G21 Silver Surf Interview
"Hey," you might be saying to yourself, "what the hell is a dead pool?" Well, it's not a game for the critically uptight, but it's easy enough to play, and it goes something like this: Each player makes up a list of names(usually 10) of the famous people he or she thinks are most likely to die during a given time period (usually a calendar year). Whoever gets the most right, wins. Pretty simple, huh? Naturally, there are as many different variations from game to game as there are causes of death. Let's explore some of these, shall we?Some dead pools we know of allow as many as 75(!) celebrities, with extra points being awarded for less obvious selections. Others offer higher scores for younger victims, or limit the possible candidates to a particular field,like politics or film. A few games even allow players to replace dead celebs with new ones, as they expire, although to us, that seems a little bit like tax breaks for the rich. The details of the game, however, aren't all that critical, as long as you have parameters that make sense for you and your group of friends. A particular pool might well evolve over time as you encounter the many problems inherent in the healthy growth of organized competition. We speak from experience, as you'll soon see, but the important thing is not to lose sight of the fun side of death and all the rewards it can bring. With that in mind, let us introduce you to our humble little contest, The Lee Atwater..... (---Zachariah Love)
Elsewhere you read:
Obits & Pieces
[Jeanne Calment 1875-1997]
Jeanne Calment
1875-1997
Once again, we're digging deep to come up with the features that you, the buying public, want most. You having trouble remembering who kicked in the last couple of years? It happens. Well, at the risk of being compared to People magazine, we offer this brief list of the big stars who've bowed outin the last few years. No, it's not complete, not by a long shot. You can't beat the price, though. Plus, they're listed in order of departure, for your researching pleasure. Have fun.
* Rose Kennedy The Mother of All Politicians, she was poppin' 'em out like larvae for decades. She had to, apparently, to keep up with the mortality rate.
* Howard Cosell Does it bother you as much as it does us that this is the guy who told half the nation that John Lennon had been shot?
* Glenn Burke A relatively obscure former baseball player who should have been more famous, if only for inventing the high-five.
* Warren Burger Dead meat.
* John Brunner Johnny, we hardly knew ye. In fact, who the hell were ye?
* Kingsley Amis A nice man, but useless, since he's already dead.
* Dean Martin When the moon hits your eye like a big fifth of rye, that's la morte. (--Zachariah Love)
 CARLENE 's Misanthropic Bitch 2 looks at the "Crisis" on Pennsylvania Avenue..
SILVER SURF INTERVIEW: ROD goes inside the Lee Atwater Invitational Dead Pool! 
VOX POPULI, The Reader Response Page
 RAHEEM's HOT LINKS(Not from Louisiana returns!
 BLKNBLU's TREND BENDS on "Good Will Hunting".
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CYNDI RUSSELL's 
JENNIFER BLUE's 
G21 EUROPE: 
TRIO: ROBIN MILLER on former Maryland state Senator Larry Young and 
PREMIERE: What type of people would publish a site like this? you have to ask yourself. And what sort of sick, twisted ghouls would update that site almost daily, spend hours compiling statistics on celebrity illnesses and hospitalizations, and, yes, ultimately, their deaths?
If you publish a website like this one, and have written for other InterNet publications over the last three years, as well, you get a lot of e-mail. Every now and then, an e-mail will prompt a story, like our feature in December on Goodyear's advertising in Peru.... In this case, the people at stiffs.com sent us an e-mail inviting the G21 to take a look at their site, and recommending(What brass, right?) that we do a story on it.
I caught up with Zachariah Love, the head writer, head ghoul, and Commissioner of the Lee Atwater Invitational Dead Pool website on Wednesday, evening, 21 January, 1998.
G21: Zach, your website has been around since 1995. The first question that comes to mind after visiting it, is why did you start the Lee Atwater?
LOVE: Actually, the website wasn't the start. I've been doing this Dead Pool since 1991. I had heard about the concept back in the '80's. I thought it was a cool idea and started buggin' my friends to join one. Finally, in 1991, I found one other guy who was willing to do it. As it turned out, we each had gotten one guy, Lee Atwater.
G21: Hence the name of the Pool.
LOVE: Right. By 1995 there we were up to eleven participants. In '96 there were 47. That's when a friend got a free website as part of his Earthlink Account. "What should we put on it?" we asked ourselves. "Why not the Dead Pool?"
That first year we had 141 people in the Dead Pool. Today, for our 1998 Pool, there are 595 entries.
G21: Everyone who publishes here on the web, and gives a contact address, gets tons of e-mails. You guys, I'm sure, get a bunch. But I'd suspect you get a bunch of hate mail, am I right?
LOVE: [Laughter.] Yeah, we do! One of my favorites is someone who wrote in, after visiting the site, to tell me I was a "waste of" my "father's sperm!" I couldn't believe it.
We have an award we give every year, called the Mrs. Hughey Award. This woman has been writing into us since Day One! "You're all in need of counseling..!" she wrote us. So we made a special note of her e-mail address. When we send out announcements of a site update, she always responds. It's amazing to me that some of these people who say they hate what we're doing, keep following us so closely!
G21: Any other mail that sticks out in your mind?
LOVE: Well, yeah, this one was a little strange. We had announced the death of a actor, Lee Mathis, who apparently was big in soap operas. One of our entrants had picked him, and gave us that background information from her research. Anyway, I guess when we wrote up the obit' we made some comment like "No, we never heard of him, either!" Something like that. What happened, and what stuck in my mind, was that we got this e-mail from someone who was a friend of Mathis's, and had apparently been with him up until the end. They went on and on about how callous were, et cetera. It was quite an emotional e-mail...
G21: So why do you do it?
LOVE: Well.... I think I can honestly say it's a creative outlet. I do all of the writing for the site, and try to stay on top of what's going on. I try to put forward a point of view. So, speaking of e-mail, when someone writes in, like a lot of people do, and say, "Hey, I heard about your site, I came here, and you're really sick and funny!" Comments like that make me feel good, like we're getting our point across.
G21: I'm curious about the format, or formats, you decided to use for the Lee Atwater. I mean, I come to your site, it's January 15th, that means I can't get in on the Big Game, the one with the real prize money, what do I do?
LOVE: The Lee, Jr. That's why we have that option. Though it's not as exciting as the Big Game, the Lee, Jr. gives you a chance to pick the celebrities you feel are most likely to pass on in the coming month. It takes more skill, and its limited to that month. We're even looking at some plans... some ideas we have, about expanding the Lee, Jr...
G21: I've gottah ask you the question that I'm sure other webmasters who see this interview will be curious about: Are you making any money at this?
LOVE: The first two years, no. But this year, though we won't make any significant money --- I mean, I've actually worked it out to an hourly figure and it was something ridiculous, I don't recall what the figure was now, but it awful --- Well, this year the site should make money.
But, as far as the money goes, I don't think that if we do ever make any money, well, I don't expect anyone to begrudge us that, for the $11.00 they pitch in, in exchange for a year's worth of entertainment.
G21: So you think it's going to continue to grow?
LOVE: Oh yes! I think that the Dead Pool idea is poised to become a fad. Judging by the way the public consciousness has been raised over the last few months to be aware of this idea, I think that the Dead Pools are going to become very popular, definitely a fad.
G21: Final question: I'm a reader of the G21, I see this interview, first I've heard of you. Why should I go to the Lee Atwell Invitational Dead Pool site?
LOVE: Because it's the most entertaining Dead Pool site on the 'Net. Because it's fun, it's a game of skill where you match your knowledge against the other entrants. And... the Lee Atwater actually espouses a point ...a philosophy about celebrities, and way we deify them.
G21: And that philosophy is?
LOVE: When it comes to famous people, the general public is insane! Look at Princess Diana, for example! The entire world went crazy when she died.
So what the Lee Atwater tries to do is be an antidote to that kind of vain attempt to fill some hole. People put celebrities on pedestals in order to fill a hole in their own lives. They do this because they think they need to....