By Chris Cosci

As we come to the end of another year, it's a great opportunity to think about what we can look forward to in the next twelve months. With that in mind, I offer the following list of predictions for 2004:

1. One week into 2004, 97% of all New Year's resolutions will officially be broken. The rest will be broken by the end of January.

2. Millions of people will watch Super Bowl XXXVIII, but at least half of them will be watching only the commercials. The next day, everybody will talk about how unexciting the game was and how bad the commercials were.

3. The Academy Awards will see a boost in ratings as millions of Lord of the Rings fans tune in to see if Return of the King wins. These fans will be the only ones awake at the end of the broadcast because they already know how to sit through something that lasts three and a half hours.

4. In April, radio stations will start playing a song by a hot new artist. By June, the song will become one of the most popular songs for the summer. The artist will be on the cover of at least six different magazines, being described as "The Next Big Thing in Music." By August, the song will have been played roughly 2.4 billion times, causing at least two dozen people to be hospitalized for overexposure to the song. By December, the song will have disappeared from the public consciousness, the artist's album will be available in discount racks for $2.99, and the artist will set off down the road to obscurity.

5. Despite NBC's decision to air 24-hour coverage (on five channels) of the 2004 Olympics, they'll still ruin it. Most of the broadcast will be devoted to pointless stories about Athens, the Olympic Village, and Olympics history. Low profile, yet interesting events like taekwondo and handball will be aired as infrequently as possible, and never in prime time. And NBC will still time their broadcasts to make sure the most exciting events end around midnight.

6. J.K Rowling will announce that the next Harry Potter book will be 1500 pages long, but it won't be available for another two years.

7. Britney Spears will do something outrageous and scandalous. Despite the fact that nobody cares anymore, she'll still make the front cover of many magazines and a few newspapers. The magazines and the newspapers will then receive hundreds of letters from upset readers saying, "that Britney should put on some clothes."

8. Sequels such as Spiderman 2 and Scooby Doo 2 will receive reviews claiming the first one was better. But they will still make tens of millions of dollars in the first weekend, suffer a dropoff of over 50% in the next weekend, then quietly disappear from theaters. And with no trace of irony, studios will still call these movies successes.

9. Roughly two-thirds of the presidential election coverage will focus on the state of Florida, including dozens of interviews with unfortunate guys named Chad. The hoopla will all be for nothing when Florida's electoral votes turn out to be insignificant in the final tally.

10. In December, there will be a huge snow storm in the Northeast. Local news stations will spend the entire day covering the story.

There you have it. So hang on to this list, and be sure to check off the predictions as they happen. Enjoy your holidays, and have a happy new year!