Month: July 2013 (Page 2 of 3)

This week’s scheduled PopCult Toybox has been delayed at the request of the toymaker. In its place we bring you a pres release for Skylanders Monopoly.

USAopoly under license from Hasbro has teamed up with Activison to create Skylanders Monopoly.

This version of the iconic board game features 22 ‘newly discovered’ Skylands locations for players to own including Stealth Elf’s Ninja Dojo, Spyro’s Chompy Diner and Cynder’s Haunted House.

The railroads of the game have been changed into services like Flynn’s Blimp Tours and Moleskin Mine Train whilst the Community Chest is now a Treasure Chest.

Chance cards are now Luck-O-Trons and the hotels have been renamed castles.

The game tokens have also been given a redesign, with players now moving around the board using one of six metal Kaos, Sheep, Cannon, Pirate Ship, Swords or Chompie figures.

The game is now available in the US at Amazon.com and at stores including Hastings, Entertainment Earth and GameStop Canada, with an RRP of $39.99.

This week Radio Free Charleston is marking seven years as a video entity with a very special episode. This is not a big splashy celebration–we’re saving that for our 200th episode, early next year.

We do have a surprise for you though. Usually we feature local artists on our show, but this week we are taking a bit of a departure. We are going to visit Dave Roberts’ house on Montrose Avenue in South Charleston!

Dave has been on our show numerous times as a member of The Nanker Phelge, Trielement and other bands. Last month, Dave and his lovely wife, Lisa, opened the doors to their house and turned their living room into a concert venue.

Neil and Sean

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This week’s art is a digital painting over a crappy phone camera photo taken in the tunnel leading from Wheeling into Ohio. You may notice that it’s all trippy and stuff.  Click to see a bigger version.

Check back later this morning for the long-awaited seventh anniversary episode of Radio Free Charleston, featuring international superstar virtuoso musicians Neil Zaza and Sean O’Bryan Smith, playing together for the first time…in a living room in South Charleston.

Tonight we look at a new animated pilot for one of my favorite obscure superheroes, Captain Canuck, the guardian of all things Canadian. I discovered Captain Canuck when I found the second issue of his comic in a Paperback Mart way back in the 1970s. Follow this link and scroll all the way down for the full story. I wound up subscribing so that I wouldn’t miss any issues, and was treated to the artwork of George Freeman and Jean-Claude St. Aubin. Richard Comely’s creation has been revived through Kickstarter funding, and even though he seems to have suffered a needless redesign of his uniform, this is still pretty cool.

The PopCulteer
July 12, 2013

Social media has been abuzz this week over a new Gallup poll that proclaims Charleston to be the most miserable city in the country.

Only it didn’t. Gallup polled over 350,000 people nationwide, asking a variety of questions based on their arbitrary opinion of what Gallup thinks makes up a high quality of living. Gallup doesn’t even use the phrase “most miserable cities.” That’s an invention of the press.

Actually, Gallup’s poll covers “well-being,” not happiness. They didn’t call folks up and ask “how miserable are you?” The press, using Gallup’s data, postulates misery based on which metropolitan areas came in last in Gallup’s chosen criteria: life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behavior and access to basic necessities. Gallup updates this poll every three months. It’s not exactly anything new and their methodology has always been questionable.

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The PopCult Bookshelf 

Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff
By Peter Bagge and various
Fantagraphics Books
ISBN 978-1-60699-622-5
$19.99

Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff is an aptly named collection of many of the other comic strips the cartoonist did for his classic comic book series, HATE, as well as several that were done for other sources, all collected under one cover. HATE was primarily noted for telling the story of Buddy Bradley and those stories are collected in two excellent volumes, “Buddy Does Jersey” and “Buddy Does Seattle.”

Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff collects the backup strips from HATE along with strips that were done for Weirdo Magazine, Details, SPIN Magazine, Magnet Magazine, and other places. Not all of the comic strips are Peter Bagge working solo. It’s a testament to Bagge’s reputation that the people who wanted to work with him include Daniel Clowes, Los Bros Hernandez, Alan Moore, and Robert Crumb.

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Cast-a-Way Toys is one of the new wave of custom action figure houses that make high-quality MEGO-style figures for limited run figure sets and customizer use. Well, they were. A few years ago their molds were lost in China, and the company has been operating on the fringe of limbo since.

However, they are poised to return, if they can raise the money to create molds for an all-new body design. Cast-a-Way Toys is teaming up with ZICA Toys, another of the “new MEGO” toy companies, to develop a new action figure body, one that eliminates the fragile rubber bands of the original MEGO bodies and adds articulation and features that make the new bodies more customizable.

Cast-a-Way Toys’ great MEGO-sized recreations of Captain Action and Dr. Evil

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This week, in honor of our now-delayed anniversary episode of Radio Free Charleston, I went back and revisited one of the classic images from Monday Morning Art, “Tracks East.” This is a digitally-assaulted photograph of the train tracks in Dunbar. The new version has brand-new wang-doodling and geegawery done to it. Click to see it bigger.

Jeff Ellis and Sasha Colette

Radio Free Charleston 187, our seventh anniversary show, which was to have gone live tomorrow, is being delayed a week due to circumstances beyond our control.  Tonight, to keep you in the anniversary mood, we’re bring you RFC 141 , our big fifth anniversary special, featuring over an hour of the best bands in town, all recorded live in two locations over two days in July, 2011.  You will see and hear Sasha Colette, Mother Nang, Pepper Fandango, Andy Park, Jeff Ellis, 600 lbs of SIN, Remains UnNamed, Disturbing The Peace, Linework and many other bands. It’s an epic show.

A week from Monday RFC 187 will be here in PopCult, and one week after that, RFC 188, with HarraH and Motion Theater will be here.

The PopCulteer
July 5, 2013

A Low-key anniversary

I’m writing this edition of The PopCulteer on the fourth of July, which is the official anniversary date of Radio Free Charleston. Our first episode was unveiled on this day in 2006. It’s hard to believe that it’s been so long. The last seven years seem to be a bit of a blur. Time flies when you’re having fun.

A clean-shaven host from way back in episode 2.

And I am still having fun doing the show (I’m sure not in it for the money). We have a very special anniversary show coming up Monday, and I’ll tell you all about it then, but for now, just be content in the knowledge that it documents the first collaboration of two internationally-renowned musical virtuosos.

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