The next big thing...

OK, let's talk coolness and fads for a moment, OK?

I would not consider myself one of the "in, hip, crowd." When I left my last job, my goodbye party was held at 1 Little West 12th Street, which, in addition to being an OK restaurant, has an "in" bar scene (well, it was in at the time, I have no idea if it still is), velvet rope and all. I left to walk my wife home (I live around the corner) so she could put our son to bed, and when I came back, the guy wouldn't let me back in.

That's right. I wasn't allowed back into my own party until I reached someone inside to come vouch for me.

Now, that said, I seem to be the harbinger of what will be cool.

When I was in law school, I thought smoking cigars was kind of neat, and a year-and-a-half later, the cigar fad of the late '90s hit.

I started talking to my wife about how cool it would be to get a scooter, and a year later, Vespas became the "must-have" accessory of the cool.

We moved to our apartment roughly 4 months before the Meatpacking District exploded into the hippest neighborhood in NYC.

I got interested in poker about 6 years ago, and look around you -- it's EVERYWHERE! (Almost annoyingly so.)

Now, nobody believes me when I say I saw these trends happening and wasn't merely a hanger-on, so I make my prediction, on a time-stamped blog, of the next fad:

Snuff.

That's right, I said snuff. The powdered, aromatic tobacco product that the aristocrats of the 19th century liked.

So in a year or two, when there are snuff bars all over Manhattan, and there's a big glossy 300 page "Snuff Afficionado" magazine on all the newsstands, and you see a clip of Paris Hilton putting something in her nose that is (amazingly) not white, you will remember -- you saw it here first.