Do you feel that? The world just got a lot less funny. Comedy icon and TV personality Soupy Sales (born Milton Supman) left us late yesterday at the age of 83, the Los Angeles Times reports. He'd spent the past week in a Bronx, NY hospital in steady decline after years of battling a variety of health issues. Sales leaves behind a great legacy and a large family, including Trudy Carson Sales, his wife of 29 years, two sons, a brother and four grandchildren. Our thoughts are with them all on this difficult day.

Sales was perhaps best known for his long-running sketch comedy TV series, which ran at varying times between 1959 and 1979. "The Soupy Sales Show" operated under several different names and locations during its on-again/off-again run, but it was always marked by a cast of wacky characters -- of both the human and puppet varieties -- notable guest celebrities (a varied list, from Frank Sinatra to Alice Cooper), short, punchy sketches, and thrown pies. There's no "official" tally, but Sales claimed that he'd been hit by more than 25,000 pies over the course of his lifetime. An impressive legacy for any comedian to leave behind, to say the least.

more of my childhood gone.