Felix and Oscar may now be together in the Afterlife.

More sad news today: Jack Lemon, star of many films, passed away at 74.

One of my favorite films of all time is Some Like it Hot, the Billy Wilder-directed film that starred Lemon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe. Tony is now the only surviving member of that group...

The film is a prime example of the screwball comedy. Years ago, a film teacher almost managed to ruin the film for me, but couldn't succeed.

Lemon was a well-loved member of old school Hollywood, an actor famous for great comedies, but also a great dramatist. He was a man so loved and respected, actor Vim Raines gave him his 1999 Golden Globe, because he felt Jack deserved it.

Goodbye, Mr. Lemon. Those of us who remember your work will make sure you're never forgotten.

The family friend I mentioned a few weeks back died in the early hours of the morning.

She stopped eating more than 2 weeks ago, and she hadn't opened her eyes in over a week. She'd gone into a coma.

She didn't feel pain in the end, and her suffering is now over - but what an awful way to go.

It's something we've expected for weeks now, an inevitable ending... but it still hurts. I've been on the brink of tears ever since mom told me.

The day after St-Jean. I went out to a banking machine in the morning, but stayed in the rest of the day. It was insanely hot outdoors... I'm not stupid!

I spent a large part of the day copying over my personal diary to another program; problem with Lite versions of some apps is that they don't provide proper export functions... so, I cut and paste, and re-live some of my older journal entries while I do.

Sunday is Quebec's major summer holiday, St-Jean Baptiste (Saint John the Baptist). It's not a holiday I celebrate. Actually, one I haven't celebrated in many, many years. I call it "St-Jean Alcoholic Day", because it's really an excuse for people to get drunk.

(Not that Canada Day next week is any different. The whole "I Am Canadian!" ad campaign for Canadian Beer fits to a T.)

Today brought sad news for both music and TV fans.

Johnny Lee Hooker, legendary blues man, an influence on the Rolling Stones, died at the age of 80.

He was still performing to the end, still recording. He will be missed.

The other I didn't hear of until a few minutes ago - but his memory will always be significant: Carol O'Connor.

Archie Bunker was a character I grew up with, and played a significant part in my pop culture gestalt. Archie's favorite chair has been an exhibit in the Smithsonian for years. Now, memories of Archie - and Carol - will be forever in our hearts and minds too.

I got a set of 10 boxes to pack with this morning. At least my bookcases will soon be done!

I wanted to start today, but the heat really slowed me down to a stand-still.

NYPOST.COM Entertainment: CLAPTON BAND'S NEW MEMBER By WILLIAM J. GORTA. He's not a Jazz musician, but Eric Clapton is a blues man, and that's close enough!

BTW: if my post about the NBA Finals seemed callous after the news of my family friend: it wasn't intended as such.

I always try to mix some lighter postings with the heavier ones, for my mental sanity as well as my readers.

A few minutes ago, the LA Lakers won their second NBA Championship in a row, beating the Philadelphia SeventySixers four games to one.

By winning this title, they've also become the first NBA champions of the 21st century, and it seems they've possibly started a run as the new dominant franchise.

A few things about the games stuck out to me: first, Tyrone Hill of the Sixers is a fantastic player - but he really needs to eat a bit. The guy must be the one player I've seen who looks way emaciated.

Secondly, Shaquille O'Neil is a truly dominant player, one of the strongest big men I've ever seen on the courts. His size must be the reason he seems to sweat so much, however.

Finally, one of the announcers really annoyed me: PJ-something, a guy who offered commentary off-court. He always looks like he's in tremendous pain or furious when he speaks.

Regardless of anything though, the Sixers played a hard-fought series. Even from down scores, they fought back to the end.

Some parts of life just stink, make me wonder about the idea of a higher power watching over us:

A family friend, one I haven't seen in many years, is right now in Paliative care, most likely on her death bed.

The reason: lung cancer.

Was she a smoker? No.

She's only 53 years old.

About 4 years ago, she went to her doctor for chest pains. He discounted it as nothing serious, gave her some cough medecine. The pain didn't go away. One of her friends recommended an Oncologist. A few months after her mis-diagnosis by one doctor, it was found to be cancer - a cancer that had spread throughout her body by now.

She had two operations to remove tumors - but now it was inoperable. She had to face four damn years of getting worse, being sick from drugs and radiation, just to lead to this. Death by millimeters. Sometimes, life really sucks.

According to the newspaper today, many surviving family members of Oklahoma bombing victims feel no relief at Tim McVeigh's execution... what a surprise - not.

Today was a protest rally in front of the STCUM (Montreal's transit service) to berate them for the horrible state of the city's Adapted Transit service.

Apparently, Toronto has one of the best such services in Canada - as if we don't have enough reason to hate Toronto!

I had to pass on the rally because of the high temperature outside; high heat makes it hard for me to get around, so I wouldn't have been able to participate for long.

The problem is: as far as I can tell, Montreal news services didn't find it important enough to mention, as I didn't hear word one on the air! I guess I'll have to hear the radio news tomorrow and check the newspapers to see if everyone ignored it.

As I type these words, it's been a little over an hour since the execution of Tim McVeigh in the US.

I suspect that right now the families of the Oklahoma bombing victims are feeling their loss no less. His death doesn't erase the deaths of their loved ones in any way. It does bring a small measure of closure to events, though.

I stand by what I said previously in this Blog: for killing all these innocents and showing NO regret whatsoever (calling them incidental to his plans), for his callous disregard for other lives, McVeigh didn't deserve to continue the gift of life... but how sad is it that any of us would think that now?

I did a large amount of Jazz Web-surfing tonight. The 22nd Annual Montreal Jazz Fest is now about 3 weeks away. I visited their site to get more of an idea of what they'll be offering. I'll try to see more of the evening shows to prevent the sun and heat from wiping me out... but if the line-ups are more than hype, it'll be a fun show this year.

One bonus, clipped from their site:

The Festival's closing performance will be devoted to Miles Davis, who would have celebrated his 75th birthday this year. As such, master trumpet player Wallace Roney has been invited to offer us a glimpse of Miles' musical legacy, in a concert entitled " Miles and Miles: A Musical Journey." Furthermore, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Miles Davis' death, the Festival is holding a posthumous tribute, and presenting one of his unknown achievements at the Galerie du Festival. This work, a signed and numbered serigraphy, will be available during the event.

As I mention on this site's discussion boards, I've grown to really enjoy Miles Davis music in the last few years, so this'll be a plus for me.

I also visited Holly Cole's Website. I haven't been there in quite awhile, and saw it was redesigned top to bottom.

One of the changes is a very welcome one: the message boards are now using Ultimate Bulletin Board. UBB seems to be growing more popular by the day... it meant I had to register for it again - but the nice thing is that it remembers your login information for you... a good thing, as I'd forgotten my old login!

Taking a Jazz approach to writing can be very effective... for fiction. Letting your mind pull you down unexpected routes, improvising, that can lead you to areas you didn't forsee.

With news, however, improvisation is unforgivable. Not doing the research needed to actually be knowledgable in your stories - that's just neccesary, not a choice.

Yahoo News failed on that miserably: they had a piece about actor Scott Bakula coming to play the Captain on the next Star Trek series. They spoke of him playing "Doctor Sam Bennet on Quantum Leap for five seasons".

Bennet? Could have sworn his character was Sam Beckett - a fact this reporter would know if he actually reasearched his piece.

The Yahoo staff must now be hiding in shame.

Since Netscape gave up, I downloaded Mozilla to try. The Mozilla project is actually what Netscape used, so it's the same browser, really.

The big difference: Mozilla is actually updated regularly, and is supposed to be more stable. I'll see... it seems to take as long to load, and pages do render slowly with it... that may be improving in later versions.

(This will be one of my more techno-geek postings. No jazz in this one; sorry)

I'm stunned at the tech news today: Netscape announced they're no longer in the browser business.

Netscape 6 was far delayed, granted. It's a fantastic browser, albeit one that hogs mondo RAM to run. They set-up entire sections of their site for it too; Sidebar Central and Theme Park.

It's also more Standards-compliant; as a Website designer, knowing a Website would appear as designed would be a tremendous plus.

Netscape was the first browser I ever used to surf the Web. MSIE is a good browser, but a) it is a Microsoft product, which seems a synonym for a product being buggy and full of security holes, and b) they are a company that has ever to follow the Standards rules 100%, which is why we have to design multiple versions of sites.

Now they won't have any real competition; Opera is nowhere near that level, so I just hope someone comes along to compete soon.

I must be a masochist: I submitted Jazz Life for review to Blog You! for review a few days ago.

I read some of the site's other reviews, as well as reviews of them. To be honest, they make me think of the comic shop owner on The Simpsons in terms of critquing style: mean, detailed, brutal...

To which I say: GOOD! My creative writing courses were harsh and brutal (which may be redundant terms). To me, that was the only way to learn and improve. I'm a better writer now for it (although in my mind I still have a lot of learning to do). I tend to get upset when people soft-sell their critiques, or just leave comments at the level of "Good stuff!"

So to the reviewers at Blog You!: if you look at this site and say "He's a disabled artist. Let's go easy on him." I'll personally track you down to bash you with my canes! (not that I think you'll go easy). I'm hoping to improve my design here; feedback will only help me do that.

The "free Internet" is losing yet another piece...

I had several of the free Internet 'hard drives' for several years: Freedrive, I-drive, and X-Drive. The first two I've used quite a bit to port work files between the office and home.

X-Drive announced they would be closing the service last month. Today I-drive did the same. I'm currently downloading a legal MP3 from there as I type, and I've removed any other files I want to keep from it, deleted those I don't.

It's a shame to lose another great resource like that.

If I believe the following post from the Evrsoft bulletin board, then updates on the software are pretty much kaput:

"I just received some complaints from Bravenet about the excessive use of this Message Board. To clarify the reason that there have been no update is that the software company previously owned by myself and known as Evrsoft Pty. Ltd has been sold to a source who does not wish to be identified. I am still very much involved with Global Planet the makers of Under Construction 98. We should be releasing a new version of Under Construction by September. "

I say "if I believe" because, while it was posted by someone named Napoleon Pham (the name of the supposed owner of Evrsoft), people have posted false names on the board before... in any event, I didn't post the URLs from the post, as I didn't want to give them any advertising.

For myself, I'll just move on. I can't afford to buy UC 98, so I'll stick to free programs available out there.

Tonight, Montreal's Global Television affiliate aired a special about Jazz Fest 2000. It showed footage of Ray Charles, Al Jarreau, Chick Corea, Holly Cole, Didi Bridgewater and the Manhattan Transfer performing. They made it seem like the 21st Annual festival was full of great outdoor performances.

They mis-represented the Festival, big-time.

Oh, all of these performers did play during the Festival - but all in indoor concerts, shows you had to pay major bucks to attend.

The outdoor free shows, while they sometimes had talented newcomers, were shows repeated as many as 10 times each during the entire festival. Not all of them were jazz music either.

The big outdoor show presented was a concert by a Brazilian group; last year was actually a show that garnered a lot of controversy for not being suitable: a Techno DJ spinning records. That caused a major uproar.

The show was packaged well; it adds to my desire to check out this year's Festival, more than I was able to last year. It just wasn't very truthful.