“Me too,” Surdo agrees, still noticeably flushed and slightly out of breath even though the game has been over for nearly an hour.

“I live for the start of football season,” muses Jaime. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t watch the games.”

“I guess we’d be bored to tears,” suggests Surdo.

“I guess we would.”

A tram pulls up to start them on the first leg of their journey home.

International Broadcasting Company
IBC Building
200 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10016

INTEROFFICE

To:   Pierce Spencer

From:   Ida Moulay, Vice-President in Charge of Programming

Date:   May 3, 2010

NOTE: This memo is company private and is printed on flash paper. It will disintegrate if photocopied or if allowed to remain outside its protective envelope for longer than five minutes.

Just a note to let you know the football player recruiting program is an unqualified success. Every player on the list you approved was signed up and equipped in time for the opening game on Sunday.

As an interesting aside, even though we had only two men (one on each team) under our guidance in each contest, still we were quite easily able to successfully dictate the action levels of every game played. I believe this conclusively confirms your theory.

I feel we may now start to think in terms of our longer-range goals, to wit:

(a) the creation of “ideal” or “dream” matches to boost ratings.

(b) the continued buildup of a “bigger than life” hero (Harv Matision has worked out quite well thus far—depending on your eventual objectives, we may want to stick with him) to be used for network promotional purposes.

(c) the elimination of players who don’t contribute to the excitement of the game (T.K. Mann comes immediately to mind—perhaps a “dream” match pitting him against Matision in which Mann emerges the hapless, i.e., lifeless, victim?).

I leave these suggestions for your consideration.

For your information, I’m enclosing the directorial transcript from a representative play in one of yesterday’s games. Brief though it may be, I feel it will adequately enable you to evaluate the performance of Danny Ho. A recent acquisition, he seems to be working out quite nicely. We may want to keep him in mind for future stardom.

Should you have any questions, I’ll be only too happy to answer them.

Directorial Transcript

Sharks versus Prospectors

May 2, 2010

Excerpt

Tuesday, July 13, 2010