Dr Legume and the Thirty Year Old Teen-aged Thrill Kill
Cult
From the SubGenius Shows: 'Pastor
Craig's Philadelphia Slackorama' and '"Bob" After Dark'.
Recently, a drunk driver cut short the life of Doctor
K'Tadem Legume. Doctor Legume touched the life of many
people on his short stay on this planet. I am here
to tell of my relationship with Doctor Legume, so that
other SubGenii may learn from both his positive and his
negative example.
My first contact with Legume was late August 1992. I
received a crudely rendered postcard by Legume.
It read:
HOLA FELLOW LOCAL SUB!
SO YOU FILTHY PLAGIARIST! STANG TELLS ME YOU RIPPED OFF
MY NOVEL "1998". HOW DARE YOU! MAY YOU ROT IN THE PITS OF
SUB-G HELL! YOU'LL PROBABLY END UP IN A PIT NEXT TO
MINE... "BOB" KNOWS I DESERVE TO BURN... WORKING ON A
PROJECT OF MY OWN, "THE BOOK OF LEGUME". WRITTEN IN THE
FORM OF MY PERSONAL DIARIES, I GOT AS FAR AS THE YEAR 2041
BEFORE I GOT A CASE OF "BLOCK" AND HAD TO BACKBURNER IT FOR
AWHILE IN FAVOR OF PRINTING UP A MESS OF STICKERS AND
PAMPHLETS. IF YOU NEED ANY STICKERS OR PAMPHLETS, DROP ME
A SASE AND I'LL MAIL YOU SOME. OR IF YOU JUST WANT TO B.S.
OR PERFORM ANY ARCANE RITUALS, I CAN BE REACHED AT [PHONE
NUMBER DELETED] WEEKNIGHTS BETWEEN 11 AND MIDNIGHT.
DR. LEGUME
[STREET ADDRESS DELETED]
UPLAND, PA 19015
I responded to his query. I offered him a ride to the
world SubGenius convention 1992 that labor day but he said
that he had swung some deal so that he was flying out with
his friend Brother Morlock.
We did not hang out together at the convention. I was too
busy making contacts and enjoying the company of my fellow
SubGenii. There were many beautiful lady SubGenii at the
convention. Legume later told me that he had done most of
them during a hippie convention called Starwood earlier that
summer.
In the video footage from the SubGenius Convention that I
was able to obtain from Reverend Toth, Legume appears only
fleetingly. But, even back then he was a commanding screen
presence.
In one segment (shot on a PXL-2000 Fisher Price Toy Camera)
said:
"I'm looking for batteries. My cattle prod died on the
plane. So did the pilot.
"Notice if you will the shape of the skull, suitable for
framing. One day you can melt a candle over this skull for
only 29.95. Send for me Dr. Legume [at his address].
First come, first served."
In the other segment, he explained his cybernetic eye, the
one he won from Wotan in a poker game, the one that allowed
him to see the viewer on the other side of the camera.
He said that he did not like to use the eye because the eye
was all seeing. He did not like seeing everything. That
was why he smoked. He used to be able to smell everything
and he didn't like that either.
Reverend Toth also included with the video footage a short
featuring him, Legume, Brother Morlock and an effigy of
Brother Morlock's Grandmother where Reverend Toth married
Brother Morlock's dead Grandmother.
It was my impression, back then, that Legume wanted more
than just the low budget tent show approach to religion.
The next big event was the Philadelphia Science Fiction
Convention in November 1992. In the years 1985-1992 I ran
some seven hotel parties for "Bob." They did not have the
show business feel of your standard devivals but had their
own homey charm. Many odd critters had been unleashed
during these parties and I had hoped that Legume would be
the centerpiece of the party, but it was not to be.
Legume instead went to a nudie bar with some one he had
just met, Steve Kean. Steve had been in and out of the
pre-service party and at one point had hotel security
asking him to return a cowboy hat he had stolen from an
S and M party on the floor below.
That night there were dozen of hotel parties going on
at the same time and the Science Fiction Conventioneers
would go from party to party. Steve had just come from
the S and M party, decrying how lame that party was.
The Service was at midnight, and featured an excellent rant
by the Sheik. I had managed to keep the Sheik out of
trouble with hotel security earlier since he was obviously
plastered and on drugs. But for that night at least he had
it under control by party time and kicked off a 90 minute
free-style rant-athon by about a dozen SubGenius doctors.
By three AM the momentum of the party had waned and there
were only six or so folks hanging out when Steve and Legume
came back. Steve left shortly thereafter, but Legume
stayed. We were engaging in some "Bob" around the campfire
type taping when one of the party goers had an attack of
food poisoning and started puking and shiting himself.
This fellow, Chris, eventually got a pink girlfriend and
stopped answering or returning phone calls. I can only
assume that he was absorbed by the corruptigating pinkness.
But that night, later dubbed the night of endless
slacklessness, Chris received a new title by Legume: "Ralph
Man."
Legume's sense of humor might have gotten Ralph Man killed.
It did not bolster by credibility with the hotel clerk when
I called to try to get a doctor for Chris, that Legume kept
cracking me up. I'm sure that the hotel clerk thought that
I was a prankster.
Legume then suggested that I try to get a radio program so
that I could play the hour of Slack. Little did I know at
the time that Legume was setting me up and that he did not
think that I had the chops to pull a radio show off.
Legume said that he and Morlock would continue their behind
the scenes SubGenius adventures. Apparently this included
driving up to military instillations and asking the guards
if they could buy some cruise missiles. Or finding a back
door out of a turnpike stop so they wouldn't have to pay
a toll. Or taking a chicken transport plane down to Mexico
to do a vision quest and obtain some magic beans. (Legume
would later buy very many men's souls for a single magic
bean each.) Or simply driving around the New Jersey
countryside looking for signs to steal (Brother Morlock
would say 'Look there's a sign,' 'Yeah, so what, it's a
sign,' 'No, it's a SIGN!')
Legume and Morlock had a special bond since they both used
to be in the same motorcycle gang.
That winter I started paying my dues to get on WKDU radio.
It turned out that since I was an alumni of Drexel
University (where I got my second Master's Degree in a four
year fit of enforced slacklessness from 1987 to 1991) my alumni status
allowed me to join the WKDU radio club.
Their philosophy was that if you came to the meetings,
fulfilled certain work obligations, that you would get a
radio slot. They were also very supporting of my idea of
running the syndicated show "the SubGenius Hour of Slack."
In April I had my first show.
At this point Legume truly showed what a backstabbing
son of a bitch he really was! Here I am, without too many
clues, on a station that only has a range of ten miles,
and Legume gets five of his buddies to call Stang and
complain about my show being lame.
So of course Stang starts demanding my show tapes. I send
them and Stang tried to assert his long suppressed
alpha-male tendencies by reaming me out on the phone for
five hours! Finally, I posed the obvious question to Stang,
'since I would be happy to quit tomorrow if you say so, may
I infer that since it would only take you thirty seconds to
say this, and since you've taken five hours to talk to me
about the situation, that you want me to continue?'
And, although Evil King Stang can be a vindictive, petty
bully with those he has power over, Stang is not a stupid
man. He first put me on probation, then made the decision
to allow me to do the show as I was doing it. This process
lasted some five weeks.
Legume was furious. He claimed that the show had prevented
him from getting laid. He claimed that he was talking with
some stripper at some sleazy topless joint and he had
mentioned that he was in the Church of the Subgenius. The
stripper had told him "Oh, like that show on WKDU? That
show isn't cool."
Of course, he was probably lying. But even to tell a lie
like that shows a pretty screwed up sense of priorities.
Why would he do this? At this point he was running with some
dubious company: Steve Kean, Brother Morlock, The Sheik
and a young man named Sweeney. Now, I know very little
about Sweeney, probably because there was nothing to know.
Sweeney looked up to and admired Steve as a great
intellectual. Steve was the sorriest, stupidest excuse for
a pseudo intellectual poser that I had ever met. Steve did
not want to hang out with me because I saw right through
him. He must have sensed my disdain for him when I
mentioned that not only had I read all the high brow books
that he loved quoting from, but that he obviously had not
read or understood these books, since he was misquoting
them so blatantly.
Legume decided to marshall his forces to make my life
miserable. Since Sweeney and Steve were in the process of
drinking their lives away at a bar around the block from
where I live, Legume would organize little field trips
where they would come by my place at one in the morning
and continuously ring my doorbell. Or vandalize the area.
On the time that they came at a reasonable hour, I met them
a block from my house and Brother Morlock tried to impress
me with what a big bad motorcycle dude he was by picking up
a seventy-five pound city trash can and throwing it over a
fence and into a small park. They then ran away like
twittering first graders.
It was this point that I mentioned to Legume that he was
hanging out with and giving his moral stamp of approval to
a bunch of immature aging hipsters who would aspire to
juvenile delinquency if they only could. I dubbed this
group the 'thirty year old teenaged thrill kill cult.'
But the ultimate stroke was still to come.
At this point it would important to focus this story
for a moment on the entity known as the Sheik.
The Sheik shared one characteristic that was pretty typical
among Philadelphia area SubGeniuses: he lived with his
mother. Legume and I would visit the Sheik on occasion.
The Sheik's mother lived in a white trash ghetto called
Port Richmond. His mother was a wrinkled old harpy who
spent most of her time upstairs. Her only rule was that
you couldn't sit on 'her' sofa. The sheik worked as a
security person at a local junior high school. He spent
his evenings drinking scotch, smoking weed and downing
valium. Once placed in the proper frame of mind or
mindlessness he would rant into his tape recorder.
Legume, I think was trying to rationalize his visits to
the Sheik's place as a rant workshop, but the reality of
the situation was that the Sheik was liberal with his
pharmaceuticals and Legume wanted to indulge in free
drugs.
The Sheik's rants were entertaining though. So after
nine weeks of show, I was not particularly apprehensive
when the Sheik called he and said that he wanted to give
an eulogy for G. G. Allin.
Now I don't want to bore you fine people with a bunch of
music criticism, but I should mention that the stage act
of G. G. Allin consisted of his singing songs peppered
with obscenities, defecating on stage and throwing his
feces into the crowd. G. G. Allin had often said that he
wanted to commit suicide by putting a stick of dynamite up
his butt and walking into a crowd of fans and blowing
himself up and taking his fans with him. Unfortunately,
he screwed up and only died of a heroin overdose.
The Sheik was more than just a fan of G. G. Allin. He was
a personal friend of G. G. Allin's brother. Before G. G.
Allin's death, the Sheik was trying to get G. G. Allin and
his band to play in Philadelphia at some abandoned
warehouse. I understood how upset the Sheik was. I told
him that he could eulogize his deceased friend but he had
to keep it clean.
The Sheik promised me one hundred times that he would keep
it together and keep it clean. He lied.
I did not know at the time that I was being set up, but
this was to be Legume's finest stroke. I pick up the Sheik
at his Mom's house at 10:45 pm. He is already drunk, but I
suspected nothing because I have rarely seen him sober. In
fact, one time I had called him up and he was on sinus
medication with very strict warnings against drug mixing.
He answered the phone and I asked him if the Sheik was
there. Since the Sheik is drunk, I have to smuggle him
past the University security. We make it to the studio in
one piece. The Sheik decides to make friends with the
reggae D. J.'s that were playing before us by saying:
"Greetings, by African-American brothers." He then tells
me that if you act like a crazy person they'll be afraid
of you. 'Acting', uh huh.
The midnight hour rolls around and I take control of the
of the station. I introduce the sheik as my special guest
and he proceeds to eulogize G. G. Allin. Twenty minutes
and twenty three cuss words later he is finished.
Meanwhile, across town, Legume is holding a party were his
guest get to witness the immolation of my radio career.
Legume later related to me that his guest eyes were
bleeding such was the shock of hearing the sheik ranting on
the radio.
The aftermath? I get a six months suspension. Stang gets
the show tape and meticulously edits out every cuss word
and plays it on Hour of Slack 410. Stang offers the uncut
tape as a KNON promotion and it brings in more money to the
station than any other station promotion.
This was the high water point of the Thirty Year Old
Teenaged Thrill Kill Cult. After my suspension, the
unifying reason that kept them together had disappeared and
predictably their immature antics turned against each
other.
The beginning of the end occurred in August. The Sheik,
Legume, Steve Kean and Sweeney were hanging out together in
Port Richmond, walking along the Delaware River waterfront.
A dad and his two kids were fishing up the pier. The Sheik
excused himself to empty his bladder. Legume was making
small talk with Sweeney and Steve Kean when suddenly they
noticed a scene of unparalleled horror. The Sheik was
chasing the dad and his kids with his pants down, spilling
his urine this way and that, screaming biblical verses at
the top of his lungs.
The group fled.
In September, Legume was able to exploit a friendship with
a band member to perform as "Dr. Legume" at the bar around
the corner from where I live. He was well received.
In October, Legume got a return engagement. He gave me
some blood capsules so I could be his shill. He pulled me
out the crowd and choked me down with his bullwhip as to
ensicken me. He then tried to get Steve Kean to come out
the audience but he just turned and ran. Steve was there
that night with a new girl, known as Suzie.
A couple weeks later Legume came by to apologize for past
behavior. It seemed that his clench had collapsed. Suzie
had left Steve for him. Steve had confronted Legume about
this and Steve had told him "Legume, you stay away from my
girlfriend or, or, I'll kick your ass!" At this point I
was rol