Longtime ultimate fighter and former UFC middleweight champion Evan Tanner was found dead in the California desert yesterday. He had apparently become stranded without water and succumbed to the heat. Tanner, 37, always looked more like a mountain man or a brooding surfer than a brutal fighter. But he kicked ass with the best of them. He rose to fame along with his sport itself, and his crossover appeal—which was immense—will probably only increase as the full story of his death becomes known. Rest in peace, dude.

Don LaFontaine, one of the best voice actors in history, is dead at 68. LaFontaine began writing and voicing movie trailers in the late 1960s, inventing, supposedly, most of the beloved and hilarious cliches ("in a world," "one man stands...") that still introduce us to whatever summer Hollywood garbage we'll be enjoying this Fourth of July. There are countless amusing LaFontaine parodies, commercials, and jokey news segments available on YouTube, but it seems more appropriate to enjoy his work on its own merits, not just as camp. So here's the classic theatrical trailer for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Bloomberg financial newswire decided to update its 17-page Steve Jobs obituary today — and inadvertently published it in the process. Some investors were undoubtedly rattled to see, as our tipster did late this afternoon, the Apple CEO's obit cross the wire and then suddenly disappear. Jobs's battle with pancreatic cancer, and speculation over his health, jarred Wall Street earlier this year and continues to be the subject of speculation. The Times weighed in on the matter as recently as last month, when columnist Joe Nocera spoke with the secretive tech executive. But news organizations routinely prepare obituaries in advance, even for the healthy. And if Bloomberg readers had seen the internal story slug, "testjobs," their jitters might have abated. The obit, which we've obtained and reprinted after the jump, is a bit macabre to read but should not scare you out of your Apple shares. (UPDATE: Bloomberg has "retracted" its obituary, and the retraction is also after the jump.) More interesting are the accompanying notes for Bloomberg reporters!

Jerry Ford,* the (dapper!) fellow pictured here, is dead at 83.** Ford founded Ford Models, one of the leading agencies in the seventies and eighties that legitimized the industry and gained renown for discovering Lauren Hutton, Christie Brinkley, Rachel Hunter, Vendela and sundry other blonde ubermodeltypes and OMG I totally forgot about Xuxa. Ford is slightly less famed for its canny picking of future Mouseketeer Gone Wild types: the agency represented Lindsay Lohan and Mischa Barton, Ashley Tisdale, Courteney Cox, Ali Larter and ha ha ha we will forgive him for this but Paris Hilton. Because Jerry Ford was the first genuinely decent boss in a business characterized by predatory "robber barons." A lot has changed since Ford's heyday, and not for the better!The robber barons, for one thing, are back. As our anonymous industry friend and Jezebel contributor Tatiana tells us, most modeling agencies these days are glorified human traffickers that occupy a place on the "usury" spectrum somewhere between Payday Loan shops and actual armed robbers. Agencies stick them in overcrowded model apartments and gouge them on rent. When they are not in "demand," they're forced to work for either clothes or nothing at all; when they are in demand, they're forced to walk 28 shows in a week and that sort of nonsense. Ford was different. He instituted a five-day workweek, paid models every Friday even when clients didn't pay up, and ran a practically Victorian institution wherein models weren't allowed to host gentleman callers. I don't even think he knew how to get coke! Obviously all that shit is gone today. In any case, Ford sold out to a private equity firm in December and his son who is still involved in the company is apparently (duh) a modelizer. We welcome any and all old Ford Model cards, hot Courteney Cox pix, links to that cute Lindsay Lohan-Mischa Barton catalog picture that surfaced sometime last year and/or clips of that retarded Xuxa show. Jerry Ford, Man Behind The Models

Someday, everyone reading this is going to die! And we should all get started on whatever we really want to do now, because the Grim Reaper could come to collect us at any minute. He's already come for Dave Freeman, co-author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die: Travel Events You Just Can't Miss. Mr. Freeman died at his home last week after falling and hitting his head—he was 47.Events that we just "can't miss" before we die, according to his book's table of contents, include the Iditarod, New Year's Eve in Times Square, the Navajo Nation Fair, something called the "Testicle Festival," and Burning Man. With that in mind, I guess I really want to go to France! Haven't been there yet. Also Thailand. But there is no way in hell I'm going to work myself into a hell-demon acid trip with a bunch of hippies in the desert at Burning Man—dead or not dead.

"In the 1960s Esquire was perhaps the nation’s most vibrant magazine — sexy, mischievous, irreverent and hip — and Mr. Hills’s idea of fiction, as well as of the literary life, fit into the ethos of the magazine perfectly." [Times]

Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, the wrestler and restaurateur who essentially introduced America to Japanese food with his Benihaha chain, died today in New York. He was 69. Aoki raised the money to start his first Benihana by driving an ice cream truck in Harlem, which is awesome. More recently, he's been known to New Yorkers through his children, model Devon and annoying scenester DJ Steve. He faced deportation in 2006, and you could do worse for an introduction to his colorful life than this New York story on that incident. It begins, ominously: "'My daughter Grace is telling me, Daddy, your wife is going to poison you to death. Be careful what you eat,' says Rocky Aoki with an odd, amused grin." [AP]

The long-time Republican senator from North Carolina—who died today at the age of 86—disliked using the term "gay" to describe homosexuals because "there's nothing gay about them." The Hands ad (featured here) during Helms' 1990 re-election campaign played into the most basic of white fears of black political power and racial quotas. And the cranky politico took seeming pleasure in opposing every cause dear to the liberal heart, such as foreign aid or support for the arts.

Clay Felker, the founding editor of New York magazine, died today at the age of 80 after an extended illness. The Missouri native got his start in journalism as a magazine writer for titles like LIFE, Time, and Esquire, but he will go down in history as the man who codified a method for chronicling the elite of New York, while providing a platform for the city's best writers. He's responsible for creating the only real glossy city magazine that is also a good magazine on its own merits—unapologetically elitist, but not blinkered. And slick enough to justify it all.

Stand-up comedian George Carlin, whose routine about forbidden words on the airwaves led to a key Supreme Court decision on government broadcast oversight, died of heart failure near Los Angeles. He was 71. Carlin had been admitted to the hospital earlier in the day with chest pains. He launched to fame in the 1960s as a straightlaced, suit-and-tie comedian appearing on programs like the Ed Sullivan Show as characters like the "hippie-dippie weatherman." By the 1970s, he was doing more risque material in long hair and jeans, and his performance of the routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" prompted an obscenity trial in Milwaukee, plus the Supreme Court fight, which arose from the airing of a similar routine on the radio in New York and an FCC fine.

In what may or may not be an irony of some kind, but should probably not actually be noted, because it's sort of ghoulish and in poor taste, political journalism superstar Tim Russert went out today with a Friday newsdump, that hallowed Washington DC practice of burying news no one wants to see. Earlier today, June 13, 2008, Russert suffered a fatal heart attack. While working, obviously. Because he worked a lot, and he always looked like he loved it.

"Jim McKay, the venerable and eloquent sportscaster thrust into the role of telling Americans about the tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics, has died. He was 87. McKay died Saturday of natural causes at his farm in Monkton, Md. The broadcaster who considered horse racing his favorite sport died only hours before Big Brown attempted to win a Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes. He was host of ABC's influential 'Wide World of Sports' for more than 40 years, starting in 1961. The weekend series introduced viewers to all manner of strange, compelling and far-flung sports events. The show provided an international reach long before exotic backdrops became a staple of sports television." [AP] Rather than post grim Munich video, what follows is a lighter bit illustrating McKay's icon status.

"Thomas A. Johnson, the first black reporter at Newsday and later, at The New York Times, one of the first black journalists to work as a foreign correspondent for a major daily newspaper, died on Monday in Queens. He was 79." [Times] (Photo via Times)

Pioneering fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, who famously wove everything from pants to peasant clothes to leopard prints into the everyday wardrobes of women, and who adroitly evolved his designs over several decades, died in Paris of unknown causes. He was 71. Laurent "had been ill for some time," according to Agence France-Presse. The hugely influential designer retired in 2002. The cause of death has not been released, but according to the BBC, "Yves St Laurent suffered mental and physical ill health for much of his life and he appeared in public only rarely." The Times obit concludes with this quote: "I have known fear and the terrors of solitude. I have known those fair-weather friends we call tranquilizers and drugs. I have known the prison of depression and the confinement of hospital. But one day, I was able to come through all of that, dazzled yet sober." [AFP, Times]

Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack, whose credits included Out Of Africa, The Way We Were and Tootsie, died at home in Los Angeles of cancer. He was 73. His death came within three months of the cancer death of his business partner and fellow filmmaker Anthony Minghella, with whom he ran production company Mirage Enterprises. Able to draw talent with his passion for film and nuanced directing, Pollack was known for featuring top Hollywood stars in virtually all his films. At Dustin Hoffman's insistence, he took a role as the agent in Tootsie, and continued an acting sideline that culminated with a standout performance in Michael Clayton, featured after the jump along with an outtake from his journalism corrective Absence of Malice.

John Philip Law—you know him as Pygar, the blind angel in Barbarella—died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 70. He was gloriously wooden in so many other nutty '60s cult classics, like The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and Skidoo. [LAT]

Artist Robert Rauschenberg, the man who saved us from abstract expressionism, died Monday at the age of 82. The Times describes him as a "brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner." People used to care way more about art when it was made by people like that instead of twee New School students. Rauschenberg started out making art out of junk he found on the streets of lower Manhattan, announcing that if you didn't find "soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles" beautiful than you must be a miserable bastard. So go to the Moma this week and see First Landing Jump, which is made of "a rusted license plate, an enamel light reflector, a tire impaled by a street barrier, a man's shirt, a blue lightbulb in a can, and a black tarpaulin." And some paint and canvas, sure. [NYT]

"Irvine Robbins, who with his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, started the Baskin-Robbins chain of ice cream stores - together concocting quirky flavor combinations with names like Daiquiri Ice, Pink Bubblegum and Here Comes the Fudge - died on Monday near his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 90... One day in 1964... he received a phone call from a reporter for The New York Post, asking what flavor Baskin-Robbins was planning to introduce to celebrate the Beatles' arrival for their appearance on Ed Sullivan's television show. Caught unaware, he came up with Beatlenut, and then scrambled to find an unnamed flavor with nuts in it to match. Two days later, it was in all the company's stores." [Times]