INTERVIEW WITH PHIL COMER by Alicia Caldwell

Award-winning, Utah-based writer Alicia Caldwell interviewed Phil Comer for the Write-Brained Network's December, 2010 Spotlight. (original here) The Write-Brained Network is a great online community of writers, should any be looking for an online home.

Alicia Caldwell

December '10 WB Spotlight Interview by Alicia Caldwell:

This month, say hello to Georgia writer Phil Comer.

Meet Phil Comer, fellow WBer, blogger, and all around fantastic writer. Phil lives in rural Georgia with dogs, cats, chickens and spousal unit. He has led writing teams for corporations, trade associations and has in excess of one million words ghosted in worldwide corporate dossiers.

Early on, he was owner/operator of The Last Resort, a venerable folk, jazz and blues venue in Athens, Ga., characterized in the press as "a local bohemian nightspot catering to the avant-garde." A popular speaker, he writes scripts and leads cemetery and historical rambles. His hobbies include international home stays, an outlet affording power naps in 30+ countries on six continents.

Phil Comer

AC: When did you first discover you loved to write?
 

PC: Writing is hard. I don’t love to write; I write because I have to. Sounds schizophrenic, but I started creative writing to engage the voices in my head, to discipline their cacophony. It’s like taking dictation; I write what they say. I use a lot of dialogue---sometimes can’t type fast enough to keep up.

The end result is gratifying. But, writing is exhausting work. Writing is re-writing. Layering. Revisiting. Constant switching, left to right brain---the creative versus the analytical.

When I was a kid, my mother had a manila pocket stuck to the wall. Every Friday I had to have a new little story or poem in it. I guess Mom invented blogging.

AC: You recently started a blog (and one of your posts was given a shout-out on the Guide to Literary Agents blog. Wow!) Can you tell us about it and, besides your crazy rants, what kinds of things we can expect to see there?

PC: I don’t censor myself. I’m sure I’ll offend. I realized recently, that’s because I’ve never had kids. Parents learn early to put on the kibosh. Consequently, I’m sometimes shocking unintentionally, but never mean-spirited. I’m not obscene.

I launched the blog on Nov. 1, 2010. The shout-out in Guide To Literary Agents came on Nov. 8. Talk about instant feedback and gratification!

Ricki [Schultz] blogged about Chuck Sambuchino’s gnome book. He’s editor of Guide to Literary Agents. He used a bunch of gnome puns in his book. I started thinking in “Gnome”---gnomenclature as he and Ricki call it---and this silly gnome rap popped out. Chuck read it, liked it, and he blogged about it. Yea!

One of the first things I blogged was my Stalker Poem ["My Darling"]; it’s something I perform at open mics. It’s meant to be fun. A number of people commented how it channels insanity. Anyhow, the blog’s had several hits from a Danish psychiatry site. Not sure the connection. When I click back on their link, it’s in Danish. Can’t read a word.

[Editor's note: Click here to see a YouTube video of Phil performing it!]

BTW, the story behind Stalker Poem is, a friend was deliberating a restraining order against her former boyfriend. I started the poem to help her see his point of view. By the time I finished, I was like, “Nah. Get the restraining order.” But, that’s where art comes from.

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 4. THE EXORCISM

[Start with Part 1 (Go!) Or click the title above to hear Talley sing.]

Ex-Gay Kirk Talley Sings To His Helmet

SQUEALING LIKE PIGS

The Evangelicals' music is good.

All that hands-up-in-the-air business looks too much like waving bye-bye to Jesus.

Pert, creased, manicured and coifed gospel singer Kirk Talley said he practices while wearing a motorcycle helmet, "Try it. It beats singing in the shower!"

Talley also described in graphic detail the exorcism that presumably delivered him from homosexuality. The exorcism was orchestrated by Rev. Roy Blankenship of Exodus International. Rev. Blankenship, a dead ringer for Karl Rove, was another of the presenters.

I'm skipping this part. If the Village People included "Gospel Singer," that Talley guy would have been "Miss It"!

Misses Indian, Cop, Biker and Construction Worker were quite sufficient.

Need a beer? I'm outta here.

Quickly while he's away: Crucifixes (not the Christ-less Protestant kind). Bibles. Ice water. Non-erotic writhing. Shouting. Tongues. Exhortations. Gnashing teeth. Rending cloth. Meanwhile, members of the opposite sex gather within earshot for prayer and supportive wailing. Upon deliverance of a sign -- perhaps calling "Uncle"? -- the recipient receives a change of orientation. The ladies then serve red velvet cake and the sweet iced tea of thanksgiving.

Back. Can't make that stuff up! That part was SO creepy. What needed changing after all that was the guy's underwear. The crowd ate it up!

Interesting, "ex-gay" ministries preserve quaint anachronisms like exorcism yet eschew sacred rites such as snake-handling. Frankly likely due to the latter being too gay.

Shaking your serpent or somebody else's could open any number of wormholes.

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 3. THE MOJO OF HOMO NO MO'

[Start with Part 1 (Go!)]

'Doctor Ex-Gay' Joe Nicolosi, NARTHoleptic

You take it. Over my head.

Listeners were bombarded with pseudoscience mumbo jumbo about why people end up with same-sex attractions in the first place. They kept quoting a Dr. Joseph Nicolosi as "the world's leading authority on homosexuality" and his organization, NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, as where to find the "science" that backs them up. One might imagine a better acronym for the alleged fount of all knowledge.

Yeah, NARTH conjures images of Death Star, Darth Vader and Dick Cheney.

I know junk science when I hear it. My fear is that vulnerable kids – and their parents – might not.

I did a search of all the journals indexed by the National Library of Medicine. As of November, 2010, a total of zero, zip, nada studies turned up in the mainstream peer-reviewed scientific literature for "Nicolosi AND homosexuality" or permutations of "NARTH." Only three studies and one review popped up under any combination of those terms. They were published in what most scientists would consider a vanity journal.

What's that?

A magazine that prints almost anything for a fee.

Since Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948, the National Library of Medicine has tracked 18,701 studies under its search term "homosexuality," 18,701 versus NARTH's max of four. I can't, however, vouch for each study.

But the diagnosis is clear: A tragic case of NARTHolepsy.

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 2. LESBIANS ARE HOT

[Start with Part 1 (Go!)]

Ex-Gay Melissa Fryrear Travels with Protection

FUN HOUSE MIRRORS

The presenters were slick. What a head job! Like, by the time Haley testified he'd been arrested for same-sex prostitution in Dallas, folks were clapping, rebel yelling, stomping feet. Never heard such. And in a church! Well, this place was more like a sports arena. Christ Chapel at SportsTowne, that's what they called it.

Yes, odd. Haley said he loves talking to "gay activists."

Focus on the Family's lead ex-lesbian, trim schoolmarm-ish Melissa Fryrear, prefers the term "gay militants" for those demanding equal treatment under the law. All those not militant, she lumps as "moderates," their target. A gay moderate, she said, was someone who "may have gone to a few Gay Pride parades."

She didn't say how many.

There were no protesters. That was unfortunate in that at several places in their scripts, they refer to "the gay activists protesting outside."

Yeah, we heard they'd be punching below the Bible Belt. Tried to get word out to stay home.

We're just tickled pink that they know we're here even if we weren't there.

By the afternoon session, Fryrear was so pleased with the friendly crowd and so comfortable in her sensible shoes, at the last minute she substituted her more hard hitting talk, "Why We Can't Stay Silent," for her previously announced, "Homosexuality and the Culture."

Apparently everything Melissa Fryrear and Mike Haley said was scripted by Focus on the Family's "policy wonks," which they both insisted they weren't.

Wonks, that is.

They used the word lesbian but always put quotes around "gay."

I see you're putting quotes around "ex-gay" here.

The word queer was never used. The only exception was an "ex-gay" website targeting gay and lesbian youth, "inqueery.com."

Cool. Wish that one was ours.

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 1. THE JESUS PIECE

Ex-Gay Mike Haley - Clap For His Kids

TOO GAY, OR NOT TOO GAY?

The Religious Right recently floated a novel take on homosexuality in my hometown.

Why'd you drag me along?

Somehow, I can't quit you. The daylong multimedia revival was billed to the largely white Evangelical audience as "a fresh Christian approach." All the speakers were affiliated with Dr. James Dobson's Colorado-based Focus on the Family and/or the Florida-based "ex-gay" ministry, Exodus International. Every presenter recommended that Evangelical Christians tone down their rhetoric toward the gay and lesbian community.

Yeah. What was that all about?

I'm not sure. The political objectives of these religious groups remain unchanged: They oppose what they term "the redefinition of marriage"; they want adoptions banned for people "living homosexually" and all "public promotion of homosexuality" ceased.

That was clear from their PowerPoints.

STIGMATA ARE EASY by Phil “Bud” Comer

Not that long ago "being committed" here in Jawja meant involuntary incarceration in the insane asylum at Milledgeville. Or it implied you’d digested the complete works of Flannery O’Conner.



Duck & Bud Invoke Ancient Rite of Same-Sex Union



My commitment to Duck was a different matter.

Duck & I became a couple eleven years ago, but we’d fallen in love before that.

In 1999, on the eve of Y2K, we marked new beginnings with formal commitment, not a marriage recognized by the United States government, or the state of Jawja, but for us, a passage uniting friends, families and our futures here in Sandtrap, in the home place of my ancestors.

Our minister told us some of the oldest Christian liturgies were for same-sex unions.

Ancient same-sex unions were news to us.

Duck was raised Methodist, I, Southern Baptist. We only got the church history they wanted us to hear.

SONG FOR BENNY by Phil Comer

Oh, poor Mae Ree Snell, she’s done gone away,

She would if she could, but she could not stay.

She had two peg legs and thick nappy hair.

Tongues wagged. Fingers pointed. Folks stopped. They’d stare.

She had them wood legs and a hacking cough,

But consumption wasn’t what carried her off.

A high yella' fella' from Waycross town,

Burt up them legs. Mae Ree stuck to the ground.

Them sticks he stroked; they spontan'ous combust!

Scared that man off, left Mae Ree in the dust.

All day Mae Ree tried. All night Mae Ree cried.

But stuck there she was; ’fore dayclean, she died.

Doctor Buzzard then, he called in his kin,

By high sun that day, Mae Ree flew away.

Geechee/Gullah Oystermen, Lowcountry, Jawja

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

First couplet based on an epitaph from Chumleigh Church, Devon, England.

“Dayclean” is a Gullah/Geechee term meaning “dawn.”

Next in the Silly Poem series:

“Breaking Up Sucks,” a snarky lament on heartbreak.  (Go!)

 

© Phil Comer

Disclaimer: Characters and events are none you or I know. If you think this doesn't totally suck, please Comment, Follow and click Like. Thanks!

Text is copyright material of the author. Painting by Ralph Parker, Student Vineville Academy of the Arts, Macon, GA, Paulette Winters, Principal, used by permission. Photo by Phil Comer. Vintage video linked to title: “Yonder Comes Day,” Georgia Sea Island Singers. Unless stated otherwise, links and artwork are for information and not the property of the author. 

PARADOKE CORNER - #11 The Incomparable Junior Samples' Paraprosdokian Top Twenty

Paraprosdokian, two phrases, the second changing the meaning of the first, usually in a funny or humorous way. 

Folks around Sandtrap, Jawja, are right fond of their Favorite Son, Junior Samples. He was a big star on the Hee Haw television program way back when and still on cable. Junior is dead now, but he was Mercer County’s Barnyard Bard and did us proud.

Junior deserves a Top Twenty in the Paradoke Corner:

20) We been gettin’ a whole lot more aigs. Tacked us up a sign on the henhouse thet sez, ‘An aig a day keeps Col. Sanders away.’”

19) “Most of the Mayor’s speeches is like the horns of a steer. A point here. A point thair. Wid a lot of bull in between.”

18) Hiram Bell tole me, ‘My wife haz done run off wid my new best friend!’ I asks him, ‘Iz he a gud lookin’ fella?’ Hiram sed, “I don’t know. Ain’t never met the man.”

17) “Miz Tompkin’s baby pitched a big fit in town the other day. I sez, ‘Ain’t that youngun a mite spoilt?’ She sez, ‘Naw, that’s jist the way it smells.’”

16) “I dun lost mah last job ‘cauz of illness ‘n fatigue. Mah boss sed he jist plain sick an’ tired of me.”

15) “How’s yore wife?” I asks Tobe Hawks. He sez, “Compared to what?”

14) If’n you learn from mistakes, why is it some folk have more than one youngun?

13) “Roscoe wuz in the hospital fer three weeks. Then he taken a turn fur the nurse.”

12) “I sez, ‘I reckon I’ll go outside an’ see if‘n it are rainin’.’ Uncle Gus sez, ‘Thet’s a waste of time. Jist whistle fer the dog an’ see if he’s wet.’” 

11) “Mah memory is reel gud. They’s jist two thangs I cain’t recall. One is people’s names. I forgits whut the other one wuz.”

10) I asked the widow, “What wore yo’ husband’s las’ words?” She sez, “They wuz, ‘I jist don’t see how they kin sell this here fine corn likker fur two bits a quart.’”

9) “They dun served me a steak up in New Yawk thet were so rare, I seed cows back home hurt worse than that an’ git well.”

8) I tole the Doc he needed to fix up my son-in-law whut I’d just shot. Doc sez, ‘Why’d you go an’ do that to your own kin?’ I said, ‘Well, he warn’t my son-in-law when I shot him.’”

7) They had a cuttin’ an’ near riot over at the hog killin’. Ole Mac was bleedin’ bad. I sez, ‘Did you git cut in the fracas?’ He sed, ‘Nope. Hit war right here above my navel.’”

6) “Lawyer Crum iz a gud lawyer. He got Calib Swan a suspended sentence. They hung him.”

5) “Young fella asks me, ‘Kin I have yore daughter fur mah wife?’ I sez, ‘Might be interested. But I’ll have to see yore wife furst.’”

4) “They all laffed when ole Precious dun come to the party dressed lak a bird. They didn’t know he’d jist been tarred an’ feathered.”

3) “We found us a fishin’ spot that wuz real gud. We marked it for next time. Put us a big ole ‘X’ on the bottom of the boat.”

2) Det story ‘bout Jonah an’ the whale proves one thang. You jist cain’t keep a gud man down.”

And the Paradoke Corner Winner in the “Incomparable Junior Samples” Category:

1) “There ain’t much a’ goin’ on in a small town. But what you hears makes up fur hit.”

Next up in Paradoke Corner:

The Lucille Ball Tasty Bakers' Dozen (go!)

Or, check out Sandtrap, Jawja’s latest.  (Go!)

Compiled by Nick Adams, ranked and translated into near-English by Phil “Bud” Comer. Photo by Bud. Unless stated otherwise, links are for information and not the property of the author.