The Church of the SubGenius is a religious group satirizing religion, conspiracy theories, UFOs, and popular culture. Originally based in Dallas, Texas, the Church of the SubGenius gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s subculture and maintains an active presence on the Internet. Publicly accessible cited figures from 1988 indicated a membership of 3,500 at that time and "more than 5,000" by 1990.

The Church of the SubGenius claims to have been founded in the 1950s by the world's greatest salesman J. R. "Bob" Dobbs. "Bob" Dobbs is depicted as a cartoon of a Ward Cleaver-like man smoking a pipe.

The church really started with the publication of SubGenius Pamphlet #1 in 1979. It found acceptance in underground pop-culture circles and has been embraced on college campuses, in the underground music scene, and on the Internet. Because of its similarities to the tenets of Discordianism, The Church of the SubGenius is often described as a syncretic offshoot of that belief.

However, its members state that the organization developed on its own with the publication of SubGenius Pamphlet #1[citation needed] (also known as The World Ends Tomorrow And You May Die!) by Reverend Ivan Stang and Dr. Philo Drummond, the original SubGenius Foundation. The original group, using such pseudonyms as "Puzzling Evidence", "Dr.

Howl," "Susie the Floozie", "Palmer Vreedeez", and "Pope Sternodox", forwarded their literature to a number of underground pop-culture figures such as R. Crumb, Paul Mavrides, Harry S. Robins aka Dr.

Hal, the New Wave rock group Devo, and Erik Lindgren (producer and president of indie label Arf!Arf!Records in Boston), who embraced it and incorporated it into their work.

Crumb's promotion of the Church through his comic book series Weirdo brought many new members into the fold, including artists, musicians, and writers. Their efforts resulted in the publication of the Book of the SubGenius in 1983, followed by Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob" in 1990, Revelation X: The "Bob" Apocryphon in 1994 and The SubGenius Psychlopaedia of Slack: The Bobliographon in 2006. In the late 1980s, the video ARISE!was produced by Cordt Holland and Ivan Stang, and narrated by "Dr.

Hal" (Harry S. Robins), then distributed by Polygram. The popularization of the Internet in the mid-1990s brought a new surge of interest in the Church, resulting in dozens of home-made, elaborately decorated web sites and two Usenet newsgroups, alt.slack and alt.binaries.slack.

(A third newsgroup, alt.binaries.multimedia.slack, was created on March 12, 2005.) Ivan Stang maintains the official SubGenius home page at Subgenius.com today. The Church's weekly radio program, the Hour of Slack, is a staple of many college radio stations. It draws from live broadcasts by Stang, his wife Princess Wei R.

Doe and voice comic "Lonesome Cowboy Dave" (comedian/musician Dave DeLuca), as well as from other SubGenius radio shows including Rev. Susie the Floozie's "'Bob's' Slack Time Fun House" on WREK in Atlanta and "The Puzzling Evidence Show" on KPFA in Berkeley, featuring Dr. Hal, Dr.

Philo Drummond and host Puzzling Evidence.

Similar to 0 things you like: