Chicago’s Capricon convention has a long tradition of hoax panels, usually identifiable by their silly premises and the fact that they are staffed by a living person, a dead person, and a fictional person.
This tradition was started by Chicago fan Phil Foglio (whatever happened to him?) who was on the con committee and found himself growing annoyed that the programming team was rejecting all of his brilliant ideas.
Suddenly, Phil had yet another brilliant idea. He was in charge of the program book. He could insert his brilliant ideas into the program without anyone’s permission. And thus was born the Phineas T. track, which was later changed to the Lake Wobegon track when Capricon moved to a new hotel with rooms named after bodies of water.