A&E Staff takes on the most important cultural phenomena for the dawn of the new decade.

Bullblog Predicts:

Luxury on the Upswing

I’m still waiting eagerly for Loopt to catch on (not to mention, at Yale, Twitter), so I’m not exactly your go-to guy for mainstream trend predictions. In the past, it’s true, I have predicted cultural phenomena long before others have caught on. I ate at Momofuku Noodle Bar in 2004 (when it was still in the space that now holds Ko, and when there was never a wait). I wore tight jeans when I was 14. I’ve been reading Metacritic for years. I got Pokemon Blue in third grade. But I chalk these small victories up not to any special prescience but rather to my overzealous willingness to accept any and all tiny suggestions of trends at face value and pursue them with all my heart. For every Survivor I nail, there is a The Mole that never makes it.

Still, I realize many want to know what the Bullblog has its eye on for 2010 so they can stockpile appropriately.

The big story in menswear for 2010, according to the Times magazine, was “Heritage Chic,” where designers like Michael Bastian reproduce some old cowboy boots they found at a Goodwill using high-end leather and charge 940 dollars for them. I think the brilliant iconography of this style will continue, but, to jive with a resurgent economy, the icons will shift from Americana to Luxury. It is time, I feel, to return to the heyday of Gucci and Fendi in the mid-90s, and for everyone to again wear body-con bodysuits emblazoned with every luxe logo under the sun.

I think the trends in dining will be analogous. For the past couple years, the thing to do has been to go to some little cava bar-ette or something in some obscure neighborhood like the East Village and taste tiny portions of pig guts fried in Chinese oil and put the fried entrails atop a little mound of grits and collards, all in the name of comfort food and small plates and value eating. But now that the recession is over, we can quit pretending salivary glands taste good and get back to the high-ticket items we have been craving all along: lobster, steak, foie gras, Iranian caviar, grizzly bear claws prepared à la Imperial China. All topped with an edible golden leaf and a mouth-watering side of Krug.

The point of all this, and, I think, of 2010 in general, will be to go BEYOND conspicuous consumption. We live in America, we go to Yale, we’re the best and we deserve it.

Not on my trend list? Health care.

The Future: More Trash, Less Class

The age of sophistication is on its last legs, and 2010 is ringing in its death. By 2015 it will be officially over. With the rise in popularity and appreciation of “Guido” culture, America is beginning to move towards a much more honest, open society because deep down, all Americans are all trash, no class.

This shift is already happening in the media. People just can’t seem to stay interested in substantive print articles, books, or even words. Where there was once The New York Times and The Washington Post, there is now Gawker and Perez Hilton. Where there was once Animal Farm, there is now Twilight. Where there was once:

To my Sweetheart,

I sincerely enjoyed our last encounter, my dearest Miranda. I miss you dearly and I look forward to our next meeting with great anticipation.

Yours Truly

There is now: “g2g. c u l8r.” As this trend progresses, newspaper articles will continue to shrink in size. The Sunday Times will soon be the only existing newspaper in print and the only survivor the page-long articles of its magazine.

Political candidates will soon be respected for “letting it all hang out.” Presidents have been admitting to doing “soft” drugs like marijuana for years, and it should be assumed that Clinton and Spitzer will have many, many more partners in sex scandals. Future candidates will have Facebook pages long before their campaign managers were hired, so there’ll be no hiding anything. It won’t be too long before candidates will be criticized for being too “earthy” for marijuana use, and too “rich” for cocaine use, but those who admit to doing crack cocaine or meth will be respected for “getting real.”

This trend is hitting Yalies at record speeds. There are already 125 members of the facebook group “JERSEY SHORE CAST FOR SPRING FLING,” a group that started this past Tuesday. The “FLEETWOOD MAC FOR SPRING FLING” group is already dead, and so is our dignity (read: the Yale Admissions video). Soon enough, DKE will be the new SAE, Cabo will be the new Myrtle, Toad’s will be the new Mory’s, and Modern Love will become a weekly foam party from midnights till four a.m.

Food, Sex Still Popular in 2010

Obesity: It’s officially time to give in. We kept up the charade for a decade or so, but it has become increasingly obvious that the entire human race is incurably gluttonous. TV shows like The Biggest Loser, while advertised as triumphant examples of human will, are actually unimaginably pathetic. Think about it: There are hundreds, if not thousands, of morbidly obese people who desperately try to score a spot on the show. One can only imagine their tryout tapes, an absurd race to the bottom as they try to prove that they are the most desperate, that they need to be caged and broken in like an animal in order to lose weight. On the one hand, we pretend to care about our health, even going so far as to grant legitimacy to hilarious phenomena such as the Atkins diet; meanwhile, true pioneers and visionaries are putting hamburgers between donuts. Who are we kidding? Fat is the new hair. This decade will be a watershed moment in our collective self-perception. An obese messiah (Oprah showed early promise but proved weak-willed) will rise from the rubble of a thousand gnarled treadmills and lead us, albeit at a comfortable walking pace, into 2010 and beyond. It’s true that they will have to surmount early challenges, especially at bastions of skinny jeans and veganism such as Yale, but there is no doubt that they shall overcome.

Male Prostitution: No one can deny that the economy is in the gutter. Our own innovations caught up with us as we engneered financial monsters we did not understand. Unemployment is up, and a large number of people out on the streets are newly hired men—fresh out of college­—who once worked the stocks. Now, however, they are going to work the streets. The oldest profession on earth, as prostitution was romantically dubbed by someone probably trying to sugarcoat the fact that they were selling sex for money, has long been a standby for women who were unable to find gainful employment elsewhere. Male prostitutes have traditionally been an overlooked and underrepresented segment of the sex worker demographic. Not for long. In December of 2009, the Nevada State Board of Health authorized urethral STD tests as an acceptable manner of proving that sex workers are clean, whatever that means. I foresee an opening of the floodgates as a trickle of customers turns into a torrent of men and women looking for escapism in the arms of a one-time Lehman Brothers analyst.

Old People Get Hot in 2K10

“Esther came out of the woodwork tonight! And Melvin was cane pumping so hard—he canned the beet up!” These are the words that you will hear coming out of a toothless mouth in 2010. Television executives have taken the uber-successful Jersey Shore template and run with it, planning series set in other beach hot spots for the geriatric set. Expect Palm Beach and Boca (do people over 60 party outside of Florida?) to be hitting the small screen in 2010.

Watching people live out their youth is not half as fun as watching old people relive their youths—because they just appreciate it more and blow it out of the water harder. These grey-haired guidos are too hard for gel—they roll with pomade.

And they say, “Fuck that, broheim” to tanning beds; their liver spots cover enough of their body that they stay nice and brown all year round. They hit the mall mad early to get their gym in—passing up Wetzel’s Pretzels and Ms. Fields for some Orange Julius—ladies love the taste of orange and cream. The ladies in the house won’t be having any ho’s in their home—a message they will crochet on a pillow in the common living room.

But worry not, these senior sluts are down to get down; Dolores wears T-shirts so low you will see her perky assets pushed up to her stomach. She may have a man waiting for her back at the nursing home, but, as she will tell you, “What happens in Boca, stays in Boca, bitches!”

Shit gets crazy when Esther starts trying to reenact her days as a Rockette, flinging her legs in the air to expose her Depends and land herself in the hospital with a cracked hip.

Melvin, too, will end up in the hospital, over a dispute at Bedliners on a night when he forgets his hearing aid: “You called me a what? JAG? I served as a Lieutenant in the NAVY, fucker!”

You will watch The Degeneration creep on girls, as his memory and sobriety slip away. “I woke up with this creature in my bed,” The Degeneration will say to the camera, “and my senescent ass had no clue who this chick was! That’s a Degeneration!

With execs projecting the same ratings for these aged ragers as their now infamous younger predecessors, we can be expecting Esther, Melvin, Dolores, and their assorted sugar daddies at Elevate by 2011.