May 21 - The Jinx

He was the man many considered responsible for the deaths of Tupac Shakur, Layne Staley (Alice in Chains), Kurt Cobain, Jerry Garcia, John Lee Hooker, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others.
The long and short of it was this: Any time someone offered him a ticket to see a concert, and he refused or cancelled or somehow didn't go, that singer would be dead within six months.
It took him a while to make the connection and even longer to let himself believe it. But once he did, it was nearly impossible to refute. He raked through his memories of declined invitations and found that without exception every one of them was followed by that singer's death within six months.
Understandably, this realization caused him to stop declining concert invitations. Whenever any friend so much as implied an invite to a show, he did everything in his power to go. Even if someone just mentioned a show, he figured a mention was an implicit invite, and since he wasn't sure what the exact rules of his apparent power were, he thought it prudent to err on the side of caution and just go.
One consequence of this was that he became known among his friends as someone who was always up for a gig, and so he got a lot of invites--and accepted every one of them. Mostly, he was cool with it. It gave him a chance to see a lot of music and, as a bonus, he also got to feel like he was doing The Right Thing.
Even still, it was a lot of pressure. He didn't want anyone to die just because he felt like staying home and watching Breaking Bad or turning in early because he had a big day at work the next day. So he didn't. He went to every show he was invited to. Some weeks he went to shows every night. As a result, it was impossible for him to catch up with his sleep. On top of that, it was hell on his bank account. Plus he couldn't focus at work. Before long, live music was no longer a joy, but something to endure.
After a couple of months, he started telling his friends about his theory and showing them the facts that proved it. Their reactions varied. Most of them figured he was kidding and kept right on inviting him to shows. Some, even though they didn't believe him, took mercy on him and stopped throwing invites his way. A couple considered inviting him to movies instead but they weren't sure if he believed his powers extended to movie stars, too, so they invited him to play hoops instead. A few, however, started buying tickets to out of town shows they knew he couldn't go to by artists they couldn't stand in the hopes that in doing so they might rid the world of the Jonas Brothers and Celine Dion. But even though he wasn't a huge fan of those artists either, he didn't want to see them dead. He found a way to go.
Eventually, it got to be too much to sustain and he tried to find a way out.
He made up a story about becoming a born again Christian in a sect that shunned the devil's music, thinking it might make his friends stop inviting him to shows. But nobody believed him.
When that didn't work, he stopped answering his phone and reading his email, but then his friends just started using his work number and email address instead.
Finally, he quit his job and moved to a small town in rural Utah, figuring he would be safe from live music if he placed himself deep in the heart of Mormon country. However, less than a year after moving there, Donnie and Marie Osmond opened an auditorium nearby where they gave concerts all the time. His new neighbors and co-workers knew he liked music, so they invited him to go almost every weekend.