Emmy award-winning actor and curmudgeonly patriarch of Everybody Loves Raymond Peter Boyle, who recovered from a stroke almost two decades ago, passed away last night after a battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.

On Everybody Loves Raymond, Boyle played the inflexible, narrow-minded, and often abrasive yet somehow lovable Frank Barone, whose signature "holy crap" comment to so many family events and his own antics made the character most memorable.

Boyle began his acting career in theater, going on to appear in movies such as Young Frankenstein, Johnny Dangerously, While You Were Sleeping, Monster's Ball, Malcolm X, Taxi Driver and most recently as Father Time in Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.

Boyle is survived by his wife Loraine and daughters Lucy and Amy. He was 71.

"A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians." -- Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa -- intelligent and articulate; gifted and prolific as a rock musician and composer; guitarist, singer/songwriter, film director, and satirist -- lost his life to prostate cancer in 1993. During his musical career, he gained a cult-like following of fans by pushing the iconoclastic envelope and by mastering the technology needed to create his complex musical compositions.

One of Frank's sons, Dweezil Zappa, wants to set the record straight about his father. According to Dweezil, "There are so many things that are misunderstood or not recognized about my father's music because they've been filtered by people who work for magazines like Rolling Stone.

For example, Rolling Stone recently printed a poor, artist-rendering of Frank holding a joint.

Frank has always been well-known for being anti-drug yet they would rather continue to perpetuate a false image of him, even after death. It's irresponsible, it's obnoxious and offensive. I think it's time people know what Frank was really about, and they should discover it through his music."

To that end, Dweezil, with his brother Ahmet, are touring Zappa Plays Zappa and introducing a whole new generation to Frank Zappa's music. You can follow the tour at the Zappa Plays Zappa blog.