2009 Celebrity Death Pool Board

[notcasesensitive]

As we head into our sixth year of Lawtalkers death pools, once again I post the rules for all who wish to enter:

(Same rules as last year. And the year before. And I think the year before that, though I'm not sure when the Hank Chinaski tie-breaker rule was added on.)

*Each player submits 10 celebrity picks to me via PM (do not post them here).

*I will be the final arbitor as to whether someone qualifies as a celebrity. If you have a local celebrity that you wish to pick, or someone who I might not be familiar with, please include an explanation of why the person should qualify as famous for me. The TM anti-Earl Woods rule is in effect this year - no one qualifies as being a celebrity just because they popped out a famous kid. Also death row inmates (unless they were famous prior to committing their special crime -- the OJ/Saddam Hussein exception), Michael Jackson's accuser, etc. do not qualify.

*All picks should be submitted to me by December 31, 2008 at 11:30 p.m. EST.

*Death Pool will begin on January 1, 2009 at 12:01 a.m. EST. Pool will close December 31, 2009 at midnight EST.

*I will post a listing of all picks here once they have been tabulated. If you wish to pick anyone of questionable celebrity status, get your list to me early to make sure I accept all picks.

*Ties in final number of deaths picked will battle it out in the Hank Chinaski tiebreaker, which will measure the difference between the ages of the celebrities picked and 100. Celebrities over 100 will not garner tied players any points in the tiebreaker. The younger the dead celebrity, the more points! So go for it and pick Prince Harry if you care to. Or an Olsen twin.

*In the event of any need for rules clarification, I will post those here. In the event of any dispute as to how the rules should work, I will have the final say. Though I may solicit opinions of pool entrants.

*If you pick someone and they die before the pool period starts, you may resubmit a new entry, but no geezer who drops before the beginning time of the pool will count as a hit for you (though if on you 2008 pool list, they wil count in that pool).

*I can't promise that I will catch every single celebrity death during the year, so I urge each of you to watch for stories confirming the death of your selected celebrities. If I miss a published death, just shoot me an e-mail with a link and I'll post the hit on this board.

*Winner gets no monetary reward. What do you think this is - a greedy associates board? But you do get to boast about it for all of calendar year 2010. Boasting is always fun!

*Person (or people) with the fewest hits during the year will grab the Angel of Mercy title.

*In case you care, here is the rundown of winners of prior Celebrity Death Pools:

2004 - Fugee
2005 - barely legal
2006 - Mr. Man
2007 - tmdiva
2008 - ??? - it looks like tmdiva will wrap up back-to-back titles, but if there is a spate of deaths before January 1, maybe someone will catch her

*Have fun and good luck!

your faithful deathpooltrix,
ncs

[notcasesensitive]

18 contestants again this year. Some interesting picks. Hank may very well be onto something with his Chemical Ali pick. Allowed because he would have qualified prior to his death sentence. A freebie? Or will the wheels of justice grind too slowly?

Without further ado, the players and their picks:

Flinty_McFlint
1. Patrick Swayze
2. Kirk Douglas
3. Fidel Castro
4. Kim Jong-il
5. Pat Robertson
6. Steve Jobs
7. Mindy McCready
8. Dick Clark
9. John "Lavin didn't kill me" Wooden
10. Amy Winehouse

Hank Chinaski
1. Kirk Douglas
2. Tony Bennett
3. Walter Cronkite
4. Abe Vigoda
5. Betty Ford
6. Chemical Ali
7. Jack Lalane
8. Peter O'Toole
9. Fidel Castro
10. Billy Graham

bold_n_brazen
1. Abe Vigoda
2. Kirk Douglas
3. John Wooden
4. Les Paul
5. Dick Clark
6. Harry Morgan
7. Bob Barker
8. Billy Graham
9. Mohammed Ali
10. Karl Malden

learnedmano
1. Patrick Swayze
2. Robert Byrd
3. Karl Malden
4. Robert McNamara
5. Elizabeth Edwards
6. Jack Klugman
7. Ernest Borgnine
8. Phyllis Diller
9. Mike Wallace
10. Michael Jackson

Atticus Grinch
1. Patrick Swayze
2. Steve Jobs
3. Ted Kennedy
4. Walter Cronkite
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Betty Ford
7. Elizabeth Edwards
8. Shirley Temple Black
9. Fidel Castro
10. Billy Graham

Jack Manfred
1. John Wooden
2. Billy Graham
3. Olivia De Havilland
4. Oral Roberts
5. Betty Ford
6. Barbara Billingsley
7. Karl Malden
8. Art Linkletter
9. Harry Morgan
10. Ravi Shankar

barely_legal Angel of Death 2005
1. Fidel Castro
2. Kim Jong Il
3. Bob Barker
4. Patrick Swayze
5. Nelson Mandela
6. Bobby Robson
7. Ted Kennedy
8. Les Paul
9. Dolores Hope
10. Farrah Fawcett

LessinSF
1. Fidel Castro
2. Yitzhak Shamir
3. Ariel Sharon
4. Billy Graham
5. Oral Roberts
6. Amy Winehouse
7. Chemical Ali
8. Louis Farrakan
9. Nancy Reagan
10. John Wooden

tmdiva Angel of Death 2007 and 2008
1. Karl Malden
2. Billy Graham
3. Fidel Castro
4. John Wooden
5. Ariel Sharon
6. Zsa Zsa Gabor
7. Nancy Reagan
8. Kim Jong Il
9. Prince Philip
10. Patrick Swayze

Miss Maine
1. Bob Barker
2. Fidel Castro
3. Dick Clark
4. Kirk Douglas
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Betty Ford
7. John Forsythe
8. Jerry Lewis
9. Andy Rooney
10. Margaret Thatcher

Sparklehorse
1. Kirk Douglas
2. Ariel Sharon
3. Zsa Zsa Gabor
4. Elizabeth Taylor
5. Margaret Thatcher
6. Karl Malden
7. Farrah Fawcett
8. Patrick Swayze
9. Pete Doherty
10. Amy Winehouse

Greedy, Greedy, Greedy
1. Doris Lessing
2. Gunter Grass
3. Wole Soyinka
4. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. Nadine Gordimer
6. Amos Oz
7. J.D. Salinger
8. Toni Morrison
9. Thomas Pynchon
10. Claude Levi-Strauss

Not Bob
1. Elizabeth Taylor
2. Mary Kate Olsen
3. Billy Graham
4. Fidel Castro
5. Betty Ford
6. JD Salinger
7. George Steinbrenner
8. Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq
9. Andy Dick
10. Liza Minelli

Happy Worker Bee
1. Robert Mugabe
2. John Wooden
3. Nelson Mandela
4. Nancy Reagan
5. Fidel Castro
6. Betty Ford
7. Senator Ted Stevens
8. Mike Wallace
9. Senator Ted Kennedy
10. Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith

Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
1. Margaret Thatcher
2. Patrick Swayze
3. Queen Elizabeth II
4. Ariel Sharon
5. Sargent Shriver
6. Eunice Kennedy Shriver
7. Fidel Castro
8. Dick Clark
9. John Wooden
10. Steve Jobs

Fugee Angel of Death 2004
1. Farrah Fawcett
2. Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby)
3. Stephen Hawking
4. Claude Levi-Strauss
5. Fidel Castro
6. Mohammed Ali
7. Michael Jackson
8. Patrick Swayze
9. Nancy Reagan
10. Seve Ballesteros

Mr. Man Angel of Death 2006
1. Fidel Castro
2. Kirk Douglas
3. Billy Graham
4. Ted Kennedy
5. Jack Kevorkian
6. Claude Levi-Strauss
7. Oscar Niemeyer
8. Les Paul
9. Patrick Swayze
10. BB King

notcasesensitive
1. Fidel Castro
2. Billy Graham
3. Steve Jobs
4. Ted Kennedy
5. Ariel Sharon
6. Eunice Kennedy Shriver
7. Sargent Shriver
8. Patrick Swayze
9. John Wooden
10. Louis Farrakhan

Diane Keaton
1. President of Haiti, Rene Preval
2. Prime Minster of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning
3. President of Cuba, Fidel Castro
4. Former Jamaica Prime Minister, Edward Philip George Seaga
5. Nepal Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala
6. Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf
7. Israel Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon
8. Mahmoud al-Zahar - Hamas Chief
9. Soupy Sales
10. Peter O'Toole

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally Posted by notcasesensitive

Happy Worker Bee
1. Robert Mugabe
2. John Wooden
3. Nelson Mandela
4. Nancy Reagan
5. Fidel Castro
6. Betty Ford
7. Senator Ted Stevens
8. Mike Wallace
9. Senator Ted Kennedy
10. Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith

Yet, not Senator Claiborne Pell.

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)

Yet, not Senator Claiborne Pell.

Damn, I thought I was going to be First! with Jett Travolta. http://omg.yahoo.com/news/john-travo...hamas/17114?nc .

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

Damn, I thought I was going to be First! with Jett Travolta. http://omg.yahoo.com/news/john-travo...hamas/17114?nc .

Just like Michael Wilbon, who is also late proclaiming New Year's Day bowl games dead.

[Diane_Keaton]

Hi. I didn't see my picks in the list. Did I not send them? I hope I'm not too late. They are the same as last year except I replaced the 2 that died.

1. President of Haiti, Rene Preval
2. Prime Minster of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning
3. President of Cuba, Fidel Castro
4. Former Jamaica Prime Minister, Edward Philip George Seaga
5. Nepal Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala
6. Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf
7. Israel Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon
8. Mahmoud al-Zahar - Hamas Chief
9. Soupy Sales
10. Peter O'Toole

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

Damn, I thought I was going to be First! with Jett Travolta. http://omg.yahoo.com/news/john-travo...hamas/17114?nc .

I offer the family my sincere condolences, but doesn't it injure a religion famously teaching crypto-Gnostic reincarnation theory that one of its most famous proponents says publicly that he's heartbroken at his son's death? Maybe he means they're scared he'll be reborn into a family of child psychologists or others with a capacity for critical thinking.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally Posted by notcasesensitive

Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)

10. Steve Jobs

Damnit.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)

Damnit.

Now he tells us? Fucking selfish prick, with his medical privacy. I think he's taking a perverse pleasure in fucking up people's 2009 pools. ncs, can we have a do-over for detrimental reliance?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

Now he tells us? Fucking selfish prick, with his medical privacy. I think he's taking a perverse pleasure in fucking up people's 2009 pools. ncs, can we have a do-over for detrimental reliance?

sloooooowww down. Liberace himself was saying everything was fine right up until.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck, 92.

Maybe she wasn't on anyone's list, but this is an excellent obituary:

Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck, who died on December 21 aged 92, was one of the richest landowners in Britain.

Had she been a boy, she would have succeeded her father as 8th Duke of Portland. He had no male heirs, which meant that the dukedom passed to a distant relative and eventually died out. But owing to a legal arrangement by her grandfather, the 6th Duke, Lady Anne inherited the family fortune, estimated at more than £150 million.

A formidable figure and a keen supporter of the Turf, she was involved in many charities and was a redoubtable custodian of her inheritance.

Alexandra Margaret Anne Cavendish-Bentinck was born on September 16 1916, the elder of two daughters of the 7th Duke of Portland, KG, and his wife, Ivy Gordon-Lennox, a maid of honour to Queen Alexandra and the only daughter of Lord Algernon Gordon-Lennox, son of the 6th Duke of Richmond and Gordon.

The Dukes of Portland were originally a Dutch family. Hans Willem Bentinck came over from Holland with William of Orange in 1670 and later became the 1st Earl of Portland. He was granted considerable lands in Britain. By 1883 the family owned 43,000 acres in Nottinghamshire, including Welbeck Abbey, and further land in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Worcestershire, Northumberland and Buckinghamshire. They also had 118,000 acres in Scotland, including the Braemore and Langwell estates in Caithness, as well as considerable real estate in central London, with the proof in street names such as Bentinck Street, Portland Place, Harley Street and Welbeck Street.

Lady Anne still owned 17,000 acres in Nottinghamshire and 62,000 acres in Scotland.

Her grandfather, the 6th Duke, a younger half-brother of the Countess of Strathmore (mother of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother), had not been in direct line for the dukedom. He succeeded his eccentric second cousin, who had a horror of being seen and so supervised the digging of a network of underground passages and rooms at Welbeck – these included a tunnel 1¼ miles long, and wide enough for two carriages to pass.

He hid in a few interlocking rooms in the west wing, with a trap door giving him access to his network of tunnels, which was at times worked on by more than 1,500 men.

The 7th Duke, Lady Anne's father, was known as "Chopper" for having built himself a wooden house to live in at Welbeck. He had no sons, but while the title went to a distant relative, a discretionary trust set up by her grandfather meant that the ducal fortune passed to Lady Anne.

It is said that when she was a debutante she refused the hand of Prince Charles of the Belgians, later briefly Prince Regent of Belgium, by remaining in bed when he arrived to pay his suit. It has also been said that when she wished to marry the 11th Duke of Leeds and her family refused to permit the union, she vowed never to marry anyone else. Indeed, she never did marry.

Besides being custodian of a considerable art collection, including works by Stubbs and Van Dyck and the celebrated Sargent portrait of her grandmother, Duchess Winifred, Lady Anne was a keen supporter of numerous charities, supporting causes for the blind and the Girl Guides. "We have allowed the Guides a permanent camp at Welbeck – much to the annoyance of the keepers," she said.

Famously haughty, she loved racing and was a dedicated horsewoman who still rode at 90. In the summer of 2000, she went over to the Castle of Mey for tea with her centenarian neighbour and cousin, the Queen Mother, who said after the visit: "She's very gruff. I've known her since she was a little girl. She was gruff then and she's gruff now."

[greatwhitenorthchick]

wtf?

[Atticus Grinch]

Promising outlook for Flinty, barely and tmdiva. But this raises questions for scoring -- do they get credit if he kicks it in 2009 but they keep it under wraps until 2010, á la Weekend at Bernie's?

[LessinSF]

The Prisoner. Damn, I loved that show, but not the ending.

[notcasesensitive]

If the name of the website is at all accurate, I think Kevin Bacon is about to bite it: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/7da...om-kevin-bacon