It was just a couple weeks ago that I noted that KTRK's Marvin Zindler had been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. He died yesterday.

He was an old coot and lived very well, but the guy is a legend. He was pimp before rap music came along, and like I noted many times before, he was a tremendous asset to his community.

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But the biggie this morning was the death of Tom Snyder.

I remember hanging out at a little bar in Hugo, Okla., and talking to one of the only other intelligent souls in that entire town, a guy by the name of Chuck Cearley. He was the barkeep at this little place, and it turned out, he was a fan of Snyder and his colortinis.

I know Snyder started out with NBC and that his show "Tomorrow" was actually a pioneering program in late-night television. However, I remember him most for his CNBC program in the early-to-mid-1990s, one that was eventually replaced I believe by a vastly underrated program from Charles Grodin, where the comic actor basically turned into Lenny Bruce, ranting on various laws and society in general.

Snyder went on to CBS and was eventually replaced by Craig Kilborn. And while it wasn't the same when Snyder went to CBS, it was still better than anything else on at that time.

No offense to Charlie Rose, but Tom Snyder WAS the best interviewer of modern time. And what's more, Snyder was like a cool old guy, talking hip to the kids and dignified to the adults -- and his stories always had viewers on edge because you never knew when one of them would reference some booze or pot-smoking, which would catch many younger folks off guard because he typically dressed like a bank president.

Nevertheless, we knew he had leukemia, so it's not a total shock. But I'm hoping that the tributes we see on television this week proportionately show just how much of an icon this guy was. How much of a pioneer he was, and just how damned cool he was.

Enjoy this li'l YouTube video I found: