THE NAKED CITY – 2019: A GRAB BAG OF PREDICTIONS!

Appearing on the Jack Parr Tonight show in March of 1963, the flamboyant American psychic Criswell predicted “President Kennedy will not run for re-election in 1964, because of something that will happen to him in November 1963”. It was one of the few times that the ‘Amazing Criswell’ actually got anything right but throughout his incredible career he was not afraid to make the most outrageous predictions. Like a meteor destroying London in 1988, an outburst of cannibalism in Pittsburgh in 1980 and one of his wildest claims – ‘The Aphrodisiacal Era’.

Criswell claimed that the “United States will in the future be swept by the popular clouds of an aphrodisiacal fragrance. … This aroma will fill every man and woman who inhales it with uncontrolled passion. It will be sold at first “underground” like LSD or STP today. But it will soon become easily available. …”

Given that a few years ago only Nostradamus himself (and maybe Criswell) would have dared predict the daily chaos and sleaze that envelops the Trump presidency, it’s a brave person who forecasts anything these days – be it political, social or cultural. But here we go with a complete grab bag of prophecies for 2019.

• The completion of the Light Rail is delayed for another two years when the prehistoric bones of a Stegosaurus are uncovered in George Street near the Sydney Town Hall and Clover Moore declares the area a protected archaeological site.
• Lord Lucan is discovered living in a boarding house in Marrickville and is immediately recruited by One Nation to stand as a candidate at the Federal Election.
• Tony Abbott finally retires from politics and joins Club Med as the brand ambassador for a new upmarket tropical resort on Nauru.
• Gladys Berejeklian orders 500 animatronic Koalas from China to replace the multitude of real koalas displaced by the increased logging of NSW coastal forests.
• A Tasmanian man who claims to have sighted the Tasmanian tiger on no less than three occasions in the Tarkine wilderness now reports on a mysterious yeti like creature strongly resembling an elderly Harold Holt.
• Pauline Hanson is appointed Australian ambassador to the Maldives and claims there is nothing to worry about with rising sea levels. “I will be happy to be here for the next 30 years,” she exclaims.
• A flotilla of protesters surround Cockatoo Island after it’s revealed that the State Government has sold off the site for a Trump Tower.
• The lockout laws are relaxed to allow all night trading with the proviso that only flavoured milk be served after 3am.
• The skeleton of a man is found on a bench in Hyde Park, all that is left after he is picked to death by a flock of marauding ibis.
• Rolf Harris converts to Catholicism and oversees a midnight mass at St Mary’s Cathedral complete with wobble board.
• Thieves steal Blue Poles from the National Gallery in Canberra and attempt to sell it off in one metre squares on eBay.
• The Rolling Stones tour Australia for a final time but angry punters demand refunds after it’s revealed three members were actually dead on stage.
• And finally – with apologies to Criswell – “President Trump will not run for re-election in 2020, because of something that will happen to him in November 2019”. We can only live in hope!