The Who2 Blog

Comedian George Carlin is dead at age 71. The New York Daily News reports that he died of heart failure on Sunday in Los Angeles.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering what skinny old Federalist Alexander Hamliton and skinny old golf champ Babe Zaharias had in common. Besides height, that is. (Both were 5’7″.) The answer: Both may have lied about their ages to seem like prodigies in their respective fields.

The Big Brown post-mortems continue, with dissatisfaction on all sides.”It just wasn’t Big Brown’s day,” said jockey Kent Desormeaux on Saturday. This a few days after trainer Rick Dutrow threw Desormeaux under the horse trailer, saying it was more or less all the jockey’s fault.

Countdown to Crawford is a brand-new blog from the Los Angeles Times, chronicling “the last days and the last actions of the Bush administration.” Interestingly, reporters have been blogging “in the dark” for the last month, trying out the new platform.

Here’s video (4 minutes) of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviewing Dr. Michael Newman after the autopsy on Tim Russert.

The LA Times offers a hard-hitting photo feature titled “Hollywood hunks before they were hot.”Still, these things are never quite resistable. And Edward Norton looks exactly the same.

Journalist Tim Russert has died in Washington, D.C. He was only 58.MSNBC reports that Russert “was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s Meet the Press broadcast when he collapsed” at the NBC News Washington bureau. That MSNBC article also has a link to Russert video clips and tributes from others.

A few days ago we mentioned that Rep. Ron Paul was still running for the Republican nomination for president — even though John McCain already had the nomination sewn up. Paul’s website even proclaimed “Now there are two!” with a graphic of him and McCain as the last men standing among the original 11 GOP candidates.

Happy birthday to the first President George Bush, who is 84 today. Bush was born in 1924 — along with Marlon Brando and Don Knotts.

The Los Angeles Times follows up (while not quite shooting down) rumors that Paul Newman is fading fast due to lung cancer.

Newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell would be 85 today — if not for his mysterious death in 1991. Maxwell was born in 1923, the same year as Ed McMahon and Norman Mailer.

Newsday reports that nothing seems wrong with racehorse Big Brown after his lackluster performance in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday. His owners have “ruled out pulmonary bleeding, mucus in the lungs and breathing problems caused by a displaced palate.”The Louisville Courier-Journal tosses out a few theories.

(Part of our ongoing series of excerpts from the official biographies of popular musicians.)

From 2007: The Village Voice asks theater pros to name the productions they wish they could have been there to see.

Mike Huckabee, Dennis Kucinich… remember those guys?With the final pairing set — John McCain vs. Barack Obama — here’s a quick look back on the fallen campaigners of 2008:

“Sergio Leone, who directed Eastwood in his breakthrough role in the Man With No Name trilogy of spaghetti westerns, said he liked the actor because he had only two expressions: ‘one with the hat, one without it.'”Funny aside from the new interview with Clint Eastwood in the British paper The Guardian.

“I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him.”

Top challenger Casino Drive is out with a bruised hoof. The rest of the Belmont Stakes field is suspect.

Call it a fist-bump, a knuckle-bump, or the more hipsterish “pound” — Obama and his wife shared one this week.And now, the obligatory over-analysis:

“I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.”Senator Hillary Clinton, telling supporters that she will end her campaign and support her Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.