The Wizard of Ass Has Spoken!

The Hal Robins you see onstage at the Odeon seems to be stuck in the wrong era; his home proves the appearance accurate. Robins lives with a roommate in a Victorian apartment in the Mission that looks like a museum storeroom filled with dusty tomes and dinosaur bones. He reads constantly and can produce odd facts on subjects ranging from hallucinogenic toad spittle to the Bible to outer space to transportation. Some call him a "walking encyclopedia." Others find him infuriatingly unable to adjust to the modern world, often to his own detriment. Though his dress for the "Ask Dr. Hal Show" is Victorian, at other times he wears a fedora and resembles Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon. He speaks in soft, baroque sentences and is shy and polite. For friends who come to visit, he keeps boxes of cinnamon candy in the refrigerator; he made it himself, from his grandmother's recipe.

Robins has no day job and supports himself by a variety of artistic pursuits. Since Robins was discovered by R. Crumb and published in the comic book series Weirdo in 1981, his dense, dark, detailed cartoons have appeared in collections with some of underground comix's biggest names, Spain Rodriguez (Trashman) and Gilbert Shelton (The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers), to name a few.

Others know Robins as Dr. Howland Owll, from the Church of the SubGenius, a dada-esque art project and fake religious sect started in the late 1970s. A cross between a club and a movement, SubGenius pokes fun at organized religion and authority through books, videos, pamphlets, and performances. It has devotees in cities all over the country.

Some insomniacs are familiar with Robins from his work on Puzzling Evidence, arguably the most bizarre radio show on the airwaves. Airing from 3 to 5 a.m. each Friday morning on KPFA-FM (94.1), the show is a schizoid montage of music, seemingly random noises, and stream-of-consciousness ramblings by Robins and two friends.

A live performer with a unique -- some may say peculiar -- vision, Robins has held one-man shows in which all he does is recite poetry. (He's particularly fond of the English Romantics.) He's spent an entire evening showing slides of Hollywood B-movie monsters while talking over them humorously. Most recently, Robins has forged an unlikely artistic partnership with the bellicose Chicken John, a performance artist and vintage car mechanic-turned-bar owner. After a string of chaotic performance art pieces that established Robins as a fixture in the underground scene, the duo hit on what is -- undoubtedly -- the most cerebral bar act in San Francisco: the "Ask Dr. Hal Show."

Constantly on the brink of financial collapse, Robins has somehow -- to the surprise of himself and others -- always pulled through. Many of his friends worry that his brilliance is wasted on esoteric performance art that doesn't pay and few will see. Others fear he'll be fully appreciated as a genius only after he dies. Robins kvetches about money, but only during breaks in his full schedule of nonpaying artistic commitments. In an age when artists often market and package themselves as strategically as fast-food restaurants, Robins makes career decisions based mainly on whether a project interests him. And the things that have interested him have been very odd indeed.

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If you're awake at 3 o'clock on a Friday morning, it generally means that something is dreadfully wrong. Yet it's the hour when Hal Robins goes each week to the KPFA studios in Berkeley to do his live radio show, Puzzling Evidence.

Robins' partners on the show are Steve Wilcox, more often known by his Church of the SubGenius nickname, the Rev. Philo Drummond, and Doug Wellman, who calls himself (like the show) Puzzling Evidence. They're neatly dressed, normal-looking guys in their early 50s. On a recent Friday, Robins reads from an article on insects he clipped from a magazine, while Drummond launches into a stream-of-consciousness patter in a Southern Cracker accent.

Robins: In my 30-plus years in the bug business, I've seen some incredible bug infestations ...

Drummond: That little place where we had coffee and rhubarb pie ... could be next weekend ....

They talk over and around each other with competing nonsense, while Wellman -- a former radio DJ for U.S. forces during the Vietnam War -- layers strange noises behind and on top of them: a lighter striking; breaking glass; a snippet of dialogue from an old television program. His fingers constantly fiddle with knobs, buttons, and switches, playing with the mix. First he drowns Robins out, then Drummond. It's impossible to follow any one thought to its conclusion. Then everybody is drowned out by the ghastly wail of a theremin.

Drummond: Is that vampire music?

Robins: Vampire movies are too overwrought.

Drummond: What would vampire music be ...

Wellman: Cello slots.

Drummond: Jell-O shots? Off the coffin?

Robins: Vampires can't eat jelly, and if they can, it's not good for them.