ROX #9: Family Values Special

B: The term “family values” was getting a lot of play in the media in the summer of 1992, after Dan Quayle made his famous Murphy Brown speech. John Byers, a local firebrand who worked at the public access television station in Bloomington where ROX first aired, suggested that we do a show on this theme.

And we did. This was the first episode we shot in the attic of our new digs, 521 N. Washington. It was a little hot up there in August, but we would return to the attic for about five more shows in the fall.

MF ran the camera for us. I think she was still staying with us at that time.

There are a few elements of this show that are not properly credited. The breast pump video was dumpstered by Mr. G. The “Family Values Explained” dialog, which may appear to be spontaneous, was actually a reading from Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip.

W. Owen: I have yet to see more than a minute or two of this entire episode.

The reason being, although BCAT/CATS has scheduled it to air quite a few times in the past several years they always have to run it after hours (due to content) and leave it in the clutches of their automation system. In the prologue to the show, right after XY (in trailer-trash redneck guise) yells the aforementioned line she aims a TV remote at the camera and it briefly goes to video white noise before (presumably) the episode titles come crashing in...only the CATS automation system invariably interprets that as a dead signal and switches over to SCOLA or Free Speech TV or something.

One of these days I'm gonna get a wild hair and just go over with a couple blank tapes and have 'em make me a copy so I can finally see the whole damn thing.

Edit 7/30/2006: and now I'm informed by B that several episodes in... [More...]