Guess What’s In Store For 2024!

My always eagerly anticipated and then just as quickly forgotten about “year ahead in preview” column

Entering Congress this past January, New York Representative George Santos came in like a lion — well, like someone who likes lyin’, anyway. And now, as the year closes, Santos has been expelled from the House of Representatives and is going out like a lamb — well, maybe “on the lam” would be more precise, considering all the criminal charges he’s facing.

And that’s what 2023 was — 12 months marked by remarkable contrasts. After all, it was the year when another of SpaceX rockets exploded in the atmosphere while the Titan submersible imploded in the ocean depths… when classified documents were turning up everywhere from Mar-a-Lago and Biden’s garage to Mike Pence’s secret underground porn locker and yet the Epstein flight logs remained stubbornly difficult to locate… when Gwyneth Paltrow was saying “I wish you well” to the man who sued her over a skiing accident while Elon Musk was saying “Go fuck yourselves” to his own advertisers… when Britney Spears revealed in her autobiography that former boyfriend Justin Timberlake was something of a heel, while dozens of current and former staffers at The Tonight Show revealed that the program’s host and close Timberlake friend Jimmy Fallon was, well, also something of a heel.

OK, so 2023 wasn’t ALL contrasts. There was even some clearly good news. The nation cheered when Hollywood’s writers and actors scored a victory in their strike against the greedy studios and were able to get back to making the kind of TV shows and movies we consistently deride as unwatchable dreck. Also, at long, long, long last, the world witnessed the coronation of the still-spry-at-74 Prince Charles, who finally assumed his rightful place as the world’s most prominent nepo baby. And in 2023 music fans were also unexpectedly graced with the release of “Now and Then,” the very last Beatles song ever recorded (barring major advances in AI technology, that is).

But why spend our time reflecting on a year we’d all just as soon leave behind, stuck in the mud like a bunch of naked, spaced-out Burning Man celebrants when we can instead cast our gaze ahead at some of the key events of 2024 rapidly floating our way like a menacing Chinese spy balloon:

(links provided for some of the more obscure references)

January 9: Scandal rocks Washington DC when reports emerge that “Mike Johnson” is an assumed name the GOP House Speaker has been using in place of his real name, “Pete Jones.”

February 3: In a last-ditch effort to revive his flagging presidential campaign, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis arrives at a candidate forum wearing 12-inch platform shoes.

February 11: Pop star Rihanna makes a surprise appearance during the Super Bowl halftime show and reveals that she has a urinary tract infection.

February 19: In a sign of weakening support for the Ukraine war effort, multiple media outlets quietly drop the superfluous “y” in the last name of President Volodymyr Zelensky

February 27: After Joe Biden slips on a banana peel at campaign speech in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, supermarket security camera footage recorded earlier in the day catches VP Harris furtively exiting a local grocery store clutching a bag filled with bananas.

March 28: On Opening Day, the LA Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani demonstrates himself more than worthy of his record $700 million contract by pitching an opening day shutout victory while also hitting three home runs, personally grooming the infield to perfection, belting out a pitch perfect national anthem and selling more hot dogs than any other stadium vendor.

April 20: After it’s discovered he lied about having read “Where the Crawdads Sing,” former Congressman George Santos is expelled from his local library’s book club.

May 8: British royal couples William and Kate and Harry and Meghan announce that, in lieu of continuing to engage in unbecoming and undignified public sniping at one another, they will settle their differences once and for all in a live pay-per-view WWE Raw cage match.

June 26: Fans flock to see the new biopic about German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun followed immediately by the live-action film based on the Stretch Armstrong doll in a double-feature many are calling “Von Braun-Strong.”

July 2: In response to fan complaints about an inability to afford the skyrocketing prices to attend her concerts, Taylor Swift announces that she will now sell tickets in exchange for “donated” organs and first-born children.

July 11:  The US women’s soccer team arrives in Australia prepared to compete in the FIFA Women's World Cup, only for tournament officials to approach an exasperated team captain Megan Rapinoe who is overheard to say, “Wait, it was LAST year?!?”

July 15: After lights dim for the opening speech of the 2024 Republican National Convention, cameras catch Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert in the back of the room passionately making out with an AR-15 rifle.

August 17: News of the devastating breakup between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce pushes pre-sales of the pop singer’s unreleased new album over the $5 billion mark.

August 30: SpaceX suffers another setback when the company’s Falcon 10 rocket explodes mid-flight after getting enmeshed in a floating cluster of Chinese spy balloons.

September 4: NATO members are poised to take a vote on whether to accept the tiny eastern European nation of Eniarku into the military alliance when, at the last minute, it is discovered that “Eniarku” is just “Ukraine” spelled backwards and the country’s official representative is actually Volodymyr Zelensky wearing a fake mustache.

September 22: In response to critics who excoriated his “idiotic” decision to rebrand Twitter as “X,” Elon Musk announces that the popular social media platform would be renamed once again, this time to a winking emoji accompanied by a loud raspberry sound.

October 28: On the first day of Supreme Court testimony in a free speech case pitting Elon Musk against the Securities and Exchange Commission, a grinning Associate Justice Clarence Thomas arrives at court behind the wheel of a tricked out new Tesla Cybertruck.

November 13: The Vatican announces that the Catholic Church is changing its repressive approach to sin and will become much more accepting of homosexuality, as well as fornication, adultery, masturbation, pornography and drug use. “Yeah, fuck all that bullshit,” Pope Francis tells reporters as he boards a plane to attend a weeklong electronic music festival in Ibiza.

December 6: A worldwide concert tour featuring “performing” holograms of The Beatles is canceled after the John Lennon hologram refuses to go on unless the rest of the band agrees to allow participation from a hologram of Yoko Ono.

December 31: A spacecraft lands in Long Island just outside of New York City. Aliens exit the ship and approach a nearby resident. “Take us to your leader,” they instruct the startled man. “Oh, no problem,” replies a now-grinning George Santos, “I’m right here!”