with his roommate John. John spent his days sleeping or watching television, as his desperate search for a date was always unsuccessful. Fred was a sarcastic student who directed campus registration. His favorite food came in bulk—a 50-pound bag of Purina Bachelor Chow. Chuck Laylo was an exceptionally smooth and cool fraternity man; a member of the imaginary Sigma Theta fraternity. Downs says, "John and Jeff were based on my roommate; Chuck Laylo was the composite fraternity guy." When Downstown became syndicated, Josh and John became Odd Couple-type roommates. Downs shifted his strip's content from college life to contemporary singles life. The strip was "mostly about frustration and women; women and frustration; the ennui of late adolescence." Main characters included: Josh who meandered through life, looking for recognition and romance with little success with either. He was "looking for someone who can cook a peanut butter sandwich." John was the slob, with mounds of dirty clothes and a refrigerator containing his definition of the four food groups: "fast, frozen, junk, and spoiled." His goal is to find the "perfect sleeping position." Fred became a sarcastic waiter at La Poubelle (The Trash Can) where customers dreaded his service, while actual waiters secretly admired him. Chuck Laylo morphed from a fraternity guy into a vain and shallow lounge lizard. One writer said, "Laylo embodied the worst qualities of the singles stud bar." Malcolm Magnesia was a new character who was "an elementary-school nerd—a sort of '80s version of Charlie Brown." Controversy From February 18 to 23, 1985, Downs decided to use Downstown to raise support for famine relief in Ethiopia. This desire linked back to Downs job as a traveling lecturer with the Campus Crusade for Christ which he started working for in 1979. Downs said he wanted to show the "insensitivity that sets in among some Americans to the problem of world hunger. …Humor is a good tool to communicate the message you want to get across." Downs series of "heavy-handed satire" depicting a starving Ethiopian child, "or possibly a hunger-shrunken adult," alongside overfed and insensitive Americans were considered "offensive" and "crude" by many readers who were used to a strip that "normally deals breezily with today's singles scene." The first segment, released on a Monday, featured an American in a cowboy hat looking at the Ethiopian boy, and saying, "Wull now, lookie h'yar! A genuuaan Ethiopian boy." The man has