It’s time for me to peer through the veil of the future into the face of tomorrow in order to describe the features of the New Year. Here are some events that are approximately 97 percent likely to happen in 2018.
The Super Bowl will be played between the New England Patriots and some other team. Approximately 76 people will attend the game, but the audience will be boosted by the hundreds who tune in for its live broadcast on Spike TV. The halftime show will feature Chelsea Handler singing her new hit, “Screw You, America, And Your Stinking Flag Too,” and will include a massive dance number representing the United States Army’s oppression of indigenous peoples around the world. After the Patriots win, NFL executives will hold a meeting to discuss the mysterious decline in their ratings. They will conclude they need more outreach to transgender people.
CNN will break an exclusive story detailing how President Trump personally funneled top-secret defense information to Russian ambassador Anatoly Antonov in exchange for a permit to open a new Trump resort in Moscow. Several hours later, CNN will issue a clarification stating it was not President Trump but his personal friend Melvin Hankey and it was not defense information but a bottle of wine and it was not the Russian ambassador but some girl named Lily Bernstein and it was not in exchange for a building permit in Moscow but in exchange for twenty dollars and that Hankey never met Trump but works in a liquor store Trump sometimes used to walk past. A day later, CNN will issue a clarification stating that Trump never walked past the liquor store.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hold its annual Academy Awards ceremony at which every presenter will be played by Christopher Plummer. The star-studded event will be held at the San Pedro Elks Lodge, the only available venue large enough to handle the audience of 54 people without leaving a lot of empty seats. The audience, however, will be boosted by the hundreds of out-of-work NFL executives watching the simultaneous telecast on the Golf Channel. Ultimately Mr. Plummer will deliver the Best Picture honors to the independent production Loving Me, Loving Ewe, which the New York Times will describe as “an important look at society’s oppression of African-American lesbians forced to transition to manhood in order to consummate their relationships with farm animals.” After the event, Academy executives will meet to discuss the mysterious decline in the show’s ratings. They’ll conclude they need more outreach to out-of-work NFL executives.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, will run an issue in which the headline to every story is Donald Trump’s name with an obscenity next to it. Times editor Blithering Prevarication III will later give a press conference admitting that the paper may have strayed somewhat from its traditional standards of objective reporting. He’ll then begin repeatedly muttering Donald Trump’s name interspersed with obscenities and will finally burst into tears, sobbing, “God help me, I love him!”
Former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake will make a dramatic run for elective office, promising to solve Flagstaff’s stray dog problem once and for all. He’ll be defeated by a local businessman running on the slogan, “Make Flagstaff’s Dog Pounds Great Again.”
After a judge sentences him to 39 hours of community service, Harvey Weinstein will be forced to take a job leading a workshop on sexual harassment in Hollywood. Calling a particularly attractive actress to the front of the room, Weinstein will demonstrate what men should never do on set by placing his hands on the actress’s breasts, buttocks and groin. The two will marry shortly thereafter
Working in a secret lab in the White House basement, Donald Trump will develop a cure for cancer while directing military operations that wipe out radical Islam during the greatest economic boom in American history. In reaction, National Review will run a cover story entitled, “Yes, But Is He Really an Intellectual?”
I’ll return at the end of the year to discuss how everyone else got their predictions so wrong.
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