Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: February 17, 1995, Weekend section
It won't be the usual weirdos on Carson Street tonight.
No, the South Side strip is to teem with hundreds of unusual weirdos, many of them donning cardboard prism specs as they parade from the Eye of Horus esoteric book store -- home of the sensory deprivation tank -- behind a fishnet-stockinged, whip-wielding dominatrix wearing the giant paper-mache head of a pipe-smoking, Ward Cleaver-resembling deity named "Bob."
Sometime after 8, the revelers will wind up at the nearby Birmingham Gallery, where things will get really weird.
The main event is a revival -- that is, a "devival" -- of the "Church of the SubGenius,," led by the hell-fire-and-H-bomb rantings of the white-tuxedoed Rev. Ivan Stang. He's the "sacred scribe" to J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, the head -- well, head -- of this post-mod cult phenomenon that's almost too weird to describe.
Consider Stang's account of what happens at a typical "devival" -- "healings, sickenings, multimedia video projections, money burning, wristwatch smashing, the launching of the sacred bleeding heads of world cup golfers, sing-alongs, hate-alongs, and the climax: the Short Duration Mass Marriage...People can marry their date, their friends, themselves, their car keys. pets or wallets, for a 24-hour period during which otherwise illicit couplings are entirely sanctified and absolved."
Either this names perfect sense, or you probably are a "Normal" or "Pink" -- part of "The Conspiracy" that robs the "SubGenii" of divine "Slack." For you who aren't in on it, we'll attempt a brief explanation, but this isn't easy to pin down.
According to the Church's complex and convoluted written and oral tradition, if you will, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs was a 1950s traveling salesman who happened to be not only one of the stupidest people to walk the Earth, but also one of the luckiest. As Stang puts it, talking over the phone from headquarters in Dallas, "'Bob' is the very fulcrum of universal Slack," Slack being an indefinable bliss-like quality, a sort of super-luck of getting whatever you want -- money, sex, a table at Mad Mex -- without even trying. (Hence the term, "slacker.")
The mutant maverick misfits who make up the SubGenii were born with "original Slack," but this is denied them by the rest of society -- that is, the Normals -- who unwittingly are part of The Conspiracy that encourages bland conformism. Thus, Stang says. "'Bob' has come to bring Slack to the SubGenii."
Assassinated and resurrected innumerable times, the elusive "Bob" is not so much a mass messiah as a "short-term personal savior." Notes Stang, "He doesn't care about anybody's sins, one way or another."
What "Bob" has done is convince the alien space god Jehovah-1 to postpone the end of the world. This "Rupture" is set to occur on July 5, 1998 -- X Day -- on which only card-carrying SubGenius ministers get to ride the escape vessels of the Sex Goddesses to a purely hedonistic existence of everlasting Slack.
They also get to enjoy the slow destruction of those who didn't send the Church $30 -- the current cost to be ordained and saved by mail.
If nothing else, this is one religion that's up front about taking money. As "Bob" himself says, "You'll Pay To Know What You Really Think."
What if the End doesn't come? Stang allows that "it just means 'Bob' swung a better deal," and so all the SubGenii will celebrate with one massive party.
It just gets weirder from there.
And "Bob" isn't the only weirdness on tap tonight: Eye of Horus owner Rachel Buckley is also presenting two local troupes. One is Circus Apocalypse, which she describes as "sort of a freak/side show kind of thing" -- two men performing such feats as hammering nails into their skulls and sewing their lips together with piano wire, after eating live cockroaches. Talk about a tough act to follow for the Bull Seal Collective, which she describes as "sort of a Monty Python/poetry kind of thing."
Other possibilities are a laser show and "Bob"-rock band or three.
All this -- not to mention the opportunity to purchase guaranteed eternal salvation (or "Triple Your Money Back") -- for just $6?
"I don't know what we're cooking, but I know it'll be good," says Buckley, who opened her funky shop in September. For this, her first big show, she's expecting 500 or more attendees, some calling from as far away as Tennessee about Pittsburgh's first "devival."
These spectacles, which are big draws in Cleveland, have been held around the country since "Bob" supposedly tapped Stang to help co-found the Church in 1980.
The whole "Bob" underground is one that certain people just find, just like certain people just find Eye of Horus. One could discover both at once, since the store sells all four SubGenius books, including the just published (by Simon & Schuster) "Revelation X." Stang, who oversaw this collaborative effort by some 50 artists with '70s comix whiz "St." Paul Mavrides, likens it to the SubGenius New Testament.
Meanwhile, the Church's syndicated indie-rockin' radio program, "The Hour of Slack," can be heard weekly in Cleveland and 14 other cities. There's a video, "Arise," and underground comics too.
And then there's the Internet, whereby the on-line world can access the busy Usenet news group "alt.slack." Think that the coincidentally (?) named "Bob" Microsoft sounds intriguing? Seek out this other "bob" with your America Online some night and, like the Church says, it may "blow the inside of your head to unusual proportions."
You at least may scratch your head and wonder, Is this all a big joke? (It is funny in places.) Or is it a parody on other religions? Or could it be, as some maintain, the One True Religion?
Don't count on Stang to say. He loves to imagine folks just stumbling onto this -- say, onto his radio show late at night -- and saying to themselves, "What the hell?"
The 41-year-old long-haired filmmaker acknowledges Stang is not his real identity, but prefers to keep that quiet since he lives in the Bible Belt. Still, what to make of this bio disclaimer: "To keep persecution to a minimum, the Church generally disguises its serious social criticism and religious message within a seeming context of bludgeon humor and bizarre libertine entertainment."
Has he gone from commenting on other kook cults, as he did in the second book, "High Weirdness by Mail," to running one full- time?
Stang just chuckles, never slipping very far out of character.
He describes himself as the "main P.R. hack" for "Bob," whose now trademarked image in fact originated as a piece of period Yellow Pages clip art. He'll talk about how he now works as a freelance writer, but not about how he's also a devoted husband and father.
But hey: Inconsistencies are the norm for this church that was "built on the shifting sands of hypocrisy." What other church not only encourages, but requires, members to schism? In fact, Stang says they "deprogram" -- that is, ridicule -- any "Bobbie" who tries to take the SubGenius line too seriously.
How many SubGenii are there? Stang Guesstimates 100,000 -- "Not enough to fill up a typical AC/DC revival concert" -- and says that while many are college students, they come in all ages and walks of life. He says 6,500 have paid to be ordained and receive the sporadic "Stark Fist of Removal" magazine. The books have sold about 50,000 copies, "and there's a tremendous hand- around."
As the Church profile begins to peak again -- just this month, Stang appeared on both "The Jon Stewart Show" and in The Washington Post -- he's looking forward to expanding the Church's presence on the Internet and everywhere else. He won't rule out a motion picture, though. "They have to pay us a TON of money."
Paying for it, Stang says, is "how you know it's the truth. Or, at least, a better brand of lie. Certainly, a more honest kind of lie...
"Who's to say what's a religion and what's not?"
The $6 tickets are available at the Eye of Horus, 1305 E. Carson St., where the evening begins around 8 p.m. For more information: 481-7887.