Ordinary ‘Lake Wobegon’ Weakened by Sight Gags

In a new 90-minute special--”Lake Wobegon Loyalty Days,” showing at 9 p.m. Sunday on the Disney Channel--we find Garrison Keillor in a ribald Viking costume, with a staff topped by a fish. These are the ancient habilaments of the Sons of Knute. He inducts the audience in Minneapolis into the order by reading the sacred creed, concluding with six “oh-yahs” and two snorts, “signifying the clearing of the head.”

To true Keillorians, we reject sight gags (though amusing), including the use of the Minnesota Orchestra as straight men and women for Keillor parodies (though amusing).

These are essentially impure.

What we need is the news from home, that the school board has decided not to fire Lyle: “Poplar trees on the south side of the school will be bare on account of the fact that the caterpillars that hatched out in his 11th-grade biology class unit on larvae turned out to be tent worms. A lot of ‘em.”

Carl Krebsbach reported an amazing event on the plane back from Phoenix, that the male attendant asked him if he liked gay men. Sent him into trauma. But the guys at the Chatterbox figured out that he was really asking if Carl liked game hen for supper. Carl remembered, “Yah, we did have little chickens.”

It was an ordinary week. That’s the way we like it.