We here at X Magazine recognize mediocre filler when we see it,
so why don't you just pretend that these are actual people predicting
THE YEAR 1990 AND BEYOND
by Mark Simple

Milton Dern has been making startling accurate predictions about what he wears and eats for twenty years now. He has publicly denounced the other two visionaries mentioned, calling them "jerks, minor-league guessers, and charla...charla...jerks." Madame Bowling has only two words for her 87% hit-miss rate with world disasters: "damn straight." Her favorite medium of divination is her trusty Tuxedo Sam drinking glass. Trevor Rut was catapaulted into celebrity in 1982 after predicting absolutely nothing would happen that year. He currently resides in Ann Arbor, where he counts things on the street. 1990 MD: I see something purple. I like it. I believe I'm wearing it. MB: God visits Australia - plays video games for a week. No one has a camera handy, but Jim Davis, vacationing in Perth, sketches a quick caricature for use in his new "God: #1 Fun Person" comic strip. TR: Tensions mount in the East. 1991 MD: Food plays a major role. Lots of burgers, clams, what have you. MB: Celebrity Jail Terms! Barbara Walters hosts this wacky new infotainment program in which celebrities pay to spend the night in jail. The premiere show will also feature how Zsa-Zsa Gabor's original sentence of three days evolved into a jail term of ten years. TR: World War III. 1992 MD: Eating something purple. This is bad. MB: Nintendos are used to vote for the president. Missing by just two electoral votes is a young skateboarder named "Slap VII." TR: World War III continues. An asteroid the size of Texas slams into Northern Canada - no one is injured. 1993 MD: I'll be testing various milk-shake polymers for elasticity at a yet-unknown fast food corporation. MB: President Mario and First Lady Princess Toadstool send peace-keeping forces to Cloudland. TR: World War III ends - no survivors. A lot of things stop moving. 1994 MD: Red. Red...cuffs. Red cuffs. No...red dye at Dairy Queen. MB: Increasingly inept leaders of each world power are suddenly eradicated, all being replaced by a single figurehead only known as the "World Guy," whose appearances on television and radio are dramatized by mimes. An intense investigation by Popular Mechanics later reveals the true power was held by the Illuminati, the Tri-Lateral Commission, and Milton-Bradley; the "World Guy" is exposed as Cher. TR: Nothing. 1995 MD: During dinner, I spill some New Vitari (formerly Vitari formerly Yodolo) - on my clothes. I spend the next year in the institution. Lot of white jumpsuits. MB: Concert T-shirts will cost a staggering $50 - and with new Japanese technology, will be reduced to the size of a dime! Also, the first funny joke will be told on the "Tonight Show," just shy of its 35th anniversary. Ed McMahon, caught by surprise, will have a seizure - and is permanently replaced by the Abe Lincoln audi-animatronic from Disneyland. TR: More of the same. 1996 MB: In a daring attempt to rescue Jerry Lewis from an American P.O.W. camp in Washington D.C., a small French army squad unwittingly overthrows the U.S. Government and makes Jerry "King Presidente." A day later, they're all shot down after going out for chili fries. TR: Fish learn to talk, and how to hold things. 1997 MD: Out of the instituition, and back into healthy eating! Duff's! Hardee's! MB: A super-magnet is created so powerful it attracts itself around the circumference of the Earth and begins to orbit, thus paving the way for perpetual motion machines, cheap overseas travel, and grotesquely large office supplies. TR: Fish talk about things they've held, are holding, or plan to hold. 1998 MD: Back to work at the milk-shake polymer plant. New uniforms in day-glo grey. MB: Britain emerges from Price War II with only 10,000 casualties, dominating the marketplace and raising hell in Japan with its best-selling product, the Bob Hope Joke Book Brain Implant. TR: Fish stop talking, still hold on to various things. 1999 MD: My inevitable drowning death at the plant. I will be wearing something jolly plaid. MB: The master reels to "Batman IV" are air-dropped into the Atlantic ocean by a crack team of rich, bored industrialists. A majority of the members are subsequently given cushy jobs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. TR: Fish forget how to hold things.

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