Bonus! The weird gay history of the "yesssss" guy

OMG. I was a HUGE X-Files fan from the premiere. That is one of (if not the single best) episodes. I knew who Charles Nelson Reilly was from his appearances on the shows I watched when I was home sick as a kid. I didn't learn his name until years after the X-Files was cancelled from a gay friend. I had absolutely no idea until now that that is who that was. Absolutely amazing. No wonder why that episode is so great. Thank you!

God, that X-Files episode, I swear I have the whole thing memorized.

I love how anal you are, Matt, about NOT letting your monitors "sleep."

I just happened to be watching a The Nanny rerun tonight and in the episode Fran references Charles Nelson Reilly and Rip Taylor in the same sentence. She's telling Mr. Sheffield that of course he's cutting edge as a producer because he Starred Charles Nelson Reilly and Rip Taylor in Love Letters. Just one sentence, one quick joke, and the scene continues.

I remember everything covered here, and my family LOVED to watch the 1.98 Beauty Pageant. Please do a segment on Charles Nelson Reilly , who was SO MUCH MORE than a game show gay. Look up his theater experience. He was an incredibly talented man.

I have *ALWAYS* wondered about that "Slide" line in Seinfeld, and it turns out it's almost exactly what I imagined it was! Fabulous!

Charles Nelson Reilly is lowkey one of the more fascinating gameshow contestants of the 1970s. As a child, he survived a circus fire.

One of Rip Taylor's other standard shticks, besides the confetti, was snatching off his own wig and using it to gesture around pretending to be exasperated. He did it on nearly every show he ever guested on. About Charles Nelson Reilly - I don't know if it's still available, but several years ago, I watched a one-man biographical show of his on Netflix. Parts of it are still available on youtube. It's called "The Life of Reilly", which is a take off of the similar name of a 50s radio and TV show. In one particularly poignant moment, he described how he witnessed and narrowly escaped being a victim of the infamous 1944 circus fire in Hartford, CT. It had me in tears. It's incredible that such iconic comedians so often come from such terrible childhoods. Edit: while i was writing my comment, someone else was thinking just like me and posted about it, too. I'm leaving mine up though. I think the comments both offer different info.

And a tidbit on Charles Nelson Reilly: Not long before he passed, he had a one-man autobiographical show talking about his life, "The Life of Reilly". His life was so much more incredible than I ever imagined. My husband and I went to see it and were spellbound the entire time. It's on DVD available on Amazon. HIGHLY, highly recommend and well worth your (or anyone's) time: lhttps://www.amazon.com/Life-Reilly-Two-Disc-Special/dp/B003NI3H6K/ref=sr_1_4?crid=U20FVHG8H5RI&keywords=life+of+reilly&qid=1656897348&sprefix=life+of+reilly%2Caps%2C116&sr=8-4 Edit: Hmmm... looks like my links aren't "live" but if you copy and paste, they should work. Thanks! Edit Edit: Checking back, I see that the DVD goes for $100 bucks. Oops. Well, if you can write it off as a tax break....

Believe it or not, writer Darren Morgan, who wrote "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" first wanted Rip Taylor for the role of the character. "Morgan wanted to cast Rip Taylor in the role, but he was unavailable, so the role ended up going to Charles Nelson Reilly." You can check it out here in the wikipedia page for the episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Chung%27s_From_Outer_Space

With regards to Frank Nelson, I wanna shout out Anthony Scibelli's Unsung Legends of Comedy videos on YT that includes one on Nelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FQL_SxCA-s (additional shoutout to his video on Moms Mabley who was also gay but didn't come out as far as I know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO1mCdrpxiQ). Also I'm putting in my vote in for Rip Taylor as the next video subject 😄

Not sure if you've ever seen or talked about this before but this is an Ikea ad from 1994 (the year after the 'not that there's anything wrong with that' episode) featuring an openly gay couple. This is credited as the first time an openly gay couple (as opposed to 'gay vague' couple) was featured in a television commercial. https://youtu.be/7qBDiIOP1P8