Wow. I just got in from a very, very late flight from Denver, and the early-morning newscasts hit me with this wallop: my favorite comedian, George Carlin, passed away last night. On Sunday, he admitted himself into a local Santa Monica hospital, complaining of chest pains, and ended up dying that evening of heart failure. He was 71.

Carlin, of course, is most famous for the 1970s comedy routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV." It was a bit which not only got radio stations that played it in trouble with the FCC, leading to landmark First Amendment and decency rulings by the Supreme Court, but he was also arrested in Milwaukee on indecency charges after doing the routine on stage there.

Ralph Story, former TV and radio journalist who is probably best known for hosting the CBS game show The $64,000 Challenge, died yesterday after a long battle with emphysema. He was 86.

He hosted Challenge for two years, starting in 1956; the show was popular, but was cancelled in 1958 in the midst of the quiz show scandals of the time, where shows like Twenty-One and others were caught supplying answers to contestants. Story wasn't implicated, but he never went on to hosting another game show again, instead staying in local TV news, including hosting an L.A. morning news show that was a model for Good Morning America.

Makoto Iwamatsu, known to TV and movie fans as simply Mako, died of esophageal cancer on July 21, according to this CNN article from Wednesday. He was 72. His death was announced by Tim Dang, the artistic director of East West Players, a theater company that Mako co-founded.

It's interesting that Mako passed away during the same week as Jack Warden, because the two of them played very similar roles in their careers; Mako almost always played either the general, the authoritarian, the soldier, or the wise old sage. Heck, I think he played all four roles on M*A*S*H alone (he played four different guest roles during the series' 11-year run).

The Jack Russell Terrier that played 'Eddie' on the long-running sitcom, 'Frasier', died last week. The pup's real name is Moose. His trainer says he died of old age last Thursday in Los Angeles. The little fella was 16-and-a-half years old, which is impressive for a dog.

Moose's trainer, Mathilde Halberg, saved him from the pound back in the early 1990s. She tells PEOPLE magazine, "He was extremely mischievious, always escaping, chewing up things and running off. When he killed a neighborhood cat and chased some horses, that was it." Sounds like little Moose was a bad ass.

Robert Sterling, who starred with his wife Anne Jeffreys in the 1953-56 series Topper died from natural causes at the age of 88. According to his son, Jeffrey, he had been battling the shingles for the last ten years. In Topper, Sterling and Jeffreys (pictured) played a young couple that dies and haunts the new owner of their house, Cosmo Topper.

Some interesting tibits from his IMDb profile: he was the son of a Chicago Cub catcher, and, after his acting career waned in the early 1970s, he entered into a computer business that kept him away from acting until some nostalgic guest spots in the 1980s. Not a bad life if you can swing it. He is survived by Jeffreys and four children, one of whom he had with his first wife, Ann Sothern.