take R 2 Rev straight into the heartland, where lives were dull and teens less inclined to notice that their latest Shiny New Thing had become a joke out in the real world.
“Swear to God,” Hutch would laugh, “they’ve still got Farrah Fawcett hair out there!”
So it was decided that Casey Lattimer would be the network’s emissary, spreading his special magic at inappropriate gatherings like state fairs and Shriner parades, where he could be parachuted in and then yanked out before some good ol’ boy snapped his neck.
The rubes in the sticks, at least until they came to hate him, could goggle at the celebrity in their midst and maybe even get themselves on the tee-vee. The sophisticates in the major markets could dine on Casey’s oafish debasement of small-town institutions and beliefs. Everybody wins!
Annie’s job—her Special Project—was to find new canvases on which Casey could smear his genius.
It was best, she decided, to send Casey into cornball events in nowhere burgs that drew the town’s most easily offended residents: all-you-can-eat pancake fundraisers, statue dedications, Junior Farm Queen pageants, and the like. The announcement and coverage of such events were the lifeblood of small-town newspapers across the country, but—no surprise—such papers often had neither the reason nor the sophistication for establishing themselves on the internet. That meant Annie had to gather her information the old-fashioned way: poring over out-of-state phone directories, making cold calls, and building a network of young volunteer stringers across the country who would make her aware of potential “Casey environments” in exchange for R 2 Rev hats and T-shirts.
And so there she was, the week of her father’s fiftieth birthday, holed up in her old bedroom in suburban Ann Arbor, tying up the family’s phone line for hours on end, trying to schedule Casey’s next six months. The sense at the network was that they were under-utilizing their star, and that his act was starting to take on a troubling sameness. The pressure was on Annie to subtly reconceptualize Casey Lattimer while leaving his engaging abrasiveness intact.
She had told her mother it was a bad time, and apologized to her father as best she could for her preoccupation. She hoped he would appreciate that she was as committed to her career as he was to his (her father was a cop, earning only slightly more than his daughter after 25 years of service; she spent sixteen hours a day trying to find trusting people who could be humiliated on TV for sport).
But she was in the home stretch. Her father’s birthday dinner was on the table, and they were all waiting. All she had to do was hear back from one more stringer and her October was set. Her cell phone had died, and her little brother had been on the landline for what seemed like hours. She had spent the late afternoon pacing, burning through a pack and a half of cigarettes while telepathically begging her brother to hang the hell up.
Finally, the call made it through: Casey and the guerilla video crew would be welcome at a hog breeding exhibition in Baraboo, Wisconsin, on the fourteenth. Annie’s heart sang. Farmers! Animal sex! Pig shit to accidentally step in! She could already envision the smirking promo spots as she proudly typed the specifics into her laptop and emailed them off to New York.
She stood with satisfaction, exhausted but happy to finally be able to devote some attention to her family. It was never easy to explain what she did or why it mattered, but tonight she would try. While pretty much everything she had Casey doing was offensive and embarrassing, she was a linchpin in the programming pipeline of the hottest cable channel in the country. Surely they could see beyond Casey being thrown in jail for trying to give a wedgie to the mayor of Mederville, Iowa, and understand her vital role at R 2 Rev.
She stubbed out her cigarette and felt a sincere wave of pride and
“Swear to God,” Hutch would laugh, “they’ve still got Farrah Fawcett hair out there!”
So it was decided that Casey Lattimer would be the network’s emissary, spreading his special magic at inappropriate gatherings like state fairs and Shriner parades, where he could be parachuted in and then yanked out before some good ol’ boy snapped his neck.
The rubes in the sticks, at least until they came to hate him, could goggle at the celebrity in their midst and maybe even get themselves on the tee-vee. The sophisticates in the major markets could dine on Casey’s oafish debasement of small-town institutions and beliefs. Everybody wins!
Annie’s job—her Special Project—was to find new canvases on which Casey could smear his genius.
It was best, she decided, to send Casey into cornball events in nowhere burgs that drew the town’s most easily offended residents: all-you-can-eat pancake fundraisers, statue dedications, Junior Farm Queen pageants, and the like. The announcement and coverage of such events were the lifeblood of small-town newspapers across the country, but—no surprise—such papers often had neither the reason nor the sophistication for establishing themselves on the internet. That meant Annie had to gather her information the old-fashioned way: poring over out-of-state phone directories, making cold calls, and building a network of young volunteer stringers across the country who would make her aware of potential “Casey environments” in exchange for R 2 Rev hats and T-shirts.
And so there she was, the week of her father’s fiftieth birthday, holed up in her old bedroom in suburban Ann Arbor, tying up the family’s phone line for hours on end, trying to schedule Casey’s next six months. The sense at the network was that they were under-utilizing their star, and that his act was starting to take on a troubling sameness. The pressure was on Annie to subtly reconceptualize Casey Lattimer while leaving his engaging abrasiveness intact.
She had told her mother it was a bad time, and apologized to her father as best she could for her preoccupation. She hoped he would appreciate that she was as committed to her career as he was to his (her father was a cop, earning only slightly more than his daughter after 25 years of service; she spent sixteen hours a day trying to find trusting people who could be humiliated on TV for sport).
But she was in the home stretch. Her father’s birthday dinner was on the table, and they were all waiting. All she had to do was hear back from one more stringer and her October was set. Her cell phone had died, and her little brother had been on the landline for what seemed like hours. She had spent the late afternoon pacing, burning through a pack and a half of cigarettes while telepathically begging her brother to hang the hell up.
Finally, the call made it through: Casey and the guerilla video crew would be welcome at a hog breeding exhibition in Baraboo, Wisconsin, on the fourteenth. Annie’s heart sang. Farmers! Animal sex! Pig shit to accidentally step in! She could already envision the smirking promo spots as she proudly typed the specifics into her laptop and emailed them off to New York.
She stood with satisfaction, exhausted but happy to finally be able to devote some attention to her family. It was never easy to explain what she did or why it mattered, but tonight she would try. While pretty much everything she had Casey doing was offensive and embarrassing, she was a linchpin in the programming pipeline of the hottest cable channel in the country. Surely they could see beyond Casey being thrown in jail for trying to give a wedgie to the mayor of Mederville, Iowa, and understand her vital role at R 2 Rev.
She stubbed out her cigarette and felt a sincere wave of pride and
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