Plenty of journalists put together their 2009 predictions by consulting with economists, historians, pundits and the most annoying person they can find (for Oscar guesses). I got mine from Justine Kenzer, who is known as Psychic Girl and has done her $200 readings for Eva Longoria, Ellen DeGeneres and the cast of Friends, though I'm not that impressed with the last one. You don't need extra-sensory abilities to say, "I see a lot of terrible movies in your future."
I met Kenzer at a friend's Christmas brunch. Four years of living in Los Angeles, it turns out, does not begin to prepare you for the answers you get to the question "What do you do for a living?" Compared with "psychic," "mobile spray tanner" and "Hugh Hefner's third girlfriend," writing about yourself for a newsmagazine seems totally legitimate.
Like most psychics, Kenzer gets her information by communicating with dead people. I personally would talk to the yet unborn about the future and use the dead for questions about history, but that's why I'm not a prediction expert. Dead people, I would think, are probably clueless about what's going on in the present, let alone the future. Though maybe that's just because I think of them as super-old people. To start the process, Kenzer paused to tune into me. Then she told me that I'm attached to ascended masters and that one of these mentors is Abraham Lincoln. I think I was supposed to be excited about this, but it's not as if I'm constantly dealing with civil wars or freeing slaves. If I'm going to have someone dead guiding me, I'd like it to be someone with a better sense of fun, like Caligula or Malcolm Forbes.
My first question for Kenzer's dead friends was about the recession. While many economists are predicting recovery at the end of 2010, the dead people were pointing her toward a far more realistic 2012. Kenzer sees a lot of companies going bankrupt this year. "I get a purple color and the letter a," she said. I figured that was Yahoo!, but she said no. "They're doing all kinds of things behind closed doors to not die." Some of those things, I predict, are opening lots and lots of credit-card accounts. When I asked if TIME magazine would have a good year, she said, "There's no issue there. There's an incredible strength behind it. There is one particular person who is connected to this strength. He has a very solid energy. It doesn't look like he's going anywhere." She said this person is probably managing editor Richard Stengel, and while she didn't specifically say he and his family would come into a lot of unexpected money this year, I figure it's best to keep that guy as happy as I can.
I had made some of my own predictions before I called Kenzer--for instance, that Sarah Palin would do a daytime talk show, a reality show or a seminude Playboy spread. But Kenzer says Palin will go gently into that 19-hour Alaskan night. "This year she'll just pop up in interviews. There doesn't look like a huge energy in entertainment or politics. But she's in no way done." And Kenzer doesn't see a wedding anytime soon for Levi Johnston. "That guy is terrified. He is not in a stable place. I'm going to send him a little healing, poor thing."
Though she didn't have a great sense of whom the governor of New York would name to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, when I asked her about baseball, she didn't hesitate to answer, "I don't get a great energy around the Yankees. I see this symbol, and it's a no energy." When I screamed, "Oh, crap!" I thought Kenzer might have tuned into my spirit and sensed disappointment. But she kept going: "I get a better energy for the Red Sox--like, a really good energy around the Red Sox for this year." I think Kenzer was just mad at me for making fun of Jennifer Aniston. Which she knew about because she's a psychic.
Because Kenzer is more of a "personal transformation girl" than a Nostradamus-type prophet, she was eager to get into my personal life. When we talked about my wife Cassandra's pregnancy, I ran some baby names by her and she decisively picked Laszlo. "I'm just looking at the spirit of the kid," she said. I'm not sure how a 5-month-old fetus puts out the spirit of a 70-year-old Hungarian cinematographer, but apparently ours does. I also think Kenzer spent a lot of time at brunch talking to Cassandra, who's a little obsessed with making our baby special. I'm just hoping that he isn't so special that he's psychic. Because as nice as Kenzer is, I don't want my son burdened with this much information about the future. Especially since he's going to be spending most of his time spelling his name for people.