Mga halu-halong hula-hula 2004

The Christmas Season officially ended last Sunday, Jan. 4, with the commemoration of The Three Kings. The (leap) year 2004 is only six days old so it isn’t too late to look into my "crystal ball" (take note: in quotation marks) and shuffle my "tarot cards" (same) – is it? – for Funfare’s annual Mga Halu-Halong Hula-Hula.

As I’ve been saying again and again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I don’t trust any manghuhula who changes faces as often as she changes bagets toyboys. Of course, I’ve also been reminding you year in and year out that manghuhulas proliferate (I’m tempted to say "are rampant") in showbiz because showbiz denizens are insecure and highly gullible.

Besides, TV shows and radio programs, and even Lifestyle sections of newspapers, have to put out their annual "predictions" and I suspect that they have no choice but to pull ‘em manghuhulas out of their hiding holes and parade them on national television and splash their faces in centerspreads for, you know, the heck of it.

Why are the manghuhulas called manghuhulas? Precisely because they make hula-hula and they can be wrong, which is often most of the time. Kaya nga hula-hula, e!

If they’re reading the stars accurately, how come they have different interpretations? Only one of the dozen or so presidentiables (including the "nuisance" ones) will win, that’s for sure, and it’s what’s written in the stars. So why is one manghuhula saying that President GMA will win and the second manghuhula is saying that FPJ will win and the third is saying that Lacson will win and so on and so forth? Some or all of them are not reading the "signs" correctly and they’re bound to fall flat on their faces when the votes are counted after the May 2004 elections.

I’ll let you in on a "secret": Making hula-hula among showbiz folks is as easy as mixing your halu-halo. All you have to do is watch The Buzz and Startalk and S-Files the whole year round and go over your stack of movie magazines and tabloids and, voila, manghuhula ka na!

That’s how I am able to come up with the following halu-halong hula-hula (batting average is, cheers to yours truly, 98.88 percent every year):

The ‘Wide-Awake’ Items

• The Philippines will have a new President. He or she will definitely be a Filipino citizen.

• Sixty-five percent of the actors running in the elections will win.

• Zsa Zsa Padilla and Dolphy will finally be able to get married – abroad as planned.

• Like the telenovelas, the days of chinovelas are numbered. A new fad (yes, it’s a fad, a passing fancy) will emerge.

• After their series of appearances here last year, the F4 guys – Vanness and Vic and Ken and Jerry – won’t be as popular as they used to be.

• But foreign artists will continue to have concerts here.

• More local films will win accolades in international film festivals.

• Aiko Melendez, who’s running for reelection as Quezon City councilor, will find a new, another love (and it’s not Victor Neri who’s just, well, a "fling").

• Kris Aquino and Joey Marquez will not reconcile (and even Kris herself is making the same "prediction").

• Martin Nievera will stay more and more out of the country because of more and more offers to perform abroad (he’s now doing a series of shows in Las Vegas, good until March or April).

• The network war will be as intense as ever. ABS-CBN will openly back some candidates and so will the other stations.

• A romance will bloom between soap loveteam John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo (formerly in the defunct ABS-CBN soap Kay Tagal Kang Hinintay and now in the new one, It Might Be You) especially now that John Lloyd and his real-life girlfriend Ciara Sotto have broken up.

• Claudine Barretto and Raymart Santiago are not getting married yet but Tonton Gutierrez and Glydel Mercado will finally make true their long-delayed "threat" to tie the knot.

• Assunta de Rossi and Jules Ledesma will decide to have their first baby.

• With her name removed from the BID’s persona non grata list, Anjanette Abayari will come home from L.A. after more than three years of absence (due to that drug bust at the Guam airport) and resume her rudely-interrupted career. It will be an uphill climb but she will survive it.

• Ruffa Gutierrez and Yilmaz Bektas will have their new (second) baby who will be delivered in early 2005, also abroad (most probably in Turkey, their homebase, and not in L.A. where their first child, Lorin Gabriella, was born).

And now, The ‘Blind Items’:

• A TV host will finally be lured to jump ober da bakod from GMA to ABS-CBN.

• A popular showbiz couple will break up but will reconcile after a while.

• The "problem child" of a singer-performer will give his poor mom more headaches by getting involved in incidents that will land him in court. Spoiled brat, e!

• An actor will be named to a government position but his appointment will be shadowed by a controversy involving his personal life – that is, if he’s not careful.

• Two record companies will merge.

• Film and video piracy will go on unabated. Cheap goods sell, you know, and times are hard.

• A young actor’s wholesome image will be tarnished by issues (involving drugs and alcohol) against him. He should mend his ways pronto!

• Two young actresses will bear children out of wedlock. Ho-hum! So what else is new?

• A popular and pretty radio-TV host will finally reveal who the man in her life is. She has no choice or alternative. The 2004 elections have something to do with her "confession."

• A bold star(let) will create another controversy and get buried in it, ending up as the victim of her own making.

(Note: As I said, these are all hula-hula and I could be wrong, you know.)

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