It’s early Monday morning and Steve Vogl is about to embark on another workweek in the health and safety field, but first he needs to run through his normal morning routine.
He brushes his teeth, and then checks the Associated Press obituaries.
“I’m like an old man,” he says, “Except I’m not looking for my friends, I’m looking for celebrities.”
Vogl then takes his newfound knowledge of the famous departed and updates his website (flymetothetomb.com), which allows users to bet on which celebrities will pass away during the calendar year.
Flymetothetomb.com is a seemingly morbid site which tracks and makes a game out of celebrity death. A simple Google search will get you there, even if you’re not looking for it. The website is formally titled “The Old Blue Eyes (O.B.E.) Memorial Celebrity Death Watch” (in reference to Frank Sinatra). The site is the brainchild of life-long best friends Steve Vogl and Matt Gitkin, and allows Internet users worldwide to compile a list of 13 celebrities at the start of each year as a sort of “bet” on which celebrities they think aren’t long for this world. Every October 31 new entries are accepted, and every year on December 31 a new game begins and lasts the duration of that calendar year. It’s completely free. Players can make donations, but in the end the cash prizes for the winners come from Vogl and Gitkin’s pockets if the donations they receive don’t measure up.
Vogl and Gitkin, who refer to themselves as “The Guys,” have known each other since they were kindergarteners growing up in northern New Jersey. The pair always had a flair for finding a bit of humor in the intrinsically humorless. “We’re the kind of guys who giggle at funerals,” admits Vogl.
About 14 years ago, they had a running bet with one another concerning when they thought Frank Sinatra was going to pass away. Sinatra was a man the pair greatly admired, and having both lost parents recently, they were looking for the “light-hearted side of death,” says Vogl.
As Sinatra lived on, Vogl kept losing the bet and eventually they moved on to other celebrities. “We’d even call each other in the middle of the night if we heard another celebrity died,” he recounts. Vogl and Gitkin’s families became involved and soon flymetothetomb.com was born, complete with a section devoted to their inspiration, Sinatra himself. “The site began as a mixed, small group of people, almost all people we know,” says Vogl, “The site blossomed from there.”
Today the homemade website has grown, with 155 participants in this year’s game. The site boasts participants from 31 states and from three different countries (Canada, Australia, and England).
Old Blue Eyes isn’t the only celebrity death pool of its kind either. A quick skim through a search engine summons up at least a dozen more sites with a similar premise. Stiffs.com charges 15 dollars per entry, but the prize winnings are significantly larger than most sites and it varies from year to year depending on the number of entries. The 2008 prize is an appropriate $2,008.
This year’s grand prize at the O.B.E for the highest number of correct guesses is $250; second and third place get $70 and $30, respectively. “That’s a lot of dough for just picking 13 people you think are gonna croak,” says Vogl.
Participants seem to echo Vogl’s hypothesis that a $250 prize can create competition and excitement. The site includes a section called “The O.B.E. Mail Bag” where participants can express their love, hate, and ask Gitkin and Vogl questions. One player, known as Dead Guys R Us (no affiliation) expresses the odd sort of excitement the game evokes in a Mail Bag entry: “Do you ever get all excited when you see a report on a famous celebrity biting it, then get more amped because you think you have them on your celebrity death watch list, then get TOTALLY peeved when you realize that you meant to pick that person?”
All this excitement over $250, which really isn’t that much cash nowadays. It is, however, a lot of money for a site run by two average Joes from New Jersey in the free time they have left after working regular nine-to-five jobs, and catching the occasional punk rock show. The Guys pay for the site’s domain, and the cash prizes are based on voluntary donations sent in from participants. “Donations aren’t mandatory to play the game,” says Vogl, “If we don’t get enough donations to cover everything, we’ll still pony up the dough…but we haven’t had to do that yet.”
As the site expands, so does its list of aging or dysfunctional celebrities. This year’s top five most chosen are Fidel Castro, Evangelist Billy Graham, “Israeli tough guy” Ariel Sharon, Kirk Douglas, and Farrah Fawcett. Britney Spears is twenty-ninth, while Steven Hawking rounds out the top 80, having only been picked by six people out of the 155. “He’s confounded players,” says Vogl of Hawking, “He shouldn’t have been [living] long [in] this world.” Interestingly enough, Stiffs.com has the same top two as the O.B.E, third is Chemical Ali, fourth Billy Graham (another O.B.E top five repeat), and fifth is 99-year-old French anthropologist and founder of structuralism Claude Levi-Strauss (not to be confused with the jeans guy, who died in 1902). Farrah Fawcett comes in seventh on the Stiffs list.
The top five of Stiffs.com and the O.B.E. don’t match up with one other celebrity death site, though. At deathlist.net there’s no guessing, no money, and no prizes, it’s merely a list of 50 celebrities chosen by the DeathList Committee, just to see how many they can get right. Users of the site can post their opinions in a forum, leave comments and give the committee “tips for next year.” The committee picked legendary actor and former National Rifle Association president, Charlton Heston, and director Sydney Pollack, as the top two. Albert Hofmann, the 102-year-old creator of LSD comes in third, while Ronnie Biggs, an ambassador, and Oscar Niemeyer, a 101-year-old architect, round out the top five.
As is to be expected when you post something on the web for, literally, the world to see, The Guys have run into a few issues with the site since its debut. “We once had the daughter of Johnny Oates [a famous baseball catcher] come across our page when she was Googling him after he died,” discloses Vogl, “she wasn’t too thrilled about seeing him listed.” Yet, instances like that seem to be rare at the O.B.E. The biggest problem The Guys have come across currently is what, in fact, defines a “celebrity.” “We used to have people who were basically like ‘let’s find the world’s oldest man, or obscure politicians who are really old, and put them on our list,’” Vogl explains, “It made the game not as fun, and we had to change the rules a bit.”
According to the official rules on the site, what makes a celebrity is a very lengthy topic, but in general it’s someone who is famous for doing something, not just being something. For instance, it can’t be someone who’s only famous for having a certain illness and has come into the public as being an activist for it. Also, the person can’t be a “celebrity” because he or she is related to someone famous. “We’re not looking for Joe Namath’s mom,” says Vogl. The picks have to be people who are famous in their own right, in order for the bet to count. “It’s caused a huge argument this year,” admits Vogl, “We’ve even lost a few of our best players because of it, but we have to keep it fair.”
As morbid a premise as it may be, The Guys are adamant about their site, maintaining that it’s all in good fun. Their opinion seems to be shared by a growing number of people as their participant numbers rise each year. Vogl insists that the website is meant to be lighthearted and intends no harm, saying, “We really do have a great deal of respect for these people.” And even though they may be celebrities in life, “Death is the great equalizer no matter how famous you are.”
