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| Q. Who's behind Jumbo Mumbo? A. Jumbo Mumbo was founded by Barry Willis. A brief bio follows: "I was born in Greenville, Mississippi, but my family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, when I was one. And although I look back on that year with a great deal of fondness and a lot of good memories, I think of myself as a native Memphian." In Memphis, Willis went to school at East where he attended from grades one through twelve. "Funny, even though I went there for twelve years, I was always known as 'the new kid.'" His career as a writer probably had its origins in high school where he honed his skills writing phony absentee excuses ("I think it's a neglected area of fiction," he says), but he really found his inner voice in college. There, he pursued his interest in poetry, writing in the rarely-used confessional limerick style. "It's sort of a cross between Sylvia Plath and Ogden Nash." After college, Willis put his writing career on the back burner and embarked on a series of entrepreneurial ventures. "I guess I saw myself as the next Bill Gates, which is interesting because Bill Gates wasn't famous at the time." His first project--a chain of minor emergency psychiatric clinics for people with bruised egos and anxiety attacks--was a flop. "I really thought that one would fly," he laments, "but I guess our first mistake was going with love seats instead of couches." After several more failures, including the Larva Lamp (cool looking and educational), Willis decided to abandon the business world and pursue his first love--journalism. (Actually, journalism was his second love. His first love was Mary Sue Kravitz back in the third grade. He thought about pursuing her, but decided there was too much water under the bridge.) Willis was hired as managing editor of Memphis magazine. "Although I had a number of different duties there, my main responsibility was making sure the word 'spats' didn't appear more than once in each issue." Now a freelance writer, Willis is currently working on a screenplay for a 3-D version of Death of a Salesman in which Willy Loman sells paddleballs. His long-term goal in life: "I want to learn to speak French with a Spanish accent." Q. Where did you get the name "Jumbo Mumbo"? A. The name "Jumbo Mumbo" represents the two sides of the human condition--the yin and yang, as it were. "Jumbo" from the Greek word jumbas, meaning "large" and "Mumbo" from the Latin word mumbo, meaning, well. . . "mumbo." Oh, what the heck--the name "Mumbo Jumbo" was already taken. Q. You're a brand new site. Do you really have "frequently asked questions"? A. Of course not. Photo by Barry Willis |
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