UPDATE: Official response from Esquire's PR firm, Dan Klores Communications:

Hi Hamilton,
I saw your post on our December issue. I just wanted to note that the address label is in fact peelable, and if it gets stuck, there is an additional cover marker on page 8.
Just letting you know in case you want to correct your post.

There is no "peel" in the word "FUTURE."

5. Back To The Future: What to do when you're on a DeLorean-powered trip back in the 50s and you need a master plan to make sure your teenage parents fall magically in love so you can, you know, exist and stuff? Why, plan an Enchantment Under The Sea dance of course! Technically not a prom per se, but Marty McFly's artfully designed gymnasium paired with Lea Thompson's updo sure made it look like one. Our favorite moment is above, after the Biff-as-recurring-obstacle-laden plan finally works, and Michael J. Fox rocks out like a regular Danny Zuko to "Johnny B. Goode" because the crowd calls for something that "really cooks."

4. Carrie: Oh dear. Nightmares much? After only one viewing of the DePalma classic at what was probably a far too early age, we still feel the instinctive need to run far, far away from whatever photo or television suddenly shows Sissy Spacek.

3. Pretty In Pink: Confession time. However ridiculously unrealistic it is when the uppity Andrew McCarthy boldly tells poufy-shouldered Molly Ringwald that he loves her, and as much pity we feel for the Right One that is adorable Duckie, we still sorta kinda need a tissue (just one!) whenever we watch this scene. Sappiness aside, any movie featuring James Spader in his trademark 80s sad snob role is a classic in our book.

2. Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Both Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry haven't exactly seen their career trajectories blow up since this 1992 gem, but at their height looks-wise, watching them battle vampires using things like wooden stakes, stiletto heels and motorcycles is always a fun ride. And who can resist Paul Reubens in what might be the best proof of Pee Wee's comedic abilities?

1. Jawbreaker: Simply. The. Best. The tiara that could double as a weapon. The slow-motion ascent to the stage. Rebecca Gayheart mouthing "Eat Shit." Rose McGowan's gradual death via flower massacre. An epic journey from queen bee to exiled Heathers-like outcast, all set to the Donnas' "Rock & Roll Machine" and Frank Sinatra. Genius

• NY TIMES TAKES MIRAMAX TO 'PROM' [Var]

"Britney is under so much pressure—too much pressure." world-famous astrologer Susan Miller told me. "She's lost her childhood. But she has amazing opportunities."

I'm a little bit skeptical. For one thing, it hardly seems that Britney Spears will ever be able to recover from her disastrously bad performance—and ensuing pro forma vadgeflash—on the night of the MTV Video Music Awards. For another thing, isn't astrology bullshit?

Susan assuages some of doubts immediately. "When you have Jupiter conjoin the sun, as Britney does now, it's a double edged sword. It makes you super-optimistic and a little bit lazy. You think, for example, 'Oh, I'll always have money. I'll always have my kids.'" There's a note of foreboding in her voice, and I get what she's saying, though she'd never come out and say it. I've been reading Susan's predictions on Astrologyzone.com for long enough to know that's not her style. "But she might actually settle down, though, and I'll tell you why. Saturn is in her 10th house of career and reputation. What's happened to her may have been a wake up call. And she's had a lot of wake up calls, but this one might have actually gotten through."

What, though, about whole "isn't astrology bullshit" thing? "Well, you have to realize, every astrologer starts off a skeptic. If you want to give it a chance, read me for six months. Read me at the end of the month. See if I'm not giving you ideas."

Astrologyzone.com has been around since basically the dawn of the Internet —well, 1995. Since then, it—and astrology in general—have grown increasingly popular. 17 million reports are downloaded from Astrologyzone every month. "I think it's because the internet gives you privacy, so people who might not have had their charts done before are exploring something they might have been ashamed to explore before," Susan said.

A lot of people have the wrong idea about astrology, she said. "When O.J. Simpson was on trial, people would call me and ask me whether his chart showed that he was guilty or innocent. Well, his chart showed that he had anger management issues—but so did my boyfriend's at the time!"

"Life is like a river! You need to have goals, and I know which goals are more likely to pan out when. Astrology is for planning. It's not about predestination. It's all about mathematical cycles, some of which will be repeated, some of which won't. If you choose to use the information that I give you, it will increase your success rate tenfold."

That sounds like a sell. Be that as it may, if I had to guess, I'd say what really keeps keeps those 17 million people coming back for more of Susan is her tone, which is friendly and chatty and just plain soothing to read. "Your chances for promotion and an increase in status have never been better! My goodness, your career will be on fire from end-of-September though mid-May 2008!" she'll say, or: "Dear Libra, you've not had an encouraging romantic picture for a long time, but as you see, all that is changing now, at long last!"

"I try to talk to each sign like I'm talking to just one person, like I'm talking to my best friend," Susan said. Her mother, who taught her the art of reading the stars over a painstaking twelve year period, always told Susan that she needed to work just as hard on her communication style as she did on making accurate predictions. "You can tell people the right thing in the wrong way."

It's hard to say whether Susan's telling Saggitarean Britney the right things in the right way in her September horoscope. "September marks a very big moment. Like the actor waiting in the wings about to go out on the stage, you may have a few butterflies in your stomach, but pay no attention. The audience is in their seats, the orchestra is starting up, and the curtain is rising. You are about to see your defining moment, upon which everything else will be based."

The Tiananmen square massacre came to Kathleen Deyo in a vision. "I didn't have any idea what it was! I saw the students waving banners, but I thought the marks on the banners were some alien language. The minister's wife, who had the gift of interpreting visions, told me that the terrible things I'd seen were going to take place in China. And then, they did." She leaned back against the banquette, sighed, helped herself to another piece of rock shrimp tempura. We sat in silence for a second. But then I had to ask.

"The... minister's wife?"

"For awhile I was a Pentecostal. I've been so many religions!"

She giggled girlishly as she said this, which reminded me of who she reminded me of. You know that episode of 'Six Feet Under' where a psychic's husband dies and she sits there in Fisher and Sons having, like, a conversation with him about his own funeral arrangements? And she has this kind of grace and sense of humor? And she acknowledges that what she's doing seems completely bonkers and doesn't expect anyone to believe that it's real, but is just going to keep doing what she's doing? That down-to-earth woo-wooness—that's Kathleen Deyo. Also, she's very cute.

Like, very cute. Seriously, when I found Kathleen in the lobby of the Mercer hotel, Adam Levine and the rest of Maroon 5 were all sitting at a table nearby leering at her, even though she is older than my Mom. They were probably captivated by her adorable apple cheeks, or her swingy Marlo Thomas bob, or her fantastic gams (clad in dark skinny jeans). Even a pair of grannyish reading glasses couldn't detract. Their eyes followed us as we exited the lobby and went across the street to Lure, where we set up camp at a table by the door. Kathleen apologized in advance to our waiter for the fact that we weren't going to order much and were going to occupy one of his tables for as long as my reading took. Then she started getting piles of stuff out of her bag and plopping it in the center of the table.

She took out a pen and a piece of her stationery first. Her stationery has a little old-timey photograph of a tarot deck on it! Then she took out a deck of ordinary playing cards, a deck of tarot cards, a piece of canvas with an intricate geometric pattern sloppily hand-painted on it and a little handful of multicolored rocks, a magnifying glass and a mini flashlight. People at the adjoining tables began to stare.

First, Kathleen read my palm in great detail, marking different lines with her pen and using the mini flashlight and the magnifying glass to make sure she was reading accurately. Then she read my tarot cards. Then, and this was the main event, I threw the multicolored stones onto the geometric-pattered canvas three times to answer three questions. Ridiculous, right? But by that point, I had completely stopped feeling self-conscious about the hostess's condescending sneers or the waiter's put-upon sighs as he refilled and refilled our water glasses.

Because, here's the thing: Kathleen told me exactly who I am and exactly what I will and should do. She nailed it, and I'm not just saying that because she flattered me. She said things about me that aren't Googleable, stuff about my family dynamics and personality that my best friends don't know about—and I, obviously, am the kind of person who tells everyone everything.

I'm also a fairly credulous person. But I've been to enough psychics now to know the tricks they use to gull vulnerable chicks. Kathleen wasn't using any of them. No "does his name have an N in it?" And no "Are you feeling uncertain right now?" She never started off with a strong statement and then backtracked when I didn't respond. She was just right. About everything.

After the reading, we talked about Kathleen's craft, and I told her a little bit about the other psychics I'd seen. "Well, yeah, some psychics are sort of evil," she said. "I'd like to say what everyone says: that it runs on love. But it doesn't always run on love. It runs on strong emotions."

She squinted, and girly-giggled. "The thing I think is the saddest are the ones who prey on the psychic junkies. You know, the women who go from psychic to psychic, just wanting to be told that they'll find love, that a wonderful man's in store for them. And then they go home and sit on the couch. That's when I feel like this stuff is kind of evil. Because some psychics don't emphasize that, like, you have to make sure stuff happens!"

Out of a sense of obligation, I ask her the classic question about why she can't just predict the winning lotto numbers, get a few million bucks, and go live on an island somewhere. "There are psychics that can give you winning lotto numbers, but I'm not one of them. I mean, I have zero control over what I get. I get reads on people on the subway, on the bus. It just flows. But I'm not good with numbers, I mean, I don't even balance my checkbook. So that's not the kind of information that would flow to me."

"And I hate it when people try to test me. I mean, all psychics do. I read a woman the other night who was lying to me, trying to test me. I read her accurately in spite of her lies, and she ended up apologizing to me. No psychic is more than 85% accurate. I mean, neither is any doctor or lawyer!" Kathleen paused. She looked peevish for the first time all night. "It's not that it's wrong to be skeptical, or critical. It's not that it's wrong to ask questions. Just don't ask asinine questions!"

My next question for Kathleen is kind of asinine, though, but I feel like I just have to ask it: has she ever read anyone and seen, you know, the opposite of what she saw for me (a long healthy life, in case you were concerned). "Oh yeah, I saw imminent death for a 21-year-old who was getting a reading for her birthday just last week. Her palm, the tarot cards, the runes: all death. That night she slammed into a taxi going 80 miles per hour."

"She ended up in jail," she said. (I exhaled.) "But the reading's good for a year, you know?"

By popular demand: contact Kathleen at this email if you want her to read you, too! Don't mess with her, though, you immature little jerks: it's bad for your karma.

Last night was the inaugural 'A Night With The News,' a new lecture series that the New York Daily News is starting in order to "empower, entertain, and enrich you. The world's leading experts come to you LIVE and IN PERSON! Everyone needs some guidance and A Night with the News will be your personal roadmap." One of last night's courses was taught by professional sportsplayer Chad Pennington. It was about sports and whatnot. The other one was taught by Francesca Kimpton, a medium and healer who wanted us to know that the spirits of dead people are all around us all the time, trying to guide our lives or just make catty remarks about our interior decor choices. Now that's what I call enrichment!

Francesca Kimpton is a stern, shiny-faced British lady who is maybe in her early 40s (Botox!). She's hot in that "If I didn't have a great plummy British accent, I wouldn't be hot" way. For the first two thirds of the class, she just lectured like an actual schoolteacher, using classic teacher tricks like "Can anyone tell me what [X] means?" I began to have that annoying and oddly sensual falling asleep in class feeling, where you repeatedly catch yourself just as you're about to drift off because your body twitches involuntarily. Also, it was odd to hear someone so smart and reasonable-sounding spout such incredibly ridiculous bullshit. Such as: "Spirits are showing themselves to us every day."

Francesca, it turns out, believes in a religion called spiritualism, which she finds combines well with the Church of England, which she has "retained." People in the audience began to pipe up, telling Francesca about times when something hadn't felt quite right or a presence had revealed itself to them via touch, sound, or thought. Francesca nodded sagely. "Spirits are never wrong. It can be quite uncanny." Later, when talking about how the spirits give her a break sometimes, she made a funny! "I do like to go out and have spirits of a different kind without their interference!" I wondered how many times, over the course of her career, she'd made that joke.

By the fifteen-minute intermission, I was feeling seriously depressed, sad on behalf of all the teased-haired Jerzmoms who had turned out in order to settle things with their dead exhusbands or find out when their estranged sons were going to call them. I was also insanely, ravenously hungry because the event had already gone on for an hour longer than I'd expected it to. So I almost didn't stay for the final segment of the evening, when Francesca would go into the audience and deliver messages from the spirit world.

The first spirit Francesca heard from was a woman who'd died of stomach cancer. She had a message for her daughter-in-law about that lady's daughter, whose name she guessed to be "Jan." It turned out to be "Jen." "I see an event coming up on a Saturday." "Jen's wedding," quaked the lady, bursting into tears. "There's some concern that it might not happen, not because of anything that's wrong with the relationship, but because of Jen's poor health," Francesca spat rapid-fire, a steely look in her wide blue eyes. "Yes," the lady wailed. "A small procedure will improve her health soon." The lady shook and sighed. She either wasn't faking, or was Oscar material.

Francesca then went on to deliver similarly miraculous-seeming messages to another family in the room. By that point, the entire audience was nodding credulously. Oddly, though, in spite of the evidence in front of me, I still couldn't quite buy it. One departed spirit told his wife to buy new drapes. If spirits existed, my companion wondered, would they really waste their time doling out decorating tips? Why not tell your beloved wife who's going to win the election, or at the very least what the winning Powerball numbers are? "I feel like dead people are sort of boring," my companion complained. "Dead people are lame," I agreed. "I feel like I'll only ever be able to get into this shit if someone I really care about dies young, a la 'Ghost,' and that's just pathetic. All these people just need to let go."

Previously: Alexandra, Spiritual/Psychic Counselor of Staten Island

One afternoon at 2:00, which was exactly one hour after she'd said she'd arrive, a busty brunette in a skimpy red sundress burst through the doors of Gawker headquarters and sprinted towards me. It was Julia Allison, of course, coming to take me to a psychic in Staten Island. The kicky rhythm of her four-inch rope espadrilles on the hardwood floor was the loudest thing that had happened in the office all day, but it was quickly one-upped by her voice. "Aren't you SO EXCITED!" she asked-told me as she enfolded me in a candy-smelling embrace. And then she grabbed my hand and the next thing I knew I was beside her in that vaunted convertible Mercedes, speeding as quickly as it's possible to speed down a traffic-clogged street in Soho, accompanied by Whitney Houston ("I Wanna Dance With Somebody"). That's when reality began to blur, so I've had to reconstruct the next part of the afternoon by looking at my sent and received text messages.

To: Josh, 2:20 pm
Now she is getting gas and everyone is staring. It's like an Aerosmith video.

To: Doree, 2:49 pm
"I think this song would be better with the top down"

To: Josh, 3:03 pm
This is the fourth construction worker we've asked for directions

From: Josh, 3:04 pm
Are you even off Crosby street?

We really may as well not have been. For an hour, we had been driving around lower Manhattan, looking for the entrance to the Battery Park tunnel, or sort of half-looking while we talked about jobs, love, family, body image, eating disorders, workouts, boys, feminism and shopping. Basically it was a slumber party crossed with a Cosmo ed meeting on wheels that occasionally pulled over to ask the nearest cop or friendly-seeming fellow motorist whether we were headed in the right direction (we weren't). Also for a time we were very involved in singing along to "Pussy Control" by Prince. We missed the turnoff into the tunnel four separate times. The whole time, Julia treated traffic laws like traffic suggestions or traffic hints. One of the times we missed the turnoff, we made an illegal u-turn, cut across two lanes of traffic, and ended up behind a cop car. "I wonder if the cop saw that?" Julia mused, and then confessed that she'd never gotten a ticket.

At 3:49, we pulled up outside a smallish detached vinyl-sided colonial and got out of the car. Alexandra, the psychic, came to her front door to chide us for being late. I couldn't see her that well through the storm door, but I could tell that she was 40ish and blonde and wearing black leather and clutching a small white dog. The dog was wering a blue bandanna. In a slightly put-out tone, she instructed us to go out back and wait by the pool. "We should have called to say we'd be late, but shouldn't she have forseen it?" Julia said, winking like Jessica Rabbit.

The pool was about the size of a lawn chair but very refreshing to stick your feet in, which we did as we waited for Alexandra and Mr. Fluffy to prepare to receive us. Soon we were ushered into the basement, which was decorated in 80s lady (white leather sectional, recumbent bike, treadmill, pink dried flower wreath, tv set with videos including 'The Hand That Rocks The Cradle' resting on top). I peed in the pink, raspberry-and-lit-matches scented bathroom (ornamental soap shaped like butterflies, no t.p.) while Julia got comfortable in the white leather easy chair where you sit while Alexandra, who has a public access show called "Alexandra's Psychic Eye," tells your fortune.

First Alexandra put her hand over Julia's hands and then she asked Julia some very specific questions. At first, I thought the asking questions part was a copout that meant Alexandra was basically just an ad hoc therapist who talked about energy and past lives. But as the session progressed, I became more and more impressed with her psychic abilities. Julia, it turns out, was a man in many of her past lives. "So men are attracted to your feminine looks, but then they're confused by your masculine energy. You're like General Patton: in every situation you need to be in control." Julia then demonstrated this tendency by badgering Alexandra with a ton of rapid-fire questions about specific career stuff. Alexandra told her straight up that she wasn't going to get anywhere like that. "You need to be more gentle, more nurturing. Women are natural nurturers. Women have inner space," she explained. "You need to stop being General Patton and start being Mother Earth." Then she started talking about how Julia was going to have a cooking show, maybe after moving back to the Midwest where her roots lie, even though Julia hates cooking and doesn't want to go back to Chicago ever. She also advised Julia to change her name to Julie.

I was trying hard to pay attention, but Mr. Fluffy had taken an incredibly strong amorous interest in all of my limbs. I didn't want to interrupt the reading, but eventually I had to draw the line at being extremity-raped by a bichon frise. "You have a lot of dog energy!" Alexandra observed as she took Mr. Fluffy into her arms. "We talked about this, Mr. Fluffy!" she admonished him.

When it came to disciplining Julia, though, Alexandra was a bit sterner. "You need to be real. You're just not real," she told her at one point. She also didn't bullshit Julia about the long-term potential of her latest suitor, a young guy who got too rich too quickly off a website he started in college. "This guy's a player, a joke. I see it lasting another six weeks, max."

Then it was time for my reading. Alexandra won me over immediately when the first thing she said to me was "I'm getting a [first initial of the boy I have a crush on]. Who is [initial]?" but I recognize that she had a one in twenty-six chance of nailing that one. Well, whatever, she said that he really likes me and that I shouldn't be so afraid of him. Just for that I pretty much consider my $100 well-spent, even though, during my energy healing, Mr. Fluffy renewed his relationship with my left calf just as I was really successfully imagining pink light escaping through the crown of my head and reaching out and enfolding the people I love.

Later, in the car going home, Julia and I talked about the highlights of our readings. We were both pretty happy with Alexandra's prognostications, but Julia was disappointed that things weren't going to work out between her and the website dude. "I'm in the mood to fall in love, Emily! I want him to fall madly in love with me." "Well, maybe he will," I said. "She's not psychic." God, long day.