Drunk Driving began to grab bottles off the shelves, stuffing them in his pockets and down his pants. The rest of the Bad Beliefs did likewise. The startled owner came out from behind the counter, while the cashier picked up the phone and punched out 911.

"What the hell is going on here-?" demanded the owner.

Suddenly, out of nowhere materialized a new Bad Belief. He resembled a Hells Angel, all fat-overlaid muscles, greasy leather and tattoos. And he was carrying a sawed-off shotgun.

The owner froze and all the color drained from his face.

"Property is theft," sneered Property Is Theft.

Then he pumped both barrels into the refrigerator case, spraying glass and liquor everywhere.

The owner dived back behind the counter and the cashier hit the floor. Property Is Theft laughed. "Youre damn lucky Life Is Worthless was busy fuckin over Africa!"

We were back outside. I heard sirens again. This time it was really the cops, three cruisers in fact.

Fuck Tha Police materialized, along with a dozen other Uzi-toting black men.

"I brung tha boyz from tha hood," he said. "Well cover while you make a break for it."

We piled in the car. I found myself lying on the floor in back. Then we were screeching away, the sound of automatic weapons fire competing with our smoking tires.

I dared to get up off the floor. Somebody stuck a quart bottle in my hand, and I unscrewed the top and drank, heedless of what was in it.

When I was done spluttering, I asked quietly, "Can we go straight to the ghetto now?"

"Sure," said Promise Them Anything, who looked just like a famous politician.

We picked up the freeway heading toward the city. Weaving from lane to lane, Drunk Driving passed the other cars as if they were motionless. He didnt let up on the horn, and the blaring noise assumed the sound of the Last Trump. I closed my eyes when the speedometer cracked one hundred. A familiar figure began tossing empties out the window.

Someone Else Will Pick Up My Litter. I remembered when he had seemed like a big problem, and a hysterical laugh that was more like a sob escaped my lips.

"Take this exit!" a new, fanatical voice shouted.

Deceleration crumpled me into the upholstery. I opened my eyes and saw a new figure next to me. Half his face was bearded, half cleanshaven. Half a turban and half a cowboy hat sat on his head, half a string tie and half a set of prayer beads hung around his neck. Something about him immediately convinced me that he was one of the most dangerous Bad Beliefs.

"We must stop to smite the infidels!" said the mullah-preacher.

"Youre, youre-" I began.

"God Is On Our Side!" he screamed.

"Right," I sighed.

Not far from the foot of the exit ramp was a gas station. We pulled in and filled several of the empties with gasoline, then corked them with some of the windshield-cleaning rags. Then we went looking for churches.

Luckily it was a weekday, and most churches these days remained empty anyway, tainted with Bad Belief connotations. We torched a synagogue, a mosque, a storefront mission and an RC church-God Is On Our Side was strictly nondenominational-leaving plumes of smoke and leaping flames and screaming sirens in our wake.

As we screeched down the city streets, taking turns seemingly at random, I wondered if I would ever live to see the safety of the ghetto. Had I been right to trust Santa, what seemed like an eternity ago? Was this escapade really going to lead to my personal growth? Would the Bad Beliefs lead me through hell and out the other side, or just leave me stranded mid-inferno?

In any case, it could not be said that I was continuing to stagnate.

We took one final spine-snapping curve and the walls of the ghetto loomed up. The street terminated in a massive gate. And in front of the gate was a six-story-high dragon.

All the Bad Beliefs shrieked in terror, and Drunk Driving stood on the brakes.

"Who-what-is that?"

One of the Bad Beliefs said in a whisper, "Thats Failure Is Inevitable."

The dragon leered and breathed forth a jet of steam. Each of Failures scales was big as a manhole cover.

A small voice piped up. "We can do it. Just try."

It was Hope Springs Eternal, looking just like Tinkerbelle.

Drunk Driving took a stiff belt from his pint. "Who the fuck wants to live forever anyhow?"

He peeled out.

We made it within fifty yards of the gate. Then Failure raised a paw big as a tugboat and slammed our car.

We tumbled over and over before we came to a stop, upside down on our roof. The Bad Beliefs had cushioned me from serious harm, and we spilled out the windows, rumpled and bruised.

Failure had lowered its head to our level and glared at us with gemstone eyes the size of cathedral windows. It opened its mouth, revealing fangs and a split tongue. Its breath smelled swampy.

Winged Hope was hovering right by me.

"Never fear, dont worry, theres always a way, just give it one more shot, dont hold back, pick yourself up off the ground-"

I couldnt stand it anymore. I grabbed the sprite, crushing her wings, and threw her into Failures mouth, which instinctively clamped shut.

There was a brilliant flash of light, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

When I opened them, Failure was gone. Hope Springs Eternal and Failure Is Inevitable had cancelled each other out of existence.

The remaining Bad Beliefs let out a lusty cheer. Lifting me to their shoulders, they dashed for the gate, which was swinging open.

Then we were inside, and I was standing. The gates closed behind me.

The Bad Beliefs all shook my hand and dispersed, home at last. I found myself alone, except for two women.

One of them seemed human enough. She was gazing shyly at the ground, so I couldnt really see her face, but she seemed rather pretty, like the nurse at the DOM clinic.

The other figure was definitely a Bad Belief. She looked kind of like a combination of Guinevere, Venus and Mae West. Alluring as she was, I knew at once that she was even more dangerous than God Is On Our Side.

"And you are-?" I said.

The Bad Belief smiled. "Im Romantic Love Solves Everything. And this is your bride."

And you know what?

I believed her.

As a Boomer whose formative years occurred during a Captain Kangaroo era of enforced "innocence" over the airwaves, I still during moment of retrogressive forgetfulness retain the capacity to be shocked at hearing, say, Homer Simpson utter the words "pissed off" or "ass" and not get bleeped. Never mind the degenerate filth sent over the cable stations! Shocking! (I dont actually subscribe to a cable service, but I am sure I would be absolutely appalled by a steady stream of curse words that every five-year-old today knows, and the lovely bare bottoms of actresses.) Yes, the past is a different country.

But what if the past were to experience immigration from its future?

LEAKAGE.

I was in the kitchen, fixing supper. the TV was on in the other room, but I wasnt really paying attention to it. You know how that is. But then I heard the unmistakeable voice of Lucille Ball saying, in a tone of mixed hysteria and anger, "Ricky, I want an abortion."

Putting down the potato peeler very carefully, I went into the other room.

There on the set was the familiar Ricardo living room, in perfect, immutable, timeless black and white. The sofa, the fireplace, the mantlepiece, the doors to the bedroom, kitchen and hall, the Populuxe Fifties decor .... It was all as I had seen it a hundred times-a thousand times-before, since that very first episode glimpsed on the verge of being sent late to bed, when I was a kid. Everything about the set stamped it as the original, no re-creation. Of that I was sure.

And Lucy and Ricky were-well, Lucy and Ricky. These were no second-rate imposters, no off-Broadway mimics or Saturday Night Live comedians. They were the original two actors, forever youthful in their celluloid stasis.

Everything, in short, was as it should have been.

Except for the script.

Now Lucy was crying in that famous way of hers, only it wasnt funny. She was blubbering something about having cheated on Ricky, to get back at him for not letting her perform her strippers act at the club. The baby she was carrying-Little Ricky, of course-wasnt his, and she wanted it destroyed.

Big Ricky did not react well to this news. He began to pace around the couch, letting loose with a flood of that inimitable goofy Cuban invective.

"Puta! Bitch! I wish I had died fighting Castro than ever live to see esta dia!"

Now Ricky took out several vials of crack and a pipe and began to smoke his brains out, while Lucy downed shot after shot out of a Chivas bottle.

My wife had entered the room.

"Hows supper coming?

I couldnt speak. All I could do was gesture dumbly at the television.

Quickly grasping the improbable scene, my wife sat down beside me, transfixed.

The next fifteen minutes of the show were excruciating, like all the worst arguments you ever had with your spouse rolled up into one ugly package. Lucy and Ricky got drunker and more stoned and abused each other horribly. It was only words at first, but then Ricky began to cuff Lucy around.

"Tell me, who is the maricon who did this to you! Tell me so I can keel him!"

Lucy held out as long as she could. But after a particularly savage blow, she blurted out, "Fred! It was Fred Mertz!"

Of course, Fred and Ethel chose that exact moment to barge in unannounced.

Some things about Hollywood plotting were inevitable.

Dropping Lucy to the couch, Ricky jumped up and, drawing a stubby pistol from his waistband, shot Fred dead, spraying a screaming Ethel in blood and gore.

Then the credits rolled up, jaunty theme music and all.

My wife and I sat stunned for a moment. Then she spoke.

"That was sick. Sick, sick, sick! Who would ever show such a thing?"

"Good question. But what I want to know is how. How could they possibly have made a new episode, with all the actors old or dead?"

"Well, find out which channel were watching first. Then well call them."

I looked at the red digits on the cable box, then consulted the cable guide.

It was the Zeiterion Channel. They specialized in the broadcasting of old sitcoms. Their spokesman was a loveable greying actor from one of the very same old shows which they featured.

I picked up the phone and called my local cable company. When I got the customer service rep on the line, I didnt try to explain the exact nature of my complaint, but simply said that Id like to register one, and that it was specifically about the content of some of the programming.

"Im sorry, sir, but we only deliver your cable service. Unless you have a complaint about the quality of the reception, I suggest you call or write the headquarters of the appropriate company."

"Do you have an address, or an eight-hundred number?"

"Yes, sir," she said, and gave me both.

I was mildly surprised to hear that the Zeiterion Channels corporate headquarters was just over the state line, in Jersey. Then my wife called me back to the set.

"Look at this one before you call."

It was Leave It To Beaver.

The Beve was entering his school through the arch of a metal-detector. The kid behind him set it off. Frisking revealed that he was carrying only a beeper, but the authorities confiscated it anyway.

The inside of the Beves school was utterly decrepit: leaking roofs, missing tiles, broken desks, cardboard-patched windows. At one point I thought I saw a rat run across a corridor. There were about fifty incorrigible kids in the class, and the teacher was not the sweet elderly woman I remembered, but a harassed harridan plainly unable to manage even half of her charges. The kids blared hip-hop from a boombox and ignored her.

Suddenly there came a squeal of tires from outside the school, along with the fluid popping of Uzi fire. "Driveby!" squealed one of the kids, and they all dropped to the floor. Beaver was the first one up and at the windows. The camera POV switched to his eyes, and we the audience saw what Beaver saw: Wally, pulling his head and gun back into the getaway car as it sped away from the bodies arrayed in front of the school.

Of course, the rest of the episode would be about whether the Beve would fink on Wally to their Dad.

Or, I supposed now, to a rival gang.

I stood up. "This has gone too far. I cant imagine what kind of marketing strategy they think theyve hit on here, but I dont like it one bit. This is my past-our past-theyre messing with! Im going to give them a piece of my mind."

Naturally, the eight-hundred number was busy, busy, busy. But finally, I got through.

The man on the other end of the line sounded incredibly sad and weary. I felt sorry for him, but let him have it nonetheless.

"Yes, sir," he said when I was done, "were aware of the problem. But I want to assure you that its strictly unintentional on our part. The technical staff is working on fixing it even as we speak. They suspect a simple mixup in the tape library, but theyre investigating every possible trouble-spot in the system."

"But who could have created such tapes in the first place?" I demanded. "And how did they end up in your studios?"

"That I couldnt say, sir. But once again, I apologize. Now, if you dont mind, there are other calls ...."