One of the more morbid things my friends and I do from time to time is have a death pool, where you select a bunch of celebrities, and if one of yours dies
first, you win. In the last pool we did, Princess Diana barely beat out my Mother Teresa, and since she died by misadventure, we had to pay double. The way
things worked this time, the three of us went around suggesting names, rejecting anyway that were not known to all of us (I can’t believe they didn’t know who
Leni Reifenstahl was) or that we weren’t sure as to their actual existence (Saddam and Osama). We then did odd-finger to see who went first (George won), then
picked from the list until we each had ten.
George:
- Pope John Paul II
- Dan Quayle
- Charlton Heston
- Meg Ryan
- Pete Rose
- Ronald Reagan
- O. J. Simpson
- Walter Cronkite
- Mick Jagger
- Dick Cheney
JP:
- Ed McMahon
- Hulk Hogan
- Boris Yeltsin
- Stephen Hawking
- Chi Chi Rodriguez
- Yanni
- Buzz Aldrin
- Farah Fawcett
- Pia Zadora
- John Edward
Me:
- Strom Thurmond
- Yasir Arafat
- Clint Eastwood
- Scott Peterson
- Bill Gates
- Eminem
- Lisa Bonet
- Sean Penn
- Jeane Kirkpatrick
- Queen Elizabeth II
Stakes are $30 a person, which is doubled for ‘misadventure’, generally agreed to be some sudden, external event, but must be agreed to by all participants or
else standard payout applies. And, as always, participants may not hasten the demise of any pool entrants.