2007 Predictions and Resolutions

Well oh well, where to begin with Nostrodamusin’ this new year. I could start with the obvious Hollywood banter about our favorite celebrities and which of their private parts will be exposed this year; hmm, I could start by predicting the boring little milestones that’ll happen in my own life but that’d just be for my own amusement at the end of this year when I don’t do any of them; so I guess I’ll just start with the first things that come to mind.

Predictions

Random thoughts

• Everyone will have exactly one birthday except people born on February 29th. No aging for you!
• Americans will drive their cars an average of 14000 miles per family
• Someone will try to claim a world record for yet another useless body feature (there were arm hair and eyebrow hair last year)

Celebrity Stuff

I’m not a huge gossip fan, but some things are irresistible — predicting the antics of our beloved celebrities is one of them.

• Jessica Simpson will get pregnant with her new husband.
• Eva Longoria will either get pregnant or divorced with/from Tony Parker
• Tom Cruise will do something even more annoying than in 2006, possibly with Katie’s help
• Hayden Panettiere will be rumored to be dating some diva’s husband despite being under 18.
• Miss USA 2006, Tara Conner, will be in Playboy after her reign is over.
• Paris Hilton will get pregnant. It’ll be a girl that ends up dating Britney’s younger son in about 10 years.
• Angelina and Brad will adopt another baby from some third-world country

Non-Celebrity Entertainment
Stuff that entertains us which isn’t about particular celebrities

• JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will become the best-selling children’s book of all time, and will be mostly read by adults 18-29.
• Voldemort and Snape will be the 2 primary characters that die in the last HP book.
• There will be more bad movies made than good ones
• The season finale of Heroes will be an anti-climactic one that people hate.
• The new iPod will suck in a way where people hate it
• Nintendo’s Wii will continue to outdistance PS3 in sales, by a widening margin
• More movies will be watched via Comcast OnDemand than HBO and Showtime combined.

National Affairs
These are classified as things that will happen around the country or in other countries related to US-stuff.

• At least 1000 more soldiers will be killed in action in Iraq. I’ll be having a morbid contest to let readers guess the exact total and, at the end of the year, the closest entry will win something (I need time to set this up)
• The President will make at least 10 more bad decisions to keep whoever the next President is from getting anything done because they’ll have to clean up his mess for 4 years.
• Muhammad Ali will succumb to his illness (I hate to predict death, but I see this coming).
• The price of gas will go back up to above $3/gal in the US for more than a month. Please understand if you’re viewing from a country where that seems cheap that the US doesn’t place much of a tax on energy and energy sources, like gasoline. Whereas in countries like Japan, energy is one of the most highly taxed things nationwide (and the cheap gas is about 110yen/liter).

Sports
Sports-related predictions

• USC will be the NCAA football pre-season #1 team next season
• My beloved Georgia Bulldogs will win the SEC championship and will finish the season in the top 5.
• The Super Bowl will be won by either the Broncos or the Chargers, and preferably the Broncos.
• The Yankees will not win the World Series despite their payroll
• Mark McGwire will be on the Hall of Fame ballot but not get elected because of the whole performance enhancers issue (though Mark only took andro, which was legal when he took it). If I had a vote, he’d be in.
• Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron’s record, then he’ll sit out and whine about his knee the rest of the season
• Brett Favre will retire but still have the hunger for the game
• The Broncos will trade/cut/waive Jake Plummer

Resolutions
I won’t make many, because I hate being held to my word if it’s convenient:

1. Of the 60% of resolutions I am serious about, 90% will be broken by March 31. At least 1 will hold until at least July 1.
2. Continue to prognosticate things that may happen.
3. Drink as much as I feel is appropriate for a situation.
4. 5000 hits on this blog!
5. Complete masters program.
6. Get a lunch date with Erin Andrews and Rachel Nichols. Follow-up note: 2 January 2007 Through several previous contacts at ESPN I managed to get Erin’s and Rachel’s email addresses. I sent an email to both of them today; hopefully I don’t get caught in the spam filter and they will both respond and I can eventually catch them in Denver.
7. Get a lunch date with Nora Zehetner
   

NHK “Topless” New Year’s performance

You may have heard about this in one of the larger US cities since they have larger Japanese populations. I happened to be watching the show when it was on (NHK’s new years Kohaku) and I was also fooled until the very end of the song. The body suits the girls were wearing were perfectly matched to their skin color, and it was very hard to tell that they weren’t real except that the boobs you “saw” were, on average, larger than the average Japanese lady. At the very end of this song, I saw some shirt wrinkles in one of the dancers, so that is how I figured out it was fake.

Not only did I think the song was inappropriate for NHK (the equiv. of PBS in the US) being something like “I wanna bang you every day how about right now?”, but this act was way out of line. I doubt DJ OZMA will be invited back next year.

CNN wrote up a short article about it as well.

I found this video of the performance on YouTube