“What the hell, man? I thought this was a 90s nostalgia site.”
Well, dear reader, that’s your fault for not understanding the mission statement. As I said in the site description, this is a place where I talk about things I find fascinating on a weekly basis. Admittedly, yes, I fell into the trap of getting obsessed with various relics of my nostalgia that I’d rediscovered, usually through YouTube, or Wikipedia, or whatever. As I’ve said in the past, most of the articles I’ve uploaded here were, at one point, scripts from days when this was originally going to be a YouTube channel that would focus primarily on such things. So yeah, we’ve had several months of mostly talking about nostalgic topics, and, spoiler alert, we’ll probably be talking about it more in the upcoming months as well.
However, in the midst of nostalgic topics that serve to prove just how much of a couch potato I was as a kid, Something like this will come up every now and then. And sharing the majesty of this thing I’ve been reading about, researching, and cramming as much of it into my headspace as humanly possible is the REAL purpose of this site.
Also, if I’m being TOTALLY honest, this article was ORIGINALLY going to be about Mojo Nixon. It was either going to be a career retrospective, or a look at the very first album of his I ever heard. It’d probably be a bit of a bittersweet retrospective for me, since he apparently passed away this past February, but in my research, I learned that he belonged to a group called The Church of the SubGenius.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll bite. What is this SubGenius thing?”
And thus, I plunged face first down a whole new rabbit hole. And while I still plan on possibly doing a Mojo Nixon article of some sort in the not too horribly distant future… Let’s face it, this is WAY more interesting by comparison.
Perhaps the biggest question surrounding The Church of the SubGenius is this: is it a joke masquerading as a religion, or is it a religion masquerading as a joke? Either way, I had a feeling it was going to be silly going in, but I was still amazed at how… I honestly can’t think of a good way to describe it.
The church was founded by Ivan Stang, and reolved primarily around the teachings of this man right here.
This is J.R. “Bob” Dobbs: a 1950s salesman who communicated with god, or JHV1 as he’s known in… SubGeniusism? SubGenuisanity? Whatever they call themselves. JHV1 gave “Bob” the sacred teachings through a television he built, and thus, a religion was born. And we’re not even scraping the surface.
In the ensuing weeks of learning and researching, I’ve heard many things about the SubGenius faith.
I’ve heard one person describe it as a hybrid of Christianity and Scientology that’s way more honest about being a scam that wants your money.
I’ve heard them referred to as a comedy cult who highjacked the Lovecraft mythos in order to pad out their patron saints and/or lesser gods.
I’ve even heard it described as the reason anyone subscribed to Weird Magazine.
Whatever you want to believe, it’s a legit organization. At least in the sense that they exist, and make it pretty clear what their mission statement is.
As time went on, the faith compiled the various writings of “Bob”, and put them in The Book of the SubGenius.
Everything you could ever want to know about the faith and its various ins and outs can be found here. I ended up getting the ebook for one measley god damn dollar… But I think that’s because I caught Amazon during some sort of sale or something. I went to get an image of the book cover for this article days after I bought it, and saw that the price had gone back up.But hey, I managed to score a deal.
Regardless of the price tag, though, it’s a near-200-page book full of nonsense, and I’m here for it.
The Church of the SubGenius also had its own radio show at one point, known as The Hour of Slack.
Oh yeah, “slack” is a big thing in the church. The more slack you have, the better. Those who have no slack, and aren’t members of the church are apparently known as “pinks”, and they’re all part of a ginormous conspiracy that all minor conspiracies are derived from. Think Q Anon, except it’s stupid on purpose.
How does one earn slack? That… Is honestly a good question. Keep in mind, as of this writing, I’m still learning the ins and outs, though.
The Hour of Slack is, in essence, one hour of the most bizarre audio I’ve come across. And that’s saying a lot, considering my taste in music. Weird music, rants, the praising of “Bob”… All crammed into one hour of audio that’ll probably rot your brain like nothing else.
My only regret throughout this journey was that I may have found this new faith all too late. While the hour of Slack is archived in glorious podcast form, the show itself was discontinued in 2022. Also, I’m pretty sure Ivan Stang is dead now, and his death had something to do with that.
All I know for sure is that even though I’m wicked late to the party, I’m still having a blast going through it all. And if you want to learn more, you can always go to their website:
Praise “Bob”. I’m out!
How About That Thing? 
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