I’m thinking about no longer posting obits.<\/p>\n
Recently, it seems like as soon as I post one obit watch, two or three or more people die. Clearly, correlation implies causality: my posting obits is making people die, therefore, if I stop posting, people will stop passing away. Right?<\/p>\n
Well, it’s a theory, anyway.<\/p>\n
David McCullough<\/a>, historian and author. It is an odd thing: I enjoy history, but I mostly haven’t read any of McCullough’s work, and I don’t know why. (I say “mostly” because we did have some of those Reader’s Digest Condensed Books volumes around the house when I was very young, and one of them had The Johnstown Flood<\/a><\/strong> in it. I remember being fascinated, but more for the account of the actual flood itself than the human and engineering factors leading up to it. I should probably grab a copy of the real book somewhere and read it.)<\/p>\n Olivia Newton-John<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 1970, she was asked to join a crudely manufactured group named Toomorrow, formed by the American producer Don Kirshner in an attempt to repeat his earlier success with the Monkees. Following his grand design, the group starred in a science-fiction film written for them and recorded its soundtrack. Both projects tanked.<\/a> The name of the film is also “Toomorrow<\/a>“, as best as I can tell. There’s a PAL DVD listed on Amazon as “currently unavailable”, but you can get the soundtrack<\/a> on vinyl.<\/p>\n Lawrence<\/a> emailed the obit for Lamont Dozier<\/a>.<\/p>\n In collaboration with the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Mr. Dozier wrote songs for dozens of musical acts, but the trio worked most often with Martha and the Vandellas (\u201cHeat Wave,\u201d \u201cJimmy Mack\u201d), the Four Tops (\u201cBernadette,\u201d \u201cI Can\u2019t Help Myself\u201d) and especially the Supremes (\u201cYou Can\u2019t Hurry Love,\u201d \u201cBaby Love\u201d). Between 1963 and 1972, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team was responsible for more than 80 singles that hit the Top 40 of the pop or R&B charts, including 15 songs that reached No. 1. \u201cIt was as if we were playing the lottery and winning every time,\u201d Mr. Dozier wrote in his autobiography, \u201cHow Sweet It Is\u201d (2019, written with Scott B. Bomar).<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n …<\/p>\n Sometimes he would have an idea for a song\u2019s feel: He wrote the Four Tops\u2019 \u201cReach Out I\u2019ll Be There\u201d thinking about Bob Dylan\u2019s phrasing on \u201cLike a Rolling Stone.\u201d Sometimes he concocted an attention-grabbing gimmick, like the staccato guitars at the beginning of the Supremes\u2019 \u201cYou Keep Me Hangin\u2019 On\u201d that evoked a radio news bulletin.<\/a> I’m thinking about no longer posting obits. Recently, it seems like as soon as I post one obit watch, two or three or more people die. Clearly, correlation implies causality: my posting obits is making people die, therefore, if I stop posting, people will stop passing away. Right? Well, it’s a theory, anyway. David McCullough, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,97,31,40,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-movies","category-music","category-obits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25014"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25016,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25014\/revisions\/25016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cIt was terrible, and I was terrible in it,\u201d she later told The New York Times.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nAnd sometimes Mr. Dozier uttered a real-life sentence that worked in song, as he did one night when he was in a Detroit motel with a girlfriend and a different girlfriend started pounding on the door. He pleaded with the interloper, \u201cStop, in the name of love\u201d \u2014 and then realized the potency of what he had said. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team quickly hammered the sentence into a three-minute single, the Supremes\u2019 \u201cStop! In the Name of Love.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"