As you hear in the song posted above, it’s clean up time here in PopCult. I don’t have an elaborate post planned for today because I’m taking some time to restore old images and missing files to the early entries in the blog.

This isn’t hard work, but it is tedious and time-consuming, and because of that, it may take months or even years for me to get everything put back the way it should be. I’ve been writing PopCult for well over fifteen years, and every time it got jerked around the servers at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, more nuts and bolts fell off. It’s going to take time to sweep those all up and figure out where they go.

I do have a few quick thing to mention about more current PopCult happenings, though.

The Governor of West Virginia took time away from his busy pursuit of trying to enact a massive income tax cut that will mostly benefit himself to lift the moratorium on live performances in the state.

I think it’s ill-advised and way too soon, but I’m happy for my friends who are fully-vaccinated and eager to perform in front of fully-vaccinated audiences, who are still wearing masks and practicing safe social distancing.

While many fine folks are chomping at the bit to get back to normal, I am not fully confident that it’s a smart thing to do yet, so I will not be plugging live and local shows in PopCult at this time. I can’t personally take responsibility or be complicit in something that still has the potential to sicken or kill people.

Maybe in a month or two I’ll change my mind, but for now I still don’t feel right telling people to go out and do something which I don’t feel is safe. I hope my readers can respect that. When I start plugging live shows again, I don’t plan to make a big deal about it. I’ll just start doing it.

I still plan to support the local scene on Radio Free Charleston and The AIR, and any responsible way that I can. I’m hopeful that we don’t face a fourth wave of the virus, and things can start to go back to normal. I’d just rather err on the side of caution than possibly send people to their deaths.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about a new episode of MIRRORBALL and talk about The WWE Network’s transition to the Peacock streaming service.

In the meantime, I’ll be re-sizing, restoring and posting old images, like the totally random ones I’ve posted along with this piece…just in case you were wondering what the hell those were.

And I’ll try to figure out why I slapped on a toupee and look like a high school gym teacher in this picture from a dozen or so years ago. You find the damnedest things buried on random old hard drives.