This is a real-life article that appeared on the front page of the feature
section of the Detroit News, the biggest newspaper in Michigan, on Nov. 28.
All mistakes are somebody else's fault, especially the recurrent misspellings
of "Bob"'s name.
IN BOB WE TRUST
Cultish church is no pipe dream for its faithful fans
By JULIE HINDS
(This is accompanied by the picture of a screaming man in the back of the
Book of the SubGenius, captioned "'The Book of the SubGenius' is the church's
first tome about a salesman named Bob, its omnipotent savior.")
Eric Beatty, 27, a design engineer from Bowling Green, Ohio, is proud to
worship at the altar of a square-jawed, pipe-smoking guy named Bob.
"I have no other religion," says Beatty. "Bob is it for me."
John Bogan, 30, of Ann Arbor, finds Bob's divinity both glorious and
mysterious.
"People respond to him in very visceral ways, even if they don't know who he
is. He has that smile, but there's a wicked glint in his eye. He's definitely
not a benign god."
Beware, normal people. Thousands of followers of Bob are out there, many of
them lurking on college campuses. They belong to the Church of the SubGenius,
one of the few religions in the world where the deity is a drawing of a Fred
MacMurray look-alike, and where the only qualification for being a minister is
paying $20.
"It's a disorganized religion," says high church honcho, the Rev. Ivan Stang.
"It's for non-joiners, mutants, misfits, class clowns and nonbelievers. (NOTE:
THIS QUOTE WAS HIGHLIGHTED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ARTICLE--ME.) There are no
official services, but if someone wants to give us a plane ticket and some
money, we'll be there. The church is kind of like a floating crap game in that
way."
Maybe religion is the wrong word to use. Comparing the Church of the
SubGenius to, say, Catholicism is tantamount to confusing Spy magazine with
U.S. news and World Report. Better to call it an obscure cult parody, one that
sharply satirizes what's wrong with religion and society in general.
So far, Bob's popularity has been limited to hipster counterculture circles.
An estimated 5,000 people have paid $20 to the church, the amount it costs to
get a card saying you're an official SubGenius minister. Three books about Bob
have sold about 30,000 or so each, and a syndicated radio show, The SubGenius
Hour of Slack, airs on 10 campus stations.
"We're still pretty obscure," Stang says. "I sat down once and figured out
only one in 25,000 Americans had ever heard of us."
The other 24,999 may not have to wait much longer. At least one syndicated
cable show has agreed to air segments of a Bob film made by the church, and MTV
is negotiating to do some one-minute Bob video spots. There may even be a
strange, heretofore unrevealed link between Bob and the cult ABC series Twin
Peaks.
"I think Killer Bob on Twin Peaks is the anti-Bob," says Stang, the most
visible member of the Church of the SubGenius. "Bob himself would never kill
cheerleaders. He'd probably want to sell them something."
Stang, an independent filmmaker who lives in Dallas, first sold the concept
of Bob to the rest of the world in 1980, when he and some friends printed the
first Church of the SubGenius pamphlet. They used public domain clip art of a
man smoking a pipe to create the image ofthe church's supposed savior.
"We did it all at Bob's bidding," Stang explains. "We were under his
guidance."
Bob became a hit in the world of underground comics. Eventually Stang
trademarked the Bob image and signed a book deal with Simon and Schuster.
"I thought they were hysterically funny when I first encountered them," says
Sydney Miner, executive editor of the Simon & Schuster division that publishes
three umor books by Stang (The Book of the SubGenius, High Weirdness by Mail,
and Three-Fisted Tales of Bob, all $10.95, Fireside). "It's kind of a cross
between Fireside Theatre and Monty Python, but very uniquely American. They
don't take themselves very seriously, and they don't expect anyone else to."
The premise of the church goes something like this. Supposedly, the faith
was founded in 1953 by J.R. Bob Dobbs (the J.R. is used infrequently, perhaps
because it's too close to J.R. Ewing for a Dallas-based religion). Bob was a
salesman. In fact, he was probably the best salesman the world has ever seen.
"Of course, you've heardthe jokes about the traveling salesman and the farmer's
daughter?" says Stang. "All those are based upon true occurences in Bob's
life."
Bob's church divides the world into Us vs. Them, wit hUs being the true
subgeiuses and Them being "normal" people. (Note to readers: If you're
confused and upset at this point in the article, you're probably Them).
According to Bob, the normal people (Them) are part of a conspiracy to keep
wealth, power, and world control away from abnormal people (Us). The
conspiracy is trying to steal all the "slack," a concept defined by Stang as so
good it "makes happiness seem like having your eyes gouged out with carrot
peelers."
Bob suffered a majopr lack of slack in 1984, when he was killed in San
Francicso that eerily parallels the Kennedy assassination. But he keeps coming
back to life, only to be killed again and again. Stang denies, however, that
Bob is a messiah figure.
"Bob is not the son of God," he admits. "He doesn't care about your sins.
He gives excuses, not forgiveness. We sell excuse documents just like
Catholics used to sell indulgences."
Comments like that tend to make Stang a popular guest on the talk-radio
circuit, where he regularly riles religious fundamentalists who fail to grasp
the church's humor. "It's amazing how many people have no sense of humor at
all," he says. "They must be the people who see the fake commercials on
Saturday Night Live and swallow them hook, line, and sinker."
To spread Bob's word to a more receptive audience, Stang makes appearances on
college campuses and alternative religion festivals. Recently, he went to
upstate rural New York, where an offshoot group caled Doctors for Bob asked him
to participate in a ritual that involved whacking Arnold Palmer's shrunken head
with a golf club.
"OK, it wasn't actually the bleeding head of Arnold Palmer," Stang clarifies,
for the sake of the sqeamish Them. "It was a replica bleeding head."
Bob's followers reve lin the church's inherent weirdness. "It forces people
to come out of familiar mindsets," says Tom Pazen of WZRD-FM in Chicago, who's
married to a non-believer. "My wife really hates Bob, but that's OK. I'm pro-
choice."
John Bogan, who considers himself a Bob fan, not a follower, made a dozen Bob
T-shirts for friends in Ann Arbor. "The people who are into Bob aren't
subgeniuses at all. They're on the more intelligent end of the scale, in
fact. Bob's sort of a high-brow concept. He has this built-in limited
appeal."
Pazen bemoans the fact that the church may go mainstream someday. "I kind of
like the fact that's Bob's anonymous. If he got to be as popular as the
Simpsons, it wouldn't be as much fun."
IN A BOX ON THE FRONT PAGE (BORDERED BY DOBBSHEADS) WAS THE FOLLOWING:
Tell-all predictions from the Church of the SubGenius
It's only a matter of time befor Bob's kingdom inherits the Earth. Here's
how it will happen, according to the Church of the SubGenius. The church's
track record on predictions? Last year, they said that armies of Bigfoot
creatures would appear on the Chinese-Tibet border and sugar would be outlawed
as a carcinogen.
1991: Bulletproof robots run most convenience stores. Minimum wage reaches
$86.50 an hour, but a soft drink costs $40. Four hundred million "Zombies for
Bob" worldwide.
1992: Valium added to water supplies. Bands of outlaws roam the countryside
and cities. Law as we know it no longer exists. Bob now runs many multi-
national corporations.
1993: Glaciers start melting due to Greenhouse Effect. Subgeniuses take
over Texas and form own nation. Organized crime now fighting valiantly for Bob
1994: Scientific proof of ghosts rocks the world. First child born on Mars.
Women are now paid better than men on average. Bob becomes master of all
religion and commerce,
1996: World peace, thanks to Bob
1997: Ghosts are recognized as citizens, given voting rights. Immortality
drugs developed, while Greenhouse Effect reversed by "Bob" science.
1998: Living clones of JFK, Elvis, Hitler and Jimi Hendrix lead mankind in
sucsessful fight against mysterious creatures from the center of the Earth.
Bob and his Church of the SubGenius hierarchy installed over entire
governmentless planet.
Well, what do you think. Is it a recognition of the Truth or a disguised
Con trick?
