Actor and comedian Bernie Mac died in a Chicago-area hospital today from complications due to pneumonia. He was 50 years old. Mac had been admitted to the hospital on August 1 but at the time was expected to make a full recovery, according to his rep. No other details were made available.

He will be missed.

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ROBIN WILLIAMS TO TALK IN WACKY VOICES ABOUT IRAQ "When the going gets tough, Robin Williams gets going. This fall, the Oscar-winning actor and famously animated funnyman is hitting the road for his first stand-up comedy tour in six years. Weapons of Self-Destruction kicks off Sept. 25, with stops in cities that include Chicago, Nashville and Baltimore. His last tour, in 2002, was filmed for HBO; the resulting program, Robin Williams: Live on Broadway, earned him two Emmy nominations. Why go back out now? 'It's an interesting time, as they say,' Williams says. 'I'll talk about everything that's going on. The election. The choices. What are we going to do?'"

DO YOU HAVE TO LET IT LINGER? "Smartypants magazine editor to CNN: If Comedy Central can do it, why can't we? That was a good part of New Yorker editor David Remnick's argument to Wolf Blitzer about the controversy the current issue of the magazine has whipped up by portraying Barack Obama and his wife as a couple of gun-slinging, bin Laden-loving terrorists on its cover. Remnick likened what the magazine has done to what 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report' do every weeknight on television. He said the point of the cover was to satirize the many right-wing rumors and innuendoes that have spread virally about the Democratic candidate."

'ENDLESS PENIS JOKES' "A leading Catholic group has come to the aid of America's Hindus who are boycotting Mike Myers' new film The Love Guru - because religious officials have found the film to be 'morally offensive.' The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has slapped the comedy with its highest classification. … Officials at the USCCB's Office for Film and Broadcasting in New York, who are responsible for reviewing and rating theatrical motion pictures, called the film 'vulgar and tasteless', adding it 'wallows in endless penis jokes and fairly yucky potty humor.'"

George Carlin, a man as responsible as anyone for the current freedoms of the Internet, died of heart failure yesterday in Santa Monica. The comedian, writer and actor was recently named the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was 71.

After the jump, some of Carlin's greatest hits, including "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." (NSFW, but tell your boss to screw.)

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HOW ABOUT 'BAD ACTOR'? "Jerry Seinfeld claims a cookbook author is cooking up some fancy semantics by calling him an actor rather than a comedian to minimize the humor in statements she says defamed her. Lawyers for Seinfeld say Missy Chase Lapine's lawyers resorted to the switch in words to describe Seinfeld when several weeks ago they filed a rewritten version of her lawsuit against him and his wife in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. 'Jerry Seinfeld is an enormously wealthy and well-known actor,' Lapine's revised lawsuit said. The original had called him a comedian."

So, the The Office spinoff is shaping up to be less a spinoff and more a brand new show, without any characters from the original American version transitioning. Bummer. But! Like The Office, said new show will star an East Indian actor who doesn't speak with an accent, and that is to be commended.

Details are finally starting to emerge on NBC's highly anticipated "The Office" spinoff — including the show's first cast hire, Aziz Ansari of MTV's sketch comedy "Human Giant."

Producers are mum on Ansari's role, but he'll be part of a larger ensemble that executive producers Greg Daniels and Michael Schur are putting together.

A commenter made a good point yesterday when they loosely compared old unfunnyman Gallagher to new unfunnyman Dane Cook. For the most part, we think it's an apt pairing, though we'd like to posit one thing: Isn't Gallagher's horribly corny but original watermelon shtick slightly better than Dane Cook's unoriginal, macho swagger?

After the jump, Cook's stellar bit about how gay guys are so lispy that it's impossible to understand them. Quote: "Fucking go be gay!"

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We made that quick Gallagher crack earlier because, like Gallagher's comedy, it was easy. But then we remembered that our seven-year-old selves used to really like the way Gallagher made a mess. A lot of our friends enjoyed it, too. Which got us to thinking: Is Gallagher to comedy what Raffi is to music? Or was he never funny, meaning we were just wrong all those years ago? Is anyone out there courageous enough to say they still think Gallagher is funny?

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The Kids in the Hall sketch comedy troupe is back on tour after a six-year hiatus! Yes, their material is very, very hit or miss, but when it hits it's hilarious. Check here to see if they're coming to a city near you, then click through to delight in one of their best new sketches and one of their best from the past. The first one is NSFW, but it's worth getting fired over.

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Because it's what they do, the New York Post has compiled a list of the 50 best (their word) jokes of the last 12 months, a feat that accomplishes little more than to confirm everyone's assumptions: the Post can never be intentionally funny.

Of the greatest 50 quips in the world today, at least 40 are completely humorless and hackneyed, two or three are not jokes at all and seven mock either African Americans or women (four for the ladies and three for the blacks). All in all, we think the whole exercise was just the Post endorsing Obama in the only way it knows how.

"Jokes" are after the jump.
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If you were moved to tears by the will.i.am "Yes We Can" video in support of Barack Obama, prepare yourself to again cry, but for different reasons, while watching this John McCain tribute.

With the WGA strike in full swing, we've had a long time to think about all the TV we aren't watching, and one conclusion that we've come to is that comedy shows aren't actually funny. Real life is funny and it's better, because it never asks for a bigger paycheck.

The Hawaii Chair is more hilarious than anything that's been on Saturday Night Live in the past four years, and the people who devised it weren't kidding. Screw off, TV.