Prediction addiction

Good day, folks. I hope you're all doing well as I welcome you yet again to UOPTA. No, that doesn't stand for, "Ukuleles Offer Pleasant, Tuneful Amusement," but man is that an apt description or what? The famous "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" version by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is certainly both pleasant and tuneful, and since that's the only ukulele song I can immediately think of, I'll assume my sweeping generalization is accurate. (And yes, I had to look up the exact spelling of his name. I always forget that it's A before E in Israel.) Instead, this UOPTA is where I write my thoughts and stories and wait for my mom to comment.

I was a junior in high school when Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain killed himself. (Oops - spoiler alert.) It was obviously big news, but (in my opinion) not the generation-shaping news that my history teacher thought it was. He, with a keen sense of the moment, spent our whole class period telling us that we'll always remember where we were when we heard this news, going as far as likening it to JFK's assassination. He asked us what this meant to us as teenagers and how we would carry this with us going forward. To me, it was sad and I liked their music quite a bit, but I clearly remember sitting there and thinking, "You might be taking this one too far, buddy." I also remember a conversation I had with a couple of friends later that day. "Mark my word," I said, "Kurt Cobain's almost two year-old kid is going to be a hit singer or big movie star by age 21." I knew the kid's name was Frances Bean Cobain, but I didn't know if it was a son or daughter. I just looked into the future and thought there was no way I was wrong with my prediction.

Well friends, Frances is a she, and she's now 17 years old. The fact that I had to tell you that means that my prediction has not yet come true. But what if she were a big star? I doubt anyone would remember me "calling it" way back in the day, and it wouldn't seem super impressive for me to say that I knew this would happen. Therefore, I've had to keep reminding people of my prediction every couple of years so that I'll be recognized for my prescience if/when it actually happens.

With that in mind, I had an idea for what I think would be a kick-ass website: Heard Here First. I'll explain my vision and then you tell me if it's as brilliant as I think it is. Everyone signs up and creates a user profile, a la MySpace or Facebook, but with fewer apps and modifications. Basically, you have a profile picture, a name, hometown, likes/dislikes, and friends. What else? Your list of predictions.

There would be some pre-populated categories from which to choose (as well as create-your-own ones). Each prediction would have to have an end date, so there would be a definite right-or-wrong aspect to it. Once you predict something, it would be time-stamped and put on your profile along with the time remaining until it will be decided. Emails would be sent to you as completion dates near (or as often as you want them). Once they're done, there would be a section that listed all of your previous predictions, the status of each one, etc. We might see, "Correct but outside of the predicted timeframe," "Marginally correct," "Way off," etc.

Why is this fun? Here's the way I look at it: I can tell you that the Lakers will win the 2010 championship after beating the Cavaliers 4-1 in the Finals. But anyone can say that, and many people already have I'm sure in their NBA previews. But let's think bigger. Will Jack Black be nominated for an Academy Award by 2020? If I memorialize that call in 2009, how amazing would it be if I were right? How about saying that some little-known senator or governor will be Vice President in 2016? What about a prediction that life on another planet will be discovered within the next five years? The bigger the gamble, the cooler the predictor is who prognosticated correctly.

Smaller ones would be cool too, especially for family and friends; they can even be used as motivational tools. "I will go to Australia by the time I'm 40," "I'm going to get straight As next semester," "I'll finish my novel by this time next year," "I'm going to run the L.A. Marathon in a personal-best time," etc. Big or small, putting predictions out there tells others about the way you think about things and your sense of the world around you. Who knows, maybe there would even be some minor celebrities made out of correctly predicting a few big things. They would be heralded for their amazing foresight. "Hell, it's practically 5sight," I'd say. And there would be much laughter and applause.

So why am I just telling you all about this idea instead of doing it? Well, I did buy www.heardherefirst.com, which currently forwards people right to this page. That's all I've done though. You see, we're talking about a shitload of work here and an equal amount of technical expertise that I certainly don't have. Think about the bandwidth a site like this would require to have profiles for everyone who wanted to sign up and upload a picture. Also, I'd be afraid that people would start using the site for predictions with which I'm not quite comfortable. "So-and-so is going to die," for example. I don't like that. I also wouldn't want to see mean things written about/to fellow high school students, like, "Brian Danning is going to get his ass kicked after school next Wednesday." (Hey look, that came true!) So would I need to only allow people to predict things in pre-populated categories? That's not fun, and it's impossible to think up every good one. Another problem is that no one can really verify the smaller predictions. If I say that I got all As that semester, who's going to say I didn't? People in a comments section under each prediction? Maybe each self-regulated prediction would require another user to verify it. That just opens the door for personal relationships to get in the way of the predictor's accuracy.

As you can see, I haven't fully thought this through except for the fact that I believe it's a good idea. I think it would have to be a free service for people, which means any money I'd make would have to be from advertisers (who wouldn't come a-knockin' until the site already had a crazy amount of daily pageloads). Who agrees with me that this idea makes sense? My feelings won't be hurt if you don't. (I'm often out on an island with things I think are good ideas. I'm the guy who thinks a Citizen Kane-like black and white close-up of a guy's mouth saying "Roast beef" instead of "Rosebud" would be a good commercial for Arby's, by the way.) I turn to you for your thoughts, homepeople.

And with that, let's waft like the delicious aroma of a Beef N' Cheddar on over to the Car Watch.

I was behind a plate on the freeway earlier this week that read, "HITSMKR." I assume that the owner is trying to say "hits maker," but I first read it as "hit smoker." That mis-reading could have two separate meanings. First, someone who smokes things in hits (versus deep drags I suppose), and second, someone who physically hit a smoker (either with a fist or with the Hit Smoker car itself). By the time I finally got around to what was likely the intended meaning, the car was nowhere in sight. Too bad, because maybe I would've seen some puffs of smoke coming out of the window or pieces of a smoker lodged in the grill. I'm just sayin'.

My loving mother-in-law saw what might be the most depressing license plate ever to grace my little slice of the internets: "NO HOPE." Unless that's an anti-Obama slogan that I somehow missed, I feel pretty bad for that person. Much like Jell-O, there should always be room for a little hope.

And lastly, my homey Rockabye sent me a plate that falls into the "I see what you were trying to do but it just didn't work" category of automobile expression. It read, "BON TCHR." I first read it as "bone teacher," as in the probably-illegal command. My homey Rockabye made me smile with his reading of, "Be on teacher," which is thematically very similar to mine (but more specific in the positioning). If I had to guess though, I'd say that this is probably a French teacher who thinks s/he is good at that job, and "good" is "bon" in that language. I've never thought of bon as "bone" before, but now that I have, I think I just made up a joke: What did the below-average French speaker call his honeymoon? A "bone voyage." You see what I did there? Hey-o!

That, my friends, is it for me today. Fret not, for I'll be back next Friday. In the meantime: Monday is my wife's half-sister Sara's full birthday. Thursday is Thanksgiving and our friends Sarah and Keith's anniversary. Speaking of Thanksgiving, I have an awful lot of thanks to give. I'm going to hold off until next week though, in a very special edition of UOPTA. In fact, it will be the final post I make here on this site. After three years, I'm kinda hanging it up. I'll explain more in my mammoth post next Friday, but just know that I'm very thankful for all of you. Enjoy the holiday, the weekend, and the majority of next week.