Unbelievable WTFs! Celebrity Predictions for 2008

NEW YEAR PROMISES COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES. As the calendar flips back to one, many of us mere mortals feel a renewed sense of hope, of possibility, of a second chance for luck and love. Some of us may simply want to drop 20 pounds; others the proverbial ball and chain clamped to our ankles. For celebrities, the new year is time to strategize on updated images and fresh hairdos, meeting new beaus and making botox appointments. They wonder aloud and to themselves: How can we keep the limelight on us?

With the New York Times’ review of the year of the "train wreck" in mind, here are some headlines we predict we could end up reading in 2008. In the meantime, we hope to see ya in the New Year!

Britney Elopes to Las Vegas With Jamie Lynn’s Baby’s Daddy!
What else could smear the Spears’ family name more than an intra-family love triangle? Then Jerry Springer could book the whole lot and we could watch fists fly!

Lindsay Lohan Exposed!
Ex-Boyfriend lets out secret that starlet sleeps naked on back with legs and arms outstretched; shakes her leg when her tummy is scratched. Reveals himself to be a real DOG.

Drunken Brawl Breaks Out Between Ex-Hollywood "He Men"!
Mel Gibson and David Hasselhoff caught in an alcohol-fueled dust-up over who made a bigger ass of himself while plastered.

Cannibalism Caught On Tape!
TMZ.com shows video of paparazzi feasting on themselves outside hospital where Britney’s baby sister Jamie gives birth to a bouncy baby boy.

Paris Reveals Her Favorite Sex Partner!
Celebutante confides she gives herself the best orgasms; promises to catch future romps with self on video for release to the masses.

Sarah Silverman Unmasked!
Supposed comic actress is really Jimmy Kimmel in drag. "I wanted to get in touch with both my feminine and unfunny side," Kimmel confessed.

The Secret’s Out! Oprah and Letterman give birth to their "Love-Hate" child.
Both Dr. Phil and Senator Obama weep with (relief and) joy at the news.

Britney and Jamie Lynn: America’s Rorschach Tests

THE SHRIEKS OF JOY CAN BE HEARD ALL ACROSS AMERICA From inside Tabloidville: Whippee! Another Spears girl is preggers! Britney’s baby sister, Jamie Lynn, who stars as the levelheaded Zoey in Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101, is three months’ along, according to OK! magazine. Won’t be long now before faux comic Sarah Silverman’s pointing out another "beautiful mistake" bearing the last name Spears. Won’t be long ’til the congregation of the Southland Christian Church is adding Britney’s younger sister to their prayer circle.

What to say? That Jamie Lynn is only one of the estimated 750,000 U.S. teens who get pregnant annually, of which about two-thirds go on to deliver babies. That surely she will become a lightning rod for activists on both sides’of the abortion line. That Britney will finally have someone to deflect paparrazi attention away from her, and who can understand how difficult it is to be a good mother. That Sean and Jared will have a cousin to go trick-or-treating with, but only if their mean mommy plays along with the paps and takes them out for candy. That a baby boom among America’s teens will be reported on in, oh, say about two to three years? And imagine the potential tie-ins for the promotion of Lynn Spears’ book on motherhood due out next Mother’s Day? All easy predictions.

This is something else we know for sure: that Britney, and now Jamie Lynn, are America’s very own public Rorschach tests. What you think of them, whether you scold or defend them, is a reflection of your very own world view. Are they sluts looking for attention? Are they the little lost daughters of Lynn? Are they the byproducts of modern day’s Sodom and Gommorah, that place we called Hollywood? Or are they typical kids who didn’t think of their consequences, got knocked up, but instead of aborting went ahead and had babies?

The end of this story won’t be known until Brit and Jamie Lynn are dead and their children are all grown up. But keep this in mind as you watch the show: however you interpret the outcome will be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The Sins of an Honest Actress. Or is that an Oxymoron?

TINSELTOWN’S SEXPOT OF THE MOMENT KATHERINE HEIGL is making headlines because she criticized the movie that made her a household name as being "sexist." If your memory serves you, Heigl stars as the E! TV producer who gets preggers while celebrating her promotion to on-air talent in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up. Heigl critizes the movie in January’s Vanity Fair saying that the movie "exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, some days. IÕm playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how youÕre portraying women? É It was hard for me to love the movie.Ó

Now the better-known, and probably wiser, gossips at Jezebel have taken Kate to task for criticizing the movie only after cashing her $300,000 paycheck she received for the movie. Come on girls, why does Katherine have to be the sole beacon of integrity in Hollywood? La La Land is a land of mirrors that only reflects back the chimera it produces. And we all know that pictures, video, press releases, and even the news, do too lie. In fact, during a brief foray into TVland, Crabby learned nothing was true but that saps are the only ones left thinking that honesty matters.

So Katherine is supposed to have, what, challenged Apatow to rewrite the script? And that would have gotten her, um, serving waffles somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard? As Jezebel pointed out in an earlier essay, the movie was painful for most women to watch. Not the least because the scenario the character finds herself in, pregnant after a HUGE promotion that most TV wannabees lust for. But because any on-air talent for E! is liable to be self-centered, egotistical, vain, anorexic, and wouldn’t be caught dead with the twit she ends up with. And yes I am generalizing.

The most unlikely of scenarios would be that such a desperado would give all her dreams up for…an unplanned baby with a loser. Apatow’s movie is clearly written from a boy’s vantage point: Even an average Joe can be loved by a hot chick who can look pass the love handles to their hidden charms. Yea, right. Knocked Up was in essence a fairy tale for boys. Cinderfella finds his Princess. Only in Hollywood does a story like this end up happily-ever-after. Katherine works in Hollywood. Why should she be held to a different standard?

Villains on My Mind

HANDS DOWN, SNOW MISER of The Year Without A Santa Claus fame, is my favorite villain of the holiday season. Wikipedia, that everyman’s encyclopedia, describes him as a lovable louse taken to making bad puns about cold weather. "Snow Miser was a giant humanoid creature, with the supernatural power to freeze objects at will…[who] lived in a large ice castle, and was attended to by a host of miniature versions of himself. He defended his domain fiercely, yet unlike [his brother] Heat Miser, was a gregarious, friendly, jocular sort, given to gales of laughter…"

So what, the reference ages me. It won’t be long before you too are reminiscing fondly about figures from your youth. Perhaps you’ll be waxing romantic about Syndrome or Fred Claus, ala former Hollywood hotness Vince Vaughn.

With villains in mind, let’s consider two of this week’s finest:

First, there’s Montel Williams, faux talk-show hero who allegedly threatened to hunt down a high school journalist for having the temerity to ask if pharmaceuticals would lose their love of the hunt if their profits were limited during one of Williams’ road show stops on behalf of big Pharma. Montel refused to answer the question. But when he coincidentally crossed paths again with Savannah Morning News intern Courtney Scott later the same day he sinisterly said, "I can look you up, find where you live and blow you up," according to news reports. How’s that for heroics? Montel, I think you just, um, lost your part-time gig.

Then there’s the four-times married ex-cop Drew Peterson of the Chicago suburb Bolingbrook who is facing new allegations that he asked two truck drivers to transport a package hours after his wife Stacy went missing. Peterson has so far deflected pointing fingers by accusing his wife, 30 years his junior, of taking off with another man. He’s also dismissed claims by a relative who attempted suicide after helping to remove a suspicious barrel from Peterson’s bedroom. NOTE TO WOMEN EVERYWHERE: If your lover boy has three ex-wives, is old enough to be your father AND has a wife who drowned in a dry tub, run so fu@#xing fast and far that the guy’s head spins. We don’t need another whodunit with a predictable ending. They are so ho-hum in La La Land.

And let’s not forget New York City’s bravest who are so clever that they decided to test the honesty of the city’s citizens by leaving wallets and pocketbooks in public places, and then arresting those who snapped them up. Yes it is indeed illegal to capitalize on such good fortune! Who could have imagined this is what the future held all those years ago when the FEDS undertook ABSCAM. The news is never at a loss for villains.