PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE: These predictions are in no way based on any sort of reliable ESP or clairvoyant training, they are just visions that came to me either "on the throne" or in a deep slumber-like trance at my keyboard before morning coffee has been made.

PREDICTION #1: People will be able to get any cartoon, movie, song, or TV show ever made online by joining a large super-conglomerate web site that will buy all the major studios of every media and have this vast library accessible to subscribers for $100 a month. Each show will be Digital quality and many will be converted into 3D, which will anger purists who feel the added depth corrupts the original programs.

PREDICTION #2: '50's retro-rockers Sha Na Na will be immortalized in a cartoon of their very own on the Fox Kids Network. "Bowzer" and "Lenny" dolls will become hotter than Pokemon cards.

PREDICTION #3: Steven Spielberg will adapt Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize winning comic-novel "Maus" as a feature length cartoon from Dreamworks.

PREDICTION #4: When Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader in Episode II of "Star Wars", one of the first things he will do is kill Jar Jar Binks. This will be followed by cheers from the crowd, who will hail George Lucas as a genius for creating such an annoying character for the sole purpose of letting everyone glory in his death.

PREDICTION #5: (Remember this one, cuz my inside source at Sony swears this is true. No official announcement has been made, but remember... you heard it HERE first!) Heath Ledger, young star of "10 Things I Hate About You" and the upcoming Mel Gibson movie "The Patriot", will be fighting the Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus in a red and blue suit in a movie that will come out sometime in 2001. I also see some sort of webbing somewhere. The rest of the vision is hazy.

PREDICTION #6: Full 3D models of actors and actresses will enable the stars of today and yesterday to make movies after they are dead. Most surviving families will be reluctant to let the studios use the likeness of their dearly departed until this fantastic script arrives and everyone wants to be a part of it. In fact, many families will be angry if their dead celeb ancestor is NOT part of the movie. Everyone will go to see it and it will win Academy awards and will start a trend of reviving the dead for new films. Expect new Hope and Crosby road movies, and the new Rat Pack team-ups with George Clooney and Ice Cube.

METALLICA UBER ALLES

If you haven't heard about the Metallica/Napster thing, here's the skinny: Metallica collected names of over 335,000 cyber-heshers who downloaded their music in MP3 format using Napster.com without paying a dime for it. This made Metallica very angry, since they have tribes of groupies to support and vintage guitars they want to buy. They issued a statement that they are going to go to each of the 335,000 kids' houses and kick each and every one of their asses until they buy the entire Metallica CD collection, a tour T-shirt and a sticker that says: "Album Sales: Nothing Else Matters". So this is why Perry Farrell dropped out of Lollapalooza when he learned Metallica were going to be headlining. To them, it's obviously more about money than music. Now, I understand how upset some artists get when they find out their work is available for free in some way when people should be paying for it. I mean, it's not as if you can't borrow their latest album from a friend and burn a CD, or even tape it off the radio or MTV. Ooops! That would be wrong, too. It won't be long before Metallica stormtroopers, looking just like the guys who took Elian Gonzales except with mullets, invade the metal community houses in the middle of the night in random compilation tape raids. "I don't care if you made this tape for your girlfriend's birthday, that song is copyrighted material and you're going DOWN!" Soon prisons will be filled with teenage stoners doing hard time for illegal downloading, copying, and air-guitaring Metallica songs. Violent fights will break out in prison yards with camps separated into the early long-haired Metallica fans and the new "alternative friendly" short-haired Metallica fans. Blood will flow freely and the percentage of Pushead prison tattoos will rise exponentially. Meanwhile, back at home in their mansions, the boys in the band will be counting their money with the satisfaction of a job well done. The checks have not stopped coming in, and the world is once again safe for Metallica to keep pumping out those hits.

BAD CARTOONS

We all remember the great cartoons... the classic motion picture masterpieces of Disney, the brilliance of Warner Brothers, Mel Blanc, and Tex Avery... but what about the BAD cartoons, the ones the world should forget and bury in the animation graveyard forever? Here is my Top 5 List (a la "High Fidelity") of some of the worst cartoons EVER:

1. RUBIK THE AMAZING CUBE - Hot on the heels of the Rubik's craze came this turkey: Rubik, an anthropomorphic version of the 3-dimensional colored puzzle, gave advice to kids in this '80's example of lameness personified. What the hell were they thinking?!?

2. THE GARY COLEMAN SHOW - This cartoon kind of creeps me out. Too bad the "guardian angel" Coleman voiced for this show couldn't save Dana Plato.

3. A PUP NAMED SCOOBY DOO - The only thing worse than Scrappy Doo was this attempt to cash in on all the "babyizing" of popular cartoon shows (i.e. Muppet Babies, etc.) to appeal to a more immature and mentally-challenged audience by making the Scooby Doo gang a bunch of little kids and Scooby a puppy. Someone give me a gun.

4. FANTASTIC FOUR (1970's) - Proving that not all bad animation came from the '80's, and meaning no disrespect to the FF cartoons from the '60's and '90's (which rocked), this '70's version of the popular Marvel comic sucked. Why? Because, network execs, fearing little kids would set themselves on fire trying to imitate The Human Torch, replaced him with a robot named H.E.R.B.I.E., which almost caused me to set myself on fire in protest.

5. LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY IN THE ARMY - Do I have to say any more? Yes, this really was a cartoon, and yes, it was really bad. Do you think Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams are still ashamed that they lent their voices to this show? (They did, by the way).

MY CARTOON IDEAS

Here are some cartoons I would produce if I was head of my own animation studio:

DREAMTIME - Have the main characters venture into different dreams every episode. The dreams are sent in by the viewers, who get to see their subconscious minds animated! You could have special "nightmare" episodes, as well as various theme episodes (i.e.: water, clowns, Abraham Lincoln, etc.). You could even offer a bit of "dream interpretation" at the end of every show, kind of like how the Superfriends gave advice on how to tie your shoes just before their toons finish.

BAD GUYS - What's cooler than being a super hero? Being a super villian! Centers around a group of bumbling baddies who hate the neighborhood super hero with a passion. A twist on the traditional comic book fare.

THE SHRINK - Psychiatrist Dr. Berry Small gets hit by an experimental gas that causes him to shrink... and shrink... and shrink. He shrinks so small that he enters a new universe every episode, encountering new civilizations with various dilemmas. Can he solve the problems of his new microscopic friends using Freudian analysis before he gets too small for them to see him, and can he ever stop shrinking? This would be much better than Dr. Katz.

GOODIE GUMDROPS - The only cartoon about a stripper. This one would be for HBO or Skinamax. Hey... I would watch it!

LIONEL RICHIE'S MOUSTACHE - Before "Being John Malkovich", this might have been seen as too weird. Well, it's probably STILL too weird, but... I could see a show about microscopic bacteria living in Lionel Richie's moustache being a big hit with the kids. No! Really!