Saturday Reads Including Obits

 Why are Arizona's iconic saguaro cacti blooming so weird?  The prolonged drought may have something to do with it.

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It looks like convicted killer Scott Peterson will never have to face the death penalty again.

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Obituary:  Actor Gavin MacLeod, 90, known for his roles on The Love Boat and The Mary Tyler Moore Show,  has died.  With his death I believe only two regular cast members of the latter show, Betty White and Ed Asner, are still alive, and they are way up there in age.

His real name was Allan See, but that name wasn't going to cut it in show business:

After a busy career of bit parts in television and film, MacLeod first achieved fame as part of the ensemble of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," a breakthrough sitcom in which he played news writer Murray Slaughter.

Murray often served as a confidante to Moore's character, rolled his eyes at the cluelessness of WJM anchor Ted Baxter and absorbed the fierce temper of WJM news director Lou Grant.

The article notes Ed Asner as confirming what I said about who was still alive from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Where did the years go?  Almost all the principal cast members have passed away in the last decade.

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The obituaries just keep coming:  Singer B.J. Thomas, best remembered for his massive late-1960s hit, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," which was used in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, has died at 78 from lung cancer.  Like Gavin MacLeod, Thomas was very religious and made the Christian talk show circuit as in the original Jim Bakker Show  (known then as The PTL Club)  and the like.

Thomas was diagnosed with the disease in March, so he must have had a very advanced type of this when he was diagnosed, or else he decided not to bother with the treatments when he did get diagnosed.

He battled drugs for a time but he credited religion with helping him and his longtime wife (from 1968) Gloria Robinson clean.

The "B.J." in his name stood for Billy Joe.  He was born in Hugo, Oklahoma.

Snip:

His signature recording was “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” a No. 1 pop hit and an Oscar winner for best original song as part of the soundtrack to one of the biggest movies of 1969, the irreverent Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Thomas wasn’t the first choice to perform the whimsical ballad composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David; Ray Stevens turned the songwriters down. But his warm, soulful tenor fit the song’s easygoing mood, immortalized on film during the scene when Butch (Paul Newman) shows off his new bicycle to Etta Place (Katharine Ross), the girlfriend of the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford).

“Raindrops” has since been heard everywhere from “The Simpsons” to “Forrest Gump” and was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013. But, at first, not everyone was satisfied. Thomas was recovering from laryngitis while recording the soundtrack version and his vocals are raspier than for the track released on its own. Redford, meanwhile, doubted the song even belonged in “Butch Cassidy.”