Marvin Hamlisch dead; Kanye West to blame?

Marvin Hamlisch wrote lots of memorable music for stage and screen, including the Tony and Pulitzer Award winning musical "A Chorus Line," the Oscar winning score for The Sting (Hamlisch's adaptation of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" became a Top 10 hit) -- and he also had a hand in writing Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were."

Well, they can't all be winners.

But Hamlisch also wrote Lesley Gore's "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows," and that makes up for Streisand, in my book.

Anyway, the sad news from Tinseltown is that Marvin Hamlisch passed away Monday at the age of 68.

Meanwhile, in other entertainment news, Kanye West has revealed that his latest magnum opus, "The Perfect Bitch," is really a song about Kim Kardashian -- and this while Kanye and Kim are still (as the gossip columns used to say) a coosome twosome.

This disclosure raises some interesting questions:

If romance is not yet officially dead, can we at least say it's in a coma?

Remember when you couldn't say words like that unless you made it abundantly clear that you were talking about raising dogs (and maybe not even then)?

What might Mr. West call Ms. Kardashian when (as is inevitable) trouble develops in Paradise?

Meanwhile, the cause of death Mr. Hamlisch's death has not yet been revealed. But I can't help but think there's some linkage here.