( Why we can't afford to go over the line in attacking conservatives, cut to save your friends' page space. )

One of the tiny handful of practitioners of that arcane art known as comedy who was capable of making Your Humble laugh out loud-more than once in a sitting-has suddenly, shockingly been taken from us...by his own hand. Actor/comic Robin Williams, of Mork & Mindy, Aladdin, Dead Poets Society, Comic Relief and so much else, has died of apparent ( Read more... )

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling in money,
The screamingly funny
And those who are very well hung.
-W. H. Auden

One of the finest examples of Auden's third category ever to come out of that superstar-comedian factory known as Chicago's Second City troupe is lost to us now. Actor-director-writer Harold ( Read more... )