My childhood is a hazy mystery to me. Lately, I've started to suspect I might have brain damage, but that's beside the point. One unifying thread that runs through my whole life, however, is the presence of a fake radio program that's planted itself in my brain and reminds me at every turn that everything I know is wrong.

It's filled my subconscious with images of a detective named Nick Danger, Third Eye; eyeball hats signifying the doom of civilization under the threat of Y2K; the ever-present Department of Redundancy Department; and an eternal huckster off the interstate named Ralph Spoilsport. My memory is laughing at me, and a certain amount of it is my dad's fault. He is the man who brought me out of infancy, through adolescence, and into adulthood with Firesign Theatre forever playing in the background.

It's only fair then that my dad rides shotgun with me as I interview the members of Firesign Theatre, the cult comedy troupe that helped define both of our existences - and that will be at the Broadway Center's Theatre on the Square for two rare shows this Sunday.

Phil Austin, David Ossman, Phil Proctor, and Peter Bergman met in the late '60s through Bergman's groundbreaking alternative radio program, Radio Free Oz. Finding a comedic rapport, the four went on to record their first album together, Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him. From that first record, Firesign Theatre spun forth an enormous amount of material.

But how to describe the kind of comedy that Firesign Theatre produces? It's surreal and chaotic; cerebral and absurd; jam-packed with topical references sharing space with facts made of whole cloth. They're pitched in the style of '30s and '40s radio plays, but they exist in a universe where time has been compressed into 45-minute bursts of words and ideas. It sounds like stream-of-consciousness, but the craft at work is beyond meticulous. It's something that, truly, has to be heard and heard again to be understood.

In that way, it now occurs to me, Firesign Theatre is almost a perfect mirror for humanity, if we can look at humanity in its most optimistic light. As humans, we function with (more or less) the knowledge of the entirety of civilization. It's compressed into our being, and shot out in bursts of words and ideas reflecting every shade and nuance of sincerity and absurdity. We have to be heard and heard again to be understood.

But there I go, getting wound up in my head again. Firesign Theatre can do that to you.

Back to my dad. How do they write these incredibly dense pieces of work, he asks.

"The way the Firesign Theatre writes is unique," says Bergman. "Nothing got finalized on paper unless all four of us agreed, so there were some long periods where, say, one guy would hold out but the result was we would end up with material that really was the best."

"The way we've always characterized it [is] we refer to ourselves as the ‘four or five crazy guys,'" says Phil Austin. "We've always referred to the fact that there is this fifth guy who we've never actually seen, who does seem to know way more than the four of us and who, by the end of things, will tie up the loose ends."

When Phil Austin asserts that the writing process may be a little chaotic, Bergman rebuts, "Chaotic? Sometimes it was chaotic, but the result was pretty strong, so I would say it was the fruits of anarchy, of creative anarchy."

All four members have stayed busy over the 40 years since Firesign Theatre's inception, working solo or as a troupe. Though it's been a while since a proper new Firesign Theatre album surfaced, the notion of releasing one isn't outside the realm of possibility, I'm told.

I implore you to take this rare opportunity to catch Firesign Theatre live, and witness for yourself their fruits of anarchy.

[Theatre on the Square, Firesign Theatre, Sunday, Jan. 24, 3 and 7 p.m., $29-$39, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.591.5894]