Underreported in the news is the death of Charles Nelson Reilly at age 76. I realize that most of you underage monkeys out there have no idea who he is, so here's a quick background. He was one of those guys, like the late Nipsey Russell, who was a fixture on television but you never knew why. He did appear as an actor now and then, but he seemed to just get by on the strength of his personality.

He is most fondly known as a regular on the 70's era Match Game shows. And if you don't remember the 1970's edition of Match Game, it was the best game show ever, mainly because it played things really loosely. The show never seemed to be about the rules itself but about the guests, host, and contestant having fun. Funniest thing about the show was the poorly-kept secret that they filmed a week's worth of episodes at a time, and alcohol was readily available on the set, so the Thursday and Friday shows tended to be the wildest. There are episodes of the show where panelist Fannie Flag can barely stand up.

Anyway, Reilly was and will always be known as the guy in the upper-right chair of the celebrity panel. He sat next to Brett Sommers (aka Mrs Quincy) and they often traded lighthearted barbs, and the two facts about Reilly that were most obvious (that he wore a toupee and was gay) were always alluded to but were never stated outright.

Yes, he was the Waylon Smithers of comedy :)

Anyway, he made me laugh as a kid. And the show still makes me laugh when I watch it on Game Show Network.

The world was a more colorful place for having had him.



On a completely unrelated note, we now have the Gamedev Publishing Schedule available as a google calendar here. This is notable not only for the fact that we are now publishing our schedule, but that we actually HAVE A SCHEDULE! Our old schedule for publishing was ad-hoc to put it mildly. Writers tended to hate us because we'd never get back with 'em, or we'd never publish their articles. Companies hated us because reviews would take forever to appear. But that's all changing now. We're now nicely scheduled so not only can you see what's coming up for gamedev, but also the editorial staff (Drew, Seyi, and myself) can follow the schedule and get the articles up in a timely manner.

Also, companies and authors can now see exactly when their articles will be appearing on the site. This is a looooong overdue feature for gamedev, so take advantage of it.

So if you schedule your life with Google Calendar (as I do), feel free to add it to your calendar. That way when you look at your calendar in the morning to see what's going on in your life today (as I do), you'll know when something interesting will be appearing on the site.

Enjoy!