Do drop dead

Last night over dessert, Mary, Norman, Sean and I decided to come up with a dead pool for 2008. Nothing too fancy: we didn't feel like dealing with rankings or point values or anything like that. Just a simple list of 10 names apiece, and at the end of the year, whoever has predicted the greatest number of deaths wins. Wins what, I don't know, though I think it should be something more than bragging rights. Perhaps an all-expenses paid outing to Forest Lawn would be appropriate.

I thought about listing all of our predictions, but it seems like a mean thing to do. Can you imagine some celebrity Googling him- or herself and reading that some insensitive Angelenos are betting they'll die in the coming year? Although, in all fairness, most of the people on our lists are not of a generation that would typically Google themselves. But I will mention some of the duplicates from our lists. Phyllis Diller, Ernest Borgnine, and Sidney Lumet, you'd better watch yourselves.