ROX #5: Rum & Coke Special

J: This fifth episode of the series starts out embarrassing, and turns eventually to shit. The result was, for this young series, a surprising eruption of controversy that may have had more to do with the long-term sustenance of the series than anyone else ever realized.

Looking back on this episode these years later, I am most immediately shocked and embarrassed by my clothing — those horrid pinstripe shorts, that inexcusable purple shirt. Egads.

Fortunately, other embarrassments divert the focus. Unfortunately, many of those embarrassments are, once again, personal. Some are funny, at least to me: my response when Editor B asks me to use the word 'assiduous' in a sentence, for example. Some are just painful: see my reading from the play, “Rum & Coke.”

And then there is Copraphagia Corner. Here we attempted to show a picture that my roommate downloaded from the Indiana... [More...]

Lynn: Lots of variations on rum and coke.

They're still showing their own paltry income in a blatant attempt at public access panhandling.

Joe recites one of the nastiest bits of prose I've ever heard on Television from a little book by Keith Reddin called, coincidently, “Rum & Coke”. As jokes go (they set it up as a dramatic reading of serious literature) it's too long for pure shock value. Joe does a surprisingly good job of recitation, though; he kept a straight face through the whole thing. Incredibly, B manages to misspell both the first and last names of the author despite having the book available.

This episode has an uncanny focus on the buttocks and associated anatomy. They start with sitting and by the end of the program feature “Coprophagia Corner”. I could have lived my entire life without knowing what “coprophagia” means and been happy in my ignorance.

J is... [More...]