I'm trying to find the Executive Producer of "Survive Dick Cheney Island," because I know he's out there and he owes me money. We've all been recruited for the ultimate reality show. The pitch went something like this:

"So the idea is that we make everyone on the island hate one another by messing with their heads. First we put a political convention there in the middle of terror alert season. Like it? Is that rich? Here's the better part: let's make it the *Republican* convention. That means the President has to show up with an F-16 escort. There'll be choppers hovering so low the backwash will ripple the soup de jour at the Bryant Park Cafe. Chaos, paranoia, the usual stuff. So that's the first episode, but then we twist it. We hold it in Madison Square Garden, which, let me remind you fellas, sits directly over the busiest train station in America. Of course we won't mention that whole *Madrid* thing, but we can't control what that does to the psyche now, can we? Okay, here's the closer--everybody thinks the whole thing is a culture clash between the Republicans and the New York liberal weenies. But then we flood the zone with 300,000 war protesters, the Republicans get dogpiled or isolated in their limos, it becomes a body modification street fair with attitude. We stack 'em on the island like it's Woodstock--we bus 'em in from Burlington, Vermont, or some damn place. They start to panic. We mix in 15,000 reporters and cameramen--I talked to the Al-Jazeera guy this morning--I mean, we'll have enough cameras to slow-mo every billy club that leaves its leather belt loop. We screw around with the police, make sure they don't know exactly where the protesters will be at any given time. And then here's the clincher--you wanna know how we pay it off? It's like you got this big cauldron of people, all of them with 97 reasons to hate *something* that's going on--hell, just the traffic issues are gonna piss 'em off--and, by the way, be sure to get some overhead shots of scary-ass panhandlers roving through jammed-up Lincoln Town Car gridlock. Okay. Now. Are you listening? The fuse is lit, we need a match, right? You set cameras. And then . . . somebody says something to PISS OFF RUDY GIULIANI. You know, insult Ground Zero, something like that. Watch it burn, man! Is that great or what?"

In other words, it's all about the streets. You think you can hide--okay, a few of us have cabins in the Catskills where we CAN hide--but think about it. Upper East Side? Sorry, the Ivy League frat boys are gonna be *all over* Third Avenue, and the provincial press--whose information on restaurants, like their information on Al Qaeda, is always ten years out of date--will be swarming into Elaine's. Soho? Obviously you've forgotten that whitebread Republican power brokers all have wives who are olympian shoppers. Theater district? The New York Times is handing out *free tickets* to the delegates. (You haven't lived until you've sat through "Bombay Dreams" with the Utah delegation.) East Village? Forget about it--where do you think all the neo-goth Bush-haters from Chico State are gonna crash?

The scariest thing about it to me is all the cameras. We're gonna have 789 Michael Moore wannabes shooting 16-millimeter, besides all the Beta crews from "Eyewitness Waukegan," the videographers from Lilith Fair, the digital camcorder freaks recording themselves in various acts of civil disobedience, and no doubt an NYU film student or two who thinks it would make a really rad setting for his horror porn homage to Takashi Miike. In what must be the ultimate Marshall McLuhan psychoscape, the FBI will be reviewing surveillance camera footage of people with cameras shooting other people with cameras shooting the surveillance cameras. If you're thinking of a cheap quickie wedding, just show up in Union Square dressed in bridal gown and tux, and have the best man get the phone numbers of everyone who videotapes the proceedings.

For all the people [seeking] photo ops, though, this one event may provide some of the finest Kodak moments since the WWF showed up at Wigstock. For one thing, we've got the "RNC Go Home" organization, which is printing up placards and buttons with the quixotic goal of actually collaring Republicans and propelling them toward the bridges and tunnels. (Tar and feathers--is there a way to make that politically correct?) I suppose the thinking there is that it's just another West Side Stadium to fight, but with an accelerated action schedule. Then there are the fine folks at counterconvention.org, who kicked off their August campaign with an event called "The Vomitorium," in which they gathered at St. Mark's Church on the Bowery and engaged in a voluntary binge-and-purge ritual, "in order to reflect on the fate that eventually befell the Roman Empire." (I missed that bulimia chapter in Gibbon.) Of course, I shouldn't overlook the wily protesters described in an internal NYPD memo who are planning to dress up like cops and stage beatings in order to claim police brutality, or just get a great image to post on aintitcoolnews. (Can you buy riot gear on eBay?)

The bottom line here is that the entire island is being turned into a massive Rohrschach blot that's dependent on what you're predisposed to see--and there's no escaping your own participation. If you march, that defines you. If you don't march, that defines you, too. If you march where you're told to march, that's a certain kind of protest. If you wander into Central Park on some pretext, carrying a sign and shouting slogans, that's a sort of Civil Disobedience Lite. If you stand on street corners, sipping a Snapple and staring at the menagerie, you become a target for pamphleteering. And if you get close enough to hector an actual delegate, you should probably be given extra points just for the espionage necessary to navigate Penn Station. (Coming from the west? Get acquainted with Hoboken- -you're going to be spending a lot of time there.) And, as in any great reality show, we won't know who the winner is and what he's *really* thinking until only one contestant remains, and the most devious plan prevails.

My own suggestion: we head for Foley Square, spring Lynne Stewart out of her terrorism trial, and transport her to a location as close to John Ashcroft as possible. By the end of the day we'll all be in the Metropolitan Correctional Center on charges normally not witnessed this side of war crimes trials in The Hague. Lynne will defend us all, and Nat Hentoff will make us martyrs. Anyone who actually manages to touch Dick Cheney will be honored with a memorial service at St. Mark's. But first, run down to Best Buy and get that camcorder.