Crystal Ball

So I started looking into my crystal ball, and wondered what life would be like in exactly one month.

1: The Dallas Mavericks will be 4-0, after running and gunning the Spurs out of San Antonio. After growing tired of the extremely long-winded second presidential debate (except for when Tom Brokaw comically chastised both candidates for talking too much), I turned on the radio and listened to part of the Mavs' first preseason game. Too bad it's not on TV, because man, they sound fun to watch this year. It's probably a far cry from the apex of Dallas basketball from the days of Steve Nash, but it can't be that bad, seeing as they have about 30 fast break points halfway through the 3rd quarter, which is 28 more than they had all year last year. Dirk hitting a 3, Josh Howard throwing down an And-1 tomahawk to the tune of "Born in the USA". And we have Diop back! We can't lose! Unless we do. Again. Anyway... Thumbs up.

2: The Dow Jones just might be in the negative. It no longer surprises me when I open up CNN.com mid-day and see that it's down 354 points. And my puny (and I mean puny) little ventures in the stock market have slowly wilted. And these are the first two days after Congress passed the Magic Bailout Bill. Thumbs down.

3: About that aforementioned debate... the election, and this endless quagmire of political finger-pointing, attacking, and self-rightousness (guilty, though I at least try not to be) that comes with it, will be done. No matter who you're for, you've gotta admit this is getting incredibly old, just like how me talking about it in this blog is getting incredibly old. At the very least, you won't have to hear me talk about it anymore. Thumbs up!

4: I recently bought the entire collection of the old 1994-95 TV show The Critic, and have enjoyed some nostalgic entertainment for the last few weeks. No matter how hard I try to stretch it out, I'm running out of episodes. There were only 23 of them before the president of FOX inexplicably hated the show so much, he canceled it in the second season, despite its above-average-and-on-the-rise ratings. By Nov. 7, I will have run out of Critic episodes and all the great Orson Welles impressions that come with it. See the first 40 seconds and last 20 seconds of the following video:



Thumbs down.

5: Daylight savings time will have ended, meaning it stays dark until I get to work and turns dark before I get home. I think there's some condition called seasonal depression which is actually caused by less sunlight. Why don't we just go year-round with daylight savings time? Isn't it supposed to be more energy-efficient anyway? Thumbs down.

6: The American people will have recovered its sanity and run Beverly Hills Chihuahua out of theaters. Forever. Thumbs up.

And finally, my bold prediction: Boston Red Sox beat LA Dodgers in the "We Don't Need Manny Ramirez" Series, a.k.a., the World Series, in a classic 7-game series.

We'll see.