More to the point: fuck 'em if they can’t write a joke. Simple transgressiveness isn’t enough to make me laugh.
Nor me. But IMO, most NatLamp material that some find objectionable (“ugly,” “misogynistic,” etc.) rises well above that level. I’ve read few things as hilarious, for instance, as the latter-day NatLamp comic, “Frenchy the Evil Clown” – which is deliberately ugly, transgressive, and a great many other horrible/wonderful things. http://www.nickbakay.com/archives/evil_clown/
Interesting you should bring up the Church of SubGenius. I was introduced to the Church ca. 1984 and ordained in 1995. Still drink my coffee from a Bob mug, even. “Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke” only applies if there is a joke. “First Blowjob” is more along the lines of a little kid who just learned some swear words. The fool who wrote it thought he was being shocking and funny. He was half right.
Your mileage may vary, but I do not find rape funny.
Did that by chance contain Ellis Weiner’s “Over the River and Through the Woods”? That was the funniest Hemingway parody I ever read.
Afterwards we went fishing in the river, and we both caught fish. He showed me his fish, and I showed him mine. He let me touch his fish, but I would not let him touch mine.
Maybe the joke is on the cosmic level: Man exposed as deluded, self-important pipsqueak and hapless tool of power, whether it’s God’s, the state’s, the school bully’s, or his own darker nature’s.
A little too college-boy? Definitely. A little too nihilistic? You better believe it. Did you expect any different from a bunch of coke-sniffing, post-Vietnam-era, first-generation Ivy Leaguers?
It sure did. And Brian McConnachie’s “Watts Kalifornia” “Huh” - the best Tom Worlfe parody. Michael O’Donoghue’s “The Polaroid Print of Dorian Gray.” Henry Beard’s hard-boiled parodies, “The Last Recall” - Ralph Nader as private eye - and “My Gun Is Cute,” Mickey Spillane as a girl. Even poetry - “The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover,” by Sean Kelly.
Their audience didn’t deserve them.