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Lynn Johnston on her writing process

From Hogan's Alley #1:

TOM HEINTJES: What method do you use to write？ LYNN JOHNSTON: I write dialogue the way you would for a sitcom. I put the family in a situation, and I exist as a phantom in the room, and I hear them speak and I watch them move, and I follow them around, and I wait for the things to happen. Some things I coerce into happening, and some things happen spontaneously. I often never know where this completely independent family is going to take me. The stories often write themselves. It's a wakeful dream state. Mike Peters says the same thing. Even Joan Rivers admitted the same thing. When you're writing, it's like you're under a general anesthetic, where you'll wake up and say, "I don't believe it -ー the sun went down!" It's like a state of suspended animation. You are transported into a dream state so your body exists as a shell during the time you're writing. When the character April was born, a group of eight of my women friends decided to give me a surprise baby shower, and the day they planned it was a writing day. I was sitting in my studio, and my studio overlooks our driveway. Four cars pulled into my driveway, and people walked into my living room, and I still didn't know they were there. One of the women walked into my studio and said, "Lynn, there's something I want to show you." I said, "Hi Beth, how are you?" not noticing that someone had walked into my house. When she led me into the living room, I had to blink several times before I could adjust to the fact that my living room was full of balloons and friends and gifts! That's how anesthetized you are. When I draw, I can talk to a friend, I can listen to the radio, I can talk on the phone, because it's like dancing to a tune I've loved to dance to before. TOM HEINTJES: So you're never just walking through the mall when a gag comes to you. LYNN JOHNSTON: Sure! And when that happens, it's wonderful. More than likely, it's the state of mind you' re in. There are times when I intend to write and nothing happens. Then there are other times when I have the flu and I feel crummy and depressed, and I write two weeks' worth of stuff. About two weeks ago, I came up with 11 Sunday comics in one day! And you wonder, if there is some spiritual connection here, where were you guys last week? I like complete quiet when I write, though. I have to have no interruptions. I can't work if there's background noise. Well, that's not always true. We live in a forest, and there were a number of trees that were dead, and they were in danger of falling over onto the house. So we had a couple of guys come over and take them down. They chainsawed all those trees as I wrote, and I didn't see them and I didn't hear them. I went outside later at about two o'clock and said, "Holy smoke, look at all the trees you cut down! They said, "You were right there by the window the whole time!" And I never even was aware of any of it ー- the noise, the chatter, the trees falling, nothing. But that's unusual. Normally I have complete quiet. If I played a radio, I'd hear snippets of conversation or song lyrics that would distract me.

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Lynn Johnston on the reader response to the Lawrence "coming out" storyline in For Better Or For Worse

TOM HEINTJES: How is your mail running, now that a large part of sequence has run? LYNN JOHNSTON: At this point, it's overwhelmingly supportive. The negative letters have been very angry or very religious. One very fine letter came in from a very religious lady who told me that I was misguided, and that with love and understanding, she wanted me to know that. She hoped I'd find peace in Jesus. I thought that was a wonderful letter. I really appreciate this lady, because she was still loving and kind and accepting of me, no matter what my beliefs were, and that to me was wonderfully valid. But then you get letters from people who say, "Do you realize that all serial killers are homosexual?" One hysterically funny letter came from a man who was in his 60s, and he began by explaining what an upright, Christian man he is, and that he doesn't believe in a debauched lifestyle, and if I only knew what these people did to each other, I would be so disgusted and repelled that I would never consider socializing with them. And he added that what they did was so horrific that he didn't want to even think about it, and then he followed it with four pages of detailed descriptions! I've gotten very few letters from people who are gay. I think the people who will be particularly affected by this story are waiting until it's over before they say whether or not it was good. For the most part, I'm hearing from families, psychiatrists, doctors, teachers, very open-minded people who are saying, "Good ー- we have left this in a closet for far too long, and it's time we allowed people a life." And I've gotten letters of support from people of all ages. There are teachers who are going over this a day at a time with their students, with the approval of the students' parents. They're writing and phoning to tell me that it's an educational tool. One letter was from a mother who said that because of the strip, her son had the courage to tell her that he was a homosexual, and because of the strip, she had the courage to handle it well. I also got a letter from a woman in Edmonton who said that if the strip had run last year, perhaps her son would still be alive, because then he would know that he was not the only one in the world with this problem. It's that kind of response that makes me think it's been worth the rollercoaster ride it's put me on. It would be so much easier not to make a statement, not to tell a story, to continue to be that yellowing page on the refrigerator.

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Lynn Johnston on wanting her work to be meaningful

From Hogan's Alley 1:

LYNN JOHNSTON: ...I never thought that I could do this. I never applied for this job. I never sent anything in and said, "Hey, check this out, give me a job." When I signed a contract at Universal Press Syndicate, the people around that big rosewood table were interested in celebrating. They wanted to take me out to lunch, but I went back to the hotel and -- swear to God -ー got physically ill. TOM HEINTJES: You realized what you'd gotten yourself into. LYNN JOHNSTON: How could I produce material every day, 365 days a year? How could I do that? I could see producing a book now and then, but a daily comic strip? I was going to have readers every day who would expect a certain level of quality work, and I think that maybe that's why I segued into the little vignettes that have moralistic and motherly values, like little parables. I might not be able to have a joke every day, but I could have a thought every day. When you're very young, you often find yourself completely devoted to something, whether it's Elvis Presley or a father figure or whatever. You become a cult member of some sort. And when I was very young, I wanted to be married to a minister. I didn't want to be a minister, but I wanted to be the wife of one, because I wanted to write his sermons. I was about eight years old, and I would lie in bed and pray, "Please, God, make me a minister's wife," because I wanted to write something that would mean something to people! I was brought up believing that everyone was bathed in sin. You would arrive at church, the day would be beautiful, the birds would be singing, everything would smell like fresh morning dew, and you'd feel great! And when you walked out after the service, you'd feel like you had nailed some poor sucker to a cross! "Wait a minute! I was happy until I came here!" [laughter] And I don't think spiritual guidance necessarily means shredding your self-confidence and destroying your day. You should come out of church wanting to carry on and care about people, pursuing your dreams and being positive. And when I was that little girl, I wanted to write pieces for that audience that would lift them up and make them feel great! And do you know what？ TOM HENTJES: Yeah in a very real way, you ended up doing just that. LYNN JOHNSTON： And I never even married a minister! [laughter]

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Lynn Johnston on subtlety in For Better or For Worse

TOM HEINTJES: Even from the earliest days of For Better Or For Worse, when the strip was still evolving, to its current incarnation, you've managed to bring a lot of what I would call subtlety into a medium that is generally not known for its subtlety. One of my favorite strips you've done was the Sunday where Elly was standing on the patio brushing her hair, reminiscing about how she used to watch her mother do the same thing, and all the while Elizabeth is watching Elly. It was so understated and poignant, and I think the reason it stayed with me is because comics have traditionally not dealt well with subtle themes and topics. LYNN JOHNSTON: I think maybe it's because I'm a girl. [laughter] There are so many men in the business who are good at the comedy part, but the subtle, gentle, nuance part, you don't see that much. I think Brian Bassett, who does Adam, is very capable of that. I think Sparky [Charles Schulz] does that. I do it. Cathy Guisewite is far more brazen, but you'll see that gut-wrenching insight in Cathy. They have their finger on that sensitive pulse. They make you say, "Yes, I know how that feels." It's not necessarily funny, but it's real.

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Lynn Johnston on drawing as a child

From Hogan's Alley #1, Fall 1994:

TOM HEINTJES: Did you devise any sort of escape mechanism for the life you had? LYNN JOHNSTON: I was very reclusive. I spent hours and hours in my room drawing. That was my other release, and that was my way of surviving. You see, anything I imagined, I could draw. And I found that if I was in a terrible depression and I closed my eyes, the blackness would appear to go on forever. But if I put it down on paper, it was no bigger than 8 ½ by 11, and I could deal with that. If you have a horror inside of you, it goes down to your marrow. But on paper, it's not so bad. TOM HEINTJES: So drawing became a form of therapy. LYNN JOHNSTON: It was a way to survive. If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper. ［laughter］ If I wanted to draw funny pictures, I would draw them, and I remember loving watching my brother laugh at them. My brother was a great audience, and if he liked the picture, he would laugh and laugh and laugh, and he would want to keep the picture. Making people laugh with an image I had created ... what power that was!

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Comic Strip History - Gary Larson and the Thagomizer

As with most things I do research on, this one turned out to be more complicated than I thought it would.

Gary Larson is the cartoonist behind the very successful single panel comic The Far Side. The panel was syndicated in newspapers from 1980 to 1995, and some newer material appeared on the official website between 2020 and 2023. The humor is often described as "off the wall" and "surreal," though many times it can be incredibly relatable. Many of the jokes involve animals, and Larson was especially fond of using insects and prehistoric animals to tell his jokes. He also often used cavemen along with the prehistoric animals, which is of course historically inaccurate, but when the joke is funny enough it can be forgiven. That said, despite the historical inaccuracy, Larson has been praised by biologists for his attention to detail when it came to drawing the animals, especially the insects, and has gained a following among paleontologists from his many depictions of dinosaurs. In fact, he has amassed quite a following over the years in the scientific community at large, despite never being a part of it himself.

However, this is not to say that he was recognized by scientists immediately, or is enjoyed by all scientists equally, as will be shown.

On May 27, 1982, Larson published a comic depicting a group of cavemen attentively watching a presentation given by another caveman on the anatomy of the Stegosaurus. The caveman in the front points to an image of the Stegosaurus and says, "Now, this end is called the thagomizer... after the late Thag Simmons," indicating the spikes on the end of the tail. This also implies that said Thag had an unfortunate encounter with the tail spikes of the Stegosaurus, and the cavemen had named them in his honor. For many years this was just a joke, probably enjoyed by a majority of readers, and a contingent of paleontologists, but still simply a joke and nothing more. It would remain so for a little over 10 years, until a certain paleontologist decided to take the joke a bit further.

In September of 1993, at the Fifty-Third annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Kenneth Carpenter gave a presentation on a stegosaurus skeleton that had, at that time, been recently discovered. Up to that point, there were theories about what the tail spikes would have been used for, among them the idea that they were used for defense against predators, but there was no fossil evidence to back any of them up. At this meeting, however, Carpenter suggested that the particular stegosaurus skeleton on display showed evidence that the tail spikes had been used as a defensive weapon against a predator, as one of the spikes had been broken off. Carpenter also remembered the Far Side cartoon, which suggested a stegosaurus had used its tail spikes as a weapon against Thag, so he dubbed them "thagomizer" in honor of Larson. While this was not conclusive evidence of the nature of the usage of the thagomizer, later discoveries, including that of an allosaurus skeleton with a thagomizer spike embedded in it, led much more credence to this idea.

Following Carpenter's lead, other paleontologists began using the term in professional settings, and over the years it has been used in more and more places. Though it never became an official term for the Stegosaurus tail spikes, it is currently in use by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, and even in the exhaustive dinosaur reference book "The Complete Dinosaur."

That said, not everyone in the paleontology community embraced this term quite as readily. In fact, there are some who are actively against it.

A perusal of the Internet will reveal that many people mistakenly believe that "thagomizer" is the official term for the stegosaurus tail spikes, which it unfortunately is not. There are those, mostly stegosaurus researchers, who take great pleasure in pointing out that not only is this not true, but that such an "official term" doesn't exist. Dr. David Hone said as much in a reply to a Reddit post about the origin of the word, and went on to say that "most paleontologists don't use it," though when presented with contrary evidence he did go on to admit that many do. Dr. Susannah Maidment, in a profile of her on the website for Utah's Natural History Museum, says that she doesn't use the term because "paleontology already has more than enough jargon," and that simply using the phrase "tail spikes" will do. In fact, in a reply to a Twitter thread about the origin of the word, Dr. Maidment stated that not only is it not a word used by paleontologists, but "No self-respecting palaeontologist has ever used the word." Later tweets in the thread suggest that Dr. Maidment may also have asked those who publish papers on stegosaurs to remove the word from them before publishing. It seems she had also stated that there were no peer-reviewed published papers that had used the word, but it's unclear whether no one had, or that no one had been allowed to.

Whatever the case, it's clearly a very popular word among non-professional dinosaur enthusiasts, as well as those of a more professional persuasion. So, while Larson can't be credited with coining an official term, coining a popular colloquialism is still notable. Personally, I'm a fan, and I think fun words like thagomizer should be more common in science. If someone has an issue with "thagomizer," I would suggest looking up the origin of the word "quark."

That's not the only way that the scientific community has shown their appreciation for Gary Larson, either. Biologist Dale Clayton, when he discovered a new species of owl louse, named it Strigiphilus garylarsoni, "in appreciation of the unique light [Larson] has shed on the workings of nature." Also, in 1991, Kurt Johnson named a species of butterfly after Larson, Serratoterga larsoni, though the species was later merged with another one and the genus name was changed. This does mean that the louse is the only one that stuck, but of having a louse named after him, Larson has said, "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."

For more information:

Watch Out For That Thagomizer! at Smithsonian Magazine

Gary Larson profile at Salon.com

Thagomizer in The Complete Dinosaur at Google Books

David Hone refuting the official-ness of the word on Reddit

Dr. Susannah Maidment profile at Natural History Museum of Utah

Susannah Maidment replies to a tweet about the Thagomizer on Twitter

...and a further Maidment reply

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Unexpected Comic Strip Creators - Matt Groening

I've been hesitant to write about this, because I'm not entirely sure how unexpected it is. I prefer to write about creators whose comic strip careers have been completely and entirely shrouded by whatever else they've done. I've always felt like Matt Groening's career prior to The Simpsons was well known, at least among fans of his, so I never felt a need to touch on it. That said, as the years go on, I have seen The Simpsons and Futurama continue to be remembered and referenced while Life In Hell, Groening's newspaper comic, has slightly faded into obscurity. So, I thought I ought to shed a bit more light on it.

Life In Hell was a comic strip that ran from 1980 to 2012, primarily in alternative weekly newspapers. It began life in 1977, as a comic book that Groening photocopied and sent to his friends, with various gags about how horrible it is to live in Los Angeles. He attempted to get some of his comics published in the LA Weekly without success. In 1978, he successfully had it published in the magazine Wet, but it didn't last long there. After working at the LA Reader for a while doing various jobs, he showed some of his comics to the editor, James Vowell. Vowell liked his work, and began publishing the strip in the back of the paper in 1980. After some initial success in the Reader, Groening was able to convince several other newspapers to run the strip as well. While working at the Reader he met Deborah Caplan, who later became his first wife. By his own admission Groening was not very good at self-syndicating, and asked Caplan to assist. Eventually the two of them would start the Acme Syndicate, which initially syndicated not only Life In Hell, but also Lynda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek and cartoons drawn by John Callahan. Barry would later decide to syndicate herself, and Callahan would later be syndicated by a former Groening employee, leaving Life In Hell as the only strip at the Acme Syndicate. Larger, more mainstream syndicates expressed interest in the strip as well, though they would generally ask for some of the material to be changed, which Groening refused to do. This did nothing to halt its success, however. Even though at that time you couldn't see it in any mainstream publications, it was in nearly every alternative newspaper you could find.

This popularity within the alternative press is precisely what led to Groening's animation career. Groening was initially approached to do an animated adaptation of Life In Hell, but was apprehensive due to having to give away licensing rights to the strip. Rather than jeopardize any future opportunities to license Life In Hell, he created The Simpsons, which first ran as short animations on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 and later became a standalone animated series beginning in 1989.

The Simpsons became very popular fairly quickly, and would of course become one of the most successful animated shows in history. Despite this, Groening continued to produce weekly Life In Hell strips and at that time promised to never give it up, as it was "his foundation." In fact, the success of The Simpsons led to more success for Life In Hell. While major syndicates had previously hesitated to print the strip in its original form, now that his work had been generally accepted among mainstream audiences they were willing to run it without alteration. Groening did make one concession, which was to not use profanity, but the content was otherwise the same, and several mainstream newspapers began running the strip in the mid- to late 90s.

His work on Life In Hell also crossed over with his work on The Simpsons in some ways. Several episodes of the show include references to the strip. In 1993, when Groening started a comic book company to publish comic books based on The Simpsons, among other properties, he named it Bongo Comics after the main character of Life in Hell, Bongo. The strip was clearly very important to him, even as it took a backseat to The Simpsons in most people's minds. When you read Life In Hell, however, you can understand why.

Life In Hell is clearly a very personal strip. While the characters in the strip are fictional, the situations are pulled from Groening's own life. As previously stated, the initial gags were all about his experiences living in LA, but later he would do gags relating to his childhood, being married, and having a child of his own, as well as some of his struggles working in television and in Hollywood. The humor is dark and sometimes depressing, and I personally find it difficult to read. That said, I can imagine that many people can relate to it and that it was therapeutic for him to draw and write. His childhood clearly was very rough, with abusive parents and siblings, and his adult life in many cases seemed very difficult for various reasons. One can understand, then, why he would want to continue doing it despite his success with other media and the dwindling newspaper market. It was a thing that he did for him, that he could control completely, and he wanted to create something of that sort.

Despite this, the strip ultimately came to an end in 2012. At least as early as 2009, Groening had stated that he didn't think the strip would last much longer, due to changes in the alternative press market as well as his ever increasing television and movie workload. Groening had apparently made attempts to publish his strips on the Internet as far back as 1998, but none of those attempts ever bore any fruit. There are fan-made archives of his work on the Internet, however.

For more information:

Life In Hell at Don Markstein's Toonopedia

Matt Groening at Lambiek Comiclopedia

Rob Rodi on Life In Hell from The Comics Journal #114

Matt Groening article in TV Host, from 1989

Excerpts from a Matt Groening interview with Gary Groth, from The Comics Journal #141

Matt Groening interview in Flux Magazine, from September 1995

Matt Groening interview in Mother Jones, from March/April 1999

Matt Groening interview with CNN, from February 2009

USA Today article on the strip ending

Life In Hell references in The Simpsons, up to 2014

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McFadden's Row of Flats, December 27, 1896

We end this December 2024 as we began it, with another Yellow Kid. Like before, there's always so much to see in these comics. You might see some bad, unsightly things, but there are a lot of good things to see here as well, much like the year that has just passed. Hopefully this next year will have fewer of the bad things and more of the good.

Happy 2025 everyone.

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Professor Otto and His Auto, December 28, 1902

George Herriman is of course most well known for his masterpiece of a comic strip, Krazy Kat, but prior to the Kat's kreation creation Herriman penned several other strips which lasted for varying amounts of time. Professor Otto and His Auto lasted less than a year, beginning in March 1902 and most likely not lasting into 1903. Today's comic is probably the last Professor Otto strip that ran.

The strip was, as the title suggests, about a professor and the various things he does while in his automobile. I guess one thing he really enjoys is running into things with it, so his resolution is to only run into snowmen from now on. It seems causing emotional trauma to children is preferable to causing physical harm to people, at least in his mind. Mistaking Henry for a snowman and plowing into him, causing Henry to beat him to a pulp, is possibly why Professor Otto did not return for another strip.

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Ever Happen To You, December 28, 1959

As a kid, when you get socks or underwear or clothes of any kind for Christmas, it can be a major disappointment. Maybe getting a cool new jacket or some neat graphic t-shirts or something could be fun, but socks are always boring. Socks with fun patterns on them are disappointing, too, because it just feels like a boring thing that's trying too hard to not be boring. Extra points off if they're Christmas themed, because in reality those are socks you can't even wear until next Christmas.

Contrast this with how some adults feel about getting socks. While it seems nearly all socks made for kids are basically the same, and all you really worry about is if they will fit or not, adult socks come in so many different shapes, sizes, textures, and fabrics that getting some good ones as a gift can actually be exciting for some people. So when adults give kids socks, they may not actually be thinking about how the kid would feel about getting them and are mostly thinking about how they would feel. This, of course, leads to the Aunt Eloises of the world giving the Sonnys of the world socks for Christmas. If you are an Aunt Eloise, perhaps next year you should consider giving those socks to your adult siblings, and get something more fun and exciting for your nieces and nephews.

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Texas Slim, December 25, 1955

I'm just reading between the lines here, but I get the feeling Colonel Beef was trying to keep the boys from leaving because he either was aware of the surprise party being planned, or planned it himself. It's a shame they didn't get to be there, but I hope the colonel had a good party with the rest of the folks even in their absence. Dalton deserved to lose that 47 cents, though.

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Ever Happen To You, December 30, 1959

I don't remember having to return very many presents that I've been given over the years, either for Christmas or for birthdays. Perhaps once or twice. On the whole, though, I've always felt bad about doing it because it seems ungrateful to the person giving the gift. If someone has gone out of their way to give me something that they thought I would like, the least I can do is at least use it or try to enjoy it.

I can understand it when it comes to clothing, however, which seems to be what today's strip is referring to. Giving someone clothing is always difficult, especially children who are growing and who it may be hard to keep track of what size they are at any given moment. Using the returns as an opportunity to get entirely different clothing seems a bit ungrateful, though. I would have to return it and get something either exactly the same or as similar as possible in order for me to not feel bad about it.

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Candy, December 25, 2024

Gift giving is hard. I've never been good at it. I'm never sure what someone else would like to receive. It appears the Candy family has the same issue, and what they've done is give gifts that they would like to have given back to them when the person they gave them to doesn't like them. It all works out in the end, I guess.

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Terr'ble Thompson, December 25, 1955

Terr'ble Thompson was an unfortunately short lived comic created by Gene Deitch, who was better known for his work in animation. The strip only lasted about six months, but Deitch would adapt it for a Terrytoons animated series called Tom Terrific a couple years later. It lasted only a couple of years, but reruns could be seen on the Captain Kangaroo show for many years after that. Terr'ble Thompson was known as the "Hero of Hist'ry," or at least that's what he called himself. He was so called because had some kind of time traveling ability that allowed him to go to any time period and meet various historical figures.

I guess Santa Claus counts as an historical figure, because we have Thompson meeting him here. This is the conclusion to a story about Santa Claus wanting to stay home for Christmas because no one believes in him anymore. The elves seem to feel the same way. Thompson uses his shirt and hat to make Santa a "beard cozy", which rejuvenates him and his elves and makes him want to give out presents at Christmas again. The decision to stay home must have happened at the very last minute, because the 4th panel makes it look like the presents were all ready to go but just weren't loaded onto the sleigh yet. Maybe Santa didn't really want to stay home, but was just thinking about it. Good thing Thompson gave him the little push he needed in order to make the right decision.

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Ella Cinders, December 19, 1937

I don't have a lot to say about this one, other than the fact that I just love it. I love the clown car of Santas that just keep coming out of the chimney. I love the dialogue in the 2nd panel that so simply sets up the whole situation. Of course, I just like Ella Cinders generally, and this one in particular is just great.

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Li'l Abner, December 26, 1937

I've never been much of a fan of Li'l Abner, because unlike certain other strips like Walt Kelly's Pogo which seems to actually have some respect for its Southern US swamp denizens, Al Capp always seemed to make every joke at the expense of the hillbilly folk. It felt like we were laughing at them when we should have been laughing with them. However, I think today's strip is very cute. Sure, Pa Yokum in his advanced age still believes in Santa Claus who we all know isn't real, but his belief is seen as something that should be preserved rather than ridiculed. Even for those of us who don't believe in a real, living Santa, I think continuing to talk about folkloric characters like him as if they do exist still adds something fun to the holiday season. Plus, if you're lucky, maybe you'll have a dream about meeting him.

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Mortimer and Charlie, December 24, 1939

It's always surreal to see media based on puppet characters that portrays them as regular people who walk around and go places on their own. While in the fiction of the puppet world they do have their own lives, there's an audience understanding that these things are being operated by a person. If it's something like The Muppets or Sesame Street where the puppeteers aren't really seen or shown, then it's not as weird, but in the case of Mortimer and Charlie, the lack of Edgar Bergen is noticeable. The ventriloquist is an integral part of the ventriloquist act, and having the dummies walk and talk without him just doesn't feel right.

On top of that, we see that in the fiction of this dummy world the dummies are actually the size of ventriloquist dummies. Had Edgar Bergen actually been in the comic, he would appear normal size, and they would appear the size that they do in his act. This allows for the punchline of today's strip, which shows Mortimer Snerd, who is small enough to fit into a baby's cradle, falling asleep in the baby furniture display. Why he has to get yelled at by a disgruntled wife in order for that to happen, I'm not sure. Having Mortimer wait in line for the phone booth forever, ask Charlie what kind of star he wants, and then go back to the store only to find it closed would work just as well. But I guess that wouldn't be Edgar Bergen-esque enough.