BORN: Actor-comedian Chris Rock ("Bad Company"), 36, and his wife, Malaak Compton-Rock, 32, welcomed their first child, a baby girl, named Lola Simone, his publicist told the Associated Press. (Before the baby's birth, Rock was touting the name Holiday.) . . . CLOSED: The family of singing legend Rosemary Clooney, 74, who died of lung cancer in her Beverly Hills mansion on Saturday, was forced to switch a public memorial service planned for Wednesday to a private one "due to tremendous response" for seats in Beverly Hills's Church of the Good Shepherd, Clooney's publicist told Reuters. A public memorial is scheduled for Dec. 9 in L.A., promised the rep. . . . DIED: Original beat poet Philip Whalen, 78, died in San Francisco last Wednesday, reports the AP. He had been suffering from heart and brain illnesses and living in a nursing home, according to the Los Angeles Times. In 1955 Whalen helped ignite the Beat movement along with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and others. . . . TOSSED: Chicago's Italian-American Defamation Association has dropped its lawsuit that accused HBO of offending Italian-Americans by depicting them as mobsters on "The Sopranos," reports the AP. (HBO, like PEOPLE, is part of AOL Time Warner.) The group was not seeking a financial settlement from HBO, but a declaration from a jury that the hit series offends the dignity of Italian-Americans. The suit met with several obstacles in court.