The Torch Has Been Taken Hostage!

Protests in the city streets tonight. Olympic torch ironically headed for China due in San Francisco tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow San Francisco will take the torch hostage. It could happen. See it with me: A guy dressed as Spock gives the torch runner a Vulcan nerve pinch because he’s really a martial arts master and knows how to knock the guy out with the least amount of effort. Our eco-performance artist terroir-ist grabs the fallen torch, and he tosses it to his buddy who evades security by driving through the pylons in a Smart Car, whereupon a bike messenger whizzes by and snags it. The torch ends up at Land’s End broadcast by live video feed: “China! We have your torch! You will not see it again until you stop torturing innocents and free Tibet!” So we send it out, a live broadcast on the Internet. It would work even if we don’t capture it. Who would know? “We have your torch. We have taken it hostage. “

Cut to live video from our eco-cave, with a parallel feed on Mapquest, showing the suspected site of the sequestered torch. As authorities rush to the spot, the live video shows our heroes chucking it out to sea, via catapult, where the Greenpeace Warrior is waiting offshore. As it’s thrown the eco-hero yells: “China, come and get it!” The Warrior, populated by among others a few Burners Without Borders with long telescoping nets, reaches out and grabs the catapulted torch. Now the torch is 500 yards off shore on a boat with state of the art broadcasting. A call to arms goes out, as people from all over the Bay Area swarm the old Battery, the Presidio, and Lands End, massing on the cliffs, waiting for an attack by China. The city is actually at peace, but as performance art it's war, and anyway if it’s live on the Web and TV it's really happening. All over the world the story rings out: “San Francisco took the torch hostage!” Mayor Newsom is briefed, and he’s into the drama. He holds a news conference during the crisis, laughing, saying, “Well, looks like the torch has been taken hostage. It is crazy San Francisco. I hear some guy has the torch in a cave somewhere in the Presidio.”

I'm just saying it's: “Come and get me China!” time. I'm just having a vision. I see all of America coming to our shores to defend this country. Not against an attack by sea, but against an attack we don't see. We begin to say it together: “Free Tibet, China.” Uncle Sam sez: Let’s have the guts Reagan did when he stood up to the Berlin Wall. Let's make sure the message is not lost: Free these people, China.

~ US