Break Out the Yoo-Hoo! ’93 Goes to the Dogs (and Cats)

I had a dream recently, a vivid one, in which I went to the Forum along with some 18,000 other people, filling the place. It wasn’t to see a concert, but a strange, almost religious, nostalgia event. The arena was set up for a concert and had all the air of expectancy that should accompany one. But everyone had bought tickets--from scalpers even, some said--just to see all of Led Zeppelin’s equipment set up. There on a stage under a huge flying sound system were Jimmy Page’s mystical rune-strewn Marshall cabinets, Bonzo’s many drums, John Paul Jones’ bass rig and keyboards and Robert Plant’s microphone stand.

The equipment was emitting a soft, 60-cycle hum. The fans just stared reverently at it all for 2 1/2 hours, slowly growing more solemn and finally filing out, vowing to return again the following year. Then I woke up.

Maybe it’s not so unusual. Most of us have seen concerts by some resurrected dinosaur bands with a lot less substance to offer than the scenario in the dream. But I prefer to think of it as a bit of pure prescience on my part and am prepared to predict that in the next year we will indeed see Led Zeppelin’s equipment on tour, or at least the band itself.

Shall we speculate a bit on what else 1993 might hold? It can’t be any more off-base than the things the tabloid seers come up with, such as “Satan to Lose 250 Pounds on Princess Di’s Beefcake Diet” or “Bill to Leave Hillary for Space Alien.”

Me? I think Yoo-Hoo chocolate-flavored drink will make a big comeback. I think the Performing Arts Center will go out on a limb and book a challenging contemporary artist--that’s if John Denver has time in his busy schedule. I think in his next video, Billy Ray Cyrus will shoot olives out of his perfect navel into the waiting mouths of grizzled cowboys. I think Yoo-Hoo will become the official chocolate-flavored drink of the Performing Arts Center.

To up dwindling attendance, nightclubs in the county will have to make some new alliances. By midsummer, expect to see combination nightclub/health spas, where “every seat is an exercise station.”

So audience members can really feel they’re participating in a performance, the exercise machines will be hooked up to generators and the performer on stage will only get electricity if people are really hauling. Expect deaths by exhaustion at some of the metal shows. Meanwhile, at OCPAC they’ll provide liposuction facilities in the orchestra seats.

I predict Orange County will originate a new solution to the traffic snarl: bunk freeways. Unlike the two-level lanes in San Francisco and other areas, on these the upper-level access will be granted only to those with cars costing $35,000 or more. This should evenly divide up traffic in O.C., where the Mercedes-to-other-car ratio is about the same as in a Hitler motorcade. Beyond that, if the freeway were to collapse, San Francisco-style, it would only be us useless poor folk who would get squished.

The Disney organization, encountering public disdain over the suggested name of the Ducks for its O.C. hockey team, will change the name to the Disney Stranglers. When their franchise is pulled for excessive giggling, they will fill out the season with an ill-conceived concept show/sport, playing against everyone’s favorite Disney characters on skates, invariably leaving blood on the ice.

In other theme park action, the crystal ball sees developers benefiting from the endless paved condo tracts they’ve built: They’ll create Dirtyland, a place where today’s kids can go to experience real mud, dirt, gullies, weeds and twigs just like Granddad told them about. Every pyro’s favorite spot will be Landfill-ville, where they’ll be allowed to set trash fires to their hearts’ content.

Although Madonna will have a team of top lawyers trying to stop it, the unauthorized “The Real Madonna” will hit the stands in September. She’ll be nude on the dust jacket while inside there will just be metal.

After spritzing up Jimmy Hoffa, Hollywood will be hard-pressed for new biographical flicks. But expect Prince to steal the day as Sammy Davis Jr. in “Yes I Can,” though there will be bad blood when Eddie Murphy aces him out for the lead in “Up From the Skies: The Jimi Hendrix Story.” Critics will roundly pan it, though the Purple One and millions of others will see it again and again just to see Murphy retch to death at the end.

I predict that the film will spin off a new theme restaurant in O.C.: Jimi’s Voodoo Chili. Shaped like a giant Afro, it will feature such bar specialties as Purple Haze and Manic Expresso, while the menu will include Little Wings, Castles Made of Ham and other items charbroiled over flaming Stratocaster guitars.

Meanwhile, television will go New Age. Realizing that people leave the TV on just to make their homes seem less cheerless, regardless of what’s on, new cable networks will forgo traditional programming entirely. First we’ll get the Hearth Network, “all flame, all the time,” for people who don’t have fireplaces.

Other networks will spring up featuring rain, sky and, on one, a different California Expressionist painting all day long. There also will be a special network for dogs featuring wet ducks, limping cats and virgin lawns, with a running commentary pitched too high for human ears.

Pets also will come to dominate the music industry. As the first form of popular culture to actually originate in Japan, the Hello Kitty sound, so named for the popular Hello Kitty product line, will sweep the globe. Sounding like synthesized versions of early Connie Francis records, except with mews and purrs in place of human vocals, the releases will be marketed with animated videos, although soon actual kittens will be put on tour.

At the Sony Forum and other venues across the newly renamed Sony United States, sellout crowds will watch the kittens’ every cavort on huge video screens.

Critics will imply that the kittens are lip-syncing and are not really the ones in charge of their music--”look, their eyes have barely opened yet, for crying out loud!” one will argue--but by this time next year the top-grossing act will be a trio of Angoras called Cuddle Factory. An all-Siamese version of “Miss Saigon” will be booked into the Performing Arts Center.

Quite independently, the domestic grunge music scene will take a new twist with Down Boy, a mostly human outfit fronted by a reputedly rabid German shepherd. Praised by one critic as “the most compelling, commanding, slavering performer since Axl Rose,” the dog, Turbo, will be featured on the cover of Time, with a proud fan’s scalp in his teeth.

Save this column, and if by this time next year all these predictions haven’t come true, I promise to actually drink a bottle of Yoo-Hoo.