Mga Halu-Halong Hula-Hula - FUNFARE By Ricardo F. Lo

In barely 30 hours, Year 2000 will slip by, bringing to a close not only an old year but an old millennium (the new one officially starts on January 1, 2001, doesn’t it?). Let’s welcome the new year (and the new millennium) with a bang (I don’t mean the explosive, life-threatening way) – and with a wide, wide smile; and open arms and hearts and minds.

As usual and as is Funfare’s wont this time of the year, the Crystal Ball is taken out of the shelf, dusted off and, voila, coaxed to reveal what the stars "up there" have in store for the stars "down here" in my annual "mga halu-halong hula-hula" (now on its 14th year). A little shuffling of the faded tarot cards also helps a great deal. (Actually, like showbiz manghuhulas, all I do is go over my stack of movie magazines from where I base these hula-hula. But that’s a "secret" between you and me, okay?)

Let’s start with the "wide-awake" items:

* Kris Aquino will finally find a boyfriend, older than she is and not from showbiz and, hooray, not married (yes, a "certified" bachelor).

* Jessa Zaragoza and Dingdong Avanzado are headed for splitsville because of a pretty (non-showbiz) third party.

* Vanessa del Bianco will – hopefully, hopefully! – get her own "John" and leave Janice de Belen’s "John" alone.

* Sunshine Cruz will start infanticipating early next year for her and brand-new husband Cesar Montano’s first child; it will probably be a boy.

* Lea Salonga will call it quits with her new boyfriend, Korean-American actor Michael Lee, the only way she knows best – by e-mail.

* Martin Nievera and Pops Fernandez might – just might – talk about reconciliation but that’s the farthest it will go – just talk. As we all know, Martin has a new love while Pops is ready for new romance, though not a serious one.

* Regine Velasquez will – at last, at last! – get her US visa before 2001 is over.

* Jao Mapa will tell the whole world what really happened to him and make a (successful) comeback.

* Paolo Bediones will be caught in a dilemma as he tries to decide whether or not to accept a very juicy offer from another station, but he won’t leave GMA because of "unwavering loyalty."

* Judy Ann Santos will become an even bigger (box-office) star but her love life will remain, sigh, zero.

And now, the "blind" items:

* Only 20 percent of the number of showbiz personalities who’ll run in next May’s elections will win.

* An actor will "self-destruct" (or try to) as soon as the painful reality of his election loss sinks in; he’ll find it hard to recover from that, yes, painful collision with harsh reality.

* Another actor will withdraw his candidacy (the, ehem, Crystal Ball/tarot cards aren’t clear what position he’s aiming for) upon receiving an "intelligence report" that the enemy will dig up skeletons (lots and lots of ’em) in his closet.

* A showbiz couple, married not very long ago, will break up amidst an ugly controversy wherein they’ll swap unsavory charges against each other, thus exposing their true colors.

* Two popular shows from two popular channels will fold up and their respective hosts will jump ober da bakod to the opposite camps; a case of, you guessed it, "switching channels."

* A TV station might change hands (ownership, I mean) to the tune of ... P12 billion?

* A popular young actress will bear a child out of wedlock, forcing her to go on "maternity leave;" meanwhile, a young movie-TV actor will become an unwed-father (much to the surprise of his actor-parents).

* A pretty actress will make a clean breast of her "mysterious" disappearance and identify the actor partly responsible for it.

* A "somewhat sexy" singer is in danger of getting pregnant by her bachelor TV-host boyfriend who’s not inclined to marry her (besides, she’s not yet legally free to commit, well, another "mistake" pending the resolution of an annulment case she filed against her singer-husband).

* Another big scandal will shake the movie industry, but the intensity won’t be as great as the 1994 filmfest scam.