And here's why!
The day after I uploaded the 5,000 page new Stark Fist to www.subgenius.com, I woke up with a fever of 101, took a Pil, and hauled my 6 pieces to luggage to the airport for the Dragon Con giant sci-f-/fantasy convention in Atlanta. The devival, radio show, and sales were FINE.
Perhaps the most far-reaching side effect of the Dragon Con con was the historic meeting between representatives of The SubGenius Foundation and the ground-breaking special-effects Horror Monster Bloodbath "rock band" phenomenon, GWAR. During a "break" in the 5-hour-long devival, Dr. Legume and I found ourselves in an elevator facing actual GWAR bipedal humanoid entity tool "Chuck." Upon realizing who each other was, we almost bonked heads simultaneously bowing. It turns out that GWAR and the Church had both wrongly thought that each other wouldn't give each other the time of day, so we were both pleasantly surprised to find that we were instead mutual worshippers. Later we swapped show tales, secret tapes and bad pictures, and Dr. Legume is apparently planning a SubGenius-GWAR porno video with them. At the very least, chances are good for GWAR-Vs.-"Bob" all-out public death-matches in Richmond and Antarctica. Dr. Legume and I are certainly excited about the potential!
After quizzing the GWAR-slave about the TECHNICAL side of their "act," I was gratified to know that my theory, that they are the hardest working band in show biz, is CORRECT. JUST WASHING THE COSTUMES after each show is more effort than most modern day tooty-fruity so-called rock bands put into their whole CAREERS.
GWAR-slave Chuck Varga even ranted at our Devival. He didn't so much rant, actually, as ask plaintive questions of "Bob" about life. He learned the hard way that he was asking the wrong guy.
The Devival was a good one. Too bad the videotape of it turned out useless. The band, Lymph Node, provided appropriate (!) accompaniment throughout the first half, which featured the experienced old-time preachers. I had earlier written my rant on a Dobbshead notepad while sitting forlornly at the SubGenius sales table in the dealer's room, watching Pink comic book fans and Trekkies shuffle past like cows, glancing at "Bob's" face without any spark of recognition or interest, and shuffling on in search of more pertinent super hero material. Thus, at the Devival I sermonized first against Those Who Shuffle Past the Sales Table, and then against Those Who Bounce Checks on "Bob." Papa Joe Mama delivered the first of his harangues, a brand new Pink-killing hate rant which you'll certainly hear on Hour of Slack, wearing his cool new Executioner's Robes and Hood. Dr. Legume, the Preacher from the Black Lagoon, once again scared the daylights out of the audience, this time smashing a large metal alarm clock against a sturdy metal plate (he later sold the smashed clock-shell to a devotee for $30 as a religious artifact). I noticed that the ubiquitous psychedelic Dobbs-n-badfilm video barrage, which we project continuously, happened to SYNC UP UNCANNILY with Dr. Legume's rant. I.E., when he was ranting about the ultimate oozsquirt, the "sexy" section of the video happened to be running. When he got into the End of the World, the UFO segment coincided with it. When he started stump-fucking the Head, the Head Launching tournament footage was up. "As if scripted!"
Incidentally, some Bobbie shit-head STOLE my VHS copy of Sverre Kristensen's SubGenius video barrage, SOMETHING NEW TO DIE FOR, with which we opened the show. This would merely be another Bobbie annoyance, except that that was my MASTER copy. Well, my MASTER master is still here, but it's in the European PAL format, which our machines won't play. It will cost me $100 to have it redubbed to SMPTE (American style) VHS format. If you the thief are reading this, you have caused a $100 hardship to the people whose work you admired enough to steal. Please anonymously return the tape, ok?
Janor Hypercleets once again brought the crowd to tears, preaching a soulful back-to-the-Pamphlet classic sermon, often in time to the funky blues back-up by Lymph Node. Lymph Node then shifted gears into strip-show beat for Rev. Susie the Floozy, who had the pew-packers riveted to their seats, the males too embarrassed to stand up, giving her all in her greatest rant yet. Rev. Susie has only preached about 5 or 6 devivals, but each sermon has been twice as steamy as the one before. I CURSE the fact that this was not caught on videotape. Whole generations of SubGenius adolescents (and adults) are being cheated out of their just MASTURBATION FANTASIES!
The second half of the devival showcased the cast of Rev. Mike Ro Fone's SubGenius improv radio show, especially the fine new preacher Dr. Nolan Void. (Mike's show and Susie's show alternate every Saturday night at 1 am (technically Sunday morning) on WREK, 91.1 fm in Atlanta, following THE HOUR OF SLACK.) Despite the stupidest heckling EVER from one very sad, drunken Bobbie on the front row, these Atlanteans managed to bring the devival to a rousing climax that included AUDIENCE-WIDE SNAKE HANDLING as well as a Launching of the Swollen Liver of Mickey Mantle.
In theory, there exists somewhere a decent stereo audio recording of at least the first half of the show, miked from near the sound board. My current $30 throw-away radio shack recorder was sitting on the pulpit the whole time, but the sound is so rinky that I doubt we'll be able to broadcast much of it. The pulpit deck usually only catches Joe Mama and myself properly, since the two of us tend to stay pulpit-bound throughout our rants. Legume, Susie and Janor all stride and crawl and bump and grind all over the stage, so my pulpit mike usually only gets the bad monitor sound from their PAs.
AMAZING DISCOVERY!
It goes without saying that a collection plate of some kind usually gets passed around at devivals. In recent years, we have experimented with the technique of SCANTILY CLAD SUBGENIUS BABES moving among the crowd, urging the mostly male crowd to dump all worldly goods into the Holy Beer Pitchers. And they might raise $40 or so. This time, we used not LUST, but FEAR as a motivator. The terrifying hulk of Dr. Legume went through the crowd brandishing an aluminum baseball bat, DEMANDING big-time donations to the poorbox. He raised $150 (!!!) and KEPT IT ALL HIMSELF. So remember, you ministers -- your congregation will respond FAR MORE PROFITABLY to good old fashioned TERROR than they, in their jadedness, will to the LUST of the FLESH.
The Sacred Sales table did much better business the day after the devival. Janor sold many of his new T-shirts ("HAVE A NICE DAY or kill me" written out in the skulls of normals); Fr. Joe Mama sold many of his new rant-tape series as well as hand-painted religious Dobbsian icons showing color scenes from Revelation X. The presence(s) of Rev. Susie the Floozie doubled the sales rate whenever she spelled me at the table. Funny how people will buy sooner from a sexy redhead with big tits than an obviously sick, scrawny preacher-man with inch-deep cracks in his lips.
That was the one problem. I was SICKER'N A BROKE-DICK STERNODOX!! And I LOOKED it. I was disfigured by this Preacher Lip condition... made me look a little like Jack Nicholson as The Joker, only it hurt to SMILE. To eat a burger, I had to flatten it to the thickness of a credit card and then "feed it in through the slot." It's a BUMMER, especially if you're being paid to HOBNOB and SCHMOOZE and do PANEL DISCUSSIONS and so forth.
When it was time to do Susie's radio show, "Bob's" Slacktime Funhouse, Susie and Legume had lost their voices completely and I was too exhausted to do anything but MIX, but by Gobbs, St. Janor Hypercleets and Papa Joe Mama were in TOP FORM, carrying the whole hour and even updating the very same trance revelations they'd spewed at the PREVIOUS year's Dragon Con Floozie show: the "Manson-Snyder" spoutings and the "old Batman TV show" parable. Janor does Manson better than anybody, and Joe Mama's The Frank Gorshwin Riddler beats Jim Carrey's Jim Carrey Riddler by a long shot. (BATMAN FOREVER is about the only movie I've seen this year. I liked it, even though it's blatant Scientology propaganda. TWO-FACE is my latest ShorDurPerSav. I want to live in his house.)
It was good to see the zillion Atlanta friends and Reverends, too many to say, but thanks for the big help to Rev. Wayne and the Holy Temple of Mass Consumption. I don't go to that many sf cons, mostly just Dallas and Atlanta, but there are certain people that I ALWAYS run into at ALL of them -- Nanzi Regalia (Nancy Collins) and Joe Christ, Bob Burden, Kate Worley, Poppy Brite, and Holly Hitch. And I always end up waking up to find JANOR snoring and farting in the OTHER hotel bed. It's cyclical. The dozens of cons end up all blurred together in memory. Gives one a queasy kind of recurrent deja vu. If you wake up and see Janor, that means you are about to have to do a devival, and will run into those same individuals again. It means you will be doing the old snake oil routine all day at a sales table. Rev. Susie will be challenging you NOT to pop a full-on Dobbshead. Eh... it's a living.
I got back from Atlanta with fistfuls of cash -- enough to pay off Crux! -- and immediately had to repack for The Chicago Underground Film Festival. I was really looking forward to sitting in the dark watching movies, since I was still DANGED SICK. As it turned out, I hardly saw any movies. I had to either rest up, or schmooze. PRAISE DOBBS for the Newest Declared Pope of All Chicago, St. @ndrew, and Pope Phred, of OGYR Network, who SELFLESSLY and indeed OBSESSIVELY manned the sales table all day Friday and Saturday so as to give pore old crippled, hacking, wheezing, complaining "Dad" Stang a break. And young st.@ndrew got INTO it. He felt the THRILL of a CLEAN KILL. He felt the satisfaction of targeting the victim, honing in, letting the Dobbsense take over, and MAKING THE SALE.
I spent a lot of time in bed shivering and reading. Went through about 5 old sci fi books. THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS by John Wyndham is a lot better than the movie. I did COME THROUGH for my pay, though. None may gainsay my schmoozing. I didn't have to preach a devival... I was there on account of my ancient underground movies. All I HAD to do was bullshit about those for half an hour before they were shown, and then later present some awards. But it would have been very bad form not to schmooze heavily. I certainly schmoozed better than Kenneth Anger, the other Honored Old-Timey Underground Filmmaker Guest, and he wasn't even sick.
Jay Bliznick and Brian Wendorf did a great job of running the festival. I was never mistreated! My Slack was not vampirized appreciably! Nobody screwed up! Only the virus gave me shit! My Hendrix bootleg collection LEAPT in size and quality! I got to see my Run&Gun friends! My lips aren't cracking much anymore! My job this week is to lay around taking it easy! There were only 60 emails I had to answer! I'll choose more Hour of Slack RERUNS to send out! I'll watch VIDEOTAPES! I'll EAT VEGETABLES and GARLIC PILLS!! Why, surely I'll be feeling TOP NOTCH by the time I go to Cleveland for the Aug. 5 devival at Peabody's Down Under in the Flats, and the booksigning Aug. 4 at Borders in Akron, or the 2 pm booksigning at Mac's Backs on Coventry in Cleveland on Aug. 5. Or the Einstein's Secret Orchestra/Lonesome Cowboy Dave radio show Thursday night on 89.3 fm at 11 pm. And the August 19 "event" in Dallas with Pope Bob Wilson.
Line-up for that Aug. 5 Cleveland devival is:
Indian Rope Burn (sexhurt band, and video premiere)
Circus Apocalypse (actual hilarious real freak/geek show)
Dr. K'Taden Legume
Rev. Ivan Stang
Einstein's Secret Orchestra (Chas Smith & Lonesome Cowboy Dave)
Forms of Insanity (Akron SubG band w/ Rev. Toth Wilder)
DR. DYNASOR!!! Breaching the chasm between the "real" and "internet" SubGenius Universes!
Minstrels of Enchantment (Hawkwind-esque "trippy" band(?))
and MUCH MUCH MORE!!
Brought to you by THE FLYING LEMUR bookstore -- (216) 221-2535, http://www.apk.net/lemur
NEW PILS CONCEPT by Lou DuChez
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More Stuff Uploaded to SubSITE
The Online STARK FIST swoll up a bit more the other day. The ""BOB" SIGHTINGS" section has been "finished" and is awaiting your gawking perusal in THE HALL OF ANSWERS. And an important and long awaited section of THE HALL OF GOODS has been installed: OTHER SUBGENIUS MUTANTS. These are our nepotistic series of ads for each other's products and services, particularly those of a SubGenius or SubGenius-related nature -- as opposed to the HIGH WEIRDNESS or NonSubGenius OTHER MUTANTS listings of more general kookery and/or visionary work.
A few big chunks are still missing from the online FIST, but they're on the way. Dr. Dynasor is scheduled to hand-deliver the FINAL DISKS containing the Science & Hymnal sections, in a suitcase chained to his hand, also containing a bomb with a timer on it. Only I have the MAGIC HACKSAW.
Those of you with slow modems, enjoy the SubSITE while it's still denuded of artwork. We haven't even STARTED on the ILLUSTRATING yet. I dunno, it might make sense to keep text-heavy sections and picture-heavy sections separate. Part of the POINT of web tech is the ability to hop around pretty fast, and for most of us, big slow art dumps are a drag unless you're there specifically to wait for big slow art dumps.
We sure do have some KEEN color art just SITTING around here waiting to be EXPLOITED, though. But Dobbs commands that we not MESS with it, yet. Dobbs commands that we instead go to Ohio and SELL, SELL, SELL. Dobbs also commands that we throw together some kind of paper STARK FIST now that all other excuses have burnt out. These are tall orders but we shall DO AS "BOB" SAYS. It's not like I have any other CHOICE!!! "Bob" sold it, I smoked it, that settles it.
Now I will open up alt.slack and actually READ some of it... like... coming home, *sniff*... It's Saturday and Rev. Will O'Dobbs and Rev. Nickie are across the factory, overseeing the Bombie Mail Order Squads and adjusting the Automatic Check Endorsing Machines. That's what they're SUPPOSED to be doing, anyway. I can see them, but they can't see me. I can look down on the whole factory floor from here. They think I'm not looking. They think old Rev. Stang don't SEE what's going on down there. Well, I got news for 'em. Old Rev. Stang, he sees all, knows all. I know who's been stepping out with who. I know which Bombies are pinchin' frappy and taking hits off the soul tanks. Oh, yeah. And I have TAPES of IT ALL. Um hmmm. We'll SEE who's gonna have the LAST lesson, as Janor says. They thought they were working at the SubGenius Foundation for SLACK. To get LAID. To procure doses of "BOB'S" FABLED LUCK. Oh yeah. They THOUGHT. They didn't RECKON on old nasty decrepit Boss Stang having a ONE WAY MIRROR SPYGLASS on his door and VIDEO CAMERAS that NEVER BLINK?? Heh. I know about 'em. I know ALL about 'em. They creep up on you. Oh yeah. They're LAUGHIN'... NOW. When Dobbs comes back, oh boy, THEN we'll see the tally. Yesirmaam. And that industrious ANT, Rev. Stang, is gonna look mighty good in that tally next to those lazy grasshopper subgeniuses all fornicatin' and partyin' around him. HMMMPH. Why, I damned near worked myself to death for Slack -- won't Dobbs be proud of me?
WATCHING YOU ALL,
Rev. Stang
AND THEN, to beat all, I opened the paper this morning and there was this COLOR PUBLICITY STILL from that movie THE NET, depicting Sandra Ballocks or whatever her name is at her evil computer, next to a fake "CD ROM GAME" box entitles "RUN LIKE HELL," with the MAIN GRAPHICS on that prop box being OBVIOUSLY STOLEN from the old front cover of the Book of the SubGenius, McGraw-Hill version, the Hellswami Satellite Weavers painting of a man (himself... self portrait) in the foreground fleeing Dobbshead-projecting spaceships across a destroyed suburban landscape (with a bepiped Vreedeez and family seen in protected force field on the right). This is the SECOND still from THE NET that shows that game box with the Hellswami's graphics RIPPED OFF. My question is, is that box seen throughout the film? Is that the product that contains the evil virus villain program? Cause if it is, they have some explaining to do.
My son put it best. He said, "You would THINK that the people working on a big-budget Hollywood production would at least come up with something THEMSELVES, considering how much they're being paid. And how come it always seems like it's the SubGenius Church that they decide to rip off??"
I'm telling you. They creep up on you. CONSPIRACY BUGS.
Original file name: atlanta report
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