Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

Month: March 2017 (Page 1 of 7)

ToyLanta Photos and Random Notes

pc-3-31-01The PopCulteer
March 31
, 2017

So after spending almost a week down Atlanta way (traveling many times over the section of Interstate 85 that just collapsed, as seen at the right), and then taking two weeks to edit video from ToyLanta (which was the reason your PopCulteer was down there in the first lace), most of this week was spent catching up on all the non-PopCult work that I normally do.

You may have noticed that PopCult was not updated at the insane pace which I had been keeping for the last month or so. Yet we still delivered at least one post per day.

Now that order has been restored to the universe, I can turn my attention back to ToyLanta because I still have tons of photos that you haven’t seen yet. I also have four or five videos still in the pipeline. It was nice to discover that I can still pull off the rapid-fire video work like I used to. I posted more video last week than I had in the previous fourteen months. But this week I needed a break. The plan is to bring you a ToyLanta photo essay every day next week, beginning Monday.

17629846_10154691390433019_7425593163873508656_nTonight, the Radio Free Charleston cameras are charged and ready for what may be my first taping session for RFC in over a year. The RFC crew (that’s me and Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch) will be at the Cantina in Kanawha City at 8 PM tonight to see the return and resurgence of the mighty and powerful Velvet Brothers!

I’ve never set foot in the place before so I have no idea if we’ll get any usable footage, but we’ll have the cameras on hand in case the opportunity arises, and if it doesn’t, we’ll still be there to experience the velvet magic and music of the sages of Lounge.

Tomorrow, Nitro is the place to be at 5 PM as Third Floor Antiques has a huge sale on toys and comics. Everything will be 20% off regular prices, and that discount swells to 30% if you spend more than a hundred dollars.

It would be cool to see you at both places I mentioned above (and in this post). If your PopCulteer can hold up, we may even make it to the Monkey Barrel for the Wedding Reception of Mr. Johnny Compton and Linda Art, who tie the knot on April Fool’s Day.

Another cool thing to prepare yourself for next week is a refreshening of the schedule over at The AIR. We’ll be moving some shows around, introducing new programs and starting new seasons of our returning shows. You’ll want to stock up on snacks so you can sit in front of your computer listening all day.

Right now, let’s look at some more cool random images from ToyLanta…

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JoeLanta CosPlayers, who somehow didn’t make it into any videos yet.

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An alternate shot of the JoeLanta Cave Explorer and Bryan Tatum’s Skul Cave. You saw a different angle all painted up in Monday Morning Art.

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Just Some Stuff To Do

Your PopCulteer has no time to be comprehensive this week, so we’re just going to tell you about three cool things happening this weekend. As always, there’s way more than this going on in town. Please get out and explore for yourself and support the local scene. These are three things that caught my eye…

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See (Or Hear) Double on Radio Free Charleston International on The AIR

rfci-logo-3-30Radio Free Charleston International returns with a new episode to The AIR Thursday at 3 PM, and it’s a double-shot special! Tune in at the website, or on this handy embedded radio player…

RFC International, the show where your PopCulteer gets to play anything he feels like playing, brings you two songs in a row by a bizarre and eclectic mix of musical artists. Some of it’s brand-new, some decades-old, representing a variety of musical styles. You can hear Radio Free Charleston International on The AIR Thursday at 3 PM, with replays Friday at 9 AM and 10 PM, Saturday at 11 AM and Sunday at 10 PM.Our double-shot show is a good one, just check out this crazy playlist:

Jerry Lee Lewis w/ Jimmy Page  “Rock and Roll”
Jerry Lee Lewis w/ Buddy Guy  “Hadacol Boogie”
Save Ferris  “Anything”
Save Ferris  “Do I Even Like You”
The Jesus and Mary Chain  “Amputation”
The Jesus and Mary Chain  “The Two of Us”
Thin Lizzy  “Jailbreak”
Thin Lizzy  “Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed”
Syd Straw  “CBGBs”
Syd Straw  “A Million Miles”
Depeche Mode  “Where’s The Revolution”
Depeche Mode  “Cover Me”
Steve Hackett  “Behind The Smoke”
Steve Hackett  “50 Miles From The North Pole”
Mel C  “Something for The Fire”
Mel C  “Numb”
Koffin Kats  “Party Time In The End Times”
Koffin Kats  “Black Knight Satellite”
Marc Almond  “Bad To Me”
Marc Almond  “The Idol (pt one)”
Redbone  “Custer Had It Coming”
Redbone  “Dancing Bones”
Navarone  “Chrome”
Navarone  “Snake”
True Sounds of Liberty  “Why Can’t We Do It Again”
True Sounds of Libery  “Nothing Ever Lasts”
Chuck Berry  “Liverpool Drive”
Chuck Berry  “Hey Pedro”

That’s not all that you can hear on The AIR Thursday. We replay this week’s local-music extravaganza, Radio Free Charleston at 5 PM, plus at 6 PM we conclude our presentation of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Don’t Panic, we’ll begin an encore presentation next week). That’s just part of a really cool schedule that includes prime-time specialty music, three hours of live music from The Empty Glass at 10 PM and Swing all night long after that. .Check out The AIR. You can’t live without it.

Wednesday on The AIR with Life Speaks and More!

lifespeaks-logo-3-29You can hear part two of Michele Zirkle Marcum’s appearance on the VIBE Network program, Chasing the Supernatural on The AIR today with a brand-new episode of Life Speaks that you can listen to at 1:30 PM and 7 PM, on The AIR website, or on this embedded radio player…

Josh Bender interviewed Michele on his program, Chasing the Supernatural, and this week we bring you the conclusion, where Michele talks about the events that lead to her book, Rain No Evil, and her adventures in the paranormal and with alternative medicine and spiritual healing.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Wednesday line-up on The AIR offers up the best of our shows as plucked from our library of excellence. That’s a fancy way of saying that we’re still in reruns while we await our revamped schedule and new programming next week.

Here’s the full day’s line-up:

7:00 AM     The Swing Shift
9:00 AM     Radio Coolsville
11:00 AM   The Mystery Hour
Noon          Curtain Call
1:00 PM     On The Road with Mel
1:30 PM     Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum
2:00 PM     The Best of The Real with Mark Wolfe
3:00 PM     Curtain Call
5:00 PM     Indie Music On The AIR
7:00 PM     Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum
7:30 PM     Word Association with Lee & Rudy
8:00 PM     Prognosis
10:00 PM   The Comedy Vault
Midnight    That Conversation with Patrick Felton overnight marathon

Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift Return To The AIR!

rfctss3-28Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift return with all-new episodes today on The AIR! You can listen at The AIR website, or on this nifty little embedded radio-player doo-hickey…

Radio Free Charleston offers up another hour of great local music, kicking things off with the newly-rechristened Scarlet Revolt, and including new music from Bon Air, The Wren Allen Band and Fabulous Head, plus archive music from HARRAH, Byzantine, Chuck Biel and more.

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with a replay Thursday at 5 Pm and Saturday at 10 AM and Midnight. Check out this week’s playlist:

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Scarlet Revolt  “Bleed”
Bon Air  “Cloaking Device”
Wren Allen Band  “Before Hello”
Christopher QiET Vincent  “Ain’t No Man Gonna Change”
Fabulous Head  “C U Move”
CHUM  “Angels In The Snow”
Year Long Disaster  “Names of God”
Byzantine  “Ancestry of the Antirchrist”
HARRAH  “Blood Moon”
Chuck Biel  “Turtles All The Way Down”

Tuesday at 3 PM we’re swinging again on The AIR with a brand-new hour of The Swing Shift. The best Swing Music from the last one hundred years can be found Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays Wednesdays at 7 AM, Thursdays at 7 PM and Saturdays at 9 AM. On top of that, we have Swing all night Thursday night/Friday morning, starting at 1 AM.

Check out this week’s new USDA-approved dose of Swing:

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Mose Allison  “Swinging Machine”
Paul Anka  “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
Steve Lucky and his Rhumba Bums with Carmen Get It  “Down Boy”
Casey MacGill and The Spirits of Rhythm  “Undecided”
Devil Doll  “Things You Make Me Do”
The New Morty Show  “Unskinny Bop”
Postmodern Jukebox  “Sweet Child of Mine”
Wolfgang Lohr  “Top Bop”
Artie Shaw  “All God’s Chillun’ got Rhythm”
Little Charlie and the Organ Grinder Swing  “Flyin’ Home”
Indigo Swing  “I Can’t Stop It”
Glenn Miller  “Little Brown Jug”
Louis Prima  “On The Sunny Side of the Street”

Next week The AIR gets a facelist with a new schedule. Keep checking PopCult for all the info on the best-kept secret on the internet.

Monday Morning Art: Mystery of The Hidden Skull Cave

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Today’s art wraps up Toy Month here in Monday Morning Art with a digital oil painting based on a photograph of the JoeLanta/ToyLanta exclusive Cave Explorer entering Bryan Tatum’s even-more-exclusive Skull Cave diorama set piece. These, of course, both came from ToyLanta, which has been fairly well dominating PopCult for the last several weeks. There’s still more ToyLanta video and photos to come, but we will also have all our regular coverage of the coolest things on the fringes of pop culture.

Contributing to this week’s art, along with the aforementioned Mr. Tatum, are Brian Becker, Felipe Monaco and Cotwold Collectibles, along with the the JoeLanta volunteers who helped assemble the Cave Explorer. Click to enlarge the image.

Sunday Evening Videos: The ToyLanta Panels

jl17001I like to be honest with my readers. This is a bit of a lazy post. I’m collecting all of the panels from ToyLanta that I posted this week, instead of posting a new clip. I’d planned to post the State of the Hobby panel with Greg Brown today, but after editing video for more than ten days straight, I needed a break, so that clip will hit in the next day or two.

In the last week I have edited and posted more video than I had in the previous fourteen months. That’s largely due to my hiatus from video work due to doctor’s orders. Now I’ve proven that I can work at my old rate without suffering crippling headaches, and that means that the return of Radio Free Charleston as a video show is imminent.

But since I’ve been posting at such a fast rate, there’s a chance that you might have missed some of the great panels from ToyLanta that I’ve been preserving for posterity here. In the next week we have one more panel, plus videos of the ToyLanta Dealers Rooms and Dioramas, as well as the parachute drop and maybe even a little surprise clip.

At the top of this post you’ll see Felipe Monaco of Louco Por Bonecos with his history of GI Joe in Brazil. Below It’s James Wozniak of Classic Recasts, talking about the vintage Marx Toy Company molds that are still in use in Mexico.

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ToyLanta 2017 Panel: Larry Hama

larry-001We are close to exhausting our stash of videos of panels from ToyLanta, but we’re saving some of the best for last. ToyLanta (incorporating JoeLanta, Botlanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention) happened March 11-12, 2017. This time around we’re going to check in with Larry Hama, the legendary creator of GI Joe: A Real American Hero. Larry also had best-selling stints as the writer of The Punisher and Wolverine, and as the editor of Marvel’s acclaimed Vietnam War comic, The ‘Nam. He’s also an accomplished artist who broke into comics as an assistant to Wally Wood, and was a longtime associate of Neal Adams.

In this video, Hama talks about his 1970s detour into acting and the time he wound up in the original cast of a Sondheim musical on Broadway. He also takes questions from the audience, and sort of discusses the new action figure based on him, which has already far exceeded all its Kickstarter goals and stretch goals. Of course, he also talks a lot about making comics and his work on GI Joe.

This panel was held the morning after Larry sat in with Radio Cult, proving that he’s a man of many talents, writer, editor, artist, actor and musician.

Check PopCult regularly because we’ve been posting all the panels we recorded all week long. Next up: Our final panel is the State of the Hobby address, this time by Greg Brown of Cotswold Collectibles, and focussing on the 3D printing work by Sean Huxter and Keith Holmes that Cotswold is bringing to fans. After that, we still have a few more videos in the pipeline for next week, but the panels will have all been posted.

ToyLanta happens every March in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s not too early to find out about next year’s show. Visit ToyLanta for early details on how you can be part of the coolest toy show in the South. Plus you can check out their Facebook page.

Ten Years of RFC Flashback: Episode 43

rfc43montagethumbThis week we reach back to June 2008 for “Holden Caufield Shirt,” the forty-third edition of Radio Free Charleston. With this puppy we featured music from The Clementines, InFormation and Melanie Larch, plus the classic Troma Trailer for Daniel Boyd’s Strangest Dreams: Invasion Of The Space Preachers and the educational cartoon “Drugs Are Bad.”

We shot our host segments on the lawn at The University Of Charleston during Symphony Sunday, where it was hot enough to bake a person’s brain if they were stupid enough to wear a heavy felt hat. Other locations in this episode of RFC include The La Belle Theater in South Charleston, Taylor Books on Capitol Street, and lots of backwoods boondockery from two decades ago. Plus there are the Catfish, gathering in anticipation of FestivAll.

Full production notes can be found HERE.

PopCult Note: Remember that episode of Radio Free Charleston that we skipped a couple of weeks ago? You’ll find it here next week.

ToyLanta 2017 Panel: Super Joe at 40

super-joeYet again we plumb the depths of our ample video bounty from ToyLanta to bring you one of the panel discussions. ToyLanta (incorporating JoeLanta, Botlanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention) happened March 11-12, 2017. An informative panel about a topic that not a lot of GI Joe collectors are aware of was the Super Joe panel. 2017 marks forty years since Hasbro’s failed “Hail Mary” idea of shrinking GI Joe down to nearly MEGO size and repositioning him as a super hero with science fiction based enemies.

On this panel we find Steve Stovall and Steve Druin, Super Joe enthusiasts who have collaborated on the comic book insert for a new set limited-run outfit and equipment set produced by Druin, and Greg Brown of Cotswold Collectibles. Stovall maintains the Super Joe 3D website, which is loaded with cool information about this overlooked part of GI Joe history. This is a great resource for folks who want to learn more about Super Joe.

There is cross-pollination between this panel and the Loco Por Bonecos panel we posted earlier. Felipe Monaco, on that panel, explains how much of the Brazillian Falcon line of 12″ figures was derived from the 8″ Super Joe concepts. Greg explains how Cotswold Collectibles came to carry Felipe’s Super Joe-style outfits, and how that spurred an interest in creating 12″ versions of the Super Joe figures (an interest that has spread to the Official GI Joe Collectors Club, who are releasing their own 12″ versions of Super Joe).

Check PopCult regularly because we’ll be posting all the panels we recorded all week long. Next up: Larry Hama, creator of GI Joe: A Real American Hero, talks about his career in comics, toys and on Broadway, and takes questions from the audience.

ToyLanta happens every March in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s not too early to find out about next year’s show. Visit ToyLanta for early details on how you can be part of the coolest toy show in the South. Plus you can check out their Facebook page.

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