Rev. Ivan Stang
aka Douglass St.Clair Smith has spent time as a
filmmaker, animator, music video director, and advertising lackey. He found his
true calling, however, as the founder of the world's first admittedly
for-profit religion, the tongue-in-cheek Church of the Subgenius. Built around
the iconic image of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, whose smiling, pipe-smoking visage can be
spotted everywhere from the opening credits of
Pee-Wee's Playhouse to
the side walls of vandalized warehouses, the Church has found its most solid
base in the Internet (
http://www.subgenius.com/). Their website draws over
1,300 human visitors a day and is roughly 650 megs in size. From the site, one
can join various SubGenius live chat devivals, watch the Church's "sacred"
video and 3D animation creations in video streaming, or hear any of "The Hour
of Slack" radio show episodes, in RealAudio. The "Websites of the Gods" section
points one to all collections of all weird website collections. "In short,"
says Stang, "the Internet was sitting there waiting for us to take it over, so
we did. "Bob's" Trademark Face is probably the most- ASCIIed graphic on the
Net, alt.slack is one of the busiest, craziest newsgroups around, and half of
the people who invented the Internet were dues-paying SubGenii when they were
teenagers in the 80s. "After years of just getting by on the occasional Devo
video and sales of the
Book of the Subgenius (still available in the
obsolete print format), Stang has found himself Pope of a world called
cyberspace, and to say that he is pleased with the wonders of technology that
have sprung from the net would be a massive understatement; "My films and me
were too weird and lazy for Hollywood," he grins (via e-mail), "but we can now
control all reality from the inside of a Power Mac 7500."
-- Ken Lieck
Stang will be in town for the South by Southwest
Multimedia/Interactive Festival, participating in forums addressing
Techno-spirituality and smart computers as well as the multimedia aspects of
the Church of the SubGenius.
