Itinerantdaughter's Blog

My boyfriend and I are putting together a celebrity death pool (details TBA) and so I’ve been doing some research on existing death pools out there, and the most clever name I’ve seen so far is the Lee Atwater Invitational, which apparently has these rules (among others):

1. You may write in any name that’s not on that list and it will be submitted to The stiffs.com Fame Committee. If 15% or more of the Committee Members can positively identify a write-in candidate by NAME ALONE, that name will be ruled Famous. If less than 15% can ID a name to the satisfaction of The Commissioner, that candidate will be ruled Not Famous.

2. Any candidate ruled Not Famous by the Committee is disqualified for the duration of this game. Disqualified names will NOT be replaced by alternates and all rulings by the Committee are FINAL.

A little explanation of the Committe:

Somehow, we have to draw a line between who’s gonna count in this game (Famous) and who isn’t (Not Famous). It ain’t easy. Everyone has a different idea of who should be called famous. Once upon a time, we thought we’d found the answer in the online version of the Associated Press. Here was a reliable, nearly immediate source of news with an international scope. And the line it drew was so clear-cut — news of a death either made the AP, or it didn’t. Our needs seemed to be completely covered. Too completely, it turned out. The damned thing covers almost everybody who ever had a job. We spent a year or more trying to tweak it by adding exceptions, and categorizing stories, and complicating the whole process, and it still didn’t work for us. Why? Because even more than we want complete objectivity, we want this game to be about really famous people. Not newsworthy people — not accomplished people — celebrities. Less than people, in other words. We were getting further and further into amateur geologists and Bosnian ping-pong players, and it’s just no fun making fun of people you never heard of before you did a search on liver cancer. So, we’ve given up on the notion of total objectivity and we’ve assembled (drum roll) The stiffs.com Fame Committee (a.k.a. the FC). Back to basics, boys and girls. We no longer give a crap about the Associated Press or who’s related to who, or what defines an obituary — all that stuff is history. Here’s why.

First, you need to understand that for us, Fame = Name Recognition, pretty much. They’re virtually the same thing, as far as we’re concerned. If you look at a photo and think, “I know that guy, he’s from that chicken commercial,” but you don’t know what his name is, that’s not a celebrity. If a person has made enough news stories, or talk-show appearances, or bad pop songs to have an identity that’s conveyed merely by the mention of his or her name, that person is considered (by us) to be famous. Each and every one of the 1900-odd names listed in The stiffs.com Select-O-Matic (don’t worry, you’ll get there) is guaranteed to be what we consider famous. You should recognize some of ‘em, even if you’re an idiot. We tried to include as many of the most likely Dead Pool candidates as we could, but of course, there’s no way we got ‘em all. We didn’t expect to. So, if you have a famous name you’d like to enter that isn’t there, you may include that name on your list as a write-in candidate. After all the lists are in, write-in names will be sent to the FC, and each will be deemed either Famous (included in the game) or Not Famous (stricken from your list), and that’ll be that. The stiffs.com Fame Committee reigns supreme.

So, what is this Committee we keep talking about, and how exactly does it work? Kinda important, since it reigns supreme and everything. The stiffs.com Fame Committee is a hand-selected group of approximately 50 people, representing a broad cross-section of American society. Yes, that means that our Dead Pool discriminates against people who don’t live in the U.S. Deal with it. The members of the FC are equally divided by sex (roughly), and are intentionally diverse in age, geographic location and cultural background. Also, none of them participate in any of our games.

Write-in candidates are submitted to The Fame Committee in name only, without description, and members are asked if they know who each candidate is. In instances where a candidate’s name is identical (or nearly so) to another potentially famous person, it is the player’s responsibility to clearly specify which person is intended (see The Robert Young Edict). If a candidate is positively identified by 15% of The stiffs.com Fame Committee members, he or she will be deemed Famous, and will be included in the contest. “Positively identified” means that a Committee member has shown that he or she knows specifically who a candidate is. [Examples: If Bill Clinton is identified as “a politician,” or Mike Tyson as “an athlete,” that’s not positive enough. “U.S. President” and “boxer” are what we’re looking for.] If a write-in candidate is identified by four or fewer Committee members, that candidate will be deemed Not Famous, and will be disqualified from the Dead Pool. Now for the bad news.

Write-in candidates who have been ruled Not Famous will not be replaced. No alternate. No do-overs. Just a blank spot. This means you better be pretty sure that the average person would know who you’re talking about. Do not assume that names eligible in prior stiffs.com contests will be approved. The Fame Committee rulings are completely independent of any of the material found on this website. Neither The Select-O-Matic, The SickTicker nor any other part of this site are meant to suggest how The Fame Committee might rule on a given candidate. All judgments are final, and no rulings will be made in advance. Don’t bother asking us what we think, ’cause we won’t tell you; don’t bother pleading your case, ’cause it won’t matter. The time has come to grow up, Poolsters, and leave the childish ways of yesterday behind you. The future is now … or pretty soon, anyway.

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Now I am off to write up my cover letter for the Fame Committee.  Will someone read it over for me before I submit it?  It’s really important to me that it reads as polished.

3. There are probably whole Johns Hopkins U. Press books to be written on the lallating function that humor serves in today’s US psyche.  A crude way to put the whole thing is that our present culture is, both developmentally and historically, adolescent.  And since adolescence is acknowledge to be the single most stressful and frightening period of human development –– the stage when the adulthood we claim to crave begins to present itself as a real and narrowing system of responsibilities and limitations (taxes, death) and when we yearn inside for a return to the same childish oblivion we pretend to scorn* –– it’s not difficult to see why we as a culture are so susceptible to art and entertainment whose primary function is escape, i.e. fantasy, adrenaline, spectacle, romance, etc.  Jokes are a kind of art, and because most of us Americans come to art now essentially to escape ourselves –– to pretend for a while that we’re not mice and walls are parallel and the cat can be outrun –– it’s understandable that most of us are going to view “A Little Fable” as not at all that funny, or maybe even see it as a repulsive instance of the exact sort of downer-type death-and-taxes reality for which “real” humor serves as a respite.

*(Do you think it’s a coincidence that college is when many Americans do their most serious fucking and falling-down drinking and generally ecstatic Dyonysian-type reveling?  It’s not.  College students are adolescents, and they’re terrified, and they’re dealing with their terror in a distinctively US way.  Those naked boys hanging upside-down out of their frat house’s windows on Friday night are simply trying to buy a few hours’ escape from the grim adult stuff that any decent school has forced them to think about all week.)

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Note to the heavens: I’ll work on the books about the “lallating function” that humor STILL serves.  Rest in peace, DFW.