While it may be a while before we learn the exact cause of Whitney Houston's death, the leading theory is that she fell asleep in the bathtub after taking Xanax (possibly in conjunction with alcohol).

The Oscars are on Sunday! Aren't you soooo excited? What's that? It's shaping up to be one of the least-surprising Oscars in recent memory? Well, OK, sure. But we think there are actually a few things to be excited about.

Brittany Murphy's life was cut short at 32 when she passed away this morning. The latest piece of news is that her husband, Simon Monjack, reportedly told Cedars-Sinai staffers that he didn't want there to be an autopsy. Who?

With two armies of ladies fighting over Christian Brando's body, the debate over where to put the recently deceased son of Marlon to rest is now being fought on a very public stage. In order to help win the battle, both Anna Kashfi, Brando's mother, and his girlfriend Donna Geon have recruited others closely connected to the actor to support their wildly contradictory claims. Kashfi's posse (which also includes Brando's ex-wives Deborah Presley and Mary McKenna) thinks that Brando's body should be buried in Washington, because, well, we're not exactly sure (we think it's because he once lived there for awhile). But! Geon says Brando told her a different story, and she's pulled some half-siblings out of the woodwork to prove it.

Paul "Tigger" Winchell and John "Piglet" Fiedler have died.

Ye fucking gods. Our first reaction when we sat down at the computer this morning and immediately discovered that Hunter S. Thompson killed himself last night was, "Holy shit." In fact, that was our second and third reaction as well. There's still some "holy shit" going around at Defamer HQ, but that will soon subside as sadness replaces it.

A Defamer operative gathers empirical evidence that John Goodman was indeed alive and well (though with one less sitcom paycheck coming in) at Sundance:

Johnny Carson's dead! It seems like just yesterday that he was feeding jokes to David Letterman. We don't want to get too macabre, but if we were in a dead pool, we'd put all our money on Ed McMahon to go next. Sidekicks never last too long after the top bananas pass on.

Hello, internet surfers! If you've heard the rumor that John Goodman died today, or were sent a link to this story (or try this link), well, it's time to pull your commemorative plates of the 100th Roseanne episode off of eBay, because they aren't going to spike in value like you'd hoped. The story is clearly a hoax (not even the AP can mangle grammar or spelling like that), and if you look closely at the URL, the story doesn't live on the MyWay.com servers. Some jokesters decided to punk the kids at the Oh No They Didn't Livejournal, where dozens of moving tributes to the not-dead-yet Goodman were instantly erected.

If you're famous, please please don't die in the next 48 hours, because the news folk have already put together their lists of everyone who died this year. Just hold on until New Year's Day.

We've heard that at least one network has put its affiliates on notice that Elizabeth Taylor is on her deathbed, giving them the heads-up that those creepy, sepia-toned special reports may soon be coming through. Let the major media deathwatch begin. Ghouls, all of them!