So, hey again from Casey, one of Philip’s many friends, here at the pivot point between seasons. I hope you all had a Happy Fappiano and are ready to start hiding the eggs!
Again, for the time being, I’ll be posting updates about Philip’s work, and efforts to preserve it. If you haven’t visited here in a while, I’m sad to report that Philip left us in July 2022. I still miss him like hell, but I’m so glad I got to know him, and I’m so proud of what he accomplished.
I’m going to talk about this year’s Xmas Bash! first, because it’s time-sensitive.
Saturday, December 17!
7PM to Midnight Eastern Time!
The 2022 Xmas Bash!
(Artwork by the inimitable Adam Lore – http://www.adamlore.com
Like always, it’s going to be 5 hours of holiday TV specials (the bad ones), music videos, cartoons, old Christmas commercials, AMANDA, and a fundraiser for the Trevor Project!
Three of the shows are ones that I know Philip had in mind to show at some point. The other four are ones I have chosen as your holiday torture.
The fundraiser page is here: http://give.thetrevorproject.org/xmasbash2022
And we’ll also post it throughout the evening of Dec. 17.
Thank you all for contributing to the Kickstarter campaign for DieDie Books and Philip’s book-length treatment of The Wolf Man. Which, if I understand correctly, was a horror film about radio DJ Wolfman Jack. If you didn’t get a chance to pledge during the campaign, I am told that copies will be available for sale. At this point, I know as much as you do about when you will have Philip’s book in your hands. I know even less about what other nasty things you usually have in your hands, and I’d like to keep it that way.
And thank you to those who came to the Bashtrospective, where a Bash time was had by all! I have received a few requests to make Philip’s hosting videos (themselves from the very first Xmas Bash! in 2013) available to watch somewhere. I wish I could say I’m working on that, and I wish I could say when I will be. But I think there is going to come a point–maybe when we move hosting over–that it will make sense to create a page or two that archive Philip’s non-blog works. There are just difficulties inherent in file sharing right now, and I’d rather do these things once, for everyone, for the foreseeable future, than piecemeal.
We are still waiting for the terribly slow gears at Apple and Google to turn and let us into any of Philip’s accounts, which will allow us to move hosting of Noiseless Chatter onto another account. We don’t know when the current hosting now expires, so if we don’t get it in time, commenter Aidan has backed up the whole site here:
https://noiselesschatterarchive.blogspot.com/
More updates as they come.
Thanks again for being Philip’s friends and loving him.
-Casey
Thank you for doing this, Casey.
Much love to you and Phil’s family and friends.
Thank you so much for doing this
I helped Aidan with the back-up site, and was more than happy to do it. Thank you so much for organizing all of this, and hope you and Philip’s family are doing well.
Thank you. Philip’s work on the blog deserves to be preserved. Condolences to his friends and family.
I made a cartoon for the 2nd xmas bash (nodategamers). It was the best time I had making something, and it was thanks to Phil. He voiced himself and was so damn hilarious… he knew how to be funny.
Thank you for doing this. I will try to make it. Phil’s death has hit me hard.
Wow. I remember watching your videos back in the day. I remember one episode with Phil and the cruise ship being really hilarious.
Yeah he helped out heaps with that… did a lot of line readings and let me choose the funniest one. Damn, feels like yesterday but was 12 years ago.
Hey Ryan,
I am a huge fan of NDG, and I talked to you here and there on Facebook back in the day. If you find the time, it’d be great to catch up/stay in touch. Any chance you have a discord/e-mail?
I e-mailed you.
This is Phil’s mom. Thank you a million times over for doing this. What a tribute. The outpouring of love from you all helps his dad and I and the entire family get through this difficult situation. You are an amazing bunch and we love you
Thanks for doing this.
It’s really weird, sometimes I think about this site, click on the link, and then remember. I haven’t followed to closely, after the ALF reviews were done, but still, it was a sort of constant, and, if the topic was at all of interest to me, I always enjoyed the articles.
I’m glad his work will be preserved. It’s good stuff, from a great person.
Thank you, Casey. I just happened to click this site accidentally, and was surprised to see a new post.
It’s wonderful to know that Philip’s work will be preserved. You’re a good friend for doing this.
And of course, my condolences to all those who knew him. He will be missed.
Hi Casey, I was very close with Phil many years ago. I’m devastated to find out about his passing. I know Phil had his battles. I tried to stay connected with him over the years and I hadn’t heard from him in a while and now I see why. I don’t know if this would be ok or not but would you be able to please reach out to me? Are you able to see my email?
Olivia,
I do remember my son talking about you.
I hope you are well.
Tammy, PJ’s mom
Thank you for doing this. Phil’s work deserves to be preserved, as does his memory. I’m just a fan who rarely interacted with Phil but he was a very sweet, honest, clever, compassionate, and observant human being, and I’m glad that I can say goodbye to him and also keep his work around. Condolences and strength to you, his family and friends.
Thank you, Casey, for honoring Philip’s memory and taking on the labor of preserving his legacy. I know this is difficult emotional work.
We at Boss Fight Books (Mike here) loved working with Philip and we miss him dearly. I remain ready to help DieDieBooks get THE WOLF MAN out into the world so new readers can connect with Philip’s brilliance and humanity.
Thanks for keeping his site up. I knew Phil in college, and just learned of his passing today. I’m so sorry to hear of it, and I am glad his site will remain accessible.
So weird he knows multiple Aidans with the same spelling. I’m not the one who helped with the site. Big thank you to whatever name twin I have out there who did.
I missed the Kickstarter because, understandably, I didn’t check his website or posts for a while. I remember talking to him very briefly about werewolf stuff- please let me know when I can buy The Wolf Man pdf or paperback when it comes out, in case I miss it. I followed the company on Twitter.
Hello all,
I never met Phil in person, but I would come here every week while he was writing his ALF reviews. He was an immensely talented writer, and I feel that he never fully realized how many people enjoyed his work on a weekly basis. I was fortunate enough to message him back and forth, and the two of us became friends. He was taken from us entirely too early, but I hope he understood to some extent the enjoyment that he brought each of us with his writing, his wit, and his personality. Even though I feel he would have had so much more to give if he had kept going, he left behind for us a world of insight through his writing, and I feel it should be preserved in memory of him.
R.I.P. Philip J. Reed. You decide to look too deeply into these things, and we love you for it.
Hello,
I’m sorry to be so late here. I knew Phil a long time ago when we were in college. I just found out he had passed. I feel bad because I didn’t keep in better contact with him after finding him on LinkedIn then coming to his Twitter profile and ultimately this site. I’m sorry that we weren’t able to help Phil when he needed us most. I’m sorry I couldn’t have reached out sooner.
I hope he’s at peace now wherever he is.
Hello, I don’t know the best place to mention this, so excuse me if this isn’t the correct venue to do so, but I’ve know about Philip’s content since… I want to say 2010-2011, back when he had a youtube channel he actively uploaded gameplay videos to, as well as stuff like his Save State Gamer parody series.
To this day, I still believe him to be one of the best game commentators that platform ever had. I particularly remember his playthrough of Megaman Unlimited, a classic Megaman fangame, and how every episode he’d point out all sorts of details related to that game’s design, as well as talk about game design in general, and do it all with an extremely unique and interesting perspective. Not only were his playthroughs hilarious, but every one would have him discussing stuff that was so interesting and doing so in such an engrossing way that I would just watch and rewatch every video so many times just because of how fascinating and well thought-out I found his criticisms and anecdotes to be. He’d also do stuff like challenge runs of other classic games, with I think his most popular being his longform No Damage Runs of the NES Megaman games, all with the same level of quality commentary. It may be nostalgia, but I’ve genuinely come to think of those playthroughs he uploaded back in the day as the Youtube Let’s Play equivalent to something like golden era Simpsons in terms of how funny, clever, and rewatchable they were. It was thanks to that channel that I’ve found his reviews on nintendolife, and shortly thereafter this blog where, at the time, he was just beginning his ALF reviews, which I treasure to this day.
As some of you may know however, Phillip’s Youtube channel got deleted, IIRC, around 2017-2018, by Youtube’s (still) broken copyright system, taking most of the videos he uploaded with it. Nowadays if you try to search for any of these videos, you’ll only end up finding his Save State Gamer series, which thankfully got archived by MattKC and uploaded back to youtube by a channel simply named “Save State Gamer Archive”. And while I really do think those are still some of the funniest videos on the platform (And I recommend you give them a watch if you haven’t already), I’m still really sad that all of his gameplay videos, with all of the amazing insight and interesting, unique critiques he provided, seem to have been lost forever.
I’ve been trying to find any archives that may have been made of these videos, but I’m pretty sure even Phillip himself said at one point that he thought all of them had been lost forever. To my suprise however, just a few weeks ago I found this Youtube channel called “Mr. Lore” https://www.youtube.com/@user-ft5hq5md9r/videos, who seemed to have uploaded some of Phillip’s old playthroughs as early as 3 months ago. Like I said, I’m pretty sure even Phillip didn’t think these videos had been archived or could be recovered, so this was a really pleasant surprise. However, those videos only comprise a very small part of what used to be the channel’s content, which I’m pretty sure numbered the 100+ videos. I don’t know who this Mr. Lore is, if he had only those videos laying around or if those are just the ones he felt like uploading, but since this post brings up the subject of archiving Phillip’s writings and video content, I feel like it’d be a great thing if we could somehow find a way to bring back all of those gameplay videos and commentaries he had uploaded to his Youtube channel so long ago.
Of course I could also be completely off base and you guys already know about this, found and archived all of the videos, in which case I apologize and I’d ask to be pointed in the direction where I could go to watch them, since like I said, I found all of those videos to be incredibly entertaining and interesting, and I’d love to have the opportunity to see them again, since they’re very nostalgic to me.
Finally, of course, I also want to thank all of you for your current efforts in trying to preserve what’s here. Phillip’s writings were not only extremely entertaining, but also had a level of insight that you rarely see nowadays when discussing mass media like shows or videogames. He had a talent where you could saddle him with the most vapid piece of garbage ever (Read as: ALF for Master System) and he would still be able to get some genuinely unique and fascinating critique or perspective out of it, and I think that makes it so important to preserve and archive as much of it as we can, so thanks a lot.
Hi John, I want you to know that over the years I have periodically checked for the Felix Deckett channel on YouTube, hoping that maybe it would be reinstated so I could check out those old videos. I’m devastated to hear the news, but happy to be able to revisit some oh Philip’s creations from the past. Thank you.
Hi Casey, my name is Zach and I wrote with Philip at Nintendo Life over a decade ago. I always loved his work and his talent and I was proud to call him a friend, even if we only intermittently stayed in touch throughout the years. I actually had hoped to do exactly what you’re doing and took the beginning steps to do so, but I was discouraged by some dead ends, and I am glad to see you are doing this. I want to help in any way that I can. One of the ideas that I had had was to collect all of Philip’s scripts from Triple Jump, an idea that they agreed to and gave me access to, and create a comprehensive collection of Phil’s work. I would love to share these with you and help in any way that I can. Please get in touch and let me know what I can do. Love that you’re doing this. Thank you. P.S. According to a whois lookup, Phil had paid for hosting through March of next year, so if I’m right then this site will stay up until then. Really glad it’s mirrored elsewhere though, just in case. Thank you again.
I remember it was only some time back when I first discovered this place. I was researching some random stuff related to ALF and I found one of Philip’s reviews. Later on, I ended up looking around the site now and then, looking mostly at ALF reviews but also taking some looks at some other things. I’ll admit I don’t necessarily always agree on everything he says, but I enjoyed reading what he had to say on things nonetheless. He was rather funny and insightful, and it was sad to learn about his passing last year. I’m unsure for how long this site will remain up, but I want to give Philip my regards nonetheless.
Thank you for your writings, Mr. Reed. You will be missed.
Hello, Casey, I’m creator in South Korea (please forgive me for my poor English) and I’m just a passing person who was very lucky to find Philip’s writings. (I searched Better call saul’ article) I felt so sad when I returned to the first page -this post- while admiring his sharp considerations and concerns with work and each sentence. I wanted to talk to him more… Thank you for your efforts to preserve it, Casey. I hope peace for Philip and everyone in here.
Segawa,
This is Phil’s Mom.
Thank you for your kind words. He is loved and missed.
Casey is doing a wonderful job of keeping Philip’s memory alive.
Hello Mrs. Reed. I’m Joe Borger, and was a fraternity brother of Phil’s from Stockton. We lost touch a long time ago, and we at Kappa Sigma just learned about his passing. We are all saddened. I remember him as being stealthily funny. If there is anything we could do, let me know. Our condolences.
Hey there. Just stumbled across this site after a wild conspiracy theory I was looking into about Elvis appearing in a sitcoms 10 years after his death. To my surprise it all stemed from an ALF episode “suspicious minds”. So I found Phils article and his take on that episode, not knowing anything of him or his sad departure I just felt so much joy reading his writings… wait I am sure I can word that a little better… I was BLOWN away with his quick wit, clever dissection, and insightfulness. I laughed all the way through it. Brilliant. One of the funniest articles I have read it a very long time. So much it has made me want to watch all of Alf and read each of Phils review for each episode.
I salute you sir. I raise a glass, to you and love to all those that knew you. You left behind some real treasures, and with the joy of the internet and supportive friends that will let your ramblings be seen by others, if I can find something so unique, hopefully thousand of others will one day see ones brilliance.
I cannot believe I’m just now finding out. I noticed Philip hadn’t written anything new in a while, but I just thought he was taking a break. This is heartbreaking.
I’ve followed Philip’s work across the decades, all the way from Save State Gamer to Noiseless Chatter to his nodategamers appearance. Does anyone else remember his Willy Wonka movie commentary track that he did? He was such a genuine, insightful, clever guy. Somehow I always keep coming back to the ALF Reviews, even almost ten years later. He got me to fervently and repeatedly read reviews of decades-old sitcom episodes for years and years. How did he do that?
I wish I known earlier so that I could have commiserated with everyone here. I feel like I missed the funeral, like I missed my chance to grieve with the others whose lives were impacted by him, and now I’m mourning alone. God, I’ll miss him and his amazing way with words. Goodbye, Philip.