Twenty years ago today, in the early hours of the morning, the Los Angeles Police Department announced that Phil Hartman had been fatally shot by his wife Brynn, who then herself committed suicide.

The loss of Hartman, then 49, stunned the world of comedy and Hollywood, as the brilliant comic actor had been an indispensable element of everything he appeared in, whether as the variety of characters he portrayed on Saturday Night Live, from real celebrities such as Frank Sinatra to original creations such as Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer; the minor but no less essential voices he lent to The Simpsons, most famously Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure; or in a linchpin role such as NewsRadio’s Bill McNeal.

I don’t have a lot of time here so I’m going to write too much more, but Hartman was such an essential part of my childhood and adolescence, especially as the wounded, deranged Bill McNeal– at turns pompous blowhard, irascible trickster, and deeply vulnerable. He became the voice for those of us who masked our own dysfunctions and family problems with a smile and a rigid denial, an experience which I suppose the real Hartman knew all too well.

Share some of your favorite Hartman characters, scenes, and moments in the comments. What do you think we’d have seen Hartman in today had he lived? (I think he would have made a great elder Hamlin on Better Call Saul; seeing Hartman and Michael McKean exchange dialogue as serious elder statesmen of the law is just one of many potential scenarios which we were denied when his life was tragically cut short.

I leave you all with a hearty gazziza, my dilznoofuses.