B:
If this episode looks even grainier and grungier than the others, there's a reason for that. The master was lost somewhere along the way, and no one even seemed to have a dub. At last superfan W. Owen found an old VHS tape with a recording straight from cable — only the tape had significant mold damage.
After viewing ROX #45, one may well conclude that it should have stayed lost.
The premise is perhaps interesting: the mechanical edit controller at the public access station broke, and so I couldn't do any editing that week. Rather than miss our weekly time slot, we decided to record an entire episode “in camera” — that is, the show was assembled on the fly by judicious application of that little red button which starts and stops the recording. Any graphics or soundtrack would have to be supplied live.
We aimed to build the show in 29 one-minute segments, even though we knew the ever-loquacious J would have trouble restraining himself to such paltry portions. But we actually succeeded on the technical front, more or less. The quality of the content is another question entirely.
I did make a couple edits to get the show ready for cablecast: a thirty-second warning was added at the beginning, and credits at the end, with music by Groverpumper. But other than that, the program was straight from the camera tape.
Here are the 29 segments, roughly:
1. Cold open: Fade up on me in the bathroom mirror wielding the camera. I walk through our Dunn Street house while counting off the first thirty seconds of the show. Note the sheela na gig photocopy on the wall! You can see Xy, J, Worm, Moonboy, and others as I make my way to the TV in the living room. I must have rehearsed this because my timing is impeccable, if I do say so myself. I press play on our... [More...]
