It was a GOOD NIGHT because it was ALL FILMICAL. Imagine some guy who works as a cop, but what he really likes to do is fix cars, and he meets another car-fixing freak in a bar when he's off-duty, and they talk pure car-part-tech for hours. The cop achieves Slack. I got Slack. Ostensibly, Jay had to "interview" me for Chicago Underground Film Festival purposes -- he made the WISE WISE decision to show my old films and have me blab about oddball movie stuff with other festival-goers -- but we just kept going off on mutual minutia-sharing. He's younger and more tied in with the what's happening scene, and I'm a treasure-trove of slightly more classic badfilm lore. I don't mean talking about who was IN these movies or how good or bad they were or anything, but the freakish real-life aspects of the PRODUCTION of some of them. To me, the process of movie making is every bit as fascinating as the movies themselves, and very often far more fantastical and hard to believe -- outside of Hollywood as well as inside. I have had similarly Slack-inducing film-geek conversational orgies with Dr. Hal Robins. I could sit and talk about monster movie ins and outs with Dr. Howll for days. I could LISTEN to him lecture about dinosaurs and other prehistoric life for... hours, at least.
WILD WOMEN OF WONGO. Now that is bulldada.
Or pornography. To discuss the highs and LOWS of the modern and classic pornography industry with one such as Brother Cleve Dunkan, or St. Byron Werner, or, yes, Rev. Susie the Floozy... such are the moments that dreams are made of. Or to strive to untangle the mysteries of the prank call artform with Sterno, or Lou Minatti.... to reenact verbally with Janor unforgettable dialog remembered verbatim from Jack Kirby comic books after Kirby was given free reign by DC to WRITE HIS OWN SCRIPTS (i.e., KAMANDI LAST BOY ON EARTH, DEVIL DINOSAUR or O.M.A.C. ONE MAN ARMY CORPS_... to share a NEWLY UNEARTHED Jack Chick Christian comic with Paul Mavrides, AH YES... to compare favorite mind-fuck concepts from Golden Age science fiction potboilers with Dr. G.Gordon Gordon... to gossip about each and every one of you at length with Will O'Dobbs, or to swap with him blistering critiques of the new "false" Ren & Stimpy shows, Howard Stern guests or Dallas Morning News articles... to hear Dr. Philo Drummond wax grandiloquent over the occult significance of an Alice Cooper lyric and its relation to the Rosicrucian doctrines, and how that correspondence was uncannily predicted by Lobsang Rampa... ahhh, yes, these are the foundations of good fellowship, gentlemanly banter and sublimely time-wasting trivia upon which SubGenius mental health is so oft built.
But there are those who would deny us even those precious moments. Those who would vampirize our Slack, as if doing so could in any way fill the Slack-void in their own souls. Those who even go so far as to become, yes, among the dreaded "ImaBobs."
However, fuck 'em. I wanna think about all the COOL SHIT instead of the SHIT. My new friend is gonna make me a video dupe of the Japanese laserdisc of the Hendrix Isle of Wight concert film, which I possess only in fragments from A FILM ABOUT JIMI HENDRIX. I in return shall send him an audio cassette dupe of John Trubey's classic prank calls, plus the undying ode, "A BLIND MAN'S PENIS," which Jay hasn't heard since high school. Just the other day I received an excellent copy of a bottleg recording of Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band live in Rosun, NY, 1978 (BAT CHAIN PULLER period). All I had to send the collector in order to acquire that treasure was a good cassette tape (which only cost me $2) of the 1974 Dallas Captain Beefheart concert that I myself recorded pretty decently on a Nagra reel to reel location deck. (This was unfortunately his "Unconditionally Guaranteed" period.) GOD BLESS the god damned Internet, and the telephone networks that preceded it, which allow me access to the treasures of the ages. And god fucking bless the U.S. post office for what they ONCE WERE, even though they blow it 15% of the time nowadays. At least MORE gets through than NOT... so far.
Do I sound like an old man mumbling in his cups over ancient memories and the cracked shards of broken dreams, etc.? That's okay. That's "within my Slack," as the traitorous thief Victor Cantu used to put it. Even my Emergentile nature permits it. For I have been cutting video all day like a FIEND. I managed to do in 8 online hours what would have taken a human DAYS. I was editing the video footage of the theatrical performance of a one-act based on UBU ROI (aka KING UBU or PERE UBU), the TOTALLY BULLDADA French play from the turn of the century (?) by Alfred Jarry, the early pataphysician who inspired Bill Griffith so profoundly in such works as his ZIPPY series. This was a DAMNED COOL production. The director "scored" it with tapes of WARNER BROTHERS CARTOON MUSIC by Carl Stallings. Every move the actors make is synced to old Bugs Bunny soundtracks. The set design was Cabinet of Dr. Caligary style (yeah yeah, German Expressionistic) -- sort of -- and the pacing was frenetic, with the whole stage busy with the most BIZARRELY RETARDED peripheral activity. The script includes lines of high bulldada such as "LONG LIVE SLAVERY!!" (sung out by happy slaves) and "LET'S ALL DISOBEY, TOGETHER!!"... giving it the oddest Monty Python ambience. One of its recurring themes is INSANE AMORALITY to the MAX.
But the most amazing thing about this almost EL TOPO-like production was that it was a HIGH SCHOOL PLAY. Rev. Ymmot Zepol and someone else and I shot it because young Ydnax Stang was in it. Now this is a STANDARD GRADE, BIG CITY HIGH SCHOOL. One of those prison-like buildings with a thousand sweaty kids inside, most of them in gangs, and metal detectors at the entrances to screen for guns. But one crazed French teacher/theater guy FORCES these kids to act out his INSANE PRODUCTIONS every year, and you gotta give the guy credit, inviting a bunch of regular Dallas parents to watch their teenagers do PERE UBU is NERVY. The UBU concept can be subversive in some times and places, and this particular 1995 Dallas neighborhood was a good place for it. The teacher lucked out, too, in that he had a couple of Yetinsyn naturals to work with in the two main roles of Ma and Pa Ubu. (The character-actor-prodigy kid who played Ubu is a pulled-in-the-wool SubGenius, EH EH EH!) The important thing about making a seed grow is to plant it at the right time.
THE HARVEST, friends. THE HARVEST is all-important. FAMILY VALUES is what it's all ABOUT in these modern times. FAMILY VALUES. Those two words -- if you can attach them to something, no matter what it is, GOOD NORMAL AMERICANS will BUY IT. The FAMILY is at the CORE. No matter if you're single, never-gonna-have-a-kid, haven't talked your old Ma in 16 weeks, it's-all-dysfunctional, INDEPENDENT, it's your FAMILY that made you that way. What there was of it. Your erudition, your style, your hipness, your talent, those are all just the outer layers of the onion. Underneath those are your Mom and/or Dad or Nanny or TV, and you're STUCK WITH IT.
And you know what? So far, I haven't seen any SERIOUS PROBLEMS with the ALL-CYNICAL, ALL-SARCASTIC, ALL-MOCKING, ENDLESSLY-TEASING, UNCEASINGLY-UPSTAGING SUBGENIUS NUCLEAR FAMILY! Whatever happened to the good old family values, where KIDS weren't treated like RETARDS who couldn't HANDLE THE TRUTH? Why can't parents accept that their kids are weird creatures of superior mentating-ability combined with ABYSMAL IGNORANCE, who will be able to COPE JUST FINE and make the right decisions if only given the PLAIN FACTS?? I know families where the little girls aren't allowed to know about cusswords, or what the cusswords mean, but since they hear some anyway, at least they're told that GOD DOESN'T LIKE IT. And He gets mad if you cry in church because your fancy underwear chafes. Well, god damn it, maybe those Dads WANT their little girls to be FOOLED FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. My little girl is gonna KNOW when some HORNY SHIT-HEAD is trying to SAP HER SLACK. Nobody is ever gonna make my dafter do anything she really doesn't want to do, because she's gonna KNOW what the OPTIONS are, and she's smart enough to draw her own conclusions. And if she isn't, then by Gobbs she'll learn like I did, only hopefully she'll have more fun doing so. And my son will not go into the world thinking that anybody has got the EXPLANATION or the SECRET. Well, he might get tricked temporarily, but he'll be able to say, "Hell, my Dad was tricked even MORE EASILY, so at least we see here proof that there IS EVOLUTION."
FAMILY FUCKING VALUES. The very term implies that somewhere there's some NON-family values. Like, all those LIBERALS are "AGAINST" family values. Well JUST EXACTLY WHAT VALUES DID YOU HAVE IN MIND, Mr. CHRISTIAN PATRIOT? The ones where you make it easier for your daughter to get SNOWED by the first "COOL STUD" she ever comes in contact with, because he isn't ANYTHING LIKE the Disney world you limited her to, so it's REAL EXOTIC and unlike you, she still has HONEST INSTINCTS?? So she ends up trapped with the first cute asshole who knocks her up? OH YEAH. HAVE AT IT, Mr. Pink Dad.
"CHURCH CAMP."
Send those kids to CHURCH CAMP so they can learn some FAMILY VALUES from some OFFICIAL CHRISTIANS. Where all the kids are "good Christians."
Heh heh heh.
Like a devil in a Jack Chick comic, friends, when I encounter these families where FAMILY VALUES are so important that everything loses its value in a religious haze, I GLOAT. I GIGGLE LIKE SATAN kneading my hands together, lit from below, a demonic glimmer of lust in my eye. Because I know that for each kid who learns more about play-acting "family values" than they do about THE ACTUAL HUMAN REALITY THROBBING AROUND THEM AND IN THEM ALL THE TIME, only to have their CHERISHED DELUSIONS DASHED before their eyes when "IT" happens, thence to GO OVERBOARD IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, for each one of those kids, there will later be another $30 check in the coffers of the Church of the SubGenius.
AHHHHHhh, yes... the HARVEST.
That's what's important, friends. We must think about the future... the future of this great SubGenius race. THE CHILDREN. We're doing it all for the KIDS. To promote FAMILY VALUES. That's all we're doing.
A beautated mind is a terrible thing to waste.
(It was Sivet Stang, age 10 (at the time), who coined the term, "beautant." She was looking for a word to describe herself.)
Pere Stang
Whose kids learned it from him BEFORE they ever heard it in the GUTTER, who can discuss David Lynch's film and TV work more intelligently than most newspaper media critics, who barf on Barney, who know HOW TO PASS FOR NORMAL, who get along with most everybody, are "popular," make good grades, and aren't fooled by fads, grades, popularity, or superstition. For long. My son recently whipped out an illustration of the comic book/MTV character THE MAXX that DAMNED NEAR equals any of the comic's cover art. My daughter encountered Photoshop for the first time the other day, and within half an hour had cranked out a starry landscape scene suitable for a Hallmark postcard. MY KIDS who carry the torch of secular humanism, rationalism, and evolutionism against tremendous odds. MY KIDS who aren't COWWED by how TOUGH the gang kids look, because they GREW UP PLAYING with those kids and know where the bluff begins and ends. MY KIDS who WORK for their spending money. Frustrated by our miserliness and refusal to provide them an ALLOWANCE, they both got JOBS this summer. THAT'S RIGHT -- the WORK-HATING SubGenius apostles BESMIRCH THE INNOCENCE of their KIDS by making them face the facts of the Conspiracy from the git-go. MY KIDS who know what every cussword and pornological term both MEANS, and IMPLIES. MY KIDS who have KILLED "BOB" in their hearts yet who can pull off a "little Marjoe" in a flash if need be.
There is hope for the future. The Yeti gene shall not be denied. The breeding program proceeds apace. The only problem so far is that most of the old grizzled Apostles have DAUGHTERS ONLY. My poor boy, and Tarla's boys, and the very few others, will be SAPPED DRY if more SubGenius males aren't produced, and SOON. This doesn't mean drowning the girl babies in the village well. It means MORE FUCKING IS REQUIRED!!!
Original file name: IT WAS A GOOD NIGHT
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