Phil Keeps Selling

I've grown accustomed to hearing less and less of Phil's normal guests in his nightly roundtable, but I wrote it off as Phil taking artistic license with his new syndicator, Talk Radio Network. After all, he was excited to drop the baton he's been running with, known as Supporting George Bush On The Iraq Issue.

Phil can now come back to the fold. He's back home, now, and is interviewing politicians, authors, and more 'authorities' than I've ever heard (except for Jay Santos) him have on, before.

I've heard the zeal in his voice while selling Barack Obama for the better part of a year, and am hearing that same hardsell over the Prop 8 passage. Much talk radio each hour, very little talk radio parody.

Finally, in the second hour of tonight's show, with 20 minutes left, he introduces Vernon, who, at first, took on the persona of Charlie, who used to start off each call with, "You won't talk over me, sir. No sir."

But it was beautiful. Vernon came on to argue against the gay lobby. Phil was getting frustrated with him, and started to press him for specifics. You could here the techno music and nightclub sounds competing with Vernon, who stopped what he was doing to call in to Phil in order to discuss his disgust with the gay lifestyle.

In fact, Vernon was the victim of a gay molester as a young kid.

Eventually, it is discovered that Vernon is making the call from a gay bar, and that he is being ushered in to the club's antechamber room, surrounded by 5 or 6 "alpha males", and is disgusted that this kind of thing goes on.

It lasted for 10 minutes. *sigh*

Then "Dr Greenthumb" takes it to the top of the hour.

I keep hoping that these bits last longer, and that he finally gets back to taking calls while in character. That was the best part of the entire parody--the caller who wasn't in on the joke.

It happened in the final hour, though, to be fair to Phil and his excellent show. A Debra called in to complain about the guest Vernon during the last hour, then Phil stops the call half way through to get Vernon back in the action. It was excellent. Priceless.

That was one of the rare times I've heard one of his characters interact with a real caller. I hope it happens more often.