Judgment day

Last Wednesday afternoon, the Olympic torch passed through San Francisco on its way to undisclosed locations in other countries. Downtown was intense—thousands of people, with the crowd divided about equally between enthusiastic support and boiling anger about the event and its significance for China and Tibet.

The mayor kept changing the torch route while it was being run, so nobody had any idea what was happening. Every so often, a huge wave of people would start sprinting toward the part of town where they thought (or heard third-hand via cell) the torch would go next. It basically turned into a giant, frenetic game of Red Rover.

To give you a sense of the scene, there are photos over at the Business Casual Shutterbug.

That night, I was part of a three-judge panel at the latest installment of Opium Magazine's Literary Death Match. Jane Ganahl (literary merit), Alan Black (intangibles), and I (performance) sat on a big squishy couch and rained down opinions on the poetry of four excellent readers.

Yes, all four were good. That must be some kind of record—most poetry readings are at least 50% excruciating. But these guys made the magic happen. I felt like I needed a gimmick, so I talked about the writers like they were bands: a passionate punkster, an angsty/intellectual indie rocker, a folkie, and a seasoned crooner whose spectacular eyebrows sang backup.

After a couple of elimination rounds, the two finalists played a spirited championship round of "Poet or Madman?" If that sounds easy, try putting snapshots of Shel Silverstein and Charles Manson side by side sometime. Then pick out who looks more literary and who looks more like Mr. T.