Predictions for 2024

I’m Nostradamus Without the Attitude

Happy new year! I want to first thank everyone for their support last year (and special thanks to all the new people here who attended my Atlas Obscura: “The History of the Snowman” talk!).

Let’s get straight to why you are here. My predictions for 2024.

Top Ten Predictions For 2024

SPORTS

Local sports radio will insist that the 5-11 New York Giants are still mathematically alive.

Demonstration sports at the Paris Summer Olympics will include Team TikTok Twerking and Wine Pong.

Aaron Rodgers will return to the field for the New York Jets but will tear his ACL on a bootleg, on the second play of the 2024 season.

ENTERTAINMENT

The average movie will now be about five hours in length and theaters will serve espresso and Red Bull.

There will be five new television channels, all about pickleball (including one just focused on complaining about the sport).

Taylor Swift will sweep the Oscars and announce in her acceptance speech that she is expecting, sparking worldwide pandemonium.

POLITICS

This election AI will be allowed to vote, out-numbering humans in some states.

Rappers Waka Flocka Flame and Lil Pump will for a time be in the Presidential race before Donald Trump settles on NASCAR racer, Corey LaJoie as his running mate.

The global economy will make a big comeback thanks to growth in single panel gag cartooning.

So, there you go. 2024 has already started very rough. I opened up my computer to learn of CNN’s disturbing and confusing assessment of our plight followed by a contradictory story (and then, of course, a George Conway, I-Told-You-So reminder);

Even my first email of 2024 was upsetting: “AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM MT. SINAI HOSPITAL. Robert, you are running out of time…” For the love of…I did not remember taking any blood tests or biopsies this week and I get this urgent email. It turns out it was the Mt. Sinai staff wishing me a happy 2024 and reminding me I was running out of time to donate to the 2023 pledge drive. My blood pressure is through the roof.

Appearing in The New Yorker

Appearing in The Hot Sheet

My New Year’s resolution this year is to not discuss, insult or disparage pickleball anymore. So this is the last time, most likely, I will be writing or cracking wise about the popular sport. The following is a piece published in this month’s Smithsonian magazine. I am going to discuss next time how this assignment transformed from one subject to another over the course of a year. But for now I’ll let readers just read the final result.

MAKING A RACKET

How an obscure paddle sport became king of the court

COURT TENNIS was the first paddle-and-ball game in the world. Henry VIII, one of the sport’s earliest and most fervent fans, erected the first pavilion at Hampton Court Palace, some 12 miles southwest of London, around 1527, and the wacky game—gentlemen had to play bounce shots off awnings that jutted from the walls—soon grew popular in France as well. By the late 16th century, the sport had spread across Europe and become a ubiquitous obsession: By 1596 Paris alone boasted more than 250 court tennis courts.

“Court tennis sits atop the family tree of all rack-et sports. Branches shot off to create lawn tennis, squash and racquetball,” explains Tony Hollins, the head court tennis pro at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. Another descendant? The game, immensely fashionable these days, known as pickleball.

In 1965 on Bainbridge Island, two friends, Washington State Congressman Joel Pritchard and businessman Bill Bell, dreamed up pickleball on an old badminton court with a pair of ping-pong paddles. Pritchard and Bell adopted the same simple rules as those of court tennis from more than four centuries earlier: A player uses a paddle or Racket to hit a ball over a net before it can bounce twice. The two spent a weekend experimenting, during which they lowered the net and moved the court onto asphalt. The next weekend, a third friend, Barney McCallum, helped further flesh out the rules of their new sport. They were to be much simpler than court tennis, which had featured all manner of eccentricities, including a moat under the net. Pickleball, by contrast, would have simpler scoring than modern tennis—each point is worth 1—and be accessible to all ages (it requires a simpler skill set, and the projectile is rather like a Wiffle ball, and thus easier to return). Pickleball has no relation to pickles, though there’s some debate about the origins of the name. Some say it originates with Pritchard’s wife, Joan, a competitive rower; a “pickle” boat refers to a group of rowers arbitrarily thrown together, and thus evokes pickleball’s shaggy-dog appeal to amateurs of all skill levels. Others say it came from one the inventors’ dogs, who went by Pickles.

Two residents of Washington State, Sid Williams and Bryon Olson, worked with other pickleball enthusiasts to found the United States Amateur Pickleball Association in 1984, which created the sport’s first official rulebook. The first National Doubles Championship was held that year in Tacoma, Washington, and the game has remained popular there: In 2022, pickleball became Washington’s official state sport, and as of 2023 it was the fastest-growing sport in the United States—in large part because it’s hard to beat the sport’s inclusivity. Pickleball courts can pop up anywhere—backyards, parking lots, driveways—and perhaps soon the Olympics? If break-dancing, surfing and skateboarding are upcoming demonstration sports in the 2024 Paris Olympics, pickleball might not be far behind.

With the new year, is a new start and so I decided to go to a real procrastinator, I mean prognosticator, to predict my future. As most of you know, I have explored many ways to help my career from head-hunters to Pilates. I want to share what I learned from going to a reading.

Miss Yolanda: I understand you are concerned about your future, specifically your occupation. You’re a comedian, correct…

Me: A cartoonist and I write stuff.

Miss Yolanda: Yes. I see there is someone in your life who is old?

Me: Yes!

Miss Yolanda: Wait…does the letter J mean anything to you?…[long pause]…Or the letter E? T? Or S?

Okay, I wasted enough of everyone’s time with this premise.

I’ve been recommended by two people in my circle that I could save a tremendous amount of time by doing my cartoons using AI, scolded that I am foolish for not embracing the new technology. I’m still upset over seeing a humorist I know well, promoting a book in their last newsletter, by a “New Yorker cartoonist” no less, who is publishing a book on doing just that.

The big, exciting advancement when I was in school, this before computers and Post-Its (there was no History class, we had Current Events*), was speed-reading. Commercials showed students and readers comprehending text books and classics in minutes by just flipping through them. “You, too, can read Moby Dick in under four minutes!” It was amazing.

I may be the slowest reader in the world. I have books stacked throughout my house and I would guesstimate I have only read 10% of them. That’s counting about 200 of my own books I have stored in boxes in the closet out of the probably 2,000 books. I HAVE read most of the books (I have written). If I had only embraced the new technology decades ago, I could today be speed-reading my way through the rest of my library.

From the Leigh Stein’s Substack, Attention Economy:

In creative writing programs, writers learn little to nothing about how to actually earn income by publishing their writing because the expectation is that they will go on to become teachers who teach writing to writers who will go on to teach writing to writers.

In 2024, I will discuss ways to monetize your talent and get others to advise, too. There are links in old editions of The Bob, specifically for humor writing.

*yes, an old joke.

This month there is a three way tie for Cartoon of the Month! First up, but in no particular order as I loved all three drawings, is Joe Duffy’s clever cartoon for AirMail Weekly. Joe has started a clever new Substack newsletter that I recommend you checking out, called Substack Lightning.

Next up is this gem by the legendary Mort Gerberg. I love how it feels so homemade and the spontaneous lines give it motion. And I won’t lie, the fact Mort, at his age, is still in The New Yorker, is encouraging and reassuring. For those who don’t know, Mort is on the other side of 50.

His work can be enjoyed here and if you would like to learn about Mort personally, I interviewed him earlier this year on The Cartoon Pad.

Seth Fleishman’s caption-less cartoon appeared in The New Yorker and it’s a real charmer. I really admire how succinct his ideas are conveyed, almost always. Without captions, but he doesn’t cut corners in the rendering as you can see from all the details, like the subway tiles. His work can be found in the CartoonStock.

Thanks for reading.

from Funny Times