First Church of the Last Laugh

The First Church of the Last Laugh (FCLL) is a parody religion created by Bishop Joey (Ed Holmes). The church has only one holy day per year, which corresponds with April Fool's Day, and is celebrated with the Saint Stupid's Day Parade in San Francisco, California. The idea behind the church and parade was based on older celebrations, the and the culturally widespread trickster character.The PreHistory Of The First Church of the Last Laugh (FCLL) The First Church of the Last Laugh (archived from November 21, 2019).‘There’s still this wild spirit’: This San Francisco April Fool’s tradition refuses to die by Dan Gentile (April 1, 2022) SFGate. The parade presents itself superficially as loosely-organized silliness, but the subtexts of the parade are anti-capitalism and anti-organized religion.
The FCLL website was stubbornly Web 1.0 throughout its existence with intentionally bad formatting and never correcting misspellings. In some older versions of the FCLL website, there were two gatekeeping pages that one had to pass through before getting to the "one pretty true" main page. The first one asked, "Are you a member of the human race?" The "yes" link proceeded to the next gate, and the "no" link proceeded to the Fundamentalist Christian Promise Keepers homepage.The Test Page Saint Stupid (archived from February 9, 1999). The second gate had the following text (sparing the reader from ALL CAPS that was in the original):Before entering this site you must agree to the conditions following Saint Stupid (archived from January 6, 2006).
The church has informal relations with another parody religion, Church of the SubGenius:
*Bishop Joey, who appeared at a Subgenius devival and has appeared on Subgenius Radio
*Reverend Howland Owl or Dr. Hal (Hal Robins),Dr. Hal Robins SubGenius Wikia Clench. artist for The Book of the Subgenius,The Book of the SubGenius: The Sacred Teachings of J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs by J. R. Dobbs (1983) McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070622299. has appeared in parades
*Puzzling Evidence, host of the SubGenius radio show,The SubGenius Hour of Slack Podcast: The Church of the SubGenius Weekly Radio MinistryPuzzling Evidence SubGenius Wikia Clench. has appeared in parades and designed the First Church of the Last Laugh website.
Another loose affiliation of the FCLL is with the (SFCS). The parade literally does sound like Cacophony. Since 1990, co-founder of the SFCS has been bringing his three Doggie Diner dog heads (named, "Manny, Moe and Jack"), together forming the Dogminican Order, to the parade.Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society edited by Kevin Evans, Carrie Galbraith & John Law (2013) Last Gasp Publishing.
==The parade==
The first parade in 1979 began with Ed Holmes and a small group then known as the "Deep Fat Friars" who marched around the San Francisco Financial District, blessing banks and throwing pennies at the Stock Exchange.Silly — yes; fun — assuredly; stupid — well, why not? by Terry Link (1 April 1983) The Oakland Tribune. By 1983, St. Stupid had become the patron saint of parking meters.SF honors St. Stupid (1 April 1983) AP via The Press Democrat. The seventh parade in 1986 had an inauspicious ending with the arrest of Bishop Joey for allegedly drinking alcohol in public; he was found not guilty by reason that he was not actually observed drinking but rather picking up a glass at an outdoor cafe table for the purpose of mock toasts."'Stupid' parade leader found not guilty" (12 August 1986) The Oakland Tribune. This event that was subsequently known as the "Martyrdumb of Bishop Joey".The Martyrdumb of The Bishop Saint Stupid (archived from April 14, 2001).
Just to confuse, the parade has different routes depending on whether April 1st falls on a weekday or weekend. The weekday route, which is more fun if for no other reason that one can slack off work, has seven stations of stupid.The Parades Ov The First Church of the Last Laugh (FCLL) The First Church of the Last Laugh (archived from February 11, 2012). The seven stations of stupid are vaguely reminiscent of Christian's fourteen stations of the cross.
===The weekday parade===
The first thing people may notice about this list is that it begins and ends with a zero. Why? It could be just because — stupid!
Parade goers often wear funny costumes (or rarely none at all, hold funny signs and play silly music. Each year, some famous person has done something really stupid and would hence be a target for mockery. The main parts of Bishop Joey's speeches are similar from year-to-year, with some ad libbing. Due to incomplete or noisy videos of past parades, these texts are edited from video and text from the more complete videos for 1997Saint Stupid's Day Parade 1997 by Scott Beale (Aug 24, 2020) YouTube. and 2014.I marched in the 36th annual St Stupid's Day Parade (Apr 2, 2014) YouTube.St Stupid Parade 4 1 14 by PuzzlingEvidenceTV (Apr 14, 2014) YouTube.
====The first zero====
Here Bishop Joey pumps up the crowd and gives an introduction:
====The First Station of Stupid====
This station ends with a ritual throwing of losing lottery tickets in the air.
====The Second Station of Stupid====
This station takes place on the normally little-noticed side of the skysraper, where there is a plain door without an external handle, about one step below ground level.
====The Third Station of Stupid====
thumb|right|165px|The Bare Butt Mechanics
This station is located at the 
====The Fourth and/or Fifth Station of Stupid====
This station is a parade rest, and includes a free lunch. It's commonly said that there's no such thing as a free lunch.Quote Origin: There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch — TANSTAAFL (August 27, 2016) Quote Investigator. Well, that's just false. You probably won't like the lunch though. This station is located at the Citibank Atrium, adjacent to the cake-shaped building (532 Market Street).
====The Sixth Station of Stupid====
This station is located on the steps of the now-former which was located at 301 Pine Street until it closed in 2006.
During the years when the Pacific Stock Exchange was still active during parades, there were sometimes spontaneous shouts from the crowd of "Jump! Jump! Jump!" if office workers could be seen peering at the parade from the office building windows across the street from the parade. This was in reference to the semi-apocryphal stories of stockbrokers jumping from office windows during the Great Depression.The Jumpers of '29 by Bennett Lowenthal (October 24, 1987) The Washington Post.The Great Crash, 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith (1955) Houghton Mifflin.The Great Stock Market Crash of 1929: Why History Textbooks and the Conventional Wisdom Get It Wrong by Thomas Schwartz (2022) Hoover Heads, National Archived.
====The Seventh Station of Stupid====
The Seventh Station is at the Banker's Heart at which was formerly known as the 	Bank of America Center. The locally-known "Banker's Heart" is a large lump of black granite sculpted by Masayuki Nagare that he called "Transcendence".Art for the city's sake / Public art adds a touch of class to a city by Valerie Fahey (Nov 6, 2005) SFGate.
====The second zero====
The parade returns to the first zero. Duh!
===The weekend parade===
The weekend parade has four stations since 2003:
The weekend parade is not too noteworthy other than briefly annoying the Scientology local headquarters located at the by chanting and shouting outside their HQ, thereby transmitting engrams to disrupt their E-Meters. The building was purchased in 2003 by the Church of Scientology. Unnoticed by most parade marchers is that the first stop, the pointy building (formally, the "Transamerica Pyramid") was formerly owned by Transamerica Corporation, when they decided after deciding to move from what is now The Fugazi Bank Building, based on pointy pyramids being better than 
In 2018, April 1 corresponded with Easter Sunday. As it so happens Washington Square Park is across the street from the large (located at 666 Filbert Street). It was a twofer!
==External links==
*The First Church of the Last Laugh (FCLL) — an archive of the church's website (through 2021 before it went offline and the website got taken over by a stupid casino)
*Sayings of stupid
*St. Stupids Day Parades — Creative Commons photos from some past parades by Bryan Costales
*St Stupid's Day 2004 Creative Commons photos by Steve Rhodes
==Notes==
==References==
Category:American religions
Category:Holidays
Category:Parody religions
Category:Saints