(The following links go to the Chicago Tribune, which stupidly requires registration. I highly recommend BugMeNot to get around that.)

* I really hate to see Ray Charles go, sorry it took me so long to mention that.  As you’d probably guess, I’m a fan of his countrypolitan-type stuff especially, but just everything he did was magnificent.  What a character too… he drank, he swore, he cheated at cards. A cool cat indeed.  He’ll be missed.

* You know the waterpark in Fort Worth where the family drowned last week?  I’m almost positive that’s the same fountain that was featured at the end of one of my favorite old flicks, Logan’s Run, which was filmed in nearby Dallas.  In the film, the characters have to actually swim up through that thing to escape the City, and later on they come back with the old man and have to swim back in the same way they came out, to prove to the twenty-somethings that there’s such a thing as an old person.  I guess the water-pumps had broken down by that time, being that it was a bleak vision of the future and all.  Anyway, it never occurred to the city that anybody might fall in that pool and drown?  Nice work… thanks to their lack of foresight, four people are dead and a geeky landmark will be forever tainted by the memory of this tragedy. Why don’t they put a layer of chicken-wire in there, under the surface so it’s not visible, but shallow enough people can’t get sucked all the way down to the bottom?

* All this Jack & Jeri Ryan child-custody stuff is giving me the heebie-jeebies, maybe ‘cuz I was a custody-battle kid myself. I know freedom of information is important, but what if the information they’re trying to root out really does pertain in a very personal way to that child rather than to the Ryan campaign?  Like, what if he’s a bedwetter or had behavioral problems during the divorce, is that something the whole world really needs to hear?  I don’t trust the media but I hope they’ll be very cautious and keep that kid in mind when reporting this info.  It really could ruin his life if it hasn’t already.