It's days like today that illuminate character. Some folks are mourning Jack Tripper. Some are mourning the Man in Black. Most of the people I know are more likely to mourn John Ritter. Me, myself, I'm more likely to think about Johnny Cash. I guess the question is, are you pop or not?

I can't say that I'm strictly mourning him. He seems so intimately connected with death in my head - it's so much a part of his public persona - that his passing seems more like a proper ending than a tragedy. As with grandparents, there's that certain feeling that it was their time.

The ones who should be mourned are those like Warren Zevon and John Ritter, who were taken in the fullness of life. Zevon in particular was a harsh case - caught in the vise of terminal cancer. He lay pinned with death staring him in the face for six long, terrible, short months. Ritter, on the other hand, was blind-sided; it's a loss to his friends and family, but he wasn't tortured as Zevon had been with long weeks of inevitability.