My Predictions For 2009

1. Jesus will not show up, again, in 2009. However his cousin Ernie will come to Earth and give to mankind the gift of an all new type of french fry. Christianity will be safe from nay-sayers for another thousand years.
   
2. Aliens will finally make themselves known. At first we will greet them with open arms, but by the end of the year they will reveal themselves to be more annoying than our one uncle at the xmas party this year who kept talking about his new job and how much more money he makes now. In December we will pretend that we forgot to text our alien "friends" before going to the bar with everyone else.
3. Being forced to ditch his Blackberry, Barack Obama will have a device created especially for him. It will historically known as the first half-blackberry in the White House.
4. Amy Winehouse will overdose on drugs and die. The media will take, and publish, photos of her corpse for weeks before anyone notices that she is dead.
5. There will be some big storms that will kill people who do not leave when the police order them to evacuate. The news will report on a saddened nation, when in reality, the nation is pretty happy to be rid of it's genetic drift.
6. Your toothbrush will be obsolete. There will be a new toothbrush with a bit of plastic on it that does something your old brush could never have done. Holy shit were you dumb for buying that piece of crap. You should buy this new toothbrush. It's the best ever!!!
7. KISS vocalist Paul Stanley will come out of the closet and admit that he is gay. KISS fans everywhere will be shocked. Elton John will remind the world he was once married to a woman too.
   
8. The world will rise up as a united people and track down, and hen kill, the handful of people who actually buy hard-on pills because a SPAM email message told them to do so.
9. Apple will release a new phone called the f-uPhone. It will work just like a regular iPhone only it will be able to detect whenever someone calls you from a non-Apple phone and instead of putting them through to you it will berate them for being second-class citizens.
   
10. The most popular diet craze of 2009 will be having your jaw broken every time you mention that you need to go on a diet. So, on January 1st, when you have convincingly lied to yourself about getting in shape, the first person you mention this fact to will punch you so hard in the face that you will have to eat Jell-o through a straw. Right around the time you get you jaw unwired it will be time to trim up for swimsuit season, earning you another broken jaw, which should carry you right through to Thanksgiving.
    

Mr. McFeely

Six months ago I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be for Halloween this year. Over the years I have not had very many stand-out costumes, so this year I really wanted to wear something that nobody else would think of, and I also wanted to be someone that everyone at the party would recognize. I had several ideas, some I may even use some day, but late one night while falling asleep it hit me, Mr. McFeely.


I mean think about it - not only could I pull that off, but it would be comfortable, people would recognize me and as a bonus the name "McFeely" opened me up for a few perverted jokes right?

The costume was a hit. Almost everyone seemed to love the it. A few were too young perhaps to really identify with the character the way I could, but it didn't matter. McFeely was a winner!

Flash forward to this past Saturday... I was out Christmas shopping with the wife. As we walked past the bookstore I saw a sign up for some local sports writer selling yet-another-Pittsburgh-sports-book. (One of my favorite things to see are these guys out for a book signing only to find out that next to nobody cares to meet them or have them sign a book.) So, when I noticed there were a few people crowded around the table I was a little confused... that was until my wife said, "Look, it's Mr. McFeely."

I felt like a dork but I had to stand in line. I dressed up as this guy for Halloween and god dammit I was gonna shake his hand and tell him that he was a hit at my party. When my turn came he looked up at me and. I don't know if it was him, or if it were all the memories pouring back in my head, but I swear to god I felt like a little kid again.

He seemed geniunely happy to meet me. He loved hearing about how I chose to be him this year and insisted we take a picture of the two of us together. He looked at the picture on my iPhone, said we needed a better one and Jamie took a second picture. He asked me to email him pictures of me in my Mr. McFeely costume. He was just one of the warmest, coolest guys you could ever imagine. He didn't even really ask me to buy his children's book, but I did and he signed it for me. I walked into the bookstore, allowing the people behind me to have their time alone with a legend.
But it didn't end there. I was listening to people all over the bookstore talking about this moment in their lives, their voices just filled with excitment. Couples were exchanging childhood memories, and parents were talling their children how this old guy was cooler than Bratz and Ben 10.

I couldn't help but think that Santa Claus was downstairs for the little kids and Mr. McFeely was up here for the adults who did not always remember that they were still children to somebody.

Yes, Nathaniel, there really is a Mr. McFeely.