Beach Blanket Shroud

ABC News.com offers a helpful round-up today of the celebrities we've lost over the summer. This year has been especially... well let's look at it positively, it's been helpful in thinning the herd and allowing new celebrities room to expand.

"This summer saw some pretty spectacular celebrity deaths," said Jeremy Wallach, an associate professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

"They're dropping like flies."

The sheer volume of famous person loss also has the advantage of clearing hard-drive space at newspapers as they burn through long-stored obituaries. And that's good because they need that space for resumes.