Ben Gazzara. Character actor. Pancreatic cancer. First saw him in "Run for your Life" on TV when I was little. He played the bad guy in "Road House". He was 81.

Although her shocked publicist initially denied the rumor, CNN is reporting that Whitney Houston has died at age 48...her continuing struggle with drugs seems likely to have killed her.

Ai least she had a chanch at life and did pretty well.

Best Whitney Houston memory: Riding to Solvang with my sister and my 8 month old nephew in the backseat in the car seat. "I Will Always Love You" from The Bodyguard came on the radio and my nephew "oooooo-ooooo" ed his heart out to the chorus. He's now a sophomore at a school just across the river from W4.

If you never heard her mom sing, just listen to this.

MsDaisy, I worked as a waitress in the mid 70s in a cabaret. I saw Cissy Houston many, many times, there and other places. When the place I worked in closed for the night, the wait staff, kitchen staff, the owners and the band all piled in cabs and went wherever she was appearing in Manhattan. Actually followed her from place to place. A stunning performer in person.

I still remember one night at Mikell's, I think it was, when a loud drunk in the audience was making a disturbance while Cissy was on stage. He was a really big, tough-looking guy. She turned her voice straight on him and tamed him with it. You heard nothing else for at least three minutes but the power of her voice. That guy was stunned silent and in the palm of her hand. Then the audience just went wild. It was astonishing and I've never forgotten that.

I also saw Whitney when she was a young teenager backing up her mother and the night she came out solo at Sweetwater's on the Upper West Side. I actually preferred Cissy as a singer, she was less packaged, but she never became the super star her daughter did or much of a star at all. I loved her, though.

Ah, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGehee bring back memories.I first heard them at a club in Georgetown,too. Years late, I went to hear them at a small blues joint in Oakland.

This was my all time favorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZN9unFD3ZM

The Cellar Door, right? Me, too! They played there often. Sadly, the Cellar Door is no more,

The award-winning American journalist Anthony Shadid, regarded by his peers as one of the great foreign correspondents of his generation, has died in Syria after a fatal asthma attack while covering the civil war there.

Shadid, the recipient of two Pulitzer prizes for his reporting, had been in Syria for the New York Times. He was 43.

Shadid began his career with Associated Press before joining the Boston Globe and then the Washington Post.

Jill Abramson, the New York Times executive editor, informed the staff of his death in an email. "Anthony died as he lived – determined to bear witness to the transformation sweeping the Middle East and to testify to the suffering of people caught between government oppression and opposition forces," she wrote.

First Amendment crusader Barney Rosset dies

Barney Rosset was not an author and never completed the memoir of his brave and wild life. But few over the past 60 years had so profound an impact on the way we read today.

Rosset, the fiery and fearless publisher who introduced the country to countless political and avant-garde writers and risked prison and financial ruin to release such underground classics as "Tropic of Cancer" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover," has died. He was 89.

Rosset died at a Manhattan hospital Tuesday night, said Kelly Bowen, publicity manager for Algonquin Books, which is to publish Rosset's autobiography. Rosset had recently had heart surgery. ...

As publisher of Grove Press, Rosset was a First Amendment crusader who helped overthrow 20th century censorship laws in the United States and profoundly expanded the American reading experience. Rosset had an FBI file that lasted for decades and he would seek out fellow rebels for much of his life.

Between Grove and the magazine Evergreen Review, which lasted from 1957 to 1973, Rosset published Samuel Beckett, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and William Burroughs. He was equally daring as a film distributor, his credits including the groundbreaking erotic film "I Am Curious (Yellow)," and art-house releases by Jean-Luc Godard, Marguerite Duras and others.

A tragic murder in Berkeley has stricken two families with grief and led to serious allegations against the Berkeley Police Department, the mental health system and Occupy Oakland.

On Saturday night, Peter and Andrea Cukor called Berkeley police on a nonemergency line to report a trespasser outside their garage. However, police did not immediately respond, claiming they were busy with an Occupy protest. Soon after, 67-year-old Peter Cukor was beaten to death by the trespasser, allegedly 23-year-old Daniel DeWitt.