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Selects: The Tale of the Church of the SubGenius · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
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Speaker 1: I've chosen our October twenty twenty one episode on the
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Speaker 1: Church of the SubGenius.
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Speaker 2: It's a neat little romp.
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Speaker 1: Through what started out as a couple of guys who
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Speaker 1: like pamphlets and turned a whole generation, well some percentage
0:18
Speaker 1: of a whole generation, and the interesting people skeptical of
0:21
Speaker 1: anything someone is trying to sell them on. As you
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Speaker 1: can hear from this intro, it's kind of difficult to describe,
0:27
Speaker 1: so just enjoy listening to the episode.
0:36
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:47
Speaker 1: I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's over there wandering
0:50
Speaker 1: around in circles and this is Stuff you Should Know,
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Speaker 1: the podcast about the Church of the SubGenius at Long Life.
1:01
Speaker 3: When did you become acquainted with the Church of the SubGenius.
1:05
Speaker 1: I had a group of friends that walked on the
1:10
Speaker 1: odd side of life, darker side of life, less you know,
1:14
Speaker 1: less serious side of life. I'm not sure in the nineties,
1:18
Speaker 1: and there was one guy who was big time into
1:21
Speaker 1: the Church of the SubGenius.
1:24
Speaker 2: What happens, right, man? That was my first introduction.
1:26
Speaker 1: Then I actually came across the Hour of Slack on
1:31
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech's student radio once like in the early two thousands.
1:35
Speaker 4: And record radio.
1:37
Speaker 1: I never got into it, though, Are you actually like
1:39
Speaker 1: a secret SUBGENII?
1:42
Speaker 4: No, same as you.
1:44
Speaker 3: I had a friend in college, a very influential friend actually,
1:49
Speaker 3: who turned me onto a lot of different things as
1:52
Speaker 3: I was just getting into college and exploring different ways
1:57
Speaker 3: of life and thought pattern and uh and shirm sticks.
2:04
Speaker 3: My buddy Jason. He turned me onto a lot of
2:06
Speaker 3: things in life. And I've been able to tell him so,
2:09
Speaker 3: which is always a nice thing. And Bob Dobbs and
2:12
Speaker 3: the Church of SubGenius was one of them.
2:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And like you might not be utterly familiar
2:18
Speaker 1: with the Church of the SubGenius, but I'll bet there's
2:20
Speaker 1: a pretty good chance that a lot of stuff you
2:23
Speaker 1: should know listeners are at least familiar with it without
2:26
Speaker 1: even being fully aware of what it is. But there's
2:29
Speaker 1: a very very famous picture of a clean cut, mid
2:36
Speaker 1: century middle aged dude with a pipe clenched in his
2:42
Speaker 1: teeth and almost like a Patrick Bateman psychotic look on
2:48
Speaker 1: his face, like.
2:49
Speaker 4: Almost Bateman meets word Cleaver exactly.
2:51
Speaker 2: Yes, Chuck.
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Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's ever put it better than that.
2:55
Speaker 1: And that is Jr. Bob Dobbs, who is the high
2:58
Speaker 1: profit of the Church to the SubGenius, and he has
3:01
Speaker 1: popped up everywhere from the background. At Peewee's Playhouse there
3:05
Speaker 1: was a sublime record that had him on there. Like
3:08
Speaker 1: he shows up all over the place. It's almost like code.
3:14
Speaker 1: And so you probably have seen it, even if you're
3:16
Speaker 1: not familiar with the Church of the SubGenius.
3:18
Speaker 2: That's called the dobs Head.
3:20
Speaker 3: Right, gathered from clip art, which we will see. It's
3:24
Speaker 3: kind of one of the fun d jokes about a
3:28
Speaker 3: pseudo religion, a satire and parody of religion, and it's
3:34
Speaker 3: you know, it was formed by two guys.
3:35
Speaker 4: We'll get into the history, but.
3:36
Speaker 3: I have a sort of a favorite definition, and I
3:39
Speaker 3: know you do, and maybe we'll just read both of them.
3:41
Speaker 2: Okay.
3:43
Speaker 3: Mine comes from Steve Davis of the Austin Chronicle, and
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Speaker 3: he said this in the late seventies. The Church of
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Speaker 3: the SubGenius was intended as a dogmatic antidote to a
3:53
Speaker 3: re emergent mediocrity, embracing an aesthetic and confluence with evolving
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Speaker 3: new waves in abilities and tropes and music, film and
4:02
Speaker 3: pop culture. It was an in joke with a half
4:05
Speaker 3: serious punchline.
4:07
Speaker 2: Very nice. That was great.
4:09
Speaker 3: And what you yours was from Ed the Grabster himself.
4:12
Speaker 4: You can kind of put it nice.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, also from the Austin Chronicle. Yeah, so Ed said
4:17
Speaker 1: that it's that the best way to explain the church
4:20
Speaker 1: is it is a joke. But to get the joke,
4:23
Speaker 1: you have to see that it isn't really a joke
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Speaker 1: at all, but it's actually getting at harrowing truths about
4:28
Speaker 1: the world.
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Speaker 2: Not bad, Ed, not bad.
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Speaker 4: So the whole thing Christ get scared a a little bit.
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Speaker 2: I think so too.
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Speaker 1: It's hilarious and cute, but the whole thing is that
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Speaker 1: it is a parody of a religion, a parody of
4:43
Speaker 1: a cult, a UFO sex cult, if you want.
4:45
Speaker 2: To get technical.
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Speaker 1: It's a it's an absurdist in joke, and the whole
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Speaker 1: thing is one big in joke made up of like
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Speaker 1: millions of tiny little in jokes that anybody in the
4:57
Speaker 1: church can kind of generate and create.
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Speaker 2: But it's all kind kind of hung on.
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Speaker 1: The skeleton of this this doctrine of the prophet Bob Dobbs,
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Speaker 1: who is the world's greatest salesman, who is basically carrying
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Speaker 1: out the will of an alien god who may or
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Speaker 1: may not love us, or the Subgenie as they're called plural,
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Speaker 1: and like, either it sucks you in immediately and you're like,
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Speaker 1: I want to know more about this because this is
5:30
Speaker 1: hilarious or repulses you because it is making fun of
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Speaker 1: everything that you hold. Dear, there's not a lot of
5:38
Speaker 1: middle ground, although I would count myself as somebody in
5:40
Speaker 1: the middle ground and tell you the truth. That was
5:45
Speaker 1: so awesome, chuck nicely.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, what I just did there, And you'll see this
5:50
Speaker 3: in a lot if you watch the documentary, if you
5:52
Speaker 3: see any YouTube footage of people from the sub Genius
5:56
Speaker 3: Church hanging out at one of their devibe they don't
6:00
Speaker 3: call them revivals, they call them devibles.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, they will do this thing where they kind of.
6:06
Speaker 3: Juggle their throat with their hand as they sort of
6:09
Speaker 3: did this weird chant. Yeah, and I didn't find much
6:12
Speaker 3: information on that specifically, but I did see them doing
6:15
Speaker 3: it all over the place.
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Speaker 1: Well, it is a huge, huge rabbit hole, and as
6:18
Speaker 1: we'll see, like some people accidentally take it seriously and
6:21
Speaker 1: that's not the right thing to do at all. That is,
6:24
Speaker 1: that is a that is a mentally unsound thing to do.
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Speaker 1: That's not what the intention is or anything like that.
6:32
Speaker 1: The intention is is to basically point out how just
6:35
Speaker 1: warped our consumer culture is. And it made a lot
6:39
Speaker 1: more sense than the eighties before our culture ended up
6:42
Speaker 1: becoming the parody that the Church of the SubGenius was
6:46
Speaker 1: carrying out.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, it had.
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Speaker 3: It had a very mad magazine vibe. You know something,
6:53
Speaker 3: I know that you and I both grew up loving
6:55
Speaker 3: and cherishing, and I could see, like, you know, if
6:58
Speaker 3: that's something as mainstream as you want to liking it too.
7:01
Speaker 3: To help people understand, it's almost as if Mad Magazine
7:04
Speaker 3: started a religion and Alfred y Newman was the God
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Speaker 3: and it was all just one big joke about consumer culture.
7:12
Speaker 2: And.
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Speaker 3: Then if people end up taking it seriously, you can
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Speaker 3: really see why, like that would be a very strange thing.
7:20
Speaker 3: Of course, ALFREDY Newman is not God, and of course
7:23
Speaker 3: Bob Dobbs is not God or the prophet. But these
7:28
Speaker 3: two guys founded this kind of funny joke religion in
7:32
Speaker 3: the late nineteen seventies because they were like minded dudes,
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Speaker 3: and what started as a joke grew into a I
7:38
Speaker 3: guess a mini phenomenon. I don't know, man, I think
7:43
Speaker 3: it's a major phenomenon.
7:44
Speaker 1: I would say major as far as cult, classic or
7:48
Speaker 1: cult phenomena go. And also we should also, I think
7:52
Speaker 1: we should preface all this, if it's not too late,
7:55
Speaker 1: to all of the Church of the SubGenius members out there,
7:57
Speaker 1: past and present. This is one of those things where like,
8:03
Speaker 1: if you explain what makes something funny, right, it is like,
8:07
Speaker 1: that's the least funny thing you can do. So if
8:09
Speaker 1: we trapes into that just by virtue of explaining things,
8:13
Speaker 1: we're sorry.
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Speaker 3: I know, because it is a fun, kind of cool
8:17
Speaker 3: thing that was created for people that felt like they
8:19
Speaker 3: were on the outside of things precisely, Yes, for outcasts
8:23
Speaker 3: and weirdos who didn't fit in necessarily. They found common
8:28
Speaker 3: ground before the Internet. Yeah, by writing letters back and
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Speaker 3: forth to each other. They kind of had the Internet
8:34
Speaker 3: through pen and paper and these devivals And we have
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Speaker 3: Douglas Saint, Clair Smith and Steve Wilcox to thank for this.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the original outsider weirdos.
8:46
Speaker 4: That's right.
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Speaker 3: You may not know by that name. If you're familiar
8:49
Speaker 3: with the Church of the SubGenius. You know them as
8:52
Speaker 3: Ivan Stang and Filo Drummond. And these were two guys,
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Speaker 3: like I said, who were they were in Texas? I
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Speaker 3: think Philo grew up in a religious family but and
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Speaker 3: had a really good childhood. It wasn't some like stifling situation,
9:09
Speaker 3: but he was always sort of didn't quite fit in
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Speaker 3: and felt like the outsider at school and was seeking
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Speaker 3: outsider culture.
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Speaker 4: And whereas Stang.
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Speaker 3: Was I think he described himself in the documentary as
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Speaker 3: secular humanist scientists and his upbringing super liberal family. Whereas well,
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Speaker 3: I'll keep onting to Colin Wilcox, whereas Filos was more
9:35
Speaker 3: conservative to be sure. But they found common ground when
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Speaker 3: a friend introduced them, they said, you both love comic books,
9:42
Speaker 3: you both love Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Get together
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Speaker 3: and you might have a new friend. And they were
9:48
Speaker 3: immediate friends.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they definitely hit it off.
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Speaker 1: In part also because they both kind of just felt
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Speaker 1: like they didn't really fit into Dallas, Texas.
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Speaker 2: At the time.
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Speaker 4: That helps.
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Speaker 1: One of the other things they really loved had in
10:00
Speaker 1: common was a love of like Earnest bona fide extremist.
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Speaker 4: Pamphlets, right, they're fun.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, whether it's extremest religious groups, extremeist like you know,
10:13
Speaker 1: like white supremacist groups, which I'm sure Dallas, Texas in
10:17
Speaker 1: the seventies had quite a bit of like anybody who
10:20
Speaker 1: was just kind of off the rails and was trying
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Speaker 1: to recruit other people to be off the rails with them,
10:27
Speaker 1: and made a pamphlet about that. These guys would collect
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Speaker 1: it and relish it, and that also included a member
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Speaker 1: of the Jack Schick tracks in the Satanic Panic episode.
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Speaker 2: They were huge into that.
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Speaker 1: I had a huge influence on them as well, those
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Speaker 1: comic strips about how somebody you know had sex before
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Speaker 1: marriage and now they were burning in hell kind of
10:47
Speaker 1: stuff like that. They took all these things together and
10:51
Speaker 1: they kind of used them as the basis for this
10:55
Speaker 1: outlook on the world, which is humans are totally nuts
11:00
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and then even more than that,
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Speaker 1: they can be dangerously nuts when they try to foist
11:05
Speaker 1: or impose their own crazy thoughts onto you and make
11:11
Speaker 1: you behave a certain way because of their crazy thoughts.
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Speaker 1: That that's the danger that comes out of modern life,
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Speaker 1: and I think that's one of the things that really
11:19
Speaker 1: stuck out to them and the thing that drove them
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Speaker 1: to kind of try to fight that however they could.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to say I see the appeal of
11:28
Speaker 3: what they did, because if you remember a few years ago, god,
11:32
Speaker 3: this is quite a few years ago now, our buddy
11:35
Speaker 3: Joe Randazzo and I wrote a TV pilot together about
11:42
Speaker 3: a scientology esque religion and it never went anywhere. We
11:45
Speaker 3: even had a few pitch meetings and nothing happened with it.
11:48
Speaker 3: But in writing that script, we had to create our
11:51
Speaker 3: own religion for that pilot. And you can't just say, well,
11:55
Speaker 3: let's just call it this and it's whatever. You have
11:57
Speaker 3: to really kind of explore the tenets of it. It
12:00
Speaker 3: a real thing. And we did that, and I made
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Speaker 3: a pamphlet. Joe and I made it together, and I
12:06
Speaker 3: kind of put it together, and we brought the pamphlet
12:08
Speaker 3: to the pitch meetings, and I'll send you one sometime.
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Speaker 4: This is really funny.
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Speaker 3: Our religion was called Binarism, and it was like this
12:15
Speaker 3: numbers based kind of scientology thing.
12:18
Speaker 4: But it was so much fun and all I.
12:22
Speaker 3: Could think about when these two guys got together in
12:24
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine and hatch this idea was, Yeah, it's
12:28
Speaker 3: a lot of fun to create a phony religion, even
12:32
Speaker 3: for a screenplay.
12:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they were definitely inspired by l. Ron Hubbard
12:38
Speaker 1: and his success at basically founding scientology based on some
12:41
Speaker 1: science fiction ideas that he had and then becoming rich.
12:45
Speaker 1: There was a famous quote attributed to L. Ron Hubbard
12:47
Speaker 1: that you can't get rich writing science fiction, but you
12:49
Speaker 1: can get rich by writing or by founding your own religion.
12:53
Speaker 2: And so.
12:55
Speaker 1: We should be really careful here. They weren't inspired by l.
12:58
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard in this sense like they wanted to take
13:02
Speaker 1: advantage of people. I think they were more fascinated by
13:05
Speaker 1: the fact that there are plenty of people out there
13:08
Speaker 1: who will buy into this right, and I think they
13:11
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to explore that, not not in any
13:14
Speaker 1: kind of like it's weird. It's the whole thing is
13:17
Speaker 1: kind of a cynical It comes from a cynical place
13:21
Speaker 1: where you just have to be cynical to be to
13:24
Speaker 1: be critical enough of society to see it for what
13:27
Speaker 1: it is. But it's also like a very humanist group
13:33
Speaker 1: as well, where like they're not trying to hurt you,
13:35
Speaker 1: they're not trying to exploit you. They definitely come off
13:38
Speaker 1: as superior a lot of times, especially if you're not
13:40
Speaker 1: in on the joke, because that makes you, by definition,
13:44
Speaker 1: part of the butt.
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Speaker 2: Of the joke.
13:46
Speaker 4: Right.
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Speaker 1: Yes, But for the most part, they're They're not like
13:50
Speaker 1: a group of people who like, hate or despise other people.
13:54
Speaker 1: I think they're fascinated by the fact that that kind
13:56
Speaker 1: of stuff exists. And they're also fascinated by just how
13:59
Speaker 1: can foremost the average person is without even thinking about it.
14:04
Speaker 1: So they were fascinated, I guess, is the way to
14:08
Speaker 1: put it, by l Ron Hubbard and his success with scientology.
14:11
Speaker 1: And there was another quote that was attributed to Stang.
14:14
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was in the documentary that
14:15
Speaker 1: came out recently or not, but he basically said, if
14:18
Speaker 1: we figured that if Jim Jones can get nine hundred
14:21
Speaker 1: people that kill themselves, we could get nine hundred people
14:23
Speaker 1: to send us a dollar. And they kind of wanted
14:26
Speaker 1: to toy around with that and see, you know, if that
14:29
Speaker 1: was the case, not to exploit people, but just to
14:32
Speaker 1: kind of see I think if there was anybody else
14:35
Speaker 1: out there, they were kind of shouting into the wilderness.
14:37
Speaker 1: And the way that you told them that you were
14:39
Speaker 1: out there was to mail in a dollar and say,
14:41
Speaker 1: give some of your pamphlet.
14:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, and here's the deal.
14:46
Speaker 2: Stang.
14:47
Speaker 3: It looks like, by all accounts, has generally made his
14:49
Speaker 3: living doing this over the year.
14:51
Speaker 2: Yeah it worked.
14:52
Speaker 4: He's not gotten rich.
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Speaker 3: It's not a scientology thing where it's like and send
14:56
Speaker 3: me one hundred more dollars and we'll give you another thing.
14:59
Speaker 3: No sort of mail us some money and we'll send
15:03
Speaker 3: you art comedy goods in the mail. And he still
15:07
Speaker 3: stuffs envelopes and he still sends pamphlets and CDs and literature.
15:11
Speaker 4: Today.
15:13
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, it's like paying for a Mad
15:15
Speaker 3: magazine or something, but it's just done from this guy's house.
15:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:18
Speaker 1: I also get the impression that the far and away,
15:21
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the people who understand the Church
15:23
Speaker 1: of SubGenius for what it is when they send money,
15:26
Speaker 1: and they're sending it out of like gratitude for what
15:28
Speaker 1: you're saying and Filo have built together. Yeah, that's what
15:33
Speaker 1: it is. They're not being duped in any way. They're
15:36
Speaker 1: in on the joke. They're just showing their support by
15:39
Speaker 1: shoveling money towards those guys.
15:41
Speaker 3: All right, I think that is a great preamble. You're
15:45
Speaker 3: either turning off your Hi Fi system now you're or
15:50
Speaker 3: you're intrigued by what's to come, and we'll talk about
15:53
Speaker 3: the night at all hatched right after this. All right,
16:24
Speaker 3: So these guys are hanging out, it's nineteen seventy nine.
16:29
Speaker 3: They didn't have I think Filo was the one. He
16:31
Speaker 3: always had a pretty decent job. He kind of had
16:34
Speaker 3: an okay career, and he always wanted to There were
16:38
Speaker 3: times where he kind of dropped in and out of
16:40
Speaker 3: his involvement because he did have a decent career, but
16:43
Speaker 3: he always supported it, whereas Staying was all in from
16:47
Speaker 3: the beginning and didn't have a ton of prospects for work.
16:50
Speaker 3: But they were hanging out and they were like kind
16:52
Speaker 3: of wondering why they, you know, didn't have more and
16:55
Speaker 3: why they weren't as successful as they thought they should be.
16:57
Speaker 3: And Stang said, you know, we aren't geniuses. You know,
17:00
Speaker 3: he must be subgeniuses. And he says in the documentary
17:04
Speaker 3: he was like, that's the moment. It was literally like
17:06
Speaker 3: a lightning bolt out of the sky that hatched this idea.
17:10
Speaker 3: So they kind of took all their interests in all
17:12
Speaker 3: these weird pamphlets and weird UFO cults and pseudo religions
17:17
Speaker 3: and New Age beliefs, and they made the original pamphlet,
17:22
Speaker 3: spent sixty dollars on this original pamphlet, and we're just
17:25
Speaker 3: leaving him at dry cleaners and stuff like that until
17:28
Speaker 3: Stang's wife got mad and she was like, that's a
17:30
Speaker 3: lot of money for us. At least send this to
17:33
Speaker 3: some publishers and see if you can do something with this.
17:37
Speaker 3: So they sent it to every publisher under the sun
17:39
Speaker 3: and got rejected by every publisher under the sun. But
17:46
Speaker 3: it's pretty funny that later they did end up having
17:49
Speaker 3: a fairly successful book, but early on, book publishers didn't
17:52
Speaker 3: know what to do with these guys.
17:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can understand why if you've ever seen
17:56
Speaker 1: what's called pamphlet number one now, which is part of
17:58
Speaker 1: the Church doctrine, and this is like the Sacred Writings.
18:01
Speaker 1: The idea is that Ivan Stang is the sacred scribe
18:06
Speaker 1: who took down the words of Bob Dobbs. And by
18:10
Speaker 1: the way, Bob Dobbs, the Bob is always in quotes,
18:14
Speaker 1: not just when you say JR. Bob Dobbs, Like even
18:17
Speaker 1: if you say Bob Dobbs or even just Bob. It's
18:19
Speaker 1: always in quotes, that's how you write his name, and
18:22
Speaker 1: that Bob was getting his divine inspiration from Jehovah one,
18:27
Speaker 1: that alien overlord that that runs Earth. And this was
18:34
Speaker 1: kind of like the conceit of the pamphlet. In the
18:36
Speaker 1: front of the pamphlet said things like the world ends
18:39
Speaker 1: tomorrow and you may die in all caps. It's asked,
18:44
Speaker 1: do people think you're strange? Do you?
18:48
Speaker 2: I know? I love that one.
18:50
Speaker 1: There was another one that said eternal salvation or triple
18:53
Speaker 1: your money back, So like, these are the things I
18:56
Speaker 1: like on and in the pamphlet, and they're they're going
18:58
Speaker 1: around to publishers being like, hey, you want to give
19:01
Speaker 1: us some money for this, So of course everybody said no.
19:03
Speaker 1: The most astounding thing is that eventually somebody actually said yes.
19:07
Speaker 1: I think McGraw hill.
19:10
Speaker 4: Yeah.
19:11
Speaker 3: And this was much later when they finally did get
19:13
Speaker 3: their book published, after they had quite a following and
19:16
Speaker 3: the sort of writing was on the wall with these,
19:18
Speaker 3: you know, fairly successful gatherings and live shows. But yeah,
19:22
Speaker 3: the book came later. Early on they got together and
19:25
Speaker 3: started just as Buddies getting on the CB radio and
19:30
Speaker 3: doing and this again, this was like you would get
19:33
Speaker 3: on the internet today. Back then it was the CB,
19:36
Speaker 3: and they would do these sort of parody voices. Basically
19:41
Speaker 3: Hatch what was the beginnings of what would end up
19:43
Speaker 3: being the hour of Slack radio show, which is ninety
19:47
Speaker 3: minutes long. Part of the joke, and people started hollering
19:52
Speaker 3: back at them. He said, they were trolls. Before they
19:54
Speaker 3: were trolls. You were kind of trolling people on the CB,
19:57
Speaker 3: and then other people would troll back and call them pinks.
20:01
Speaker 3: And that's where the notion of pinks or pink boys
20:04
Speaker 3: came up. And pink boys they kind of flipped it.
20:09
Speaker 3: In the Church of the SubGenius. Pink boys are the others.
20:12
Speaker 3: They're the squares. They're the ones who just follow along
20:15
Speaker 3: and go to their nine to five job and spend
20:17
Speaker 3: their consumer money and you know on catalog items and
20:23
Speaker 3: anyone else outside is a pink or a pink boy.
20:26
Speaker 1: Yes, but but there's a distinction between say, people like
20:32
Speaker 1: you and I and actually died in the wold pink boys,
20:35
Speaker 1: the kind like middle manager types who are like not
20:39
Speaker 1: only fully bought into the con, the great con that's
20:42
Speaker 1: going on, they actually like like almost violently defend it
20:47
Speaker 1: in its existence and it's its rightness. Those are those
20:51
Speaker 1: are pinks, They're irreparable. There's nothing that's ever going to
20:54
Speaker 1: help them, and they're genuine humans. Now, there are plenty
20:57
Speaker 1: of subgenii out there who don't know they's so genii.
21:00
Speaker 1: They haven't been exposed to the church, they've never seen
21:02
Speaker 1: a Dob's head maybe whatever reason, they're not aware that
21:06
Speaker 1: they're a SubGenius yet. And if you're a true SubGenius,
21:10
Speaker 1: then you have YETI blood coursing through your veins.
21:13
Speaker 4: Yeah.
21:13
Speaker 2: Now, if you're an.
21:14
Speaker 1: Actual SubGenius, that means that you are a of YETI heritage.
21:19
Speaker 1: Who is who has basically become aware of the teachings
21:23
Speaker 1: of Bob and are now actively working against the conspiracy
21:29
Speaker 1: and exploiting pink boys anytime you get a chance, because again,
21:33
Speaker 1: they're hopeless. They're never going to be converted because they
21:36
Speaker 1: don't have any Yetti blood in them.
21:38
Speaker 3: Right, And to reiterate, I don't know if I kind
21:41
Speaker 3: of just tossed it off earlier, but.
21:44
Speaker 4: Bob Dobbs is a piece of clip art.
21:47
Speaker 3: Literally, that face that you see was a piece of
21:49
Speaker 3: clip art from clip art catalog and they loved clip
21:52
Speaker 3: art because it was free. Yeah, And a lot of
21:54
Speaker 3: their early stuff was just collage from clip art that
21:57
Speaker 3: they had found. And this was from a clip art catalog.
22:00
Speaker 3: And now it's, you know, one of the you know,
22:03
Speaker 3: arguably one of the most famous pieces of clip art
22:05
Speaker 3: there is.
22:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know if it was a joke.
22:07
Speaker 1: It's so hard to tell what's a joke and what's
22:10
Speaker 1: not because they play everything so straight.
22:13
Speaker 4: They're in character basically.
22:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that I saw on one of their websites
22:17
Speaker 1: that they said, reminder, this is a this is this
22:20
Speaker 1: is a trademarked piece of art now as part of
22:23
Speaker 1: like the SubGenius or copyright SubGenius.
22:26
Speaker 2: So I don't know if they actually did copyright I
22:28
Speaker 2: could totally see.
22:29
Speaker 1: Them doing that in real life, or if they were
22:32
Speaker 1: just joking about it. Either way, Yeah, it's kind of great.
22:36
Speaker 3: So I think we probably can't go any further without
22:39
Speaker 3: explaining this concept of slack. I mentioned that the radio
22:44
Speaker 3: show is called The Hour of Slack and kind of
22:47
Speaker 3: the major I guess philosophy intenet of their religion is.
22:54
Speaker 4: It's this concept of slack.
22:57
Speaker 2: Are you having trouble describing it.
22:59
Speaker 4: No.
22:59
Speaker 3: I mean they even say in the documentary it is
23:01
Speaker 3: not even to be described that they can't even describe it.
23:04
Speaker 3: So whatever we do is going to be our own attempt. Okay,
23:08
Speaker 3: Slack is different for every person, but the definite idea
23:12
Speaker 3: is what you think, which is being slack like kind
23:16
Speaker 3: of but not just being lazy, having everything you need
23:19
Speaker 3: in life and being content while giving up as little
23:23
Speaker 3: as possible exertion wise.
23:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, exertion wise exactly, like having done as little as
23:28
Speaker 1: possible to actually attain it. That's one definition of slack
23:33
Speaker 1: for sure. The point is, like, I think it's one
23:37
Speaker 1: of those things where you or what is not slack
23:42
Speaker 1: is easier to recognize than what is slack. And I'll
23:45
Speaker 1: give you an example of something that happened today, Okay, okay,
23:49
Speaker 1: because I've been thinking about this, I'm like, how are
23:50
Speaker 1: we going to define slack?
23:52
Speaker 3: Yeah?
23:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, so.
23:55
Speaker 1: I knocked over the toilet brush behind the toilet in
24:00
Speaker 1: my bathroom, right, okay, And you know, like the little
24:03
Speaker 1: drippings that end up in like the toilet brush holder.
24:06
Speaker 2: Yes, they spilled out on the floor.
24:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, those are the worst drippings.
24:10
Speaker 2: The worst drippings.
24:12
Speaker 1: I would have rather spilled like like like raw pork
24:14
Speaker 1: juice onto my floor. Than those drippings, they're bad drippings, right,
24:18
Speaker 1: bad dripping. So I spent the next ten minutes not
24:21
Speaker 1: only like cleaning up those drippings, and I mean like
24:24
Speaker 1: cleaning it up like there's there's some floor missing.
24:27
Speaker 2: Now.
24:27
Speaker 1: I scrubbed it so hard and then also cleaning the
24:31
Speaker 1: holder for the scrub brushs before I put everything back.
24:34
Speaker 1: And this is a totally unintentional, totally avoidable thing for
24:38
Speaker 1: me to be doing. That took up ten minutes of
24:40
Speaker 1: my life. I did not want to be doing it. It
24:42
Speaker 1: was gross, it was yuck, and I realized, this is
24:44
Speaker 1: the this is the perfect example of what is not slack.
24:48
Speaker 4: It's the conspiracy.
24:49
Speaker 1: It was the conspiracy that probably had something to do
24:52
Speaker 1: with it. But the point was is like I was
24:55
Speaker 1: doing something I didn't want to do, and I was
24:58
Speaker 1: doing it. I was getting no reward from it whatsoever.
25:03
Speaker 1: I was a little stressed out about it. It was
25:05
Speaker 1: not slack. So slack is the opposite of that. It's
25:08
Speaker 1: where things are going your way. It's where you are
25:12
Speaker 1: content and happy, and that doesn't necessarily mean you have
25:15
Speaker 1: everything in life, like all the trappings of life, It
25:18
Speaker 1: very frequently doesn't mean that. Instead, it's just whatever it
25:21
Speaker 1: is that makes you content. And because it's undefinable, that
25:26
Speaker 1: means that it's up to every SUBGENII to define what
25:30
Speaker 1: is slack for them.
25:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the conspiracy is are the things that prevent
25:35
Speaker 3: you from achieving slack. Originally, I think the conspiracy was
25:40
Speaker 3: literally like the man that kind of thing, but it
25:43
Speaker 3: evolved over the years to the point where one of
25:46
Speaker 3: the guys in the documentary said it evolved to you know,
25:49
Speaker 3: it was like when it rained really hard on a
25:51
Speaker 3: day you were going to do something like, that's the conspiracy,
25:54
Speaker 3: I gotcha. It's things I think conspiring against you. That
25:58
Speaker 3: toilet brush knocking over definitely the conspiracy, right, because it
26:03
Speaker 3: prevented you from, I guess, taking your your mid morning nap.
26:06
Speaker 1: Right, and the under the teachings of Bob, the conspiracy
26:11
Speaker 1: is actually an acronym for clicks of normals secretly planning
26:14
Speaker 1: insidious rituals aimed at controlling you.
26:18
Speaker 4: And that's a good.
26:19
Speaker 2: One, I agreed.
26:20
Speaker 1: And then under the doctrine like this is an actual
26:24
Speaker 1: group who they don't know what slack is, but they
26:26
Speaker 1: know it exists, and they're bent on stealing as much
26:29
Speaker 1: of it as possible, and they start stealing it from everybody,
26:31
Speaker 1: pinks and yetti from the moment you're born. And so
26:36
Speaker 1: it's up to you to to steal it back, to
26:39
Speaker 1: get as much slack as you possibly can. But the
26:42
Speaker 1: problem with the conspiracy is they're the ones running the
26:45
Speaker 1: show here on Earth. They're the ones who are behind
26:47
Speaker 1: consumer culture, and they've created this illusion that that what
26:54
Speaker 1: what normals and pinks and uh non subgenia YETI who
27:00
Speaker 1: haven't figured themselves out yet buy into as life is
27:04
Speaker 1: all just this vast consumer conspiracy and that they actually
27:12
Speaker 1: offer what appears to be slack, but it's like false
27:16
Speaker 1: slack is what they call it.
27:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's manufactured slack.
27:18
Speaker 1: So it's like the SubGenius wiki as awesome, and they
27:24
Speaker 1: give examples of like pre planned recreation, like days off
27:31
Speaker 1: from work that you earn or are given like these
27:34
Speaker 1: are this is all false slack, Like it's somebody else
27:37
Speaker 1: deciding what your slack is and yeah, buying into it.
27:40
Speaker 1: And that is the that is not slack. Slack is
27:43
Speaker 1: you have to decide what slack.
27:45
Speaker 3: Is, right, and there's original slack. We're all born with
27:48
Speaker 3: original slack according to the Church, and the conspiracy chips
27:52
Speaker 3: away at that slack or sells you false slack over
27:55
Speaker 3: the years to degrade your your natural slack that you're
27:59
Speaker 3: born with.
27:59
Speaker 2: Yep.
28:00
Speaker 3: And then there's also involuntary slack, which is my favorite slack.
28:05
Speaker 3: And this is like if you lose your job or something,
28:08
Speaker 3: if you get fired, this is just involuntary slack that
28:13
Speaker 3: Bob is sending your way to force you to take
28:16
Speaker 3: a little time off.
28:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
28:17
Speaker 1: I saw a video from I guess two thousand and
28:20
Speaker 1: nine or ten, and it called the Great Recession the
28:23
Speaker 1: Great Slack Session, and it basically said, like the financial
28:29
Speaker 1: markets have melted down, and it had like this real
28:31
Speaker 1: dramatic music of millions of people are out of work.
28:37
Speaker 1: No one has a clue about what to do about it.
28:40
Speaker 1: Victory is at hand. There's one other thing I want
28:46
Speaker 1: to say about slack.
28:47
Speaker 2: Two.
28:48
Speaker 1: There are basically two groups, two approaches or philosophies as
28:53
Speaker 1: far as slack is concerned. And I think it's pretty
28:55
Speaker 1: interesting that the whole concept has gotten this far. It's
28:59
Speaker 1: of all into something and I think this is a
29:01
Speaker 1: really good example of what happens with the Church's teachings,
29:05
Speaker 1: like these guys just wrote some crazy stuff like back
29:07
Speaker 1: in the seventies, eighties, even into the nineties, and then
29:11
Speaker 1: other people who kind of vibed on it came along
29:14
Speaker 1: and expanded it. Like I read an essay on the
29:17
Speaker 1: scissors of Sight and apparently that's mentioned offhandedly and pamphlet
29:22
Speaker 1: number one, and somebody wrote a whole essay about how
29:25
Speaker 1: they're still trying to figure out what those are and
29:27
Speaker 1: they think it's from a crystal in Atlantis, and it
29:30
Speaker 1: was just just like, that's.
29:31
Speaker 2: Just what they do.
29:32
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're putting stuff out there as like
29:35
Speaker 1: thoughts starters for other people's creativity to kind of sprout from.
29:38
Speaker 1: But anyway, the two paths for slack has kind of
29:44
Speaker 1: split between these two groups, the Rewardians and the emergent tiles, right.
29:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the emergent tiles are getting their slack because
29:53
Speaker 3: they're getting the things done that they kind of feel
29:55
Speaker 3: like they want and need to get done, but it's
29:58
Speaker 3: under a deadline from someone else. But then they have
30:01
Speaker 3: their slack and then the Rewardians don't think this is
30:05
Speaker 3: more like two of Steve stuff. Did you ever see
30:07
Speaker 3: that movie?
30:08
Speaker 1: No, I need to though I'm well aware of it.
30:11
Speaker 4: Sort of that was sort of that guy's deal.
30:13
Speaker 3: He was just like he had this life philosophy and
30:16
Speaker 3: he would have really fit in with the with these folks,
30:19
Speaker 3: with the Rewardians. They basically like slack off all the time,
30:22
Speaker 3: don't do any work until you absolutely have to write.
30:25
Speaker 1: I think there's quite a bit of pot involved everyday
30:28
Speaker 1: kind of thing.
30:29
Speaker 4: Sure, that wouldn't surprise me.
30:31
Speaker 1: And that's what I think most people would think of
30:33
Speaker 1: when they think of like slacking, Like, yeah, that's what
30:35
Speaker 1: you do when you slack, you don't work, You sit around,
30:37
Speaker 1: you smoke pot, you're like never put on pants or
30:39
Speaker 1: anything like that, and you're just having the time of
30:41
Speaker 1: your life as long as like that's what you want
30:43
Speaker 1: to do. Emergentis you're like, no, no, there's another way
30:47
Speaker 1: to do this. Like I feel really good about accomplishing
30:51
Speaker 1: something about like setting a goal and meeting it about
30:55
Speaker 1: but that's my goal. Like I want to learn how
30:58
Speaker 1: to climb a mountain, So I'm going to go learn
31:00
Speaker 1: how to climb a mountain and climb that mountain, and
31:03
Speaker 1: during that whole process, I'm slacking, Like that's my slack.
31:08
Speaker 1: So those are kind of like the two ways of
31:10
Speaker 1: doing it, and apparently the two groups kind of pity
31:12
Speaker 1: each other and think they have it completely backwards. But
31:15
Speaker 1: the point is neither group is right or wrong, because
31:18
Speaker 1: it's all up to the individual.
31:20
Speaker 2: What your slack is.
31:21
Speaker 3: I mean, what these guys really it's such a time
31:23
Speaker 3: and place thing. They were born out of this sort
31:26
Speaker 3: of spirit of the Mary Pranksters, sixties counterculture kin keezy
31:30
Speaker 3: kind of thing, but they came along at a time
31:33
Speaker 3: where that had been bulldozed over and the Eighties were
31:38
Speaker 3: being born, which was about as anti you know, sixties
31:42
Speaker 3: counterculture vibe as you can imagine. But these guys still
31:46
Speaker 3: had that sort of fun, playful idea, and you know,
31:50
Speaker 3: this was their invention. I just I always think it's
31:53
Speaker 3: just so fun and so cool. I every time I
31:56
Speaker 3: see a devible or a live show, I absolutely do
32:01
Speaker 3: not want to be there, no, but I think it's awesome.
32:05
Speaker 3: It was I liken it to when I saw Spinal
32:08
Speaker 3: Tap in concert. They actually toured when I was in college,
32:13
Speaker 3: and I was such a fan of the movie. And
32:15
Speaker 3: when they played the Fox Theater and we all went
32:17
Speaker 3: and I had it was not fun at all because
32:20
Speaker 3: it was like it was funny as a movie, but
32:23
Speaker 3: you're at this rock and roll show that is supposed
32:25
Speaker 3: to kind of be funny. But there were also people
32:28
Speaker 3: that were really getting into the rock and roll and
32:31
Speaker 3: I didn't know. I was stuck in between worlds. I
32:33
Speaker 3: didn't know how to feel. And when I was watching
32:36
Speaker 3: these SubGenius live shows, I was kind of like, oh,
32:39
Speaker 3: that's like spinal Tap live. I don't want to be there,
32:42
Speaker 3: but I'm glad people are enjoying it.
32:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's kind of like yeah, and dude, they are
32:47
Speaker 1: enjoying it. The people who go to those are genuinely
32:50
Speaker 1: having like the time of their lives. Like that's their
32:52
Speaker 1: time to like just like just be themselves as much
32:55
Speaker 1: as they ever have in their lives. I love it.
32:58
Speaker 1: It's almost like I would compare it to a like
33:04
Speaker 1: a meeting of the Juggalos, a comic con, and a
33:11
Speaker 1: guar show all mixed together. That's what the Divibles these
33:15
Speaker 1: days kind of seem like. Just based on what I've
33:17
Speaker 1: seen on the internet.
33:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good. I like it.
33:20
Speaker 3: And if you're if you think this is all really dumb,
33:22
Speaker 3: then you probably would not like their motto. They have
33:25
Speaker 3: a lot of sayings and mottos, but they're chief one
33:27
Speaker 3: that they kind of yell out at these devibles is
33:32
Speaker 3: FM if you can't take a joke, or if they
33:33
Speaker 3: can't take a joke, right, And I mean.
33:36
Speaker 4: It's right there there.
33:38
Speaker 3: It's amazing to me that some people took this too
33:40
Speaker 3: seriously because the motto is literally, this is a joke.
33:44
Speaker 1: Right yeah, And and it is really kind of like
33:47
Speaker 1: disconcerting because like if you do take it seriously, like
33:51
Speaker 1: you really have to go to great lengths to get
33:53
Speaker 1: past all the winks, the nods, the absurdity of everything.
33:59
Speaker 1: It suggests that there's like you're you're more soft than
34:04
Speaker 1: the average cult member because you're actually taking a joke
34:07
Speaker 1: cult as a cult.
34:09
Speaker 3: It's like when fight Club got too serious, you started
34:11
Speaker 3: blowing up buildings and stuff.
34:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, except there was.
34:16
Speaker 4: No violence involved in the Church of the SubGenius.
34:18
Speaker 2: Now they're they're peaceful.
34:20
Speaker 4: It's right, because they're all stoned.
34:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of them are.
34:24
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them are like the Frank
34:26
Speaker 1: Zappa types, or they're just weird and they have nothing
34:28
Speaker 1: to do with drugs or alcohol or anything too, you know.
34:31
Speaker 4: Those are they were born with original stoned.
34:34
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's exactly right.
34:36
Speaker 4: It requires no drugs.
34:37
Speaker 1: Apparently, Frank Zapple was a real jerk to people who
34:40
Speaker 1: did drugs, Like he had that cafe or restaurant or
34:43
Speaker 1: club or whatever, and he would kick you out if
34:45
Speaker 1: he thought you were on pot.
34:48
Speaker 4: That's conspiracy.
34:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a little pink from what I can tell.
34:53
Speaker 4: Interesting.
34:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And you said also, if this kind of
34:58
Speaker 1: stuff seems weird to you or whatever, or you don't
35:00
Speaker 1: like it, like, that's a pretty like fairly normal reaction.
35:04
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you now. But
35:07
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that it might make you feel
35:10
Speaker 1: a little wobbly or a little shaky, or like you're
35:12
Speaker 1: missing something, or like you're being made fun of. That
35:15
Speaker 1: kind of weird feeling in your stomach is because you
35:17
Speaker 1: probably are being made fun of. Like if you're not
35:19
Speaker 1: in on the joke, like I said earlier, by definition,
35:23
Speaker 1: you're you're part of the butt of the joke.
35:25
Speaker 2: You're a member of that group.
35:29
Speaker 1: And if you actually are actively getting offended at what
35:32
Speaker 1: they're saying and doing, because one of the threads of
35:35
Speaker 1: humor that they very frequently use is bad taste shock value,
35:41
Speaker 1: Like it's just basically the opposite of PC, Like they
35:44
Speaker 1: really don't care for PC very much. And if you're
35:48
Speaker 1: deeply offended by this stuff and you actually like respond
35:51
Speaker 1: to it, you're actually kind of proving their point that
35:55
Speaker 1: you are maybe a little too wrapped up in this
35:59
Speaker 1: culture that they that they're basically saying, like this, this
36:02
Speaker 1: is a fraud. This is all a fraud, and and
36:05
Speaker 1: like you're you're proving that that there's problems with it
36:08
Speaker 1: by getting mad at something.
36:10
Speaker 2: We're you know, at a joke.
36:12
Speaker 4: Basically, yeah, and.
36:15
Speaker 3: You know, before you start feeling too sorry for these
36:17
Speaker 3: people because they're being made fun of as like squares
36:20
Speaker 3: who aren't hip to the joke and don't get the joke.
36:23
Speaker 3: I mean, the original reason this was started was because
36:25
Speaker 3: these very people were outcast and being bullied by those
36:28
Speaker 3: very people to begin with.
36:31
Speaker 1: Right, So let's take a break, man, We'll talk about
36:34
Speaker 1: some of the lower points in the Church of the
36:37
Speaker 1: SubGenius that have happened across the years.
36:39
Speaker 4: Huh, let's do it.
37:10
Speaker 1: So if you went to a dvible, one of the
37:13
Speaker 1: things you would find, Chuck is, especially an early one,
37:16
Speaker 1: is a lot of like put on preaching, like evangelical
37:21
Speaker 1: mock preaching. But the what the the guy's doing is
37:24
Speaker 1: like doing a fire and Brimstone preacher bit. Yeah, but
37:29
Speaker 1: what he's saying is espousing you know, Bob stuff about
37:33
Speaker 1: you know, if the FM, if they can't take a
37:35
Speaker 1: joke or you know whatever, and that like doesn't sit
37:41
Speaker 1: very well usually with people. But also it never really
37:44
Speaker 1: sits very well with me because it's obnoxious even in
37:47
Speaker 1: its real form, and it's super obnoxious when it's like mocked, because.
37:50
Speaker 4: That's so I wouldn't want to be there.
37:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.
37:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the anti music is another reason.
37:54
Speaker 1: That was the next thing I was going to get
37:56
Speaker 1: to is like, if you if you are not super
37:59
Speaker 1: into this and probably on a pretty decent amount of
38:02
Speaker 1: acid back in like nineteen eighty five or four, the
38:06
Speaker 1: anti music would probably turn you off too.
38:08
Speaker 2: I know, I don't like it at all either.
38:10
Speaker 4: Yeah.
38:11
Speaker 3: It's basically the idea is that they would get a
38:13
Speaker 3: bunch of instruments and you could just do whatever you
38:15
Speaker 3: want with them, and the ideas that you can't play
38:19
Speaker 3: these things, these are not skilled musicians or not even
38:21
Speaker 3: musicians at all, and they would just make noise with them,
38:27
Speaker 3: and you know, when watching the documentary, you get the
38:29
Speaker 3: idea from some of them that it's sort of like
38:34
Speaker 3: the drum circle that finally everyone gets in synchronicity for
38:38
Speaker 3: a minute. You're like, oh, okay, something just happened. That
38:41
Speaker 3: would happen occasionally, apparently with the anti music is that
38:44
Speaker 3: it would coalesce at a certain point. Or maybe that
38:47
Speaker 3: was a drugs talking, but basically it's a bunch of
38:49
Speaker 3: people making a lot of awful noise and screaming.
38:52
Speaker 1: Yes, there was actually a time during the at Devibles,
38:58
Speaker 1: I think during the nineties maybe where a schism in
39:04
Speaker 1: the church.
39:04
Speaker 4: Developed was very much planned.
39:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So the idea was so one of the
39:12
Speaker 1: big parts of the one of the tenets of the
39:14
Speaker 1: church is there the like the world's going to end
39:16
Speaker 1: eventually on X day. And X Day was originally slotted
39:20
Speaker 1: for July fifth, nineteen ninety eight, and that came and went,
39:24
Speaker 1: and there were no UFOs driven by sex goddesses to
39:27
Speaker 1: come whisk off the Subgenii to planet X to live
39:32
Speaker 1: out the rest of their eternity partying and then but
39:37
Speaker 1: the fact that this was coming along, the church decided, like,
39:42
Speaker 1: we don't know what's going to happen to the Pinks
39:44
Speaker 1: after that, so we need to decide. And the schism
39:49
Speaker 1: was formed between people who said, well, there'll probably be
39:52
Speaker 1: sub Subgenii who want to stay and rule the world,
39:55
Speaker 1: and we can just let them rule the Pinks from
39:57
Speaker 1: there on out. And then the other group said, no, no, no,
40:00
Speaker 1: all the Pinks are going to be slaughtered on next day.
40:03
Speaker 2: There won't be any Pinks left. And apparently this.
40:08
Speaker 1: Differing opinion on basic church doctrine was a thread that
40:13
Speaker 1: was carried on for a very long time.
40:15
Speaker 3: It was, and I think we just need to be
40:17
Speaker 3: really clear. A schism was written into the script of
40:20
Speaker 3: the Church of the SubGenius. Okay, it was nothing formed.
40:24
Speaker 3: It was they wrote a heel basically into their wrestling
40:27
Speaker 3: show with Papa Joe Mama, who was the leader of
40:32
Speaker 3: the Holocaustals who believed and again all in jest, but
40:36
Speaker 3: he believed like go out and shoot the rich basically,
40:39
Speaker 3: like kill these people. And I think it was Stang
40:43
Speaker 3: was the leader of the Evangelicals, which was, yeah, let's
40:47
Speaker 3: just enslave them basically and keep them alive. And two
40:52
Speaker 3: things here, first of all, in that they eventually had
40:55
Speaker 3: a big show in the eighties, kind of jumping back.
40:58
Speaker 3: In San Francisco, they had these sort of small tent
41:01
Speaker 3: devivals with one hundred people, and then in San Francisco
41:04
Speaker 3: they booked this theater for two nights, nine hundred seat
41:07
Speaker 3: theater for two nights, and we're like, we don't really
41:10
Speaker 3: know if we can do this, and they had set
41:12
Speaker 3: builders and set designers and it became a real actual thing.
41:15
Speaker 3: The news covered it, and they did. They covered it,
41:17
Speaker 3: and they had a fake assassination of Bob. Bob finally
41:20
Speaker 3: came out.
41:21
Speaker 1: He walked down on stage and them bang, he was
41:23
Speaker 1: immediately shot.
41:25
Speaker 3: But apparently they started doing this a lot Bob had.
41:27
Speaker 3: You know, Bob had many, many lives and could be
41:29
Speaker 3: killed over and over again assassinated.
41:32
Speaker 4: So there was that.
41:33
Speaker 3: And then after X Day, judging from the documentary, is
41:38
Speaker 3: when it seemed to like kind of go bad and
41:41
Speaker 3: not go bad in that everybody really started believing and
41:44
Speaker 3: it became this really scary thing. But it sort of
41:48
Speaker 3: lost its jush a little bit, and there were some
41:52
Speaker 3: people and I think one person specifically even went up
41:55
Speaker 3: to Stang. I don't know if it was the X Day.
42:00
Speaker 1: I think it was San Francisco show in nineteen eighty four.
42:03
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and he was, you know, obviously someone who
42:08
Speaker 3: needed some real help because he thought this was all real.
42:12
Speaker 3: Was was livid that it wasn't being taken seriously and
42:15
Speaker 3: that people were laughing. And that's when Stang was like
42:18
Speaker 3: a man like kind of this was bound to happen.
42:22
Speaker 3: But it also made him sad because I'd never wanted
42:25
Speaker 3: anything like this.
42:26
Speaker 1: Right, and that was the reason why. So like the
42:29
Speaker 1: documentary that was made by Sandy K. Boone, who was
42:33
Speaker 1: involved in a few other pretty great documentaries recently, including Tower,
42:39
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the Tower, just Tower, the one
42:41
Speaker 1: about the the Charles Whitman, the shooting at the university
42:46
Speaker 1: back in the sixties.
42:47
Speaker 2: Oh, it's amazing. So I remember Waking.
42:49
Speaker 1: Life that that whole thing link Letter did with the animation.
42:53
Speaker 1: They did that for this documentary and it really like
42:55
Speaker 1: had the rotoscoping.
42:57
Speaker 4: Cool.
42:57
Speaker 2: Yes, So she was involved in that as well.
43:01
Speaker 1: But she made this documentary apparently her late husband was like,
43:04
Speaker 1: what a great adherent in the truth of the SubGenius,
43:07
Speaker 1: and she made it also kind of as an ode
43:09
Speaker 1: to him as well. But in it, Stang and Filo
43:13
Speaker 1: break character and like, yeah, hadn't broken character for thirty
43:17
Speaker 1: something years, right, Like they've done interviews, they've like like print, TV, radio,
43:24
Speaker 1: like they've done the radio show, They've like written tons
43:27
Speaker 1: of books. They just don't break character. That's just part
43:32
Speaker 1: of their jam. And for this documentary they did, and
43:35
Speaker 1: they said the reason why, at least Stang said, the
43:37
Speaker 1: reason why he did was because they're kind of getting
43:42
Speaker 1: on in years and he wants to make sure that
43:43
Speaker 1: it's perfectly clear before he dies that this is a
43:47
Speaker 1: joke and that everybody knows it was a joke and
43:49
Speaker 1: it's always been a joke, and there's like you need
43:52
Speaker 1: to take it as a joke so that it doesn't
43:54
Speaker 1: accidentally turn into something like scientology down down the line. Yeah,
43:58
Speaker 1: he said, you watched it, right, Yeah, Yeah, I didn't
44:01
Speaker 1: watch it right before this.
44:02
Speaker 2: I saw it several months ago, yeah, he said.
44:06
Speaker 3: And this kind of sums it up in the way
44:08
Speaker 3: that it makes sense, but it doesn't. And this is
44:10
Speaker 3: in relation to that guy who really came up to
44:13
Speaker 3: him and other people that really thought it was real.
44:15
Speaker 3: He said, we wanted, we always wanted to trick people,
44:18
Speaker 3: but we didn't really want to trick people, right.
44:20
Speaker 1: Yes, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. They
44:22
Speaker 1: were fascinated by the.
44:23
Speaker 2: Fact that people could be tricked, Yeah.
44:25
Speaker 1: And they wanted to explore that and make fun of it,
44:28
Speaker 1: and they invited other people to explore it and make
44:30
Speaker 1: fun of it. But it wasn't too hurt anybody that
44:34
Speaker 1: they weren't actually trying to exploit anybody. Like the idea
44:38
Speaker 1: of having you, having you become a part of become
44:41
Speaker 1: a member, sending your dollar, become ordained by and all
44:45
Speaker 1: that sales stuff, was to point out that that's what
44:48
Speaker 1: was going on in the real world, you know.
44:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this sort of came to a head in
44:54
Speaker 3: the nineties when they it was just after Columbine. They
44:57
Speaker 3: had a live show planned in Boston and Popu Joe Mama,
45:00
Speaker 3: who was again their sort of scripted heel agent provocateur,
45:05
Speaker 3: got on a think a radio show and somehow reference Columbine.
45:10
Speaker 4: It was a little unclear.
45:12
Speaker 2: I think he blamed Columbine on the Church of the SubGenius.
45:16
Speaker 4: Oh, was that what it was? Okay?
45:18
Speaker 3: Because I couldn't quite tell what the reference was, but
45:20
Speaker 3: it was clear that that was over the line for
45:23
Speaker 3: both Filo and staying and the show was originally canceled
45:27
Speaker 3: by the theater, and then a real church I think
45:30
Speaker 3: like an Episcopal church stepped up weirdly and said you
45:33
Speaker 3: can have it at our church, and then they got
45:36
Speaker 3: bomb threats and they said, well, no, I guess we
45:38
Speaker 3: can't do that, and then I think they ended up
45:40
Speaker 3: having it in a like a public park or something.
45:44
Speaker 3: But that was sort of like where it. You know,
45:46
Speaker 3: the the nineties weren't too kind to the not just
45:50
Speaker 3: like the numbers, but you know, once the Internet was born,
45:53
Speaker 3: and that was like really when the consumer culture and
45:56
Speaker 3: the internet boom happened for real, it was just so
45:59
Speaker 3: antithetic to the Church of the SubGenius. It seemed to
46:02
Speaker 3: kind of fade away until later on when the Internet
46:07
Speaker 3: kind of helps revive it again.
46:08
Speaker 1: So my take is that what really kind of let
46:12
Speaker 1: it down hill, not to say that there's like like it,
46:17
Speaker 1: not to say that it it went downhill on its own,
46:20
Speaker 1: like that just just the world changed, yeah, and there
46:24
Speaker 1: was like the world became the parody. Not it wasn't
46:29
Speaker 1: like straight any longer. It was just a joke, but
46:33
Speaker 1: that was real life now. So you can't satirize something
46:36
Speaker 1: that is the satire that you're coming up with. There's
46:39
Speaker 1: just no way to do it.
46:41
Speaker 4: No, that's absolutely right.
46:42
Speaker 1: And that's you know, America changed quite a bit in
46:45
Speaker 1: the last like twenty years, and that the like what
46:48
Speaker 1: do you like how you just can't you can't satirize
46:51
Speaker 1: something when it becomes this weird version of itself that
46:56
Speaker 1: you were using before it encoached on your turf kind
46:58
Speaker 1: of thing, you know.
47:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the last like ten minutes of the
47:03
Speaker 3: documentary sort of focus on the Trump administration and these
47:06
Speaker 3: fringe groups that started online there saying this crazy, made
47:10
Speaker 3: up stuff and that really puts a hurting, like you said,
47:15
Speaker 3: on something like the Church of the SubGenius as far
47:18
Speaker 3: as being and their numbers were never huge, but I
47:23
Speaker 3: get the idea from watching it that's staying still has
47:26
Speaker 3: people that write in that still send him some money.
47:29
Speaker 3: He told one funny joke about getting a payment upon
47:33
Speaker 3: receipt envelope that like he had to pay two dollars
47:36
Speaker 3: to even open this thing, and he was all perturbed
47:38
Speaker 3: about that, and that was one thousand dollars in cash,
47:41
Speaker 3: so really and he took half of it and immediately
47:44
Speaker 3: took it to a sick friend, Like that's the kind
47:45
Speaker 3: of guy he is.
47:46
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool. Yeah, he struck me as that as well.
47:49
Speaker 3: But he's still you know, paying his mortgage stuff and envelopes.
47:52
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because I think like if you go back
47:54
Speaker 1: and you read the original books and you know, even
47:57
Speaker 1: still I was reading like the wikia that it explained
48:00
Speaker 1: all of the different stuff is hilarious and like totally
48:05
Speaker 1: worthwhile and still applies today. Like it's like in a
48:09
Speaker 1: certain way, it's timeless even though it screams Reagan era,
48:12
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, but it's still it still makes sense
48:16
Speaker 1: because we still have like a consumer driven culture that
48:20
Speaker 1: is that has a lot to do with gender norms
48:23
Speaker 1: and conformity and exploiting people for their labor. Like all
48:30
Speaker 1: that stuff is still going on. So the original stuff
48:33
Speaker 1: still still stands and still holds.
48:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they you know, Mark mother Spaw of Devo
48:38
Speaker 3: and I can't remember the other guy's name in Devo.
48:40
Speaker 3: They were way into it. Penn Gillette, Nick Offerman, Richard Linklader,
48:45
Speaker 3: Paul Rubins, Pee Herman's Playhouse out of Bob Dobbs on
48:48
Speaker 3: his Big Wall collage. These were all people that were
48:51
Speaker 3: attracted to it. It was a lot of dudes, of course,
48:54
Speaker 3: but they do interview a few of the women in
48:56
Speaker 3: the original group that said, like, we were outcasts and
48:59
Speaker 3: we wanted to meet these weirdo guys, and this is
49:02
Speaker 3: where we did it, Like we went there because it
49:04
Speaker 3: was mostly guys. Yeah, and you know when we could
49:06
Speaker 3: meet these these dudes, but it was very male oriented.
49:10
Speaker 3: And I don't know, I just like I said, I
49:14
Speaker 3: never I always had fun reading about it and hearing
49:17
Speaker 3: about it, but never wanted to get too involved just
49:20
Speaker 3: because I had too much of a pink.
49:22
Speaker 4: I guess.
49:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yes, it is a lot of fun to read about,
49:25
Speaker 1: for sure. Like there's a lot of stuff out there
49:27
Speaker 1: on the Internet to.
49:29
Speaker 4: Read, and I this is like ten percent of it.
49:32
Speaker 2: I encourage. Yeah, there's there. It's huge.
49:34
Speaker 1: It's an enormous, huge rambling, Like what do you call
49:38
Speaker 1: a group of beliefs in scripture and doctrine mythos? I
49:44
Speaker 1: guess maybe yeah, canon, Yeah, canon, that's what I was
49:48
Speaker 1: looking for. There's a huge, extensive cannon and it's a
49:51
Speaker 1: lot of fun, especially the older stuff. Some of the
49:53
Speaker 1: newer stuff is not that funny because it's and I
49:56
Speaker 1: don't mean new, I mean like mid two thousands, the
49:58
Speaker 1: mid auts kind of stuf started to really lose its
50:01
Speaker 1: sense of humor. Some people lost their sense of humor
50:04
Speaker 1: and got real serious about it. The eighties and nineties
50:08
Speaker 1: stuff is hilarious. I strongly recommend going to read an
50:14
Speaker 1: explanation of the male to female discrepancy in the Church
50:17
Speaker 1: of the SubGenius by Reverend Nancy Regalia and.
50:22
Speaker 4: By the real book.
50:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I don't think that was in the book.
50:25
Speaker 1: That was just supplemental stuff. It was an essay explaining it.
50:29
Speaker 1: But it also is more like a kind of a
50:31
Speaker 1: call to arms for those girls who never felt like
50:35
Speaker 1: are always recognized that they were kind of being forced
50:37
Speaker 1: into certain gender roles and did never feel good about it.
50:42
Speaker 1: She had it quoted, it's not enough to simply burn
50:45
Speaker 1: your bras why stop there burn a few bridal boutiques
50:48
Speaker 1: in city Hall while you're at it. It's just a
50:52
Speaker 1: It's a good essay for sure, totally worth reading. So, yeah,
50:56
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to say about the Church of
50:58
Speaker 1: the SubGenius, but we'll just leave it to you. I
51:01
Speaker 1: feel like we should just part with It's a joke.
51:04
Speaker 2: It is a joke.
51:05
Speaker 1: Ultimately, it's a joke and take it as that. Okay, man,
51:10
Speaker 1: you got that down, you got some yetti, and you
51:12
Speaker 1: pink boy?
51:13
Speaker 4: Oh maybe?
51:14
Speaker 1: Uh? And since I called Chuck a pink boy, it's
51:16
Speaker 1: time for listener mail.
51:20
Speaker 3: Keeping it short and sweet. Here with a quick correction
51:24
Speaker 3: from a new listener. Okay, hi, guys, I'm a very
51:27
Speaker 3: new listener and I love what I've heard so far. However,
51:30
Speaker 3: just three episodes in about the Magna Carta, one of
51:34
Speaker 3: you off handedly suggested that William the Conqueror was a
51:36
Speaker 3: beloved English king because he annexed Normandy after the Battle
51:39
Speaker 3: of Hastings. It was me, that's pretty much backwards, guys.
51:41
Speaker 3: He was a Norman king who conquered England at that battle.
51:45
Speaker 3: William's story would make a great episode. That is from
51:48
Speaker 3: Scott Scattergood in Suon Korea.
51:51
Speaker 1: Well, Scott, since you're new, you obviously don't know that
51:55
Speaker 1: most of the viewpoint that we give on stuff you
51:58
Speaker 1: should know is from the Vikings view point. So we
52:02
Speaker 1: had it right, Okay, good Scott scattered Good, what a
52:05
Speaker 1: great name, right, Yeah?
52:08
Speaker 2: What happens if you scramble Scott around? Scatter's good?
52:13
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this like
52:14
Speaker 1: Scott did. You can send us an email to stuff
52:18
Speaker 1: Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:23
Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
52:26
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