Mondo 2000: date unknown, page 156
Review this? I'm supposed to...review it?!?
How about if I "review" my entire life, and all of World War II, and every atrocity in the Inquisition, and every B movie ever made, and every vision ever seen by every Opium Eater ever, all at once?
Huh?!
How about THAT?!
That'd be EASIER, pal!
Oh, of course I sat down to review it. Innocently turned it on. Chuckled at the video/cinematic/photo-stills collages, the "warnings" about the various side effects, the strange subliminal energies the video could bring about. Yes I LAUGHED at those things. Well I'm NOT LAUGHING NOW, ladies and gentlemen. Sleeved in humor and satire were these "warnings" about this tape's effect -- but it's no joke, ladies and gentlemen, you'd better take those warnings seriously.
I didn't. Go ahead. Grab a handful of my hair and tug. The top of my skull will life away neatly in your hands. I haven't succeeded in putting it back yet so it'll stay put. They knew it would be that way, of course. Stang. J.R. "Bob" Dobbs. Dr. Howl (the Reverend Hal Robbins), who does the brilliantly authoritative narration on this tape. Who calmly explains about the Conspiracy that's STEALING OUR SLACK. The Conspiracy that makes us have to undertake degrading, unhealthy pastimes such as...jobs. Non-enjoyable WORK. Employment. In short, the erasure of the true self.
The true self?! The SubGenius hiding in all of you. I say all of you, because if you're oddball enough to read MONDO 2000,chances are you're one of the secret, superior race, the SubGenii -- a race which superficially can have any color at all, any ancestral derivation: Oriental, Caucasian, Hispanic, African, whatever. As long as your true ancestors, beyond the genetic pale (or tan), are the Yeti, and not the Pink Apemen that Normals are descended from. It's shattering, Ladies and Gentlemen, shattering to learn that your heritage has been ripped off, that the aching emptiness inside you should have been filled with SLACK all this time...Shattering to turn away from the video, after an hour and a half in overwhelming re-imprint, shaking, to see yourself in a nearby mirror and perceive -- for the first time -- the astral puppet strings that have bound us.
"Next to slack, the Nirvana known by saints is like an endless torment..." Dr. Howl tells us, and how true it is. Once they lay the evidence down in front of us, we cannot shield ourselves from the razor-edged truth. It slashes away at us, and makes a shred of our assumptions.
A joke? Dada and BullDada? Satire of cults, self-help scams, organized religion, and art itself? Hysterical impressionistic evocation of the collective unconscious, a collection of pirated images and blood-splattered original narrative that connects-the- dots in the great puzzle of the Media Mind; that paints in the paint-by-numbers bits making up the vast secret painting on the underside of your calvarium?
Yes. Music, comedy, wickedly meaningful media collages and fascinating extracts from actual footage of genuine SubGenius Devivals where such Rantmasters as the Reverend Dave Meyer and Ivan Stang and Janor Hypercleats and Sterno and Paul Mavrides and other performance art accomplices are showcased in all their bristling charisma with frightening hilarity?
Yes again. But don't think you're going to come out of this chuckling at some campy joke. No. Not if you have the persistence and vigor of "the attention gland" to make it all the way through this assault on the senses. "Too much," Reverend Meyer tells us, "is always better than not enough." The truth resonates here, like a nameless scream from the alley outside your tenement.
The scream of...crazed laughter?
"If you think it's all a joke," SubGenius Messiah "Bob" Dobbs tells us, "You'll never get the punchline..."
Review this? Oh sure. Maybe when I stop shaking...
"Death to the Anti-Bob and Pink Creatures who would defame our temple! DEATH! DEATH!"
But not for us. For us, LIFE. Praise "Bob."
[Note: order this tape by sending a pittance, $39.95, a small price for enlightenment, to Arise! Video, c/o Ivan Stang, P.O. Box 140306, Dallas, TX 75214-0306]