Davy Jones of the Monkees died today. He was 66, and cause was a heart attack. Behold Davy in his prime, in this weird scene from the 1968 Monkees vehicle Head, featuring him shadowboxing, washing his hands without soap, and finding a huge eyeball in the medicine cabinet. Man, '60s movies were effed. more ›

The great Etta James has died, ladies and gentlemen, at the age of 73. She was a tough, loud, dirty old broad who brought some much needed sex into the sounds of the early 60s with songs like "Something's Got a Hold on Me," "I Just Want to Make Love to You," and "I'd Rather Go Blind." Her signature song, "At Last," has become a wedding standard. And now she has passed on. more ›

Only one Golden Girl remains, ladies and gentlemen, and it's Betty White. Rue McLanahan has died of a massive stroke at the age of 76. more ›

We don't know the full details just yet, but we'd heard that former child star Gary Coleman was hospitalized in Utah after falling in his home, and he has now died at the age of 42 of an intercranial hemorrhage. Here, People has an obituary, which they'd obviously been preparing just in case. Above, in lieu of Keyboard Cat playing him off, we give you this swell YouTube tribute. more ›

Seeing as 2009 has been unrelenting in its taking of famous types, we can't ignore the death of one of Hollywood's younger third of movie stars: Brittany Murphy, who died at the age of 32 of cardiac arrest at her home early Sunday morning. Her career in recent years had been leaning toward lame rom-coms and Lifetime channel fare, but she was still the voice of Luanne Platter on King of the Hill, and as EW notes she co-starred in a number of notable films, including Clueless and 8 Mile. As TMZ reports, she had apparently been very ill during her last hours, and a ton of prescription medications were found in the house. She's being widely eulogized via Twitter (by Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, and Jessica Simpson, among others), which is both notable for its novelty and for the sad misspellings. The Huffington Post is reporting on Brittany's tumultuous final weeks, which included parting ways from the set of The Caller and a health scare for her husband. We are sad both for her family, and for the permanent hiatus of Luanne Platter. more ›

August Coppola, who served as dean of the College of Creative Arts at San Francisco State and who created the famed Tactile Dome at the Exploratorium, died last week at his home in Los Angeles and the obit is just running today. The cause was a heart attack and August, brother to Francis Ford Coppola and Talia Shire and father to Nicholas Cage, was 75 years old. more ›

Rounding out the Summer of Death (TM), and in addition to yesterday's loss of Patrick Swayze, we shouldn't neglect to mention the death of punk musician, poet and Basketball Diaries scribe Jim Carroll at the age of 60. Marke B. over at SFBG's Noise blog points us to a section from Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk in which Jim Carroll sits doling out lines of blow for Nico in the manager's office of the Filipino Restaurant-turned-punk haven The Mabuhay Gardens in North Beach (a.k.a. The Fab Mab, now known as Club 443 at 443 Broadway, and dubbed The Old Mab by loyal patrons). more ›

MSNBC giveth, and we couldn't resist. So here it is, all 3 hours of it for your scanning pleasure, in case you slept/worked through the televised event. more ›

Great man, brilliant musician, bizarre icon, lover of children -- whatever you think of him, he has passed on to next plane of life. And much like they would for the death of the pope, throngs of the faithful and members of the news media from the world over will descend upon the Staples Center in L.A. for the Michael Jackson Memorial today, and it shall be relentlessly covered, on every channel, and in every newspaper, until all concerned have run out of breath, and ink. Below, our aggregate of updates. more ›

The details were fuzzier before, and it seemed like the place was being prepped for some kind of exposure. Now it is becoming clear that the co-owners of Neverland, a real estate firm called Colony Capital LLC, want to offload the place to some entrepreneur or mega-wealthy fan so that they can turn it into the tourist attraction it seems destined to become. They opened the property to the news media on Thursday, seemingly with the hope of showing it off to potential buyers. And Michael hadn't even been living there for four years -- after his 2005 child molestation trial he felt the spirit of the place had been destroyed, and he moved to another house five miles up the road. In 2008 sold a share of the house to Colony Capital in order to assist with $24 million in mortgage arrears. So the road trip is still on, kids! All you have to do is show a press credential or pretend to be a wealthy buyer to get in! more ›

Sadly, for all concerned -- including the deceased -- Michael Jackson's public memorial is going to take place at the Staples Center, Tuesday, July 7th at 10 a.m. and tickets will cost $25. We're guessing Diana Ross is going to sing. In any event, we still encourage the die-hard fans and all those who never say no to a road-trip to swing on by Neverland, where plenty of sod-laying and moving van activity seems to indicate that something is going to happen there... and at the very least it will likely open as a tourist attraction that will rival Graceland both in size, and bizarreness. more ›

• A UPS man cries.
• A Chron staff writer goes to Rasputin, interviews folks.
• Toxicology results, predictably, not coming for weeks.

Inspiration to many left-leaning political activists, writers, and observational humorists, comedian/social satirist/pottymouth George Carlin died of heart failure today at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. He was 71. more ›

Speaking of Santa Cruz, the inventor of LSD, Albert Hofmann, died on Tuesday at his Switzerland home. He was 102. more ›

This kind of image makes us fall in like-like with San Francisco all over again. Someone just ripped out an article about the passing of Robert Goulet, and taped it up to a lamp post. Really, what a great trend for people in this city to start doing when big names die. Just a simple, quiet statement of respect. We love it. RIP, Lancelot. Image credit: balmes... more ›