2012 Dead Pool | The Ashford Zone

I like this time of year because all the lists come out. The Best of… The Worst of… It goes on and on and on. I tend not to get reflective, myself. Not anymore. I've seen too many years now to think that any given year, either the past or the upcoming one, is going to be dramatically different. Which isn't to say that I wouldn't like 2012 to be a superlative year, but if it isn't, I'm sure it won't suck.

So I have no Best of or Worst of thoughts of my own. I just have my dead pool. My little morbid year end summary.

Last year, I provided a list of several people I thought would die in 2011. Let's see how I did.

My long list:

Zsa-Zsa Gabor – still alive
Bob Barker – still alive
Mike Wallace – still alive
Jack LaLanne – died 1/24/11
Harry Morgan – died 12/7/11
Olivia de Havilland – still alive
Michael Dukakis – still alive
Billy Graham – still alive, barely
Betty Garrett – died 2/12/11
Eli Wallach – still alive
Stan Musial – still alive
Abe Vagoda – still alive
Nancy Reagan – still alive
Both Kirk and Michael Douglas – both still alive
Aretha Franklin – still alilve
Al Jarreau – still alive
Margaret Thatcher – still alive
Norman Lear – still alive
Jean Stapleton – still alive
Yogi Berra – still alive
James Garner – still alive
Lauren Becall – still alive
Jack Klugman – still alive
Both Mickey and Andy Rooney – Mickey's alive; Andy, not so much (died 11/4/11)
Jeff Conaway – died 5/27/11
Both Garry and Penny Marshall – both still alive
Dick Clark – still alive
Gene Wilder – still alive
Fidel Castro – still alive

On the whole, my predictions were not too good.

Then, last year, I did a "competition" list for the "Dead Pool" game. There IS an actual "Dead Pool" game. What you do is pick ten famous people to die in a given year. If they die, then you take 100 minus their age when they died. So if someone 75 years old dies, you get 25 points. Someone 98 years old dies? Oh! That's a two pointer. Person with the highest number on January 1, 2012, wins.

Obviously, the goal is to pick someone younger who is likely to die. Although realistically, the younger they are, the more UNlikely they are to die. That's the trick of the game.

Here was last year's entries:

Zsa Zsa Gabor (born 2/06/1917)
Billy Graham (born 11/7/1918)
Dick Clark (born 11/30/1929)
Al Jarreau (born 3/12/1940)
Dick Cheney (born 1/30/1941)
Aretha Franklin (born 3/25/1942)
Penny Marshall (born 10/15/1942)
Michael Douglas (born 9/25/1944)
Jeff Conaway (born 10/5/1950)
Amy Winehouse (born 9/14/1983)

I get zero points for Gabor, Graham, Clark, Jarreau, Cheney, Franklin, Marshall, and Douglas, since they all lived. I scored bigtime with the two youngest on my list — Jeff Conaway and Amy Winehouse.

With Jeff, I got 40 points (he died at the age of 60).

With Amy, I got 73 points (she died at the age of 27).

Final score: 113 points. Which is really good.

And now it's time for my new lists. First the long one — ones that I simply think will die. I naturally carry over many from last year, but some are now off the list, and others are on: