SLICK CITY: THE PITCH

Alright everyone, you know it’s high time for some major spin control. We may have managed to plug that baby up, but now we’ve got to fight that public relations fight. Ha ha – who would have thought that 4.9 million barrels of crude oil spilling out would piss so many people off? But seriously, the bad press is still everywhere, and we are, quite frankly, getting hammered out there. So what can we do about this? How exactly can we turn this PR nightmare into a PR fairytale?

Well, we in the spin department think that we’ve got an idea that you upper managerial types are gonna love. Let me explain. Basically, it’s like this: when we thought about fairytales, we thought about castles. And when we thought about castles – as vanguards of the consumer world, we didn’t think about real “historic” castles. No, we thought about pink stucco creations – you know, like the kind you might associate with movie studios and animated versions of Cinderella. And then, like magic (and we mean that literally), we said in unison, “THEME PARK ON AN OIL RIG!” And then we wondered, how much energy is 4.9 million barrels anyway?

Well, it turns out (this with some very speedy back of the envelope calculations) that the amount of energy we can get from 4.9 million barrels is just about the same as the energy needed to run our own magic kingdom for the better part of a year! This is the honest to freaking goodness truth! We can even show you the calculations if you want. Believe me when I say we did them properly: Yup, did that 30% efficiency pulled from the crude oil thingy, and other science stuff like that. That’s right. Magic castle on the water, oil from the water, energy from the oil, and then energy to run the park! It’s freaking awesome!

But we digress. Let’s not bore you with talk of numbers: let’s talk THEME PARK ON AN OIL RIG!

Now this is just preliminary brainstorming, but we’re thinking a great name would be something like SLICK CITY! Nice, right? Maybe even add to that a catchy tagline – something like THE FAMILY FRIENDLY OIL SPILL. We can even have animal characters wandering around the park, with maybe some kind of funky oil in their fur and feathers so it looks all fancy like. We can even envision a theatre area where an oiled down anthropomorphic animal mascot version of Grease is performed. Maybe it’s just us, but we think people will pay some serious coin to see that.

And the rides? Well, obviously we need a roller coaster. Perhaps one made to look like crude oil on tracks – black and all shiny like. People can even sit in barrels or something. Wait – maybe we should save the barrels for something like the log ride. Except that the barrels might even go faster since they’re flowing through a petroleum based fluid: dredging up some first year physics here and stuff about friction coefficients. Oh man, wouldn’t it be cool if we can somehow light it on fire!

What about a game like “Stop the Press?” You can have all these carts that go around a track, and the riders can have these light guns that shoot at things for points. For instance, they can shoot lasers at all the nasty news articles and opinion pieces. Or how about at the journalists themselves? Ha ha, just kidding – we’re just throwing ideas out there, but you get the picture right?

What we’re saying is that we think (in a manner of speaking) that we’ve hit oil here! A gusher of an opportunity, if you know what we mean. Seriously folks, it’s like the ideas are spilling out uncontrollably. It’s like – wait a minute – FRIED FREAKING FOOD!

Whoa. That one came out of nowhere. Somebody pinch us now. This is going to be so awesome…