Famous Frog Fiasco (eBook)

Robert Trenchard (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-1916-5 (ISBN)

In 2006, Farkel the Frog-and famous movie star-visits the small West Texas oilfield hamlet named for him. A motley crew of people flood the town to take part in the festivities celebrating his visit. But the town, including District Attorney Mike Mandel, soon learn that when you combine the Cowboy Mafia, bank robbers, bikers, news anchors, FEMA, the president, the vice-president, a national religious leader, a documentary filmmaker, and a movie star frog with a gun and knife show and alcohol, things don't always go according to plan...

The Famous Frog Fiasco takes place in 2006. It is a caper that mixes the Cowboy Mafia, ex-high school football stars turned bank robbers, bikers, the president and vice-president, cable news personalities, FEMA, a well-known documentary filmmaker, a gadfly national religious figure and a beloved movie star frog with the locals in a small West Texas oilfield hamlet with the same name as the frog. The small town is devastated by the catastrophic events occuring during and as a result of the famous frog's visit that is to be the start of a world-wide tour to celebrate his fifty years in show business. As Mike Mandel, the long-time Jayton County District Attorney, surveyed the charred ruins of what had been his law office, he found it hard to breathe. The air was heavy with the smell of water-soaked, burned rubble at his feet, the odor if the still smoldering Jayton County Court House across the street and the stench of the many overflowing porta potties which had been placed on the courthouse square to accommodate 30,000 people who had come to Farkel, Texas (pop. 6800) to participate int the weekend's festivities. The Famous Frog Fiasco, the debut novel by Robert Trenchard, takes an entertaining look at the news media, Hollywood, Washington, Texas high school football and the oil industry.

Chapter 2

Eighteen Days Earlier – September 27

The Recipe For Disaster

The headline of the Jayton County News read, “It’s Official–Farkel Is Coming To Farkel”. Media Entertainment Group Alliance, the huge media company, announced that, in celebration of his 25th birthday, Farkel The Frog would embark on a 25 city world tour with the first stop being Farkel, Texas. Other stops were to be Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Boston, New York, Miami, London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Tokyo and several other of the world’s most important cities in the estimation of MEGA, as the giant media conglomerate was known. Farkel, the town, was a small West Texas oilfield community, in the heart of the Permian Basin, the largest inland oilfield in the United States, covering West Texas and southeast New Mexico. The Odessa/Midland metroplex, sometimes called the Petroplex on local television news, was an hour to the northeast via Texas State Highway 203.

During the height of the boom a quarter century ago, it is estimated that the population was over 10,000. The residents drove new pickups and new Cadillacs. The general consensus was that the good times would last forever. Good, high-paying oilfield jobs were so easy to get that men who had never seen a drilling rig or pumpjack were migrating from the other side of the country and would get hired the day they arrived by just going to an Allsup’s or Town and Country and putting their name up on the board or calling the number of a driller or trucking company on the board that was looking for hands. It was ridiculously easy to make money and those who were willing to take the risk of investing in oil and gas exploration or any oil related business found banks fighting over who would loan them the money. Everyone got rich no matter how poor a businessman or how dumb they were with the notable exception of a young oil promoter in Midland with a Harvard MBA who would eventually be elected president of the United States. He and those unfortunate enough to invest with him somehow lost their ass on his drilling projects during the boom but he was the exception, one of the few who managed to go broke during the boom.

When the bust came in 1982, it was all over. The majority of oilfield businesses went bankrupt and many banks went under. The Permian Basin banks that survived the 1982 bust went under when things went from bad to worse in 1986 except for a few small town banks that, unlike their competitors, had chosen to follow sound banking practices during the boom. Permian State Bank of Monahans, Texas, with a branch in Farkel, was one of those banks. After the bust, Farkel eventually lost about one-third of its population and most of its small businesses other than a few oilfield related businesses that had not borrowed excessively to expand during the boom. Some blamed it on Wal-Mart putting a big box in Odessa, and that certainly was a factor in why Farkel no longer had a shoe store, a clothing store, a Wacker’s, a tire store, why two furniture stores closed, and why only one drug store remained or why two of the four grocery stores closed, but it did not explain the demise of the GM dealer or the Chrysler dealer leaving Farkel with only a Ford dealership or why there were now only two medical doctors, neither educated in the United States. Farkel, like most of the other small towns in the Permian Basin, was dying.

So, from the moment Mayor Joel Wilkinson was first contacted by MEGA, he and the other city leaders saw the visit by the famous frog as a chance to revive the town.

MEGA was one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, owning about 9% of the US radio stations, in addition to its movie studio, several cable television networks and 37 newspapers. MEGA gave its audience what they wanted. Their various programming departments did extensive research to determine, for example, what 50 songs classic rock radio listeners wanted to hear. After that was determined, all of their classic rock format radio stations were given a playlist of those fifty songs to play over and over and not deviate from. If you tuned in to a MEGA classic rock station on your commute, you could count on hearing Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys, the Doors’ Light My Fire, When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge or one of the other 47 familiar songs on the playlist and nothing else. The MEGA classic country format stations were the same way but the new country format and other formats playing more current music would have their formats changed monthly based on the most current listener research. Then the listeners would hear the same 50 songs for a month, with each successive month having songs added and dropped from the playlist.

The newspapers all had the same editorials and commentary with exception of one local editorial column once a week that the editor would have to have pre-approved by the corporate headquarters in LA. Their television programming was like all the other major networks. It was filled with the type of shows that had received the highest ratings last year with low-budget, easily produced programming, such as reality shows, being favored.

One of MEGA’s biggest movie stars was Farkel, the famous animated frog. The Farkel and Sparkle movies were a popular, profitable franchise, particularly since there was so much merchandising and ancillary income that continued every year even though there had only been six movies in twenty five years. For the past eight years, Farkel and Sparkle was also a weekly television series in prime time with real actors and, before that, cheap Farkel and Sparkle cartoons had been produced as a Saturday morning kids’ show. The basic premise was that they both were frogs who could turn into a handsome prince and beautiful princess if they kissed by the light of the full moon but who both preferred to remain frogs and live in the swamp with their animal friends. The corporate lawyers felt that Shrek had stolen that premise and filed an ill-advised lawsuit after the success of the first Shrek movie which was dismissed on motion for summary judgment.

The mayor, the city council members, the chamber of commerce, the county judge and county commissioners, church leaders, school leaders, civic clubs, the sheriff and chief of police all were involved in planning for the big event, albeit in a completely disorganized, competitive manner with each group having different ideas, no one coordinating with anyone else and many believing they should be in charge or that they actually were in charge.

The end result was that, in addition to the annual FallFest Arts and Crafts Extravaganza, which was already scheduled for the weekend in question, October 14-15, the high school homecoming was moved to that weekend, a gun and knife show was hastily organized and, fearing that the homecoming parade, which usually consisted of the FHS Fighting Jackrabbit Band, the Farkel Junior High Band, a flatbed trailer carrying the Jackrabbit varsity football team, and a few convertibles in which the homecoming queen court rode, someone came up with the idea to invite the Iron Thunder Brotherhood motorcycle club to ride in the parade and rally in Farkel that weekend since an estimated 600 bikers had traveled to Farkel in 2002 for the funeral of a brotherhood member.

As with everything else in connection with the planning for the weekend, it was decided bigger was better, so the brotherhood was contacted a second time and encouraged to have as large a turnout as possible and to put the word out that other brotherhood chapters as well as other biker clubs were welcome.

After several telephone calls to the mayor, it was agreed that Farkel would be presented with the key to the city, the biggest city park would have a name change to Farkel The Frog Park, that Park Boulevard would be renamed Frog Prince Boulevard, the two side streets bordering the park would become Prince Farkel Lane and Princess Sparkle Lane, and MEGA artists would paint a giant Farkel The Frog on the water tower. In addition, Farkel would be the grand marshal of the homecoming parade, the theme of the parade and the halftime show would be “Farkel Goes Hollywood”, and finally, Farkel would be homecoming king as well as escort and crown the homecoming queen. The MEGA people later offered to provide a 60 foot tall frog balloon if the school would agree to tether it to the goal posts during the football game.

The local city and county leaders were advised that Farkel would not be accompanied by his consort, Princess Sparkle. During a summer publicity photo shoot for the new fall television series on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago there had been a regrettable incident. The producer of the television series had decided that Sparkle’s human princess wardrobe should be updated to look more modern. She was wearing a rather short skirt and Chicago is known as the Windy City for good reason. During the shoot it was discovered that Sparkle preferred to “go commando” as she put it, which means sans underwear, when a sudden gust of wind blew off the lake. There were several onlookers but, fortunately, few children. To the dismay of MEGA, a photograph of Sparkle, taken by a tourist from Minot, North Dakota started showing up on the internet. He was some distance away when he took the picture with his disposable camera he had bought at a Chevron One Stop on the way to Chicago and his picture was of very poor quality. However, the photo taken at close range by a professional photographer hired by MEGA for the shoot was, as you would expect, of professional quality and the photographer had a $500,000 offer from a tabloid for...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	20.11.2017
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Comic / Humor / Manga
ISBN-10	1-5439-1916-2 / 1543919162
ISBN-13	978-1-5439-1916-5 / 9781543919165

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