The ballad of Brave Last Dave: A sad story getting sadder.

I like the obituaries. I always have. Most people think it's morbid, but when someone dies you haven't thought about in quite some time, it gives you a chance to reflect. One of the most popular posts I've written this year was my tribute to Sir Henry Cooper, the British boxer who was the first to knock down Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) in his pro career.

When I rejoined the Internet back in the late 1980s (I was on something like a chat room in 1974, so I gots a little seniority), one of the first newsgroups I joined was alt.obituaries, where people from all over the English speaking world posted obits. I met my friend Amelia from New York there. I'm not on the group anymore, but I joined their deadpool this year under the name Brave Last Dave, using a list gleaned from the people who the tabloids predicted would die in 2010.

I contend obituaries aren't morbid. Deadpools, on the other hand, most certainly are. Predicting who will die in a calendar year is by definition morbid. My excuse is that the predictions aren't my own, but instead a test of the tabloids' power of predictions.

My nom de mort is Brave Last Dave. After getting very lucky, catching the very first celebrity death of the year with Anne Francis, the only other hit I've had is Miss Elizabeth Taylor, who was also on 23 other people's lists, so not much of a coup there.

My contention is that the tabloids kind of suck at telling you who will die soon. My standing near the end of May in the deadpool bears this out.

I have two hits out of the 40 people on my list for a total of 13 points. The points are a combination of how old someone was when they died - younger people are worth more points - and some bonus for having a name that was on very few other lists. So far, I haven't had any bonuses for solos, duets or trios and given how well known the people are on my list, I doubt that I will get any.

The average number of points for people who have at least one hit is 27.1 points and the median is 22. The average number of hits is 3.2 and the median is 3. In other words, I'm at the bottom of the pool and my odds of a miraculous turnaround stink pretty bad.

My list has some politicians (the elder Bush and Bill Clinton, but not G.W. Bush or Jimmy Carter) and some British royalty, but it leans heavily on people who were famous before I graduated from high school, especially people who were on TV in the 50s, 60s or 70s. There are some young out of control folks on the list (Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen, for example) and they have a dislike for the fat (which explains the inclusion of Rush Limbaugh and Kirstie Alley), but it's very light on aging rock stars or athletes, so I have no chance to score points when someone like Seve Ballesteros or Phoebe Snow dies.

The people who join these deadpools usually put some thought into their choices, so I didn't expect to come in and sweep the field, but I do find it interesting just how bad my list is doing versus people who are putting in some effort.

The shorter version of this post is this.

The tabloids suck at tell the truth and they are even worse at predicting the future.

But we kind of knew that already, didn't we?

Repeat after me: Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.

Well, the first weekend of the NCAA men's basketball tournament has come to a close and my bracket is out of the running. It wasn't complete garbage, more like mediocre with 31 correct predictions out of 48, but mediocre ain't gonna get you in the money.

You might think that predicting the outcomes of win-lose games would be a 50%-50% gamble, but in our set of 127 brackets, the average number of correct prediction was 30.8 of 48, or around 64%. One of the big reasons for the improvement over flat out guessing is seeding. When a #1 seed plays a #16, it's crazy to pick an upset. Likewise, #2 vs #15 is pretty much a done deal as well and #3 seeds went a perfect 4-0 in the first round as well. If you picked all the #1, #2 and #3 seeds to win in the first round, that's 12 correct predictions and just 36 more "tough" games to choose. If you go 50%-50% on the rest, that's 30 correct without getting very lucky or clever.


Let's switch to a guessing game that is much tougher to do and hard to figure the odds on mathematically. Alt.obituaries, a newsgroup I used to subscribe to when the Internets were young and so was I, has a deadpool each year. Before January 1, you have to submit a list of 40 famous people who you think will die before the next January 1.

I had never done this before because I don't actually care for predicting people will die, but now that I'm running The Other Blog, I figured I'd make a list of 40 out of the people marked for death and right soon by the vultures of the gossip world.

I'm not really doing this for fortune or fame. There is no entry fee and first prize is a bottle of Moxie, an East Coast brand of root beer.



I entered the deadpool under the nom de mort Brave Last Dave, a pun on the "Brave Last Days!" headline the tabloids use so often in cases like this. Given how badly the tabloids did in 2010, six correct out of sixty six predictions fatalities, I figured Brave Last Dave would be near the bottom of the standings all year long. But on Jan. 3, I got my first hit, in fact the first hit of the year, with Anne Francis, the lovely blond who starring in Forbidden Planet and Honey West. I started getting the idea that maybe I'd get about a hit a month and actually have a chance to get that free bottle of Moxie, favored fizzy drink of the now departed Ted Williams.

But since then... nothing. In February, the tabloids were absolutely certain Zsa Zsa Gabor and Miss Elizabeth Taylor would be on the other side of the lawn before the month was out, but Spring is about to sprung and both of those lovely women are still with us. Zsa Zsa is pretty stunning. 93 years old, broken hip, found in a pool of blood, leg amputated, infection set in so the leg was amputated even further, had a stroke and is still clinging to life.

I tell ya, that old bird is tougher than a two dollar steak.

The tabloids lean very heavily on former TV stars when they predict someone is going to die, so there was no chance I was going to get a hit with the recently deceased Secretary of State Warren Christopher or even Dodger great Duke Snider. They could have mentioned Jane Russell before she died, but that's aiming slightly older than their target demographic. It's much more about Mike Connors (still alive and best wishes) than it is about Michael Gough (recently deceased and best wishes to his family and friends).

Yes, Spring is nearly here and though there are many months left, I expect that if I'm ever going to have any Moxie, I'm going to have to buy it my own damn self.