Tomorrow's news, via the crystal ball of The Swami: Traffic deaths rise as gas prices climb ever higher ... and more and more people walk in the middle of the Tri-State Tollway to get to work.
Tomorrow's news, via the crystal ball of The Swami: Mother and sister of "Batman" star to appear on "Larry King Live," "Maury," "The Steve Wilkos Show," "America's Next Top Model" and "Ice Road Truckers," in that order.
Tomorrow's news, via the crystal ball of The Swami: Wall Street says it just likes to have a little drink now and then to blow off steam, and it's a grown adult, and it doesn't need you judging it, and it can stop any time it wants to, so get off its back already, dammit.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... the release of designs for an outdoor sports complex on the site of the defunct Orchard Hills Golf Course will spark a new round of raging against the machine by disenfranchised golfers in Waukegan -- not that this will slow the freight train of progress rushing toward the construction of an outdoor sports complex on the site of Orchard Hills ...
... following his comments that violence in Chicago is "out of control" -- and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's subsequent and unconvincing public insistence that "I'm not mad at him" about it -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich will wake up with the head of Khartoum in his bed ...
... and, as the buzz over the record-setting box office for "The Dark Knight" starts to settle down, July 25 will bring with it the release of the Will Ferrell comedy "Step Brothers," signaling the official end of all the good movies that the summer of 2008 has to offer. From here on out, it's like all the junk that fell out of the bag on the way to the curb.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... a random verbal altercation between suspected gang members outside some business somewhere on Chicago's South Side will leave analysts wringing their hands about how the incident will jeopardize the city's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics ...
... Barack Obama will decline a lucrative endorsement offer from Chock Full O' Nuts ...
... "The Dark Knight" and its Oscar buzz for the late Heath Ledger will rule the box office over the weekend of July 18-20, easily overtaking "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," but barely holding off a challenge for the top spot from the eagerly awaited "Space Chimps" and its Oscar buzz for Omid Abtahi...
... and baseball's All-Star Game will be won by the American League by forfeit after the entire National League team gets mugged of its lunch money while heading to Yankee Stadium on the D Train.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... with the Illinois Legislature being dragged kicking and screaming back to Springfield (at $129 per diem plus mileage), the only news that will emerge will be the literal hair-pulling catfight between Gov. Rod Blagojevich and House Speaker Michael Madigan, scheduled to break out in a Statehouse hallway sometime Thursday evening. The smart money is on the wiry but cold-blooded Madigan, who would kidney-punch a nun if it meant preserving the title of Most Powerful Man in the State ...
... Brett Favre will skip the early-bird senior special at the Shoney's in Hattiesburg, Miss., paying full price for his Backyard Bar-B-Que buffet -- and fueling new rumors that he will come out of retirement to lose twice more to the Chicago Bears in 2008 ...
... as Starbucks plans to close 600 "underperforming" stores, Lake County fans of the gourmet java franchise will seek alternatives that include mixing Nescafe straight into a Dairy Queen Oreo Blizzard ...
... and Lincolnshire will gladly return to its status as a "far northern suburb" that can't be found by the Chicago media without a murder and a map.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... after everyone gets a few hours to pass along the news that a teen was decapitated while trespassing underneath Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Over Georgia, thousands of Lake County residents will be grossly misinformed that 10 people were severed in half while walking through Wiggles World at Six Flags Great America ...
... someone who came of age watching "Jackass" will visit a Lake County emergency room either Thursday or Friday night after using a lit cigarette to light an M-100 purchased out of the back of a guy's van ...
... five months after the entertainment world was freed from the grips of the Writers Guild of America strike, the Screen Actors Guild will threaten to go on strike, setting up the historic possibility of Olivia de Havilland walking a picket line with Rob "Deuce Bigalow" Schneider ...
... and actor Kevin Bacon will celebrate his 50th birthday within six steps from every person on Earth.
This week's news headlines today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... the void in pop-culture-trash voyeurism left by the end of the R. Kelly trial will be filled by ... hmmm ... oh, let's just say "that troubled actress who makes us feel better about not being famous," because one of them is overdue ...
... floodwaters will recede in both Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, Iowa, to reveal that there are, in fact, both a Cedar Rapids and a Des Moines, Iowa ...
... your No. 1 movie at the box office for the weekend of June 20-22 will be either "The Incredible Hulk" or "Get Smart." Whatever the choice, Americans will be paying $9 a pop for something they once saw for free on television ...
... and the annual renewal of the Cub-Sox Interleague Rivalry will result in 974 arrests for disorderly conduct between drunken Cubs and Sox fans -- and that's only counting the arrests at family barbecues, not the ones at Wrigley Field.
Tomorrow's news today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
-- Some people will complain about tornado sirens going off in the absence of a tornado in Lake County. These will be the same squeaky wheels who would complain if the sirens did not go off before a tornado took them by surprise ...
-- ... now that she has given in to the inevitable and "suspended" her campaign roughly two months after all logic demanded it, Hillary Clinton will spend the next five months trying to explain that her new best friend, Barack Obama, actually is capable of picking up a telephone at 3 in the morning. Suggested line during stump speeches on behalf of her candidate: "Who are you going to believe -- me now, or me then?" ...
-- ... John McCain, who has been running against Obama since St. Patrick's Day, will continue to mock his presumptive opponent in speeches obviously written by someone else, in front of noticeably tame crowds who wish he was Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson ...
-- ... as for Obama, he and his spin doctors will spend the next six to eight weeks preparing Swiftboat countermeasures ...
-- ... and Lake County residents, especially those with large homes in villages that can afford such luxuries, will both crank up the air conditioning 'round the clock and continue to object to the presence of anything resembling a power-generating station in their community. This is the summertime equivalent of having your cake and eating it, too.
Tomorrow's news today, only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... with schools closing for the summer and their buses getting off the roads, your commute to and from work in Lake County will be shortened ... by five to 10 seconds ...
... with the Michigan and Florida trump cards having been played and the game still not being won, Hillary Clinton will insist that Bill Clinton's surplus delegates from the 1996 Democratic primaries be included in her total for 2008 ...
... Barack Obama will issue I pre-emptive "I am disappointed" press release for every person he has known, met on the street or glanced at in a hallway since 1981 ...
... John McCain will sip iced tea in the shade of a live oak tree, pausing now and then to break into convulsive laughter at the Democratic roller derby ...
... and, as night falls in communities around Lake County, the first pops, cracks and explosions from illegal fireworks will start to count down the days until the Fourth of July.
Memorial Day Weekend's news today -- only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama will actually take a day or two off from the warpath, knowing that no one with a life pays attention to the news on a holiday weekend anyway ...
... that bag of charcoal briquettes that you left in the garage to freeze and thaw all winter will not light no matter what you put on it at the family barbecue -- and, yes, this would include gasoline ...
... motorists who bite the bullet and fill up their tanks at $75 a pop to travel north to Wisconsin or south to Michi-ana will be amazed at how open the roads are, since everyone else will be staying home and saving up for Tuesday's trip to work ...
... that roaring sound you will hear around 10 a.m. Monday will be the wild cheering of dentists everywhere, thrilled that children at Memorial Day parades will pick up pounds of fresh candy to rot out their teeth ...
... and the mercury will finally top the 80-degree mark in Lake County on Sunday, bringing with it a humidity that will make us pine for the refreshing north winds of February.
.
Tomorrow's news today -- only from the crystal ball of The Swami:
... Hillary Clinton will win Kentucky on Tuesday, which will then be transformed into America's electoral bellwether by the James Carville culture.
... Barack Obama will win Oregon on the same Tuesday, and declare the de-facto victory that every pundit has declared he will declare after winning the Beaver State, historically known as America's electoral bellwether.
... "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" will dominate the box-office all through Memorial Day weekend, even as tubby 35-year-old bachelors hit the blogosphere to nit-pick it to death and unfavorably compare it to the movies from their idealized youth.
... and, also with the approach of Memorial Day, the cost of a gallon of gasoline will rocket from "You've Got to be Kidding Me" to "You've Got to be @&*# kidding me."
