2007: Looking Back at the Year Ahead

Man's history has been marked by a near unbroken series of years, and 2007 promises to be another one. And with history as our guide, two things are sure about the year ahead of us: stuff will happen while at other points not a lot will happen at which time people will talk about the stuff that just happened or about when the producers of Lost are going to get to the frigging point.

I know about stuff happening. I write about it every day in my Diary of a Mad County column so I am uniquely qualified to write a piece about what 2007 figures to bring to Orange. That and nobody else wanted to do it. Plus, Theo Douglas is a wad. So, yes, I've written you a little piece about what you can expect in the coming year since, if you're like me, you don't have the patience to wait for the stuff to actually happen (I find the older I get the less patience I have, which is exactly the opposite of what I was told was going to happen, so the whole thing was a lie, you know, like no-fault insurance and life insurance; pretty much the entire insurance industry).

Anyway, may I present to you a little year I like to call 2007 . . .

THIS YEAR'S JAMES BROWN, SEE THEM BEFORE, YA KNOW . . .

. . . just sayin'

Gordon Lightfoot, 68, performs at the House of Blues, Anaheim, Jan. 31.

George Clinton, 65, and Parliament perform at the House of Blues, Anaheim, March 16.

CITY THAT WILL BE ROCKED BY SCANDAL

. . . please

Do you even have to ask? Of course it'll be Huntington Beach. If Huntington Beach goes three months without the mayor resigning or serving time in federal prison or the cops shooting some kid brandishing a pen knife, folks start to wonder what's the point of living in HB. Rest easy, HBers, our reporters have once again been looking into things and found, as usual, good stuff, which is to say bad stuff, and we'll be getting back to you on that real soon. Still, this being the season of giving, may I make one wish: that Huntington Beach pool its talent for one big tsunami of a scandal this year, say the police accidentally shooting the city council, who they believed were inciting a riot while wielding toy light sabers.

CITY THAT WILL NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ITS CONSIDERABLE RESOURCES

. . . please

Do you even have to ask? Long Beach, Long Beach, Long Beach. The city's East Village Arts District is just about smothered out—the arts got chased away and the village is gonna be torn down for shitbox-to-the-sky high-rises and if there develops a way to make money by erasing the direction 'east,' someone on the city council will certainly be amenable. What looked like a ready-to-pop showcase neighborhood—Silverlake by the sea, or downtown Santa Ana by the sea—three years ago is set to lose cornerstone venue-and-gallery Koo's plus award-winning bookstore and arts center Open plus landmark Acres of Books plus any space for sunshine and free breeze as developers negotiate to plant franchise storefronts and unnecessary Santa Monica-style big-box condos where anything original or affordable once stood. Wasting neighborhoods is an honorable tradition in Long Beach, which offers buffet-style development deals for anyone with a bulldozer and a PowerPoint presentation, and everything nice and old between the 710 and Alamitos Boulevard is already attracting the vultures who picked off the Pike—the Pike people liked, not the zombie shopping mall stinking up the waterfront. But the East Village Arts District had a few seconds where it seemed like something better was beginning. With decent rents, sympathetic venues and active artistic residents, this could have been a credible creative center for the city. Instead: Santa Monica with no pier and more panhandlers.

BRIAN JONES, THAT GUY AT ALTAMONT, ATLANTIC RECORDS FOUNDER AHMET ERTEGUN, WHO WILL THE ROLLING STONES KILL NEXT?

No, I was hoping you knew.