Happy New Year everybody. Time to get back to a partial list of those who passed away last year, beginning where we left off, in July.

July

Jul 1: Tim Russert, still dead.

Jul 3: That Bozo Larry Harmon died of heart failure at the age of 83. Seriously. He was one of the Bozos the Clown.

Jul 4: NC asshole Senator Jesse Helms kicked the bucked at the age of 83.

July 11: Heart surgeon Michael E. DeBakey died. He was 99.

July 12: Fox News and Bush Administration shill Tony Snow died at the age of 53 from colon cancer.

July 21: Eric Dowling, who helped plan “The Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III in WWII died at the age of 92.

July 22: Actress Estelle Getty of Golden Girls fame died from Lewy body dementia. She was 84.

August

Aug 8: 1969 US Open champ Orville Moody died at 74.

Aug 9: Comedian Bernie Mac, died from complications of pneumonia. He was only 50.

Aug 17: Dave Freeman, author of ‘100 Things To Do Before You Die’ fell and hit his head. He was 47.

Aug 18: 1980 Kentucky Derby winner Genuine Risk died at the age of 31.

Aug 20: Stephanie Tubbs Jones, 58, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was the same day that former Oakland Raider and NFLPA head Gene Upshaw died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 63. Pancreatic cancer also took Buddy Guy’s brother Phil that day. He was 68.

Aug 31: CBS journalist Ike Pappas, who broadcast murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, died of heart failure at the age of 75. Country music singer and actor Jerry Reed died at 71 from emphysema.

September

Sep 1: “Thunder Throat” voiceover man Don LaFontaine died of complications from pneumothorax at 68.

Sep 7: My uncle Bill joined my aunt Mary Lou and my mom and dad. He was 82.

Sep 11: Joan Winston, co-founder of the Star Trek convention, died from Bendii Syndrome Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 77.

Sep 15: Pink Floyd keyboardist went to the Great Gig in the Sky at the age of 65, courtesy of cancer.

Sep 26: Legendary actor Paul Newman died of lung cancer. He was 83.

Sep 30: Henry Adler, who taught Buddy Rich how to play the drums, died at the age of 93.

October

Oct 1: “Mr Clean,” House Peters, Jr. died of pneumonia at 92.

Oct 17: The Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs, died from complications of cancer and stroke. He was 72.

Oct 18: Dionne Warwick’s sister Dee Dee died at 63.

Oct 24: Keyboardist and all around good guy Merl Saunders died at the age of 74.

Oct 31: We lost Studs Terkel on Halloween. He was 96.

November

Nov 1: Jimmy Carl Black, drummer and founding member of the Mothers of Invention, died at the age of 70. Lung cancer got him.

Nov 4: Global warming denier and author Michael Crichton died at the age of 66 from throat cancer. It was the same day that John McCain’s presidential aspirations officially died as well.

Nov 8: Florence Wald, “mother of the American hospice movement,” died at her home in Connecticut at the age of 91.

Nov 12: Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell died at 61.

December

Dec 2: American folk singer and human rights activist Odetta passed away at the age of 77 from heart disease.

Dec 5: Beverly Garland, who finally snagged that longtime bachelor Fred MacMurray in My Three Sons, died at the age of 82.

Dec 6: Sunny von Bülow finally slipped away at the age of 76, after having spent 28 years in a persistent vegetative state.

Dec 11: Pinup model Bettie Page died at 85, from complications of a heart attack.

Dec 12: Actor Van Johnson died at the age of 92.

Dec 16: Apocalypse Now surfer dude and bother of Timothy, Sam Bottoms passed away at the age of 53.

Dec 17: Slingin’ Sammy Baugh died. He was 94.

Dec 18: Deep Throat, W. Mark Felt, died at the age of 95. The voice of Star Trek’s computer fell silent the same day, as Majel Barrett went to joing her husband Gene at the age of 77 from leukemia.

Dec 19: Republican political strategist Michael Connell died in an “accidental” airplane crash at the age of 45. Cancer took Noam Chomsky’s wife Carol the same day. She was 78.

Dec 25: Colon cancer took Eartha Kitt on Christmas Day. She was 81.

Dec 29: Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died of complications from a heart attack at the age of 70.

Enjoy the day, everybody. Let’s hope 2009 is a much better year than 2008 was.