The Future’s So Bright We Can Already See It

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We’ve reluctantly — because we don’t want to abuse our supernatural powers — dusted off the Pensito Review crystal ball to make a few predictions for 2009.

  • On her first trip to Eastern Europe as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton is met in Bosnia with sniper fire.
  • Adam Sorkin creates a new West Wing-like television program based loosely on The Jeffersons sitcom where a black family moves into the White House and has to deal with a bunch of weird white people in Congress in a lot of forced, uncomfortable situations.
  • In his last few hours as president, Bush pardons Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Vicks, Mark Cuban, Ken Lay (posthumously), Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, Todd Palin (DUI), Ted Stevens, Duke Cunningham, Larry Craig, Bill O’Reilly (sexual harassment), Rush Limbaugh (prescription drug fraud), Phil Spector and O.J. Simpson.
  • Eliot Spitzer and Jon Edwards buy a Winnebago and a digital camera and hit the road for Panama City, Fla. during spring break for a new reality program called “Guys Gone Wild.”
  • It’s June 2009 and they’re still counting votes in Minnesota.
  • Jamie Lynn Spears, Angelina Jolie, Katie Holmes, Bristol Palin, Clay Aiken and those 17 high school girls in Gloucester, Mass., volunteer to be sterilized by aliens as a gesture of interplanetary goodwill.
  • The newspaper industry completely collapses, bankrupting Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zeller, and leaving the West Framforth Argus-Beacon the only print newspaper still publishing in the United States.
  • With its bailout money, the U.S. auto industry retools and comes out with the coolest hybrid ever made, called the Iaccoca. Unfortunately, although the vehicle initially is greeted with excitement and was hailed as having the potential to single-handedly cure our dependence on foreign oil, due to its name it is consigned to the dustbin of history alongside the Edsel.
  • In a desperate attempt to maintain its momentum from the presidential elections, Saturday Night Live starts doing skits involving Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — and nobody notices.
  • After poisoning our dogs’ food, our children’s toys and our toothpaste with melamine, China refines its efforts to kill members of both political parties by flooding the post-election market with lead-glazed Barack Obama commemorative plates and MSG-infused “Palin in 2012” T-shirts.
  • Larry King finally stops doing whatever it is he does.
  • On his first day in office, President Barack Obama signs Executive Order 1256 decreeing that no one, and he means no one, is supposed to pay one iota of attention to any celebrity who goes by just one name. That means you, Cher, Madonna, Beyonce, Oprah, et. al.
  • Newt Gingrich gets fatter, uglier and meaner.
  • So does Jeb Bush.
  • Al Gore just gets fatter and more saintlike.
  • General Motors apologizes to the American people for the Hummer, calling it “the single most obnoxious thing we ever did” and adding, “Our heads were up our butts, but we get it now. Buy a Chevy! LYLAS!”
  • It’s October 2009 and they’re still counting votes in Minnesota.
  • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints apologizes for its role in the defeat of California’s Proposition 8, which bars gays from entering into a civil marriage contract. The Mormon Church issues a statement that to atone for its actions, it will immediately stop posthumously baptizing Nazis and Jews. Pinkie promise!
  • In what has been hailed as a further effort to seal his hetero creds, a honeymoon sex tape was released on the Internets of closeted Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and his blushing bride Carole Rome engaged in sexual acts that are illegal in every county of the state. The grainy, poor-quality tape confirms that Crist’s famous tan is an all-over one.
  • Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin agrees to appear on the cover of Playboy Magazine. “How many hockey moms do you know who can have four or five kids and still have a bodacious bod like this?” asked the former Miss Wasilla.

John Lennon Covers Everything in Five Minutes

In 1969, a 14-year-old named Jerry Levitan talked his way into John Lennon’s Toronto hotel room, armed with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Impressed by the kid’s chutzpah, Lennon obliged him with a five-minute chat that covered war, peace, and the newly arrived Bee Gees.

Levitan teamed up with filmmaker Josh Raskin in 2007 to make “I Met the Walrus,” an animated film that turns Lennon’s thoughts into concrete, if trippy, images. It’s cool.

Obama Wins the Halloween Mask Poll

Trick or treat!

Obama can cancel the third debate and declare victory, according to an ABC report that uses Halloween mask sales in a presidential election year to predict a winner. Two major national Halloween retailers are selling Obama masks by at least 60 percent to McCain’s 40.

In the last seven elections, this method accurately called the winner.

One caveat: Chinese suppliers are having a hard time turning out Sarah Palin masks quickly enough, so costume shops are just selling wigs and glasses to Palin wannabes, which could skew the results. No word on how many trick-or-treaters will be going as Joe Biden.

Heart Tells McCain/Palin to Stop F*cking Them Over

You know you’ve hit a classic rock station as you punch the seek button when you hear the 1977 Heart hit, “Barracuda.” And probably the last thing the song connotes in your mind is the Republican party.

Heart cried foul after the first time the song was played at the Republican convention, in Sarah Palin’s honor on the night of her speech. When it was played again after McCain’s speech, the Wilson sisters issued a cease and desist notice to the McCain campaign.

“The Republican campaign did not ask for permission to use the song, nor would they have been granted that permission,” [an email issued by Heart] read. “We have asked the Republican campaign publicly not to use our music. We hope our wishes will be honored.”

Nancy Wilson: “Sarah Palin’s views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women”

But after McCain finished his speech accepting the GOP’s presidential nomination tonight, Palin joined him on stage, and the song was used again: Heart’s “Barracuda” played as balloons fell. With that elephant in the room, Heart’s Nancy Wilson felt compelled to personally respond. “I think it’s completely unfair to be so misrepresented,” she said in a phone call to EW.com after the speech. “I feel completely f—ed over.” She and sister Ann Wilson then e-mailed the following exclusive statement:

“Sarah Palin’s views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song ‘Barracuda’ no longer be used to promote her image. The song ‘Barracuda’ was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The ‘barracuda’ represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there’s irony in Republican strategists’ choice to make use of it there.”

Ironic indeed. With Palin’s creds so seriously in doubt that the McCain handlers are barring her from direct contact with the press, it seems an odd song selection. While most of us hum through a majority of the indecipherable lyrics, we can all belt out the chorus:

If the real thing don’t do the trick —
No? You better make up something quick

Heart was preceded by Jackson Browne in resorting to lawsuits to get the McCain campaign to stop distorting their work.

Father of Edwards Mistress Electrocuted Horses for the Insurance Money

This is one of those stories that is so awful it makes you gasp, then bounce up and down, then hit the “send” button trying to tell everybody. So I’m telling you.

The woman John Edwards had his affair with has a bizarre past, including a father who electrocuted horses for the insurance money. I am not making this up.

First, a little background. Before she took the more exotic sounding name Rielle Hunter, Edwards’ mistress was good ol’ Lisa Jo Druck from Ocala, Fla. known in this state as horse country. There are ranches outside Ocala worth more than the average Rolls Royce dealership. Lisa apparently grew up riding horses.

But wait, here’s a warning. This is really bad. If you are an animal lover like me, don’t read the last three paragraphs of the quoted material.

Warning. This is really bad. If you are an animal lover like me, you might want to skip the last part.

Hunter’s father, James D. Druck, a successful Ocala lawyer representing insurance companies during the 1980s, was implicated in a scam that involved a local man, Tommy “The Sandman” Burns, who electrocuted horses for their owners to collect the insurance money. One of Burns’ first victims was the show horse Lisa Druck rode, Henry the Hawk.

Burns said in a 1992 Sports Illustrated interview that James Druck showed him how to electrocute Lisa’s horse using a stripped extension cord and a wall socket. Burns said Druck showed him the scam so Druck could collect $150,000 in insurance. Burns’ arrest in 1991 drew national attention. Druck died of cancer in the Tampa area in 1992…

About the time Lisa Druck’s horse died, Burns had already earned the nickname “Sandman,” a term horse owners gave him because when he showed up at horse shows, invariably a horse would mysteriously die.

Burns and accomplice Harlow Arlie, both of the Chicago area, were held at the Alachua County jail after their arrest in Newberry, according to stories published by The Gainesville Sun.

Burns’ choice of execution was electrocution because many veterinarians would wrongly determine the cause of death to be colic. That became a problem for Burns in 1991 when one horse owner couldn’t get an animal insured for colic, so the owner asked Burns to break the horse’s leg instead.

So, on the night of Feb. 2, 1991, Burns held the horse while his accomplice Arlie swung a crowbar into one of the animal’s rear legs. The animal ran into the night screaming, falling onto its broken, dangling leg. The animal was euthanized when a veterinarian was called by the horse’s owner.

The two men were sentenced in Alachua County Circuit Court. Both pleaded guilty or no contest to animal cruelty and insurance fraud and received jail sentences, according to Sun file stories.

Take a deep, cleansing breath.

Lisa went on to drop out of college and end up in New York where her exploits earned her a place in modern fiction, thanks to author Jay McInerney. And then she was introduced to John Edwards…