94: Stall Six

I cut classes and flew to Virginia the Friday before Thanksgiving with Janet Anderson. Whitney graduated from OCS. After her oath, I was honored to pin a gold bar to her lapel as she was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the USMC. An enlisted Marine standing next to me snapped a smart salute to Whitney as soon as the bar was attached. She returned it crisply, and handed him an equally crisp $20 bill, which she subsequently informed me was the custom for a first salute. "Coach Hancock said it was just $10 twenty-five years ago. Some of the enlisted men on base clear a few hundred bucks on graduation day," Whitney said. She was now officially an officer. Thankfully, there were no martial arts demonstrations—at least that I was aware of. Whitney had a week's leave for Thanksgiving, but warned us that meant she wouldn't be home for Christmas. At least we were able to talk once a week now. She'd continue at Quantico for the next six months for what they called The Basic School. She would have a regular five days a week schedule and I could visit on some weekends.

Thanksgiving week was all too short. It was great to have the week off of taping and to be with Whitney, but there was the quickly looming specter of starting the new season and the new show. After making love all Saturday night, Whitney dressed in her uniform and caught a bus back to Quantico early Sunday morning. I wished there was a god that I could pray to protect her. But then, I'd want to kill him if anything happened to her.

We were, as usual, just two weeks from finals. For me, they could easily be my last finals at IU. Next semester, while I was traveling around and working my tail off, I'd also be writing my thesis. I had to get to campus early on Monday so I could meet with Dr. Z about it.

"You don't have to break new ground with a master's thesis," he said. "The content needs to be original, but we are more interested in having you show that you understand the subject matter at a master's proficiency than that you are contributing to the body of knowledge."

"Yes, sir," I said. "I thought that by exploring a case study like this, I could analyze the process with an inside view of how things work out."

"Here's what concerns me about that. Every case study you have read over the past eighteen months has been fallacious. We can use them to analyze behaviors and discuss what goes right and wrong, but even when an analyst goes into a corporation to develop a study, we seldom get the whole story. Corporations don't want to lay bare their souls, so to speak. As if they have them. They will always position the study to the positive. If you write on the whole development of your new show, it will be assumed that you are not telling the truth. It would be better if you took a single aspect and analyzed the effectiveness of that rather than the complete project."

"What would you suggest?"

"Audience selection. It is a neutral enough topic that it won't expose the success or profitability of your production or your company, yet it has quantifiable results. Instead of focusing on how fabulously successful your performance is, you can analyze how well the predictions and audience selection criteria reflected the actual audience statistics. You might even be able to show how you adjust and change your targets as information comes in. This will help you play on neutral turf. You are not playing percentages of general viewership against other similar shows, but instead are measuring the success of reaching the specific audience you targeted. You'll need to have the demographic data that was compiled before you began production and compare it to actual results periodically through the first three months. Don't worry if you don't have the thesis finalized before graduation. Writing seldom coincides with academic calendars."

"Yes, sir. Let me give this some thought and revise my thesis plan. I can get it back to you during finals week if that suits."

"That was spoken like a corporate executive and not a graduate student. Well done."

"I can't do this," I said on Saturday as I sat at the table in the big house with my production team. It had been a difficult week. I suspected this would always be a difficult week as we all took a moment on the first to remember Lexie. She would have been twenty-one on Thursday. I was thankful that Rees had the show on Friday. I'd been too drained to even watch her.

"But, Brian..." Samantha started. She was frayed around the edges as well. Chuck, Frankie, and April all pushed back away from the table a little. Rose and Rhonda came to join us. This was a family matter. I opened my arms and Sam came to sit on my lap. This kind of conversation required more than a boardroom atmosphere.

"Look at it, Cutie. The schedule shows that I would be out of here ... gone ... for ten weeks. I can't. I can't leave my family for ten weeks," I said. "I can't do it."

"I know," she whimpered. "But what am I supposed to do? We can't get an audience to the ranch for ten straight weeks. We narrowed it down to Big Ten schools. If we only used schools in Indiana, we'd look way too regionalized. How can we get a nightly audience clear out here?"

"Ideas, anyone?" I said looking at Rose and Rhonda, but including my cameraman and writers. More members of the family gathered. Cassie had been sitting just behind me, keeping notes. Dani came to us and put Xan in our arms. She stepped behind and began rubbing our shoulders.

"Is this what our schedule is going to look like, Rhonda?" Elaine asked as she looked at the printout in front of me.

"We definitely have to get out of the studio in order to get a bigger audience," Rhonda said. "I think we can do it in one week a month, though."

"Would it tie us too closely together to do both shows in the same place the same week?" I asked.

"I think so," Rhonda said. "You will be on cable. At least for this part of the season, we are committed to our broadcast syndicate. Lockhurst wants us to move over, but he won't even have coverage in all our markets by the end of the year."

"Won't it stretch our resources to both be traveling at the same time?" Rose asked. "Do we even have an adequate amount of equipment?"

"For the most part, we think we should lease equipment in the local market and not cart our own around. Unless we get a satellite truck and drive everyplace, it just isn't economically feasible to cart our own equipment. And truck coverage has the limitations of how far you can drive and get to a location on time—unless you saddle up and take a long, long road trip," Rhonda said.

"That could be fun," Courtney said. "We could get a couple of those big buses like Heaven uses and take the whole family on the road!"

"Dream on, lover," Jen said. "It takes us a whole day just to all get ready to go up to Mishawaka."

"Well, here are the options as I see them," Rose said. "Chime in with other thoughts. Cassie, can you take them down?"

"Sure."

"Let's start with the proposal. Brian travels every week to a different campus. Tapes five shows and gets to spend two nights a week at home. Quiet, Brian. It's one option. Two, he travels the same amount, but for only three nights a week. During the week he tapes two shows during the daytime that are shown on the two off days of the week. Three, he travels less frequently and we figure out how to get more audiences here to Bloomington. Four..."

"Since these are brainstormed options, I want the one where we all travel on a tour bus together," Courtney said. "Hey, it could work."

"Okay, that's four," Rose said.

"How about working the way we started with Elaine?" Nicki suggested. "Have Brian do fewer shows each week and have another, compatible show on the off nights. We could develop a second show at the same time that way."

"How tight is our contract with Lockhurst?" I asked. "Does it require five nights of me?"

"I don't think so," Rose said. "There's some merit in that if we can come up with another evening talk show."

We kept brainstorming. We didn't reach a conclusion, but there were options and we were committed to working one out. Even if I had to travel for a couple weeks early on, we could get ourselves in gear for later. We had some flexibility.

The next week was my last week of classes at IU. Unlike the undergrad profs, the grad school profs seemed to have their shit together when it came to how much they planned to cover in the semester. As an undergrad, it always seemed like the two weeks between Thanksgiving and finals were crammed with professors desperately trying to finish their curriculum. None of the classes I was in had any appreciable difference in workload. I'd finished reading the textbooks by Thanksgiving break and it had really helped me out to discuss what I was studying with Rose. She was getting a lot out of it, too.

One thing our brainstorming had revealed was that we really needed an audience development person on staff. We were going to double the number of shows that needed an audience by the end of January and Sam, Rhonda, Jen, and Rose had already been going crazy trying to book audiences for Elaine. I put the word out in my classes and posted notices in the Media Center and the Business School. We started getting calls during finals week.

We were taking another week off between Christmas and New Year's, but it was looking like we'd be working the whole time anyway. We reviewed résumés as they came in and started setting up appointments. Rhonda, Rose, Louise, and I were doing a ton of work on organization and resources needed. Lamar sat in with us as our new corporate counsel to go over human resources stuff and make sure we were posting all the correct affirmative action and workers' comp posters in the studio. He was also coordinating work with our contract and IP attorneys now.

I got through my finals and was congratulated by my professors on completing my coursework. Two of them were on my committee now and said they were looking forward to reading my thesis. The week before Christmas, of course, we were still taping every morning and Rees was with me on the Young Cooking set every day. I gave her more and more focus and acted more like Miss Polly used to during my early shows. I'd be alone on the show for the first two weeks of January while Rees finished her final semester at West Monroe High School. Then we'd spend another week together on the show before I left it.

Regardless of how chaotic things were, we had fun getting ready for Christmas. Judy turned 21 on Sunday and, unlike TK, wanted to spend the night with me. Instead of the master suite, she wanted to stay in the big bedroom with the rest of the casa and everyone showed her how much she was loved.

Rose, on the other hand, wanted her birthday on Wednesday at the Sheraton in Indianapolis with me. She almost wept when she heard how we'd celebrated Mary's birthday, and even though we didn't go to Le Palais, we had room service in our suite and spent the evening dancing naked around the room. Getting Rose alone for an entire night was a rarity and we both made the best of it. Rees handled Thursday's show alone.

After the show on Friday, the guys descended on the studio and disassembled the entire audience area so we had room for everyone to gather. We'd put the tree up on Thursday so it would be on Elaine's set Friday morning. With the platforms out of the way, everyone pitched in to decorate. It was a festive occasion. I saw that even Rees had stayed to prep the kitchen and was baking pies and cookies non-stop.

"You know, feeding the clan is not part of your responsibility," I said when I caught up with her.

"I know, but it's so exciting. Those girls—the triplets—have an entire plan put together to feed a hundred and fifty people. I just volunteered to help. Is it okay? I mean, I'm not trying to horn in or anything. It's just ... Is it okay, Brian?" she stumbled to a halt.

"It's very okay, Rees. Are you happy?" I asked.

"So far, so good," she said. "I can't believe that I'm actually cooking on national television. I've got a fan club at the high school already."

"That's great. I've got something for you. I'm glad you stuck around because I wasn't sure when I was going to give you your Christmas present."

"A present for me? I didn't know. I didn't get any presents for anyone."

"In general, we don't give Christmas presents around here. There's just too many people to buy for. We just lavish presents on the children. No, not you! Instead of a Christmas present, let's call this a 'welcome to Young Cooking' present." I stepped behind the partition to the prep kitchen and reached in the closet. "Here you are, Rees. Welcome to Young Cooking." I held a chef's jacket out to her and helped her slip it on. She looked down at the name embroidered on the pocket: 'Young Cooking with Chef Rees.'

"Oh! It's beautiful! I love it!" she screamed. Several people stopped working and came over to see what the fuss was about. Elaine came up to her and tied a checkered bandana around her neck. Rhonda stepped up and put a chef's hat on her.

"Welcome to our kind of crazy," Rhonda said.

"You are welcome to stay for dinner," I said. "We have all the family here and are serving a buffet. It's very informal." Rees blushed. Uh-oh.

"I ... um ... was ... sort of invited already," she said. "I kind of have a date."

"Really?" I said. "Rees, no one at the ranch is putting any pressure on you are they?" If one of the guys in the dorm had started trying to hit on her, I was going to be royally pissed.

"Oh, no! It's that nice guy who got here yesterday and was helping put up the tree. We stopped and talked for a while before I took off. He said his sister told him it was okay to invite me. It is, isn't it?" she asked. Who the... ? I glanced around the room and my questions were answered by a blush near the fireplace that was almost brighter than the fire. I pointed and crooked my finger. He came stumbling toward me.

"Yes, Patrón?" Brett said.

"Brett, I understand you invited Rees to dinner tonight. Is that correct?" I said. I felt Rose put her hand on my arm.

"Yes, Patrón. Pam said it would be okay. I just thought it would be nice to have someone my own age here, you know," he said.

"Then why were you way over there when your date was way over here trying to explain why she was crashing the party? Doesn't a young man introduce his date to important people like his parents and his Patrón and Matrón?" I asked. Rose giggled beside me.

Rees had wide eyes. She had not interacted with the clan other than as the production unit for Hearthstone Entertainment.

"Excuse me," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." He stepped over to Rees's side. "Patrón, Matrón, may I present my date this evening, Miss Rees Mendenhall. Rees, I thought you knew everyone and I apologize for not making this formal introduction. This is Brian Frost and Rose Davis, the Patrón and Matrón of our clan ... er ... our whole tribe." He looked past my right shoulder and I glanced over to see Pam standing with her parents. "I'd also like to introduce you to my parents, Bonnie and Jack Owens and my sister, Pam. Mom and Dad, this is Rees. I invited her to dinner this evening."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Rees," Bonnie said. Jack seldom said anything, I noticed. "Don't let all this overwhelm you. Brian and Rose are really very nice people, even when they are disciplining an unruly boy. I can only imagine what they'll do to my daughter later. So you're the new face of Young Cooking? How exciting." Bonnie took charge of the two seventeen-year-olds and dragged Jack with her as she took them around to introduce other members of the tribe. I chuckled.

"Patrón, did I do wrong?" Pam asked plaintively. "I'm sorry if I did."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Rose laughed. "That was Brian being all fatherly toward his new protégé."

"Rose, don't spoil it," I laughed. "I might need to go discipline Pam. For a couple hours." Pam blushed as hot as her brother had earlier.

"Anything you'd like, Patrón," she whispered.

Christmas Eve morning, I set out on a mission to visit all the homes in the village and ranch. Rose went her own way around the community and each of us was joined periodically by one or more of our hearthmates. After we had each visited a house, people from that house often went out to visit as well. It was a way to circulate and talk to people in smaller groups before the big party Christmas Eve.