Patrick Swayze

Vaya con dios.

First Place: Courtney, 5 points

Second Place: Austin, Ben and Sho. 3 points each.

Third Place: Tyler, 2 points.

Fourth Place: Alan, Pete, Brian, Derek, 1 point each.

Totally Unimpressive Place: Bill, Jon, Keith, Keri, Matt, Steve, Tom.

I Have Never Heard the Nickname "Lion of the Senate" Before Today.

Senator Edward Kennedy, stalwart of the Democratic party, brother to John and Robert Kennedy, and easily one of the more prominent and divisive figures in American politics over the past half-century, has died at age 77.

Either because I just watched the HBO biography on Teddy or because I wasn't alive during the whole Chappaquiddick situation, I am feeling pretty bummed out about this. For an informative but not terribly balanced portrayal of the Senator (narrated by the man himself), check out the HBO doc. For a more balanced but kind of awkward in places ("He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly.") obituary, check out the Times.

And for scores, check here!

First Place: Ben and Courtney. 3 points each.

Second Place: Alan, Pete, Brian, Derek, Austin, Sho. 1 point each.

Third Place: Bill, Jon, Keith, Keri, Matt, Steve, Tom, Tyler. Come on guys, it's almost September! Time to get off the bench.

Good News for People Who Like Bad News About Walter Cronkite

It seems like almost every celebrity who dies this year, I think "score! I totally had him on my list!" and then it turns out I'm 100% wrong. But seriously guys, Derek's the only one who picked Walter Cronkite? Well done sir.

Scores:
First Place: Ben and Courtney. 3 points each.
Second Place: Alan, Pete, Brian, Derek. 1 point each.
Third Place: People whose names aren't already up there.

And special thanks to Alan, for coming up with the title of this post. And for being awesome.

Bad Day for Farrah Fawcett

Farrah Fawcett's extended battle with cancer came to an end today as the actress and sex symbol passed...


HOLY SHIT MICHAEL JACKSON DIED OH MY GOD WHAT


Crazy, right? Who saw that one coming? Other than, of course, Ben and me. Because we are super geniuses. Also very good looking.

Scores!

First Place: Ben and Courtney. 3 points each.
Second Place: Alan, Pete, Brian. 1 point each.
Third Place: The rest of you suckas.


PS: In all fairness, I picked MJ because I heard his liver was failing, not because of heart problems. Though let's be honest everyone dies from cardiac arrest. It means your heart stopped. No one dies from anything other than that. Seriously.

PPS: Yeah. Sorry Farrah. Bad day.

You may have already won.

You know, I really should know more about Ed McMahon. I was trying to think of a title for this post, and I realized that here is what I know about the man without having to turn to Wikipedia:

(1) He wears glasses.
(2) He does the sweepstakes with the balloons and the people screaming.
(3) I think he declared bankruptcy at some point.
(4) He was on the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson hosted it.

And, well, now he's dead. I really thought I had him on my death pool list, but it turns out the only person with the right idea here was Brian, putting him into a three-way tie for first place. Congratulations!

Standing:

First place: Alan, Pete, Brian = 1 point each
Second place: Everyone else = 0 points

Rule Updates / Score Updates

So when I was first writing out the rules for Courtney's Celebrity Death Pool 2009, I considered making explicit the in-my-head rule about what happens if you find out in 2009 that someone on your list died prior to 2009. Mostly I was thinking about this because I have both Castro and Kim Jong-Il on my list and while I am not really someone who listens to conspiracy theories... you never know. Anyway, the rule that I never actually wrote out is that what counts is the year we find out your celebrity died, not the year he actually died. Now you know.

The reason I bring this up now is because it turns out we have a remarkably late arrival to the known-deaths list: Dr. Aribert Heim, aka Dr. Death, a Nazi war criminal who escaped capture and was believed to be living in South America. It turns out he was actually living in Egypt and died a painful death in 1992, though -- let's be honest -- there's no way it was painful enough.

It turns out our very own Alan saw this one coming, so one point to him. Also one make-believe point to me, who likes writing about these bastards dying way more than writing about, like, Hunter Thompson dying.

New scores:

Alan & Pete: 1 point
Everyone else: Still 0.

Hey, Look Who Scored!

In a move that should be completely unsurprising to anyone who's been in this death pool in years previous, the one and only Pete is first to score in the 2009 Celebrity Death Pool.

As you may or may not already know, author John Updike has died. Updike wrote a ton of books, some of which my sisters refer to as the Rabbit books and I refer to as books I haven't read. Also over a long Thanksgiving drive I tried listening to The Witches of Eastwick as an audiobook but I did not make it very far. Anyway, now he's dead.

And hey, we have a scoreboard!

Pete = 1 point
Everyone else = 0 points