Consumer Report: Mysticism
by Hope Candyfloss, popular futures expert and licensed macrame therapist
Reviewed in this article:"Stargazing," weekly newspaper column of celebrity predictions, Sun Media
Gosh, the future is a wonderful place to live! It's certainly better than the past, which of course we can never live in again. And the present is nothing more than that infinitesimal moment between the past and the future, so there's not much you can do about planning it. The future, though, is rich with possibility and hope! One of my chief challenges as a futurist, though, is getting people to realize that the future is the only period in which they can hope to improve their quality of life. You can't improve the quality of your past life, and any change in your present quality of life will take place in the future!
But we futurists strive to overcome this challenge, and among the strivers are Tony Brenna and Anthony Carr, whose newspaper column "Stargazing," carried by Sun Media throughout Canada, has been providing helpful futurist advice to celebrities for several years. Tony Brenna is a noted expert on celebrities, while Anthony Carr is described each week as a "famed mystic"!
Oh, I know – many of you have probably heard about Tony and Anthony's prediction a couple of years ago that Richard Harris's cancer would go into remission, which unfortunately was published two days after Richard died of the same cancer. But you know, even I make mistakes occasionally! You can't judge a celebrity expert and a mystic by one solitary prediction!
So I decided to give Tony and Anthony a fair chance by conducting a real evaluation of their predictions! I collected all the confirmable predictions from their columns published in January 2002 which we could reasonably expect, if they are valid, to have been confirmed by January 2005. That meant leaving out intriguing predictions such as the one about Prince Harry "in his later years" single-handedly preventing the extinction of several species, but we can all keep a watch on that one. It also meant leaving out predictions I couldn't confirm one way or another, such as Sarah Jessica Parker's children being the results of in vitro fertilization. But perhaps Sarah Jessica will 'fess up after reading this article, in the cause of science.
Now, several of Tony and Anthony's predictions are of a type that even we non-mystics could make with a reasonable chance of success. Predicting that people will marry their boyfriends, girlfriends, or co-habitants, for example, does not place too heavy a strain on one's mystical faculties, and neither does predicting that young people will have children. Nevertheless, "Stargazing" was right in predicting that Kate Winslet would marry Sam Mendes and bear his child, that Russell Crowe would become a father "soon" (I'm considering December 2003 to be soon enough), and that Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen would have a child.
On the other hand, Pamela Anderson has not married Kid Rock or borne his child, Mariah Carey has not borne Luis Miguel's child, and Britney Spears most definitely has not married Justin Timberlake. Altogether that makes eight predictions, of which four were correct! That's a batting average of .500, which is better than any Ty Cobb or Ted Williams ever posted!
"Stargazing" also predicted that Leonardo DiCaprio would split up with his girlfriend, and that Sean Penn would separate from Robin Wright. That still leaves them with a record of four correct predictions in ten, and neither Ty nor Ted would have sniffed at a .400 average!
And now on to the more daring predictions! Yes, Richard Blow's American Son did become a bestseller, according to the sources I consulted. And yes, Elizabeth Hurley did establish that Steve Bing was the father of her child.
On the other hand:
So that makes two of the daring predictions successful and thirteen unsuccessful (I consider that two predictions were made about Joan Collins, and three about Will Smith). When we combine them with the less daring predictions we end up with a record of six successful predictions out of a total of 25.
- American Son has not been made into a movie
- Chelsea Clinton has not had a scandalous abortion
- David Gest has not succeeded in keeping Liza Minnelli "on the straight and narrow for several years"
- an attempt was not made on Camilla Parker-Bowles' life
- Halle Berry and Pierce Brosnan have never ridden together in a plane which made a forced landing
- Halle Berry has never seriously injured herself while making an action film, despite making two of them
- Will Smith hasn't bought a house in Cape Town, let alone watched it fall prey to fire, violence, and robbery
- Joan Collins' proposed talk show never got on the air, thereby preventing it from "bring[ing] her renewed international success, eventually being seen globally"
- Mariah Carey's career has not ended "in circumstances tragically similar to those that destroyed Marilyn Monroe"
- Britney Spears has not "[spent] millions buying ancient medieval witchcraft texts"
And so I conclude…way to go guys! If the CIA had managed to get six of every 25 facts about Iraq correct, they'd be a lot less shamefaced today! Perhaps the White House should consider calling in a mystic occasionally.
If professional forecasters could get six of every 25 forecasts correct, we'd also be better off! And if my fellow futurists could get their accuracy to that elevated a level people might start forgetting those predictions they made about the leisure age.!
So thanks, Tony and Anthony, for making the future respectable again!
Posted January 12, 2005
Consumer Report: Mysticism © John FitzGerald, 2005
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