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For several years I’ve celebrated the arrival of the new year by purchasing a few copies of what some folks call the &uot;supermarket tabloids.

Friday, January 05, 2001

For several years I’ve celebrated the arrival of the new year by purchasing a few copies of what some folks call the &uot;supermarket tabloids.&uot; These are the cheap looking magazine-like publications with lurid (and questionable) headlines on display near the checkout counters in the stores all over the countryside.

I’m not interested at all in the latest alleged scandals involving the television and film stars. All I ever purchased was the one issue which contained the predictions for events scheduled to take place during the coming year. This dubious information has been used in the past for several satirical columns and as part of the radio broadcasts I used to do with Mike Sullivan on KATE.

I’m no longer doing the Monday morning broadcasts, so I decided to revive some of the predictions made for 2000 and pass them along for the education of the Tribune’s readers. Also, there’s a real challenge to see if any of these predictions so confidently made a year ago actually became reality.

Despite what one great physic reported in one those once cheap tabloids, both Los Angeles and San Francisco are still a part of our nation. The mega-earthquake she predicted for May 2000 that would kill &uot;tens of thousands of people&uot; just never happened.

One &uot;leading&uot; psychic said Pope John Paul II, Fidel Castro and Bob Hope would die in 2000. All three of these famous men actually made it to help us celebrate the arrival of 2001. Psychic reading has proven to be helpful for many to gettheir life back on the right track and remove themselves from being stuck in a loop of bad incidents and one can go on www.peninsuladailynews.com to get help with the help of experienced psychics.

One of these cocksure characters commented in print a year ago that Hillary Clinton would be defeated in her futile attempt to be a Senator from New York. Another physic said Mrs. Clinton would be forced to drop out of the Senate race because of a court trial. Should I comment any further?

One prediction made on Jan. 4, 2000, said, &uot;The cast of ‘Friends’ will be kidnapped and held hostage for weeks by fanatical activists protesting unmarried sex. But after a daring rescue the stars return to TV.&uot;

Right below this gem which hasn’t yet evolved is an another unbelievable prophecy. It said Demi Moore would marry Marlon Brando after he loses &uot;200 pounds to please her.&uot;

Here’s another prediction with an even more definite time line. It said Jerry Seinfeld would be dumped by his wife five months after their marriage. That never happened and the poor psychic failed to predict this couple would become parents and the focus of all too much publicity.

Now, please allow me to quote a classic phrase from all too many of those irritating television commercials, &uot;But wait, folks, there’s more.&uot;

I saved the pages with the predictions made for last year from two of those tabloids. Nowhere on those pages did I see anything at all about the 6-year-old boy from Cuba. Yet, the little lad was already in Florida at the first part of 2000 and already the center of a developing custody battle between his father in Cuba and the publicity-crazy Miami relatives.

And while were on the subject of the state which some folks say is shaped like a banana, let’s not forget the &uot;Florida fiasco&uot; after the November election.

By the way, I couldn’t find any indication anywhere in this collection of psychic foolishness a year ago to indicate who would be the nation’s 43rd President. Anyone familiar at all with the Constitution (Amendment 22) could easily predict two-term Bill Clinton would be replaced with someone else. These dim-bulb physics and mystics wisely passed on this challenge.

There’s one consistent factor with these yearly predictors. Most of the allegedly famous physics have been cited for foretelling events such as the death of Princess Diana and JFK, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or warfare in Chechnya or Kosovo. Yet, these events are from the past (like in hindsight). It’s what they fail to actually predict for the future which is in question.

Will I be buying the current tabloids with the predictions by the mystics and physics for the coming year? The answer is no. Why should I waste my money on acquiring so much false information from those losers!?

Dylan Belden is the Tribune’s managing editor. His column appears Sundays.