Purpose and rules

PURPOSE

You're kidding, right? What do you think our purpose is? It's to try to win the Pool prize by best prognosticating celebrity deaths for the calendar year. But, more than that, it's to wallow in the goofy ephemera of pop culture while also thumbing nose at the Grim Reaper; and, let us not forget, it is very much to laugh at the misfortune of others. Have I left anything out?

THE RULES:

  1. Entrance fee is $2 per list. You may submit as many lists as you like.

  2. First prize, awarded to the pool's point winner, will be 75% of total pool entry money; second prize, awarded to the best list, will be the remaining 25% of pool money.

  3. Lists comprised of up to ten individual Celebrities Marked for the Grim Reaper (note: no teams/groups/cults/cabals of more than ten) must be submitted by midnight December 31.

  4. Grand Poobah Spellman will judge the acceptability of celebrities listed.
    Generally speaking, anyone famous enough to merit an obituary in a major media outlet will be accepted, as will anyone the choice of whom makes GPS laugh. (Realize GPS' low standards.)

  5. No credit awarded for those picks killed by pool participants.

  6. Beginning in 1999, no credit will be awarded for individuals who receive the death penalty for crimes they've been convicted of committing.

  7. And, jeez, no animals -- human celebrities only, please.

  8. Each celebrity pick who dies over the course of the year earns his or her chooser(s) points by the formula of 100 minus the celebrity's age at death.

  9. For 1998, point value will be doubled for celebrities whose deaths are skiing-related.
    "StoP tHE LoGGiNg oR wE WiLl coNtInUE To KIll oNe CeleBrITY EacH WeEK. theRe ARe nO SkIinG 'aCciDenTS.'"
    Signed, THE TREES
  10. Interpretations and disputes will be adjudicated, in the most peremptory and arbitrary fashion possible, by Grand Poobah Spellman.

  11. 1998 Date-of-first-death sub-pool: a free 1999 list goes to whomever comes closest to guessing the correct date of the first 1998 Verde Death Pool death. Deadline for guesses, one per person, is Good Friday, April 10.


Product liability warning: Participation in the NYPD/Mike Verde Death Pool does not confer immortality upon participants.





Shakespeare had it right about lawyers.
Let's go somewhere else, please.