Don LaFontaine, one of the best voice actors in history, is dead at 68. LaFontaine began writing and voicing movie trailers in the late 1960s, inventing, supposedly, most of the beloved and hilarious cliches ("in a world," "one man stands...") that still introduce us to whatever summer Hollywood garbage we'll be…
Some weekend. Isaak Hayes died today at his home in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 65. His wife found him unconscious next to his treadmill, which was still running. Paramedics could not revive him and he was pronounced dead shortly after 2:00 p.m., according to the Shelby County Sheriff's Department. Among the highlights…
Actor/comedian Bernie Mac passed away in a Chicago hospital this morning a week after being hospitalized with pneumonia, his publicist Danica Smith confirmed. He was 50. The sad news comes as a shock since newspaper reports just yesterday stated that he was responding well to treatment and would be released soon.
Conservative talking head and former George W. Bush press secretary Tony Snow died of colon cancer today. He was 53. After a decade at Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, Snow served 17 months in the Bush administration, from May 2006 through September 2007. "Although a star in conservative politics, as a commentator he had…
Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, the wrestler and restaurateur who essentially introduced America to Japanese food with his Benihaha chain, died today in New York. He was 69. Aoki raised the money to start his first Benihana by driving an ice cream truck in Harlem, which is awesome. More recently, he's been known to New…
Restaurant Florent, a foot soldier in the gentrification of the Meat Packing District, has closed its doors, and with the removal of a single letter from the window, declared itself vacant. Alphabetical flourish is an appropriate goodbye for the 24-hour French restaurant as known for its matchbooks as its boudin noir. …
Death completed its triple crown of taking down talented people that we actually like and respect. First, came Tim Russert, whose passing was quickly and sadly followed by Stan Winston. Now comes news that Cyd Charisse, the actress and dancer perhaps best known for her role in Singing In The Rain, passed away today at…
In what may or may not be an irony of some kind, but should probably not actually be noted, because it's sort of ghoulish and in poor taste, political journalism superstar Tim Russert went out today with a Friday newsdump, that hallowed Washington DC practice of burying news no one wants to see. Earlier today, June…
Hillary Clinton's race for the presidency is OVER. It's DONE. The primaries are finished! The Associated Press has just crowned Barack Obama the official Democratic nominee for President. The wire story is an amusing 'fuck you' to the Clinton campaign, which spent the morning crowing about how the AP got their earlier…
John Philip Law—you know him as Pygar, the blind angel in Barbarella—died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 70. He was gloriously wooden in so many other nutty '60s cult classics, like The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and Skidoo. [LAT]
Artist Robert Rauschenberg, the man who saved us from abstract expressionism, died Monday at the age of 82. The Times describes him as a "brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner." People used to care way more about art when it was made by people like that instead of twee New School students.…
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "DC Madam" who was convicted in April of charges related to her famous prostitution ring, died today in an apparent suicide at her mother's house in Florida. She was 52. Palfrey was busted in October of 2006, and it wasn't long before she captured national attention by threatening to release…
Here's a measure of the loss the American reading public has suffered with the abrupt closure of Pagesix.com. The New York Post's round-the-clock gossip site is down, but we still have a copy of what is believed to be the last post ever published on the site. At 1.07pm this afternoon, Jarett Wieselmann (awesome name…
It's the end of one of the great magazine marriages: deputy editor Chris Tennant, right-hand viper to Radar's Maer Roshan, is leaving the magazine. The move isn't entirely surprising. Tennant (whose brain is an encyclopedia of who's fucked whom, literally and metaphorically) has lasted longer than any other veteran of…
Conservative author, essayist, columnist, pundit, smug asshole, gadabout, secret spook, and blue-blooded creep William F. Buckley is dead. Buckley, 82, suffered from diabetes and emphysema, though his cause of death is not yet known. And with him died respectable, intelligent, genteel-but-cut-throat New York…
Drinking and slutting your way through your twenties on the downtown artclub scene? Party on! But listen, if you get famous, your NYT obituary will most definitely remember you as a wild one. Like Dorothy Podber, "artist and trickster", whose obit ran today. The first sentence tags her as "wild child of the New York…
The influence of Maureen Dowd, formerly important New York Times opinion columnist, is dead, at the age of 13. The Pulitzer-winning columnist is still blamed, in some circles, for killing Al Gore's shot at the presidency with her relentless, belittling, emasculating, and most importantly media consensus-shaping…
Australian-American screen actor Heath Ledger is dead. Ledger was an Oscar-nominated leading man with an admirable career both artistically and at the box office—he may currently be seen in 2007's art-house sleeper I'm Not There and he'll soon be opening across the nation as the iconic Joker, the lead villain in next…
