Oh Glory Be, Is It Really... 2023?

Here it is, my always eagerly anticipated "Year Ahead in Preview" column

At this time last year, many of us were welcoming the end of 2021, figuring that after nearly two years of pandemic living the new year would just HAVE to be an improvement, right? Wrong. For those optimists 2022 represented a real, well, slap in the face.

So yes, 2022 was both troubling and confusing. After all, this was a year when:

• The longest reign of any British monarch came to an end, but so did the shortest rule of any British Prime Minister. 

• President Joe Biden triumphantly announced that the COVID pandemic was over, then added that the CDC director would elaborate on the announcement as soon as she recovered from her third bout… of COVID.

• An incoming GOP Congressional Representative reportedly cheated his way to victory by pulling his entire resume out of his ass while a chess grandmaster reportedly cheated his way to victory by putting an electronic sensor *up* his ass.

• The UN’s Climate Change panel released an alarming report stating that, “any further delay [in global action] will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all,” but this report was immediately overshadowed by more pressing news that Kim Kardashian had been spotted holding hands with Pete Davidson.

And that’s without factoring in other major woes of 2022 like rampant inflation, the devastating war in Ukraine (and in Yemen and in Somalia and in Myanmar and in Syria and in Libya…), catastrophic natural disasters across the globe, and poor James Corden getting banned from a New York restaurant just because it turns out he’s a huge jerk.

Admittedly, 2022 did offer a few bright spots. Bold advances were made by women like Ketanji Brown-Jackson, the first female African-American Supreme Court Justice, Stéphanie Frappart, the first woman to referee a men’s World Cup soccer match, and Jane Goodall, who became the first primatologist ever honored with a Barbie doll in her likeness.

And who wasn’t delighted when the Bennifer Bennaissance we all found so Bendearing became a Bengagement that concluded in August with truly Benchanting Bennuptials?

But overall 2022 was a twelve month-long overbooked winter trip on Southwest Airlines, a fake NFT jointly sold to us by Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried and George Santos, a big Wordle puzzle that took all six guesses just to spell out “L-O-U-S-Y” — in short, a year we’d all have been happy to cram into Heidi Klum’s worm costume and abandon someplace no one would ever have to see it again, like the Metaverse.

Which is why we’re much better off downing what remains of 2022’s last negroni sbagliato with prosecco and affixing our resultantly blurry gaze on some of the “uncut jahms” of news items that await us in 2023:

January 3: The ceremony marking the ascension of Republican Kevin McCarthy to the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives ends on a down note when McCarthy is suddenly set upon and noisily devoured by Marjorie Taylor-Green, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert.

January 10: Proving she has learned nothing from the firestorm of criticism she received after donning Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dress for the Met Gala, Kim Kardashian shows up at the Golden Globes wearing Fonzie’s leather jacket. 

February 12: Crowds erupt with cheers at the Super Bowl halftime show when performer Rihanna performs a mesmerizing duet of “Islands in the Stream” with surprise guest, Volodymyr Zelensky.

February 27: After a ferocious bidding war, talent agency CAA triumphantly announces the inking of a four-picture deal for the lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss.

March 3: After an autocorrect error over text, confused climate protesters at New York’s Museum of Modern Art mistakenly hurl paintings at Andy Warhol’s most famous work, Campbell Soup Cans.

March 27: British royal watchers are shocked when reports emerge that Camilla Parker Bowles has renounced her position as Queen Consort to begin dating Pete Davidson.

April 22: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is applauded wildly when he makes an in-person appearance at the 2023 Academy Awards. The applause turns into a standing ovation when Zelensky approaches and slaps Will Smith.

May 4: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stirs up controversy when she attends the nation’s largest Star Wars convention wearing a couture dress emblazoned with the words “Han Shot First.” 

May 6: At the Kentucky Derby, long shot National Treasure overcomes 25-1 odds to win – a first-time victory for the thoroughbred’s jockey, Volodymyr Zelensky.

May 29: Marvin Oglethorp of Newburgh, Indiana wins the largest ever lottery jackpot of $2.3 billion and tells reporters he was originally planning to use the money to purchase a Tesla, “but now I may just buy the whole company.”

June 14: A new study published in Scientific American categorically confirms that COVID-19 began in a Wuhan, China animal market with researchers adding, “unless, maybe it didn’t.”

July 28: Continued receding water levels in Lake Mead reveal the bodies of Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, D.B. Cooper and the Loch Ness Monster.

August 19: Draft of a top secret internal Supreme Court memo leaks revealing a petition from eight of the nine Justices to eliminate afternoon sessions “on any day Justice Alito orders in Taco Bell for lunch.”

September 4: The 37th annual Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert concludes with the ceremonial igniting of the effigy by a naked, gyrating Volodymyr Zelensky.

September 16: In an effort to duplicate the show’s success in introducing a new generation to Kate Bush’s “Running Up The Hill,” producers of Stranger Things announce that Season 4 will take place in the 1990s and prominently feature Right Said Fred’s hit “I’m Too Sexy.”

October 2: Robert Downey Jr. announces that his next film – about a struggling actor who repeatedly tries and fails to be cast in a Marvel blockbuster superhero movie – will be called “Ironic Man.”

November 4: Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announces he is coming out of retirement and plans to lead the Supreme Court to victory once more in the annual SCOTUS-White House softball game.

December 29: NASA releases images captured by the James Webb telescope that reveal not only a hitherto unknown inhabitable planet at the far end of the universe, but also a smiling, waving Volodymyr Zelensky.