off the Subgenii to planet X to live
(39:32):
out the rest of their eternity partying and then but
the fact that this was coming along, 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
was formed between people who said, well, there'll probably be
(39:52):
sub Subgenii 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.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
There won't be any Pinks left. And apparently this.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Differing opinion on basic church doctrine was a thread that
was carried on for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
It was, and I think we just need to be
really clear. A schism was written into the script of
the Church of the SubGenius. Okay, it was nothing formed.
It was they wrote a heel basically into their wrestling
show with Papa Joe Mama, who was the leader of
the Holocaustals who believed and again all in jest, but
(40:36):
he believed like go out and shoot the rich basically,
like kill these people. And I think it was Stang
was the leader of the Evangelicals, which was, yeah, let's
just enslave them basically and keep them alive. And two
things here, first of all, in that they eventually had
a big show in the eighties, kind of jumping back.
(40:58):
In San Francisco, they had these sort of small tent
devivals with one hundred people, and then in San Francisco
they booked this theater for two nights, nine hundred seat
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 had a fake assassination of Bob. Bob finally
(41:20):
came out.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
He walked down on stage and them bang, he was
immediately shot.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
So there was that.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
And then after X Day, judging from the documentary, is
when it seemed to like kind of go bad and
not go bad in that everybody really started believing and
it became this really scary thing. But it sort of
lost its jush a little bit, and there were some
people and I think one person specifically even went up
(41:55):
to Stang. I don't know if it was the X Day.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I think it was San Francisco show in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Oh okay, and he was, you know, obviously someone who
needed some real help because he thought this was all real.
Was was livid that it wasn't being taken seriously and
that people were laughing. And that's when Stang was like
a man like kind of this was bound to happen.
But it also made him sad because I'd never wanted
(42:25):
anything like this.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Right, and that was the reason why. So like the
documentary that was made by Sandy K. Boone, who was
involved in a few other 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
(42:46):
back in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Oh, it's amazing. So I remember Waking.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Life that that whole thing link Letter did with the animation.
They did that for this documentary and it really like
had the rotoscoping.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yes, So she was involved in that as well.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
But she made this documentary apparently her late husband was like,
what a great adherent in the truth of the SubGenius,
and she made it also kind of as an ode
to him as well. But in it, Stang and Filo
break character and like, yeah, hadn't broken character for thirty
something years, right, Like they've done interviews, they've like like print, TV, radio,
(43:24):
like they've done the radio show, They've like written tons
of books. They just don't break character. That's just part
of their jam. And for this documentary they did, and
they said the reason why, at least Stang said, the
reason why he did 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
(43:47):
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 down the line. Yeah,
he said, you watched it, right, Yeah, Yeah, I didn't
watch it right before this.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I saw it several months ago, yeah, he said.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
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 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.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yes, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. They
were fascinated by the.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Fact that people could be tricked, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
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 weren't actually trying to exploit anybody. Like the idea
of having you, having you become a part of become
a member, sending your dollar, become ordained by and all
that sales stuff, was to point out that that's what
(44:48):
was going on in the real world, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, And this sort of came to a head in
the nineties when they it was just after Columbine. They
had a live show planned in Boston and Popu Joe Mama,
who was again their sort of scripted heel agent provocateur,
got on a think a radio show and somehow reference Columbine.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
It was a little unclear.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
I think he blamed Columbine on the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
Oh, was that what it was? Okay?
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Because I couldn't quite tell what the reference was, but
it was clear that that was over the line for
both Filo 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, no, I guess we
can't do that, and then I think they ended up
(45:40):
having it in a like a public park or something.
But that was sort of like where it. You know,
the 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
antithetic to the Church of the SubGenius. It seemed to
(46:02):
kind of fade away until later on when the Internet
kind of helps revive it again.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
So my take is that what really kind of let
it down hill, not to say that there's like like it,
not to say that it it went downhill on its own,
like that just just the world changed, yeah, and there
was like the world became the parody. Not it wasn't
(46:29):
like straight any longer. It was just a joke, but
that was real life now. So you can't satirize something
that is the satire that you're coming up with. There's
just no way to do it.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
No, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
And that's you know, America changed 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 encoached on your turf kind
of thing, you know.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
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 that really puts a hurting, like you said,
on something like the Church of the SubGenius as far
as being and their numbers were never huge, but I
(47:23):
get the idea from watching it that's staying still has
people that write 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 that was one thousand dollars in cash,
so really and he took half of it and immediately
(47:44):
took it to a sick friend, Like that's the kind
of guy he is.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Oh that's cool. Yeah, he struck me as that as well.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
But he's still you know, paying his mortgage stuff and envelopes.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
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 it explained
all of the different stuff is hilarious and like totally
worthwhile and still applies today. Like it's like in a
certain way, it's timeless even though it screams Reagan era,
(48:12):
you know, yeah, but 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 exploiting people for their labor. Like all
that stuff is still going on. So the original stuff
(48:33):
still still stands and still holds.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
Yeah, and they you know, Mark mother Spaw of Devo
and I can't remember the other guy's name in Devo.
They were way into it. Penn Gillette, Nick Offerman, Richard Linklader,
Paul Rubins, Pee Herman's Playhouse out of 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
(48:56):
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. Yeah, and you know when we could
meet these these dudes, but it was very male oriented.
And I don't know, I just like I said, I
never I always had fun reading about it and hearing
(49:17):
about it, but never wanted to get too involved just
because I had too much of a pink.
Speaker 4 (49:22):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
Read, and I this is like ten percent of it.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
I encourage. Yeah, there's there. It's huge.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
It's an enormous, huge rambling, Like what do you call
a group of beliefs in scripture and doctrine mythos? I
guess maybe yeah, canon, Yeah, canon, 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
(49:56):
don't mean new, I mean like mid two thousands, the
mid auts kind of stuf 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. I strongly recommend going to read an
explanation of the male to female discrepancy in the Church
(50:17):
of the SubGenius by Reverend Nancy Regalia and.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
By the real book.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
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
are always recognized that they were kind of being forced
into certain gender roles and did never feel good about it.
She had it quoted, it's not enough to simply burn
(50:45):
your bras why stop there burn a few bridal boutiques
in city Hall while you're at it. It's just a
It's a good essay for sure, totally worth reading. So, yeah,
there's a lot more to say about the Church of
the SubGenius, but we'll just leave it to you. I
feel like we should just part with It's a joke.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
It is a joke.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Ultimately, it's a joke and take it as that. Okay, man,
you got that down, you got some yetti, and you
pink boy?
Speaker 4 (51:13):
Oh maybe?
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Uh? And since I called Chuck a pink boy, it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Keeping it short and sweet. Here with a quick correction
from a new listener. Okay, 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 handedly suggested that William the Conqueror was a
beloved English king because he annexed Normandy after the Battle
of Hastings. It was me, that's pretty much backwards, guys.
(51:41):
He was a Norman king who conquered England at that battle.
William's story would make a great episode. That is from
Scott Scattergood in Suon Korea.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
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 view point. So we
had it right, Okay, good Scott scattered Good, what a
great name, right, Yeah?
Speaker 2 (52:08):
What happens if you scramble Scott around? Scatter's good?
Speaker 1 (52:13):
If you want to get in touch with this like
Scott did. You can send us an email to stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (52:23):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
I've chosen our October twenty twenty one episode on the
Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's a neat little romp.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Through what started out as a couple of guys who
like pamphlets and turned a whole generation, well some percentage
of a whole generation, and the interesting people skeptical of
anything someone is trying to sell them on. As you
can hear from this intro, it's kind of difficult to describe,
so just enjoy listening to the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
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 the Church of the SubGenius at Long Life.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
When did you become acquainted with the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I had a group of friends that walked on the
odd side of life, darker side of life, less you know,
less serious side of life. I'm not sure in the nineties,
and there was one guy who was big time into
the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
What happens, right, man? That was my first introduction.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Then I actually came across the Hour of Slack on
Georgia Tech's student radio once like in the early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
And record radio.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I never got into it, though, Are you actually like
a secret SUBGENII?
Speaker 4 (01:42):
No, same as you.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
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 pattern and uh and shirm sticks.
(02:04):
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 and
the Church of SubGenius was one of them.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, yeah, And like you might not be utterly familiar
with the Church of the SubGenius, but I'll 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 picture of a clean cut, mid
(02:36):
century middle aged dude with a pipe clenched in his
teeth and almost like a Patrick Bateman psychotic look on
his face, like.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Almost Bateman meets word Cleaver exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
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 to the SubGenius, and he has
popped up everywhere from the background. At Peewee's Playhouse there
was a sublime record that had him on there. Like
he shows up all over the place. It's almost like code.
(03:14):
And so you probably have seen it, even if you're
not familiar with the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's called the dobs Head.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Right, gathered from clip art, which we will see. It's
kind of one of the fun d jokes about a
pseudo religion, a satire and parody of religion, and it's
you know, it was formed by two guys.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
We'll get into the history, but.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I have a sort of a favorite definition, and I
know you do, and maybe we'll just read both of them.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Mine 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 waves in abilities and tropes and music, film and
pop culture. It was an in joke with a half
(04:05):
serious punchline.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Very nice. That was great.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And what you yours was from Ed the Grabster himself.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
You can kind of put it nice.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, also from the Austin Chronicle. Yeah, so Ed said
that it's that the best way to explain 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.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Not bad, Ed, not bad.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
So the whole thing Christ get scared a a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
To get technical.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It's a it's an absurdist 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.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
But it's all kind kind of hung on.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
The skeleton of this this doctrine of the prophet Bob Dobbs,
who is the world's greatest salesman, who is basically carrying
out the will of an alien god who may or
may not love us, or the Subgenie as they're called plural,
(05:23):
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 and tell you the truth. That was
(05:45):
so awesome, chuck nicely.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, what I just did there, And you'll see this
in 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 devibe they don't
call them revivals, they call them devibles.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yeah, they will do this thing where they kind of.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Juggle their throat with their hand as they sort of
did this weird chant. Yeah, and I didn't find much
information on that specifically, but I did see them doing
it all over the place.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
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 that is a 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
(06:39):
more sense than the eighties before our culture ended up
becoming the parody that the Church of the SubGenius was
carrying out.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yeah, it had.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It had a very mad magazine vibe. You know something,
I know that you and I both grew up loving
and cherishing, and I could see, like, you know, if
that's something as mainstream as you want to liking it too.
To help people understand, it's almost as if Mad Magazine
started a religion and Alfred y Newman was the God
(07:08):
and it was all just one big joke about consumer culture.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Then if people end up taking it seriously, you can
really see why, like that would be a very strange thing.
Of course, ALFREDY Newman is not God, and of course
Bob Dobbs is not God or the prophet. But these
two guys founded this kind of funny joke religion in
the late nineteen seventies because they were like minded dudes,
(07:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
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 SubGenius members out there,
past and present. This is one of those things where like,
if you explain what makes something funny, right, it is like,
(08:07):
that's the least funny thing you can do. So if
we trapes into that just by virtue of explaining things,
we're sorry.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
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 precisely, Yes, for outcasts
and weirdos who didn't fit in necessarily. They found common
ground before the Internet. Yeah, by writing letters back and
forth to each other. They kind of had the Internet
through pen and paper and these devivals And we have
(08:39):
Douglas Saint, Clair Smith and Steve Wilcox to thank for this.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, the original outsider weirdos.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
You may not know by that name. If you're familiar
with the Church of the SubGenius. You know them as
Ivan Stang and Filo Drummond. And these were two guys,
like I said, who were they were in Texas? I
think Philo grew up in a religious family but and
had a really good childhood. It wasn't some like stifling situation,
(09:09):
but he was always sort of didn't quite fit in
and felt like the outsider at school and was seeking
outsider culture.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
And whereas Stang.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Was I think he described himself in the documentary as
secular humanist scientists and his upbringing super liberal family. Whereas well,
I'll keep onting to Colin Wilcox, whereas Filos was more
conservative to be sure. But they found common ground when
a friend introduced them, they said, you both love comic books,
(09:42):
you both love Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Get together
and you might have a new friend. And they were
immediate friends.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah. Yeah, they definitely hit it off.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
In part also because they both kind of just felt
like they didn't really fit into Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
At the time.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
That helps.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
One of the other things they really loved had in
common was a love of like Earnest bona fide extremist.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Pamphlets, right, they're fun.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, whether it's extremest religious groups, extremeist like you know,
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 made a pamphlet about that. These guys would collect
(10:31):
it and relish it, and that also included a member
of the Jack Schick tracks in the Satanic Panic episode.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
They were huge into that.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I had a huge influence on them as well, those
comic strips about how somebody you know 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 used them as the basis for this
outlook on the world, which is humans are totally nuts
(11:00):
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
(11:21):
to kind of try to fight that however they could.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, I have to say I see the appeal of
what they did, because if you remember a few years ago, god,
this is quite a few years ago now, our buddy
Joe Randazzo and I wrote a TV pilot together about
a scientology esque religion and it never went anywhere. We
(11:45):
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. You have
to really kind of explore the tenets of it. It
a real thing. And we did that, and I made
a pamphlet. Joe and I made it together, and I
(12:06):
kind of put it together, and we brought the pamphlet
to the pitch meetings, and I'll send you one sometime.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
This is really funny.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Our religion was called Binarism, and it was like this
numbers based kind of scientology thing.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
But it was so much fun and all I.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Could think about when these two guys got together in
nineteen seventy nine and hatch this idea was, Yeah, it's
a lot of fun to create a phony religion, even
for a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, And they were definitely inspired by 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.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And so.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
We should be really careful here. They weren't inspired by l.
Ron Hubbard in this 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 right, 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
(13:17):
kind of a cynical It comes from a cynical place
where you just have to be cynical 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
(13:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Of the joke.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yes, But for the most part, they're 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
can foremost the average person is without even thinking about it.
So they were fascinated, I guess, is the way to
(14:08):
put it, by l Ron Hubbard and his success with scientology.
And there was another quote that was attributed to Stang.
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 hundred
people that kill themselves, we could get nine hundred people
to send us a dollar. And they kind of wanted
to toy around with that and see, you know, if that
(14:29):
was the case, not to exploit people, but just to
kind of see I think if there was anybody else
out there, they were 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.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Yeah, and here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Stang.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
It looks like, by all accounts, has generally made his
living doing this over the year.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah it worked.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
He's not gotten rich.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
It's not a scientology thing where it's like and send
me one hundred more dollars and we'll give you another thing.
No sort of mail us some money and we'll send
you art comedy goods in the mail. And he still
stuffs envelopes and he still sends pamphlets and CDs and literature.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Today.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
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 saying and Filo have built together. Yeah, 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
(15:39):
shoveling money towards those guys.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
All right, I think that is a great preamble. You're
either turning off your Hi Fi system now you're or
you're intrigued by what's to come, and we'll talk about
the night at all hatched right after this. All right,
(16:24):
So these guys are hanging out, it's nineteen seventy nine.
They didn't have I think Filo was the one. He
always had a pretty decent job. He kind of had
an 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
(16:47):
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 Stang said, you know, we aren't geniuses. You know,
he 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.
(17:10):
So they kind of took all their interests in all
these weird pamphlets and weird UFO cults and pseudo religions
and New Age beliefs, and they made the original pamphlet,
spent sixty dollars on this original pamphlet, and we're just
leaving him at dry cleaners and stuff like that until
Stang's wife got mad and she was like, that's a
lot of money for us. At least send this to
(17:33):
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 publisher under the sun. But
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.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
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, and this is like the Sacred Writings.
The idea is that 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,
(18:14):
not just when you say JR. 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, and
that Bob was getting his divine inspiration from Jehovah one,
that alien overlord that that runs Earth. And this was
kind of like the conceit of the pamphlet. In the
(18:36):
front of the pamphlet said things like the world ends
tomorrow and you may die in all caps. It's asked,
do people think you're strange? Do you?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I know? I love that one.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
There was another one that said eternal salvation or triple
your money back, So like, these are the things I
like on and in the pamphlet, and they're they're going
around to publishers being like, hey, 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.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And 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 and live shows. But yeah,
the book came later. Early on they got together and
started just as Buddies getting on the CB radio and
doing and this again, this was like you would get
(19:33):
on the internet today. Back then it was the CB,
and they would do these sort of parody voices. Basically
Hatch 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
(19:54):
were trolls. You were kind of trolling people on the CB,
and then other people would troll back and call them 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
(20:15):
and go to their nine to five job and spend
their consumer money and you know on catalog items and
anyone else outside is a pink or a pink boy.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yes, but but there's a distinction between say, people like
you and I and actually died in the wold pink boys,
the kind 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 defend it
(20:47):
in its existence and it's its rightness. Those are those
are pinks, They're irreparable. There's nothing that's ever going to
help them, and they're genuine humans. Now, there are plenty
of subgenii out there who don't know they's so genii.
They haven't been exposed to the church, they've never seen
a Dob's head maybe whatever reason, they're not aware that
they're a SubGenius yet. And if you're a true SubGenius,
(21:10):
then you have YETI blood coursing through your veins.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Now, if you're an.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
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 working against the conspiracy
and exploiting pink boys anytime you get a chance, because again,
they're hopeless. They're never going to be converted because they
(21:36):
don't have any Yetti blood in them.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Right, And to reiterate, I don't know if I kind
of just tossed it off earlier, but.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Bob Dobbs is a piece of clip art.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
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. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, And I don't know if it was a joke.
It's so hard to tell what's a joke and what's
not because they play everything so straight.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
They're in character basically.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, but that I saw on one of their websites
that they said, reminder, this is a this is this
is a trademarked piece of art now as part of
like the SubGenius or copyright SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
So I don't know if they actually did copyright I
could totally see.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Them doing that in real life, or if they were
just joking about it. Either way, Yeah, it's kind of great.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
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 intenet of their religion is.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
It's this concept of slack.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Are you having trouble describing it.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
No.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
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. Okay,
Slack is different for every person, but 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
(23:23):
as possible exertion wise.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, exertion wise exactly, like having done as little as
possible to actually attain it. That's one definition of slack
for sure. The point is, like, I think it's one
of those things where you or what is not slack
is easier to recognize than what is slack. And I'll
(23:45):
give you an example of something that happened today, Okay, okay,
because I've been thinking about this, I'm like, how are
we going to define slack?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I knocked over the toilet brush behind the toilet in
my bathroom, right, okay, And you know, like the little
drippings that end up in like the toilet brush holder.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yes, they spilled out on the floor.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Yeah, those are the worst drippings.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
The worst drippings.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
I would have rather spilled like like like raw pork
juice onto my floor. Than those drippings, they're bad drippings, right,
bad dripping. 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.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Now.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
I scrubbed it so hard and then also cleaning the
holder for the scrub brushs 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
was gross, it was yuck, and I realized, this is
the this is the perfect example of what is not slack.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
It's the conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
It was the conspiracy that probably had something to do
with it. But the point was is 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. It's where you are
(25:12):
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's undefinable, that
means that it's up to every SUBGENII to define what
is slack for them.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
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,
(25:54):
I gotcha. It's things I think conspiring against you. That
toilet brush knocking over definitely the conspiracy, right, because it
prevented you from, I guess, taking your your mid morning nap.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Right, and the under the teachings of Bob, the conspiracy
is actually an acronym for clicks of normals secretly planning
insidious rituals aimed at controlling you.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
And that's a good.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
One, I agreed.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
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 yetti from the moment you're born. And so
it's up to you to to steal it back, to
get as much slack as you possibly can. But the
(26:42):
problem with the conspiracy is they're the ones running the
show here on Earth. They're the ones who are behind
consumer culture, and they've created this illusion that that what
what normals and pinks and uh non subgenia YETI who
haven't figured themselves out yet buy into as life is
(27:04):
all just this vast consumer conspiracy and that they actually
offer what appears to be slack, but it's like false
slack is what they call it.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, it's manufactured slack.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So it's like the SubGenius wiki as awesome, and they
give examples of like pre planned recreation, like days off
from work that you earn or are given like these
are this is all false slack, Like it's somebody else
deciding what your slack is and yeah, buying into it.
(27:40):
And that is the that is not slack. Slack is
you have to decide what slack.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
And then there's also involuntary slack, which is my favorite slack.
And this is like if you lose your job or something,
if you get fired, this is just involuntary slack that
Bob is sending your way to force you to take
a little time off.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I saw a video from I guess two thousand and
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 it had like this real
dramatic music of millions of people are out of work.
No one has a clue about what to do about it.
(28:40):
Victory is at hand. There's one other thing I want
to say about slack.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Two.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
There are basically two groups, two approaches or philosophies as
far as slack is concerned. And I think it's pretty
interesting that the whole concept has gotten this far. It's
of all 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
(29:11):
other people who kind of vibed on it came along
and expanded it. Like I read an essay on the
scissors of Sight and apparently that's mentioned offhandedly and pamphlet
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 it
was just just like, that's.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Just what they do.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
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 paths for slack has kind of
split between these two groups, the Rewardians and the emergent tiles, right.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Yeah, And the emergent tiles are getting their slack because
they're getting the things done that they kind of feel
like they want and 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 two of Steve stuff. Did you ever see
that movie?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
No, I need to though I'm well aware of it.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Sort of that was sort of that guy's deal.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
He was just like he had this life philosophy and
he would have really fit in with the 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.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I think there's quite a bit of pot involved everyday
kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Sure, that wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And that's what I think most people would think of
when they think of like slacking, Like, yeah, that's what
you do when you 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. Emergentis you're like, no, no, there's another way
to do this. Like I feel really good about accomplishing
(30:51):
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 going to go learn
how to climb a mountain and climb that mountain, and
during that whole process, I'm slacking, Like that's my slack.
So those are kind of like the two ways of
doing it, and apparently the two groups kind of pity
(31:12):
each other and think they have it completely backwards. But
the point is neither group is right or wrong, because
it's all up to the individual.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
What your slack is.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
I mean, what these guys really it's such a time
and place thing. They were born out of this sort
of spirit of the Mary Pranksters, sixties counterculture kin keezy
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
(31:42):
counterculture vibe as you can imagine. But these guys still
had that sort of fun, playful idea, and you know,
this was their invention. I just I always think it's
just so fun and so cool. I every time I
see a devible or a live show, I absolutely do
not want to be there, no, but I think it's awesome.
(32:05):
It was I liken it to when I saw 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 at this rock and roll show that is supposed
(32:25):
to kind of be funny. 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.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, It's kind of like yeah, and dude, they are
enjoying it. The people who go to those 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. I love it.
It's almost like I would compare it to a like
(33:04):
a meeting of the Juggalos, a comic con, and a
guar show all mixed together. That's what the Divibles these
days kind of seem like. Just based on what I've
seen on the internet.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Yeah, that's good. I like it.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
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 mottos, but they're chief one
that they kind of yell out at these devibles is
FM if you can't take a joke, or if they
can't take a joke, right, And I mean.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
It's right there there.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It's amazing to me that some people took this too
seriously because the motto is literally, this is a joke.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Right yeah, And and it is really kind of like
disconcerting because like if you do take it seriously, like
you really have to go to great lengths to get
past all the winks, the nods, the absurdity of everything.
It suggests that there's like you're you're more soft than
the average cult member because you're actually taking a joke
(34:07):
cult as a cult.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
It's like when fight Club got too serious, you started
blowing up buildings and stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, I think so, except there was.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
No violence involved in the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Now they're they're peaceful.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
It's right, because they're all stoned.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Yeah, I think a lot of them are.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I think a lot of them are like the Frank
Zappa types, or they're just weird and they have nothing
to do with drugs or alcohol or anything too, you know.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
Those are they were born with original stoned.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yes, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
It requires no drugs.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Apparently, Frank Zapple was a real jerk to people who
did drugs, Like he had that cafe or restaurant or
club or whatever, and he would kick you out if
he thought you were on pot.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
That's conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, he was a little pink from what I can tell.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
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 now. But
one of the reasons 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
(35:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
You're a member of that group.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And if you actually are actively getting offended at what
they're saying and doing, because one of the threads of
humor that they very frequently use is bad taste shock value,
Like it's just basically the opposite of PC, Like they
really don't care for PC very much. And if you're
deeply offended by this stuff and you actually like respond
(35:51):
to it, you're actually kind of proving their point that
you are maybe a little too wrapped up in this
culture that they 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.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
We're you know, at a joke.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Basically, yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
You know, before you start feeling too sorry for these
people because they're being made fun of as 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.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Right, So let's take a break, man, We'll talk about
some of the lower points in the Church of the
SubGenius that have happened across the years.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Huh, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
So if you went to a dvible, 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 the guy's doing is
like doing a fire and Brimstone preacher bit. Yeah, but
what he's saying is espousing you know, Bob stuff about
(37:33):
you know, if the FM, if they can't take a
joke or you know whatever, 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.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
That's so I wouldn't want to be there.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
Yeah, And the anti music is another reason.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
That was the next thing I was going to get
to is like, if you if you are not super
into this and probably on a pretty decent amount of
acid back in like nineteen eighty five or four, the
anti music would probably turn you off too.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I know, I don't like it at all either.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
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 the ideas that you can't play
these things, these are not skilled musicians or not even
musicians at all, and 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 sort of like
(38:34):
the drum circle that finally everyone gets in synchronicity for
a minute. You're like, oh, okay, something just happened. 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.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yes, there was actually a time during the at Devibles,
I think during the nineties maybe where a schism in
the church.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Developed was very much planned.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, right, So the idea was so one of the
big parts of the one of the tenets of the
church is there the like the world's going to end
eventually on X day. And X Day was originally slotted
for July fifth, nineteen ninety eight, and that came and went,
and there were no UFOs driven by sex goddesses to
come whisk off the Subgenii to planet X to live
(39:32):
out the rest of their eternity partying and then but
the fact that this was coming along, 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
was formed between people who said, well, there'll probably be
(39:52):
sub Subgenii 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.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
There won't be any Pinks left. And apparently this.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Differing opinion on basic church doctrine was a thread that
was carried on for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
It was, and I think we just need to be
really clear. A schism was written into the script of
the Church of the SubGenius. Okay, it was nothing formed.
It was they wrote a heel basically into their wrestling
show with Papa Joe Mama, who was the leader of
the Holocaustals who believed and again all in jest, but
(40:36):
he believed like go out and shoot the rich basically,
like kill these people. And I think it was Stang
was the leader of the Evangelicals, which was, yeah, let's
just enslave them basically and keep them alive. And two
things here, first of all, in that they eventually had
a big show in the eighties, kind of jumping back.
(40:58):
In San Francisco, they had these sort of small tent
devivals with one hundred people, and then in San Francisco
they booked this theater for two nights, nine hundred seat
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 had a fake assassination of Bob. Bob finally
(41:20):
came out.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
He walked down on stage and them bang, he was
immediately shot.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
So there was that.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
And then after X Day, judging from the documentary, is
when it seemed to like kind of go bad and
not go bad in that everybody really started believing and
it became this really scary thing. But it sort of
lost its jush a little bit, and there were some
people and I think one person specifically even went up
(41:55):
to Stang. I don't know if it was the X Day.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I think it was San Francisco show in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Oh okay, and he was, you know, obviously someone who
needed some real help because he thought this was all real.
Was was livid that it wasn't being taken seriously and
that people were laughing. And that's when Stang was like
a man like kind of this was bound to happen.
But it also made him sad because I'd never wanted
(42:25):
anything like this.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Right, and that was the reason why. So like the
documentary that was made by Sandy K. Boone, who was
involved in a few other 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
(42:46):
back in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Oh, it's amazing. So I remember Waking.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Life that that whole thing link Letter did with the animation.
They did that for this documentary and it really like
had the rotoscoping.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yes, So she was involved in that as well.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
But she made this documentary apparently her late husband was like,
what a great adherent in the truth of the SubGenius,
and she made it also kind of as an ode
to him as well. But in it, Stang and Filo
break character and like, yeah, hadn't broken character for thirty
something years, right, Like they've done interviews, they've like like print, TV, radio,
(43:24):
like they've done the radio show, They've like written tons
of books. They just don't break character. That's just part
of their jam. And for this documentary they did, and
they said the reason why, at least Stang said, the
reason why he did 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
(43:47):
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 down the line. Yeah,
he said, you watched it, right, Yeah, Yeah, I didn't
watch it right before this.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I saw it several months ago, yeah, he said.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
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 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.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yes, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. They
were fascinated by the.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Fact that people could be tricked, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
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 weren't actually trying to exploit anybody. Like the idea
of having you, having you become a part of become
a member, sending your dollar, become ordained by and all
that sales stuff, was to point out that that's what
(44:48):
was going on in the real world, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, And this sort of came to a head in
the nineties when they it was just after Columbine. They
had a live show planned in Boston and Popu Joe Mama,
who was again their sort of scripted heel agent provocateur,
got on a think a radio show and somehow reference Columbine.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
It was a little unclear.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
I think he blamed Columbine on the Church of the SubGenius.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
Oh, was that what it was? Okay?
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Because I couldn't quite tell what the reference was, but
it was clear that that was over the line for
both Filo 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, no, I guess we
can't do that, and then I think they ended up
(45:40):
having it in a like a public park or something.
But that was sort of like where it. You know,
the 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
antithetic to the Church of the SubGenius. It seemed to
(46:02):
kind of fade away until later on when the Internet
kind of helps revive it again.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
So my take is that what really kind of let
it down hill, not to say that there's like like it,
not to say that it it went downhill on its own,
like that just just the world changed, yeah, and there
was like the world became the parody. Not it wasn't
(46:29):
like straight any longer. It was just a joke, but
that was real life now. So you can't satirize something
that is the satire that you're coming up with. There's
just no way to do it.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
No, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
And that's you know, America changed 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 encoached on your turf kind
of thing, you know.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
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 that really puts a hurting, like you said,
on something like the Church of the SubGenius as far
as being and their numbers were never huge, but I
(47:23):
get the idea from watching it that's staying still has
people that write 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 that was one thousand dollars in cash,
so really and he took half of it and immediately
(47:44):
took it to a sick friend, Like that's the kind
of guy he is.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Oh that's cool. Yeah, he struck me as that as well.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
But he's still you know, paying his mortgage stuff and envelopes.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
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 it explained
all of the different stuff is hilarious and like totally
worthwhile and still applies today. Like it's like in a
certain way, it's timeless even though it screams Reagan era,
(48:12):
you know, yeah, but 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 exploiting people for their labor. Like all
that stuff is still going on. So the original stuff
(48:33):
still still stands and still holds.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
Yeah, and they you know, Mark mother Spaw of Devo
and I can't remember the other guy's name in Devo.
They were way into it. Penn Gillette, Nick Offerman, Richard Linklader,
Paul Rubins, Pee Herman's Playhouse out of 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
(48:56):
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. Yeah, and you know when we could
meet these these dudes, but it was very male oriented.
And I don't know, I just like I said, I
never I always had fun reading about it and hearing
(49:17):
about it, but never wanted to get too involved just
because I had too much of a pink.
Speaker 4 (49:22):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
Read, and I this is like ten percent of it.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
I encourage. Yeah, there's there. It's huge.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
It's an enormous, huge rambling, Like what do you call
a group of beliefs in scripture and doctrine mythos? I
guess maybe yeah, canon, Yeah, canon, 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
(49:56):
don't mean new, I mean like mid two thousands, the
mid auts kind of stuf 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. I strongly recommend going to read an
explanation of the male to female discrepancy in the Church
(50:17):
of the SubGenius by Reverend Nancy Regalia and.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
By the real book.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
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
are always recognized that they were kind of being forced
into certain gender roles and did never feel good about it.
She had it quoted, it's not enough to simply burn
(50:45):
your bras why stop there burn a few bridal boutiques
in city Hall while you're at it. It's just a
It's a good essay for sure, totally worth reading. So, yeah,
there's a lot more to say about the Church of
the SubGenius, but we'll just leave it to you. I
feel like we should just part with It's a joke.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
It is a joke.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Ultimately, it's a joke and take it as that. Okay, man,
you got that down, you got some yetti, and you
pink boy?
Speaker 4 (51:13):
Oh maybe?
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Uh? And since I called Chuck a pink boy, it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Keeping it short and sweet. Here with a quick correction
from a new listener. Okay, 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 handedly suggested that William the Conqueror was a
beloved English king because he annexed Normandy after the Battle
of Hastings. It was me, that's pretty much backwards, guys.
(51:41):
He was a Norman king who conquered England at that battle.
William's story would make a great episode. That is from
Scott Scattergood in Suon Korea.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
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 view point. So we
had it right, Okay, good Scott scattered Good, what a
great name, right, Yeah?
Speaker 2 (52:08):
What happens if you scramble Scott around? Scatter's good?
Speaker 1 (52:13):
If you want to get in touch with this like
Scott did. You can send us an email to stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (52:23):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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