This week's Best Gamesville Avatar was created by Sidekicks2003 of Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada (pictured at left).

Sidekicks2003 says: "I'm a self-employed wife, and I work up to eight jobs a week in the summer on top of all the lawn care jobs I do. I have two loving boy dogs that go every where with me and help in their own little ways with the gardening chores. I love gardening and being able to help out the elderly people with their gardens so that they can enjoy theirs as much as I do."

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This week's Best Pet duo is from Schenectady, NY. Useless fact: The name "Schenectady" is derived from a Mohawk word for "over the pine plains."

Pet Names:
Bella & Midnight

Pet Owner:
Gamesviller "April1721"

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Distinguishing Personality Traits:
April1721 says: "Our girls hated each other the first two weeks they were together. Now, they're inseperable. Midnight will stare Bella down and attack as soon as she looks away, but Bella (being the larger cat) won't stand for it: Bella will chase Midnight, and they run around the house tearing things up until they get tired out. "

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In part one of our interview with executive producer David X. Cohen, David told us about the demise of the animated scifi series Futurama and its return as the straight-to-DVD, full-length movie Futurama: Bender's Big Score. Today, David reveals plans for Futurama beyond Bender's Big Score as well some insight into his own gaming habits...

Gamesville: Are there additional straight-to-DVD movies planned for Futurama?
David X. Cohen: Yes, there are four original movies in this second installment of the show.

Can you tell us anything about the other three movies?
Bender's Big Score ends on a little bit of a cliffhanger, which isn't necessarily something new for us. Previously, we would end shows on cliffhangers and not go back to resolve them because it was part of the joke and everything would return to status quo in the next show. Not this time. The second movie, which is tentatively titled "The Beast With a Billion Backs", will pick up roughly where we leave off in Bender's Big Score and will guest star David Cross as this planet-sized monster from another universe who has a simultaneous love affair with every living being in our universe. It's a very touching, inter-universal love story. Brittany Murphy and Stephen Hawking (in his second appearance on Futurama) are also in there.

The third movie is our real first heavy foray into Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy which is something we haven't really done before. The fourth movie is an epic scifi story about this titanic struggle between two mighty powers, with our loyal crew caught squarely in the middle.

Will the four movies eventually air on television?
Down the line, yes. The movies will only be available on DVD for a good while, then down the line each DVD will be divided into a set of four episodes each, to air on Comedy Central.

Will there be substantive content differences between the DVD releases and the television episodes?
There is some content on the DVD that you won't see if you're watching the shows on television; there are also several minutes of treats on the episodes that aren't on the DVDs. This is our way of saying thank you to everyone who watches, no matter how they watch.

Do you play games?
I have a one-year-old, so I used to play a lot more games than I do now. Of course, if you go old school, I spent the eighties in the arcades and I do believe that I may be the world's champion at Qix. I mean, it's conceivable, anyway.

Any closing thoughts?
First, I want to thank Adult Swim because Futurama has been airing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim for five years now, and they deserve a lot of credit for promoting the show and keeping it on consistently. Adult Swim brought us a tremendous amount of fans who just could never find the show when it aired on Fox because we were bounced around so much.

Second, I want to recognize Comedy Central for giving us a huge show of support by agreeing to air the new episodes in primetime again... which, if you think about it, is an amazing circle. Usually, people aren't so happy to travel in a circle and come back around again, but in this case that's a lot better than taking a long straight trip into the grave.

Third and finally, if this second installment of Futurama really is the last thing we ever do with Futurama, we're ending it in a way so that we and the fans are satisfied, just like we did last time around with the final episode of the television series on Fox. Come to think of it, writing our final episode is something we're getting good at. Hopefully we can carry on that tradition with a third installment of Futurama, based on how well these four movies do. With luck, Futurama will continue on, in some form, for a long time to come.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Kevin DuBrow, lead singer of the metal band Quiet Riot, was found dead in his Las Vegas home this past weekend. He was 52.

Quiet Riot is best known for its 1983 album Metal Health which featured "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" and a remake of British rock band Slade's "Cum On Feel the Noize". (The live version of "Cum On Feel the Noize" is below.)

Funeral plans have not yet been finalized. But the staff of Gamesville.com will be wearing our zebra pants today to mourn the passing of this prominent figure of our formative years.

Good news, everyone: the animated sci-fi TV show, Futurama, is returning tomorrow as the straight-to-DVD feature -length movie, Futurama: Bender's Big Score. In part one of our interview with the movie's executive producer, David X. Cohen, we talk about the demise and return of Futurama...

Gamesville: Futurama never seemed to get a fair shake when it aired on Fox in the early part of this decade. How did it make this comeback?
David X. Cohen: Simply put, it was the fans. We always thought we'd be lucky to have fans like Star Trek fans who would keep watching the show no matter how many times it reran and buying the DVDs--and, lo and behold, they did. It was one of those miracles, that the fans stayed with us and proved to Fox that there was a much bigger audience for the show than Fox thought. So thank you to our fans.

Were the exectuives who originally cancelled the show put out to pasture, making way for Futurama's return?
Yes, the executives who made those decisions are long gone, and we have a little fun with that in the movie. But, by no means, were they ground into an all-purpose powder or anything like that in real life. Some fans might be disappointed by that, but there it is. There is one interesting twist to the return of Futurama: it's not the Fox network bringing us back, but the Fox televison studios, 20th Century Fox Television.

The Fox network is not involved?
Right. That's the amazing thing about this: The DVDs did so well that they said, "We're going to bypass the traditional airing on the network and bring it back anyway." One of the benefits is the lack of a network censor this time around. That's one of the strange sidebars to coming back directly to DVD. For the first time ever, no censor reviewed it; hence you may have noticed a lot of naked aliens in this movie, and no one there to object to it.

Why the decision to go with the full-legnth movies instead of the individual episodes?
Part of it is, we wanted the return to be special. We wanted to do something we hadn't done before and really say thank you to the fans for coming back to the show. To make it feel like a feature movie, we made it widescreen for the first time ever and also Surround Sound for the first time ever. Hopefully, the movie has the same spirit and tone of the show, so it will deliver the goods for Futurama fans, but visually it will be more than we've seen before. Ditto for the plot.

Without spoiling it, what can you tell us about Bender's Big Score?
We wanted to accomplish two things with the movie: We wanted to please the fans and create a big scifi epic with time-travel, and we wanted to have a really down to earth story with genuine emotion in it. Some of the best Futurama episodes managed to balance those kinds of things—here, we wanted to do that on more of a grander scale. I'm realy eager to see whether we pulled it off.

Tomorrow, in part two of our interview, David will discuss plans for Futurama beyond Bender's Big Score as well as give us some insight into his own gaming habits... Stay tuned!

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends at Gamesville.com!

It's been said before, but it's worth saying again: Thanksgiving isn't really about the food; it's about with whom you spend the day and what you do with your time.

If you are fortunate enough to have family and friends around--whether they're with you physically or online with you in a game--please spend time with them and reflect on how lucky you truly are. If you're in a place where you can improve the life of someone less fortunate than yourself, please be generous and share some of your good fortune with them.

Above all: Have a safe, healthy, and happy Thanksgiving. And thank you for making a place for Gamesville in your home; we are, all of us here at Gamesville HQ, grateful for your time and patronage.

Sincerely,
Chris Cummings
Manager, Gamesville.com

Gamesviller Perdy999 of South Yorkshire, UK, (pictued at left) recently won $4,999 playing Magic 21. Perdy999 was nice enough to sit down and chat with us about herself and what she plans to do with her winnings...

GV: Congratulations! What was it like to realize that you'd won?
Perdy999: When the message "Jackpot Winner" appeared on my screen, I mometarily froze as I hadn't been playing to win--I'm just addicted to the game.

How will you spend your winnings?
The cash will come in handy as my daughter is expecting a baby in six weeks and the list of things to buy is endless. I am off work at the moment, awaiting an operation on my elbow for a trapped nerve, and could be out of action for several months.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever heard, and who said it?
The best advice was given to me by my grandmother who told me to go with my first instincts; I have found this invaluable.

What's your favorite thing to do in South Yorkshire?
Socialising: I love meeting new friends!

Anything else you'd like to add?
I came across Gamesville by chance and now play every day. It doesn't matter if you're a newbie, you have the same chance of winning as all the other players. I have recommended Gamesville to all my friends so you may see an influx of new players from South Yorkshire.

Sad news for the Charmin-sequeezing bloc, from our colleagues at Lycos News:

Dick Wilson, the actor and pitchman who played the uptight grocer begging customers "Please, don't squeeze the Charmin," died Monday. He was 91.

The man famous as TV's "Mr. Whipple" died of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his daughter Melanie Wilson, who is known for her role as a flight attendant on the ABC sitcom "Perfect Strangers."

Over 21 years, Wilson made more than 500 commercials as Mr. George Whipple, a man consumed with keeping bubbly housewives from fondling the soft toilet paper. The punch line of most spots was that Whipple himself was a closeted Charmin-squeezer.

[...]

The first of his Charmin commercials aired in 1964 and by the time the campaign ended in 1985, the tag line and Wilson were pop culture touchstones.

[...]

Though Wilson said he initially resisted commercial work, he learned to appreciate its nuance.

"It's the hardest thing to do in the entire acting realm. You've got 24 seconds to introduce yourself, introduce the product, say something nice about it and get off gracefully."

[...]

He was born in England in 1916, the son of a vaudeville entertainer and a singer. He moved to Canada as a child, serving in the Canadian Air Force during World War II, and became a U.S. citizen in 1954, he told the AP.

In addition to Melanie, Wilson is survived by his wife, Meg; a son, Stuart; and another daughter, Wendy.

Gamesviller Bgem0 of Sicily, Italy, (pictured, below) sends us this timeless slice of life:

While feeding her pet rabbit a carrot, my daughter turned to me and asked, "Mom, do you know why carrots are good for you?"

Thinking I was about to get a science lesson, I responded, "No, why?"

Her reply: "Well, have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses?"

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