Technical Difficulties

It finally happened last night at Neutrino.
In total it was our 8th show in the theater and I guess I've been expecting something disastrous to happen sooner or later. It's always the second show (sophomore slump) that's terrible. It's too bad to - as I had a friend as a guest star playing with us last night.
From the beginning the one of the decks I was using wasn't playing the tapes correctly. I have a pre show slideshow I play (like movie trivia) for the audience, and one of the two decks was playing that tape with lines on it. It worked fine from the other deck, so I knew it wasn't the tape.
Once the show started - the deck was playing everything fine. The show went smoothly up until the final scene. I put the final scene tape into the 'bad deck' (which again, had been working fine since the initial slip up at the beginning of the show) and the deck read "Error 9-2099" and shut itself off. Having only one minute and thirty seconds to figure out what the hell to do - I turned the deck back on and pressed the eject button...
No dice. The deck read the same error message. I then shut it off and turned it back on myself and was able to get the tape out (just as the previous scene was ending)
but it looked like this:


(except it was a DV tape, not a VHS tape).
I couldn't do anything. I tried to 'rewind' the mini DV tape by hand - to no avail.
Luckily the improvisors acted out the final scene on the stage - so the audience got some sense of closure for the movies.
I felt terrible. This show is such a learning experience.