Looking Forward to a Tomorrow With More and Better Holy Relics

Unstuck in Time: When using a time machine, one of the biggest dangers is mechanical failure, especially if you break down during the 1970s and are forced to relive the disco era.

Thankfully, the Automobile Club recently introduced a time-travel towing service that retrieves disabled time machines from any epoch and tows them back to the dealer just before the warranty expires.

So we asked AAA to rescue Off-Kilter’s time-trekking journalist, who had been stranded in 1978 with a broken timing belt. After several sessions of electroshock therapy to control the Bee Gees flashbacks, he embarked on a new assignment--collecting the top stories of 2000.

He recently filed this summary of upcoming news events:

* April: The LAPD corruption probe expands to include charges that suspects were also framed on “Dragnet,” “Adam-12,” “T.J. Hooker” and “The Naked Gun.”

* May: The space shuttle is hijacked by terrorists who sneak guns past a NASA metal detector and order the craft to fly to the planet Remulac.

* June: Fox Television airs an updated version of the game show “Family Feud” called “Who Wants to Inherit a Million Dollars,” hosted by Lyle and Erik Menendez. Sample question: “Name something you do before going to bed at night.” Top survey answers: “Brush teeth,” “Put on pajamas” and “Take off toupee and shoot parents.”

* July: The popularity of Christian merchandise labeled “WWJD” (for “What would Jesus do?”) skyrockets after archeologists discover a second Shroud of Turin inscribed with the initials “WWID” (“What would I do?”). However, skeptics question the shroud’s authenticity after the archeologists also unveil a Dead Sea Scroll manuscript of the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and they reply, “Well, according to the latest Zogby poll, which has a margin of error of 3%, half believe you are John the Baptist, 22% think you’re Elijah, 18% regard you as the Messiah and 10% think you’re the guy who gets upset when people squeeze the Charmin.”

* August: Al Gore’s presidential candidacy suffers a huge setback when medical authorities reveal that the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States is “mixing barbiturates and alcohol with C-SPAN broadcasts of speeches by the vice president.”

* October: Taking a cue from the marketing geniuses behind such concepts as “edutainment” (the combining of education and entertainment), “shoppertainment” and “laundrotainment” (washing machines with built-in video games), self-described compassionate conservative George W. Bush promises to cut welfare expenditures by launching a program called “povertainment,” designed to make poverty fun.

* December: Time magazine replaces its Person of the Year cover with a Clone of the Year.

Weird Auctions Bureau: Sotheby’s expects the sweat-stained T-shirt worn by Mark McGwire when he hit his 70th home run to attract a minimum bid of $300,000. Meanwhile, Butterfield & Butterfield is auctioning a lasso used to rope Dwight Eisenhower at his 1953 inauguration (seriously) for an estimated $8,000.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Woman Wakes From 12-Year Coma and IRS Charges Her With Tax Evasion Because She Failed to File Tax Returns While Comatose!” (Weekly World News)

Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service. E-mail Off-Kilter at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.