Admittedly, this blog is about a week late.  Teena Marie’s unfortunate and untimely death caused me to bump my 2011 predictions back a week.  I’m not sure if I can technically call the following statements predictions since we are already a few days into the new year.  Nonetheless, I prognosticate for you, dear audience.  I will try my best not to cheat or be any lazier than I usually am.  And by lazy, I mean I won’t predict anything (unfortunate) about Tyler Perry or Oprah Winfrey or how I plan to use my fantasy football winnings to adopt a puppy and name him Vick.  (Although if you’d like to read what I tweeted during Barbara Walters’ interview of the Divine Ms. O, you may see that here.)  Instead, I offer the following hopes for the new year:

Ms. Lauryn Hill releases an album in 2011. Lauryn Hill stops performing for obsequious-ass sycophants and gets checked for being tardy for the party.  I’m sure many of you read the New York Times review of Hill’s performance in Brooklyn last week.  For those of you who missed it, Hill showed up four hours late for her show, then promptly chastised the audience for giving her DJ and the band a hard time for her lateness.  And people cheered her for checking them as if she was their mama and not an artist they had paid $65+ dollars to see perform.  I will be the first to confess that I have an irrational love for Lauryn Hill.  As soon as I received the email about her upcoming show in Chicago, I hopped in the car, headed downtown, and got my tickets.  An eternal pessimist, I have hope for Lauryn Hill.  In fact, upon reading the article, I wasn’t that mad.  I mean, we’ve been waiting umpteen years for L-Boogie to return, what’s another few hours?  And personally, I think that Lauryn Hill NOT on stage for four hours > Nikki Minaj’s entire life.  Obviously, my relationship to Lauryn Hill is dysfunctional and borderline abusive.  That said, the group of folks cheering for her as she chastised them was alarming to say the least.  This is how dictatorships happen, people!  Some folks missed a key afterschool special, The Wave.  Damn.  Lauryn better not keep trying her luck like that.  Otherwise “Ms.” might not be the only thing that gets dropped that night.

Some nappy-headed black girl starts beef with Willow Smith with a song entitled, “I Pick My Hair…” or something like that.   Perhaps the residue of a Scrooge-like attitude from the holiday season still emanates from my pores, but are there any children more annoying than the spawn of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith?  2010 was like a some twisted version of sibling rivalry between Jaden and Willow–all played out on the pop culture radar.  iCANT.  Granted, “Whip My Hair” was absurdly catchy, but there are plenty of young black girls with neither weave nor relaxer nor press and curl who cannot actually whip their hair back and forth.  As such, I predict that–and by predict, I mean I get down on my knees and pray to white Jesus for each and every night–some young black girl takes offense at the implicit “issue” in Willow’s jam and claps back.  Hard.  I will ghostwrite the song if necessary.  Anything to terminate that whole Raz-B/Chris Brown twitter conflict.

Some young group of enterprising and musically gifted teenagers starts an internet sensation with a new dance, “The Patti Mayonnaise.”  God bless The Dougie, but when Matthew Stafford adopts it as a touchdown dance, the shark has been jumped.  I have no idea what this dance will look like, perhaps it will resemble the Dougie (Mr. Fresh, I’m happy for you and I’ma let you finish, but Doug Funny was one of the greatest Dougs of all time.  Never gets old to me.), or be some sort of weird interpretation of it.  I imagine a group of young tomboyish girls would do such a dance.

Those of you who watched any NBA action during the Christmas holiday may have seen ads for the latest installment of the Big Momma’s House franchise, Big Mommas.  Having caught the commercials myself, I’m hoping that Martin Lawrence gets his butt kicked by a real life Big Mama.  I’d predict that black men stop dressing in drag in ‘011 for a few laughs and a paycheck, but I’m trying to be somewhat realistic here. I just. need. this. to. stop. NOW.

Barack Obama’s thought bubble during his entire State of the Union address will pretty much be some iteration of “Fuck all y’all.” I typed that for no reason beyond I thought it might be funny.  And I needed to predict something “political.”  Eh.

Phaedra Parks, Esq. gets her own show. For no reason other than I need it in my life.

Happy New Year, all.  Make it a great one.