PalmMy latest hobby is to visit the website muertonomuerto.com and spend a while guessing whether the celebrities they suggest are alive or not. They show you a photograph and you have to decide between 'Dead,' 'Not dead,' or 'I don't know who that is.' If you guess correctly, they don't warn you or congratulate you; they just tell you if you've made a mistake. It's time better spent than watching reels, a pit more of zombies than of the deceased. The challenge is to guess as many as possible while participating in what the website presents as "an experiment on the fragility of memory." Mine, which can have trouble remembering what I've eaten, works very well when it comes to famous deaths. I stopped after about 100 names. Without fail, eh, and because I ran out of seconds on the next one when a friend sent me a WhatsApp message full of exclamation points asking: "But is Ramón Sánchez Ocaña alive?!!!!!!" Meh! I had failed. It had been so long since we heard from the host of "Más vale evitar evitar" that we thought he'd passed away. After a while, another message: "Álex Angulo is dead?!!!! When did this happen?" Response: eyes-in-the-sky emoji.
The highest percentage of errors are, in addition to Ocaña, Diana Ross, Little Richard, Raúl Sender, Joan Collins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and José María Carrascal. I've mixed them up randomly so as not to upset anyone who wants to play. I haven't managed to find out who invented the suggestion, but I respect him for mixing Alan Rickman, El Fary, Neil Armstrong, and Joselito.
I have a theory that celebrities die in groups of three. They announce the first one, and within a week, the shortlist is complete. Friends write to me anxiously when the deadline is up, waiting for who will close the group. They're excited, like a superstition that confirms a kind of evidence.
The macabre version of 'Mort-No Mort' is the necropora, lists that circulate on the internet and social media, betting on which celebrities will die in the coming year. Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kirk Douglas, and Betty White topped the list for years for purely biological reasons. A bet like that is always right sooner rather than later. They were months away from reaching centenarians. He died at 103. Incidentally, there's a very high percentage of 'Mort-No Mort' players who fail to get to the Spartacus actor. It must be the fragility of memory.
