Many Seven Days staffers are fans of the NPR show “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” What better way to review the week’s national news than by answering panel questions, completing silly limericks and bluffing the listener? The show’s final segment is always panelists’ predictions for the week ahead, but, honestly, they’re often a bit cryptic.

So we thought we’d try our hand at prognostication — for the whole year to come.

We perused our 2022 stories for clues, consulted oracles, gazed into crystal balls, threw decks of cards in the air, asked our pets, and landed on the following very unscientific and marginally helpful predictions for 2023.

What will be carved into Mount Mansfield? How will TikTok save local theater? Which AI rapper will become a household name? What’s Harry Bliss going to do next? Here’s what we hope will happen, what we think may really happen and a few outrageous outliers.

Baseball or Bust

I fervently hope that Major League Baseball took note of Seven Days‘ exclusive interview with Champ, the famed Lake Monsters mascot, and is inspired to restore a minor league franchise to Burlington in 2023. It will undoubtedly be an AA farm team from expansion team the Vancouver Vikings. Its mascot: Rally Ragnar, a nod to Ragnar Lodbrok, the ninth-century Viking king and warrior.

But I fear that something far less sportsmanlike is more likely to happen. After establishing the first Vermont Tesla dealership, in South Burlington, non-reclusive billionaire Elon Musk will buy the state for cash, stock options and promises to be broken later. Critical Twitter Theory will become a mandatory part of secondary school curricula, Musk will bring in Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to solve the housing shortage with a plan for so-called “settlements,” and a replica of Mount Rushmore will be carved into Mount Mansfield featuring the likenesses of inventor Nikola Tesla, entrepreneur Peter Thiel and Musk.

In well-founded disgust, Ben & Jerry’s will launch a new flavor: EggoManioc.

Steve Goldstein

Vermont Goes Cheap