The PEN15 Club

So we each woke up this morning, chiseled the dried vomit off our cheeks and thought, “Holy shit. 2005’s just about over and the bird flu didn’t get us.”

This means we get to look forward to another fucking post-millennial year. ‘Cause everything since 2000 has just been gravy. Hurricanes, looming pandemics, Bush, a long war, earthquakes, Olsens, Vaughniston, legalized sodomy, more Bush, Nancy Grace, 9/11, civil war in the Sudan, The War at Home. This decade just keeps getting worse.

So, with incipient disaster on our minds, join us in looking forward to what we’re pretty sure we’ll be complaining about throughout 2006. Happy goddamned New Year.

1. Pandemic-omonium! It won’t be H5N1, but whatever’s festering in Brittany Murphy’s inner thigh suddenly mutates and becomes airborne, traveling easily from person to person. As opposed to just traveling easily from Brittany to some dude.

2. Celebrity injury extravaganza!

• Nicole Kidman trips on the stairs and shatters.
• Janet sits on Mariah while fighting over the last chicken wing at the craft services table while rehearsing for Divas Live.
• Orlando Bloom’s lung collapses when he is crushed under the weight of his own failed potential.
• A mini-epidemic of carpal tunnel syndrome breaks out among screenwriters trying to write the next great blockbuster gay love story (and jerking off while writing the sex scenes).
• Anderson Cooper chokes on his own journalistic righteousness (that’s the official story; he’s actually trying to deep-throat Bill O’Reilly’s Polk Award).
• Eva Longoria is hospitalized after shouting, “Cinco de Mayo?! Should be more like Cinco de Take a Shower!” at the Los Angeles Festival de Cinco de Mayo, thereby inciting a riot. Unfortunately, the hospital’s Latino staffers spitefully refuse to bathe or feed her.

3. Comeback…uh…apalooza!

• Ashley Judd rises from the ashes of her Twisted career by giving Geena Davis a run for her money, starring on CBS as the first female Secretary of Agriculture in Commander in Chaff.
• Jm J. Bullock delights his fan by starring as Gypsy Rose Lee in an Oklahoma dinner theater revival, Everything’s Coming Up Monroe-ses!
• Helen Hunt briefly resurrects her public profile when a Boeing 777 crashes into her fivehead.
• Leelee Sobieski then returns to the spotlight, winning acclaim and an Emmy nomination for starring in Lifetime’s quickie She Cried, “That’s My Head, Asshole!”: The Helen Hunt Story.
• Patrick Swayze exploits the metrosexuality trend of several years ago with a popular series of infomercials promoting his own brand of chest wax, Smooth Like Swayze.
• Siegfried and Roy tell their heartbreaking story, starring in a Bellagio Black Box production of Riding to Physical Therapy Mit my Boyfriend, produced by Rosie O’Donnell.

4. Trendnomenal trendsplosions!

• Red carpet vag flash!*
• Maudecasting! Podcasts recorded in the voice of Bea Arthur. Velour housecoat optional.
• Heather G’rahaminals. The Boogie Nights star’s ultracute line of low-cost teen fashions. Available exclusively at Wet Seal.
• Penis ascots**
• iFlan
• Hot cocktail: Katrinatinis. Crushed mint, bourbon and above-ground-level sea water, with a cayenne pepper rim. Garnish with a chicken head.
• Cutornot.com, an analysis of paparazzi shots of naked male celebrities.
• Skinny, straight women married to fat, gay men - commonly known as a Broderick/Parker romance.
• The Black Eyed Peas’ latest smash: “My Lovely Vertical Bacon Sandwich”
• Scat

*Eliza Dushku, copyright holder

**Ascots for your wang

5. Veritable geyser of celebrity baby names!

• White Knuckles Jones Reynolds
• Mohair Camelback Jolie Pitt
• Prince “Bollocks, how on earth is this physically possible?” Parker Bowles Windsor
• Vertical Bacon Sandwich Ferguson Duhamel
• Tight-Lipped Resentment Witherspoon Phillippe
• Kanta Lope Blythe Potato “Excuse for my stalled film career” Paltrow Martin
• Oopsy Fanning

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Happy ‘06, bitches.

Love,

Rob & Jordan