The New York Times: Thursday, December 26, 1985, Late City Final Edition, Section B, Page 18, Column 4:
The police at San Francisco's Central Station are still talking about a recent Church of the SubGenius Devival meeting, but they call it the M-16 caper.
It was a Saturday night at The Stone Bar in the city's North Beach section. The Zombies-for-Bob choir had sung, the Band That Dares Not Speak Its Name had played and a watch-smashing ceremony had already freed the audience of its "time addiction" when officers spotted a man loading what looked like a machine gun.
"He was putting the magazine in when I got to him," said Sgt. Dale Boyd. He said he dashed across the dimly lit bar and confiscated the weapon.
It turned out to be a plastic prop.
"M-16's are not something you forget very quickly," Sergeant Boyd said later. "It wasn't very funny."
Be forewarned: the Church of the SubGenius, a pseudo-theology that says it has thousands of members worldwide, is an elaborate spoof of religious cult mentality. Sometimes, as in San Francisco, SubGenius humor can be frightening. But members insist that their mythical leader, J.R. (Bob) Dobbs, works in mysterioys (and often hilarious) ways.
In New York, Mr. Dobbs fell into the lap of David N. Meyer 2d. When Mr. Meyer opened a magazine in 1980, he was shpwered by tiny pictures of Mr. Dobbs's smiling face. Today Mr. Meyer is the reigning SubGenius Pope of All New York and Idaho.
In Cleveland last year, Randy Woodling, an archeology major at Case Western Reserve University, began a radio program, "The Bob Dobbs Radio Revival," after reading that blistering heat had not prevented a merry band of SubGeniyuses from demonstrating at the Republican National Convention in Dallas. The issue they rallied around: Nothing in particular.
"It's a cult, it's sort of a joke, but it's a joke you can believe in," said Mr. Woodling, a 22-year-old college senior.
And indeed, particularly since McCraw-Hill published "The Book of the SubGenius: Lunatic Prophecies for the Coming Weird Times," the groups bible, in 1983, the movement that calls itself "an inherently bogus religion" has become a cult in its own right.
About 18,000 copies of the bible, a compilation of satire and graphics, have been sold for $9.95 each.
In addition, since the organization was founded in 1980, 5,000 people have sent $20 to the SubGenius Foundation in Dallas to be ordained as high priests or priestesses, and 20,000 more consider themselves nonpaying members, according to spokesmen. Not for nothing does one official SubGenius slogan warn, "You'll pay to know what you really think."
The tenets are unabashedly self-interest and off-the-wall humor. SubGenii, as the church calls more than one SubGeniys, distinguish themselves from normal people, called Pink Boys or Mediocretins.
Mr Dobbs, the High Epopt, is said to preach with one goal in mind: "The SubGenius must have slack," a fragmented state of relaxation too often impinged upon by pushy waiters, insensitive employers and withheld taxes, among other things.
But there is more than rhetoric: Members say the SubGenius community is one of comradeship and support. "It is an uncompetitive collaborative network of individuals who are sensitive, creative and sweet to each other," said Mr. Meyer, 33, a writer who frequently appears in SubGenius publicity events.
Most SubGenii are in their 30's. "They're in that middle bround -- too young to be hippies and too old to be punks," said Douglas Smith, 32, a film editor, who is the co-founder and Sacred Scribe of the church. Many, like the Rev. Ivan Stang (alias Mr. Smith) and Rev. Zydecko Kukulcan (Mr. Woodling), have pseudonyms.
"The Church of the SubGenius hit a nerve in the underground community -- people who were interested in everything from R. Crumb to B-movies to aliens to Firesign Theater," said Tim McGinnis, who edited the SubGeius book for McGraw-Hill and is now a senior editor at Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster. "It has all the complexity and appeal of a religionm: good, old-fashioned zeal with an avant-garde chip on it shoulder."
This is no accident. "We borrow the best from each major world religion and all the greatest cults," says Mr. Smith. Scholars say such a practice is not uncommon. "Even the Kiwanis, the Odd Fellows and the Elks had some elements of caricature in their beginnings," said Harvey Cox Jr., a professor at Harvard Divinity School. "It's an old tradition."
No one has ever really met Bob -- he's a mystery wrapped in an enigma," said Mr. Woodling. But SubGenius members manage to keep their leader in the public eye. His face, originally lifted from the generic clip-art used to illustrate telephone books, turns up in subway stations and bathrooms, on sidewalks and on liner notes of records by the rock group Devo. It is a registered trademark, as is SubGenius.
At least four radio stations broadcast church-produced cassettes on regular programs: KNON-FM in Dallas, KPFA-FM in Berkeley, Calif., WSMU-FM in East Orange, N.J., and Mr. Woodling's show on WRUW-FM in Cleveland.
In the last few weeks, Devival meetings and Rants like the one in San Francisco have been held in Seattle, Little Rock, Ar., and Dallas. Always original, they often feature any of the more than 20 musical (and "antimusical") SubGenius bands, as well as healings, sickenings, acu-beatings, live-on-stage glandscapings and head-launchings.
Published: January 15, 1986
An article on Dec. 26 about the Church of the SubGenius, a mock religious organization based in Texas, misidentified one of four radio stations that broadcast the organization's programs. It is WFMU in East Orange, N.J., not WSMU.