The media is observing the recent death of influential New York Magazine founder Clay Felker with a predictable avalanche of eulogies. New York has an elegant essay from Tom Wolfe (who also double-dipped his B material for Time), rounded out with a big collective tribute from colleagues and friends ranging from Gore Vidal to Tim Zagat. Elsewhere, Jon Carroll recalls Felker comparing feet with Milton Glaser, Voice theater critic Michael Feingold recounts his discourteous first......

Clay Felker, founder of New York magazine – a publication he once described as a guide to “how the power game is played, and who are the winners” – died this morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 82 and had been battling cancer of the throat and mouth. Felker started New York in 1964 as a Sunday supplement to The New York Herald Tribune; when that paper folded he collaborated with graphic designer......

George Carlin, a native of Morningside Heights, died of heart failure yesterday in California. He was 71. The iconoclastic comedian was famously arrested (pictured) after doing his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine during a 1972 performance in Milwaukee (you can see video of a 1978 performance after the jump). When the words were later aired on WBAI, the ensuing lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled in......

A former city employee could face seven years in jail and a lifetime of ghoulish haunting if convicted of stealing $3,300 from a dead person’s safety deposit box. Arthur Orikher pulled the scam while working as an accountant for a Kings County office that administers the estates of those who die without a will or families. Assuming it’s the same Arthur Orikher who owns this gorgeous Siberian cat, can you really blame him for wanting......

Groundbreaking postwar artist Robert Rauschenberg died last night at the age of 82. The adventurous painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, set designer and composer was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, a small refinery town with little cultural stimuli. (In his adult life he took the name Robert.) His father worked for a local utility, and the family’s lifestyle was so financially tight that, according to the Times, Rauschenberg’s mother......

The Justice Department is denying federal benefits to the families of the two auxiliary police officers who were brutally killed by a marauding gunman in the West Village last year. Yevgeniy Marshalik's and Nicholas Pekearo's families each applied for $300,000 in benefits, part of the 2003 “Hometown Heroes” Congressional bill for families of first-responders killed in the line of duty. But the DOJ doesn't think they qualify, because NYC's “auxiliary police are not recognized as......

Okay people, time for your morning update on The Ledge – come on, you know you want it. Even Daniel Day Lewis says there’s nothing else to talk about. (Scroll down.) Sorry we’re late, but there are a lot of new developments this morning. First and foremost, Heath Ledger is, sadly, still dead. Second! Before calling 911, Diana Wolozin, the unlicensed massage therapist who found Ledger’s body, used Ledger’s phone to speed dial Mary-Kate Olsen......

Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his downtown Manhattan apartment by the police. Some reports say he died from an overdose. UPDATE 5:00PM :According to the NYPD spokesman, Ledger, who was living in an apartment at Broome street, "had an appointment for a massage...The housekeeper who went to let Ledger know the masseuse was there, and found him dead at 3:26 p.m" with "pills strewn all around him." The housekeeper and masseuse tried......