Parting Shot
The Year in Preview
By Mark J. Lucas |
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Usually, magazines will try and toss one of those "year in review" numbers in their January issue, summarizing the annum past. Well, anyone can play Monday morning quarterback. How about a column that calls the plays from the line? Without further adieu, I give you: The Year in Preview... maybe.
In Transportation:
Columbus will finally be given what it's needed for years: a light-rail train system that will connect all major districts of the city with the surrounding suburban areas. This train system will be part of a grand Ohio network, that will run from Cleveland to Columbus to Cincinnati, stimulating the economies of each by allowing citizens to commute to jobs halfway across the state in a fraction of the time, and without consuming any gasoline whatsoever. The project is scheduled to break ground right after researchers at OSU figure out how to make pigs fly. So far, the primary stumbling block for the genetic scientists has been getting them to stop high-fiving each other over the name of their craft: the A-10 Warthog. (It's already taken, boys! Already taken.)
In Parking:
The temporary recanting of the parking meter increase will come undone, and once again, we will be forced to pay astronomical prices to leave our cars on the street. A quarter will get you twenty-seven seconds of time, a dollar will get you a whole minute, and the cost of leaving your vehicle in a private lot over night will be one (unblemished) human hand. The law won't specify whether or not it must be your own hand, but it will mandate that the hand be from someone 18 years of age or older. The increased revenues will go towards hiring new meter readers for the City. The goal set for Columbus is to have one reader for every meter, who will stand constant vigil, waiting to hit you with a ticket if you even think about not awkwardly running out of whatever engagement you're in the middle of with a sack full of gold coins. The price of not paying said ticket will be one human foot - blemished or otherwise.
In Casino Development:
Construction of the casino will begin, but unfortunately for the owner (and fortunately for the people who patronize the establishment), the man hired as floor boss will be one Pete "Unlucky-and-Bad-at-Math" Holcombe. His bumblings will make millionaires out of the most unlikely characters, turning our city into the basis for a situation comedy titled "Shit into Luck". The show will only run for half a season, as it will be brilliant and air on Fox.
(614)Magazine contributing writer and soothsayer, Mark J. Lucas
Photo: Christopher Atwood
In Sports:
The Blue Jackets will win the Stanley Cup. This will happen right after the ground breaking of that train system. It will also be decided that the Buckeyes - as a franchise - will finally graduate college and become a professional football team. And after 120 years, it's about damn time. I mean, they've got to have a degree in just about everything by now. They even have a master's in Celtic Sheep Shearing, earned back in the days when they were an agricultural school.
In Architecture:
Columbus will erect 13,000 new arches, all equipped with blazing lights. Unbeknownst to the city planner, however, they will be arranged in just such a way as to channel ghosts from around the world, most notably, Litheria, a phantom princess from the Orient, bent on enslaving the human race to service her in a twisted and grandiose necro-kingdom, long forgotten to the histories of man. Subsequently, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Ernie Hudson will be called out of retirement to help us fight this scourge, ultimately failing, as they are merely actors, and not in any way knowledgeable in the operation of proton packs. Dammit!
In Culture:
A new sexual technique called "melling" will come into fashion, and it's going to make people wonder why no one had ever thought of it before. We can't be too explicit, but melling is performed on women, requires strong knees and powerful ears, and if you're good at it, the ladies will be buying your drinks. It's that good, and could legitimately be called a game-changer in the dating world.
In Entertainment:
Though Columbus is known for its thriving independent music scene, Indie Rock will come to a screeching halt, when it's proponents are officially "over" everything, leaving no room for expansion. The bursting of this "rock bubble" will create an entertainment gap with reprehensible consequences, including a desperate move to champion mime as a hip form of entertainment. This also could, for bizarre reasons, be considered a game-changer in the dating world.
In Fashion:
Lederhosen. Believe it.
In Science:
Scientists at Battelle will be given the Nobel Prize after they successfully create a new, unique emotion. The emotion will be called "weck," and will fall in the range somewhere between sadness and wonderment. On the "up" side, people who feel weck will have clear focus and an open mind, which will allow them to achieve great things in the face of struggle and adversity.
Weck's downside is that when you experience it, the idea of decorating your house with dried flowers doesn't seem so unreasonable. Also, it gives you new, bizarre inclinations towards anything that whistles. Either way, the majority of men will be encouraged from a young age to suppress this emotion, along with all the others.
In Media:
(614) Magazine will discover that rather than having hired a savvy humorist to write its back-page humor article as they thought, they'd actually hired a two-bit hack comedian that got lucky after he responded to a Craigslist ad. They will also dispose of the editor-in-chief, upon discovering that he is, in reality, two goats wearing a trench coat. His (or rather their) termination won't be due to poor quality of work, but for the failure to produce two valid social security numbers upon request. (This should have been obvious, as the one on the application reads 275-80-CANS-ARE-TASTY.)
That's it.
There isn't any more.
Nothing else will happen.
Well... there is something about aliens landing and bringing an end to all war. Unfortunately, their method for doing so involves intense racket ball sessions, bringing about a tennis elbow epidemic, effectively rendering melling impossible. But for those few months, men and women find themselves on even ground, sexually.
The aliens also get pretty freaked out by all the ghosts running around. That causes a number of misunderstandings.
But other than that, nothing else happens.
Originally Published: January 1, 2010
