First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers.

First, Warner Brothers is putting the kibosh on "Wizard People, Dear Reader," an alternate soundtrack/narration to their merely competent film of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I have never had the pleasure of seeing the performance, but I'm sure there's a lot that could be done with it, and it's too bad that it falls outside the limits of the corporation's sense of humor (as so many things associated with brands seem to do).

And then, what is much more distressing and in a small way life-altering to me: Hasbro is shutting down e-scrabble.com. E-scrabble.com has been one of the delights of my life for the past two years, thanks to its clean, ad-free interface; e-mailed turns that let users play at their leisure; a chat log to leave comments or hold conversations; and of course the way it offers the opportunity to play Scrabble with friends or strangers halfway across the country or even the world. I haven't seen any other Scrabble site to compare, and now . . . sigh. Damn intellectual property rights.