WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Monkees singer Davy Jones was remembered in a small private Florida funeral as a laid-back daydreamer who brought fans into a world blissfully free of worries.

The service was held behind locked doors Wednesday at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Indiantown, close to Jones’ home and next to Hope Rural School, which Jones had supported.

The Rev. Frank O’Loughlin, who presided over the service, said several of Jones’ own songs were played, including “I’ll Love You Forever” and “Written in My Heart.” In his own remarks to mourners, the priest compared the singer to the diminutive hero of “Lord of the Rings,” saying the author J.R.R. Tolkien portrayed a world not unlike the one Jones offered fans.

“He wrote about a quiet, gentle, contented people,” O’Loughlin said in his sermon, a copy of which he shared with The Associated Press. “A people for whom life was bright, neighbors friends, daydream believers with an absolute absence of burden who took themselves lightly – lighter than air. Wasn’t that what David conveyed to the world, a blissful lightness of being?”

O’Loughlin said Jones’ widow, Jessica Pacheco, brought her husband’s cremated remains to the church, and her brother Joseph Pacheco, the singer’s manager, gave a eulogy. Besides family, the man who first trained Jones to ride racehorses was in attendance, as were members of his current band, who wrote prayers they read at the service. The three surviving members of The Monkees did not attend, saying they didn’t want to attract unwanted attention.

Filmmaker of ‘Titanic’ plans to dive deeper

LOS ANGELES – James Cameron has gone two and a half miles underwater dozens of times to view the wreck of the Titanic. Now the “Avatar” and “Titanic” filmmaker aims to go nearly three times as deep with his latest ocean dive.

Cameron said Thursday he plans to take a submersible craft down seven miles to the world’s deepest point, in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean, 200 miles southwest of Guam.

The journey later this month reportedly would be the deepest solo dive ever, breaking Cameron’s own record set this week, when he descended five miles off the coast of Papua, New Guinea, in the South Pacific.

Cameron will be the first person to descend to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, known as the “Challenger Deep,” since a two-man U.S. Navy expedition did it in 1960.

Those explorers spent just 20 minutes on the ocean floor, according to the National Geographic Society, a partner in the Cameron expedition and for whom the filmmaker was named an explorer-in-residence in 2011. Cameron will spend six hours at the bottom of the trench, collecting scientific samples.

Pat Robertson backs legalized marijuana

RICHMOND, Va. – Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government’s war on drugs has failed.

The outspoken evangelical Christian and host of “The 700 Club” on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network he founded said the war on drugs is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. He said people should not be sent to prison for marijuana possession.

The 81-year-old first became a self-proclaimed “hero of the hippie culture” in 2010 when he called for ending mandatory prison sentences for marijuana possession convictions.

“I just think it’s shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of a controlled substance,” Robertson said.