The PopCulteer
October 3, 2014
After a week where your PopCulteer posted a record amount of video, we slide into the weekend with a variety of topics, plus just one more video (or five).
This week we will address the Suddenlink stink, toss plugs your way for a night of animation, a local filmmaker’s bid to work for Motorhead, plus a rundown of local shows, and we’ll also bring you a mini photo essay from the subject of this freshly-made video of the 2014 Charleston Rod Run Doo Wop Car Show…
At the end of this week’s PopCulteer we’ll show you some bonus car show photos, but first let’s dive into the other topics…
Suddenlink Stink
So Suddenlink has undertaken the Kamikaze tactic of dropping 24 Viacom channels, right at the start of the fall television season. Amy Robinson has a good rundown of what this means for Suddenlink customers. Basically it means that Suddenlink customers lost access to The Daily Show, South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants and all the Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1 and other Viacom channels, most importantly among them, Comedy Cental.
Suddenlink has replaced these channels with an assortment of channels moved down from their digital tier and a rag-tag bunch of obscure channels scraped from the bottom of the television barrel.
This is a real head-scratcher. Viacom had accepted Suddenlink’s most recent offer, then Suddenlink withdrew it and caused this stalemate. It’s almost like Suddenlink is deliberately sabatoging their cable TV business. Just a few weeks ago, their local spokesman talked about transitioning into a post-cable business model, telling the Gazette, “It’s not just about video anymore – it’s about all the other services that Suddenlink can provide.” Maybe they’re trying to hasten the inevitable.
There is a conspiracy theory that Suddenlink dropped the Viacom channels over politics, replacing their channels with more conservative networks. Maybe they thought that if they replaced The Daily Show with Glenn Beck’s Blaze Network that people would just be content with getting fake news, whether it was deliberately funny or just unintentionally so.
All this really does for me is affirm that I made the correct choice when I dumped Suddenlink cable and switched to Direct TV last January. I get many more channels. The picture quality is vastly superior. I’m paying way less. I have way fewer service interruptions. I can get a living representative on the phone without having to play Frogger with their automated unresponse system. And now…I don’t have to worry about losing South Park one-week into their new season.
Holly’s video
Holly Sider has entered a competition to make a video for Motorhead. Normally I don’t condone this sort of contest, but I’m making an exception because A) Holly does amazing work and B) It’s Motorhead, for Christ’s sake. Go HERE and vote as often as they’ll let you.Here’s Holly’s video…
ShockaCon Stuff
I still have about five hours of ShockaCon video to edit and post. I will be taking a few days off from this so I can work on PopCult and Radio Free Charleston. Between RFC 200, School Girl Zombies from Hell High (you have two morce chances to see it, watch the clip below) and documenting ShockaCon, I’ve posted almost six and a half hours of video in the last two weeks. Let’s see the guys at the other paper do that.
Costume Parade
Lost among all the lengthy panels and performances, I posted one short ShockaCon clip of the costume parade, with music by The Renfields. Here it is…
Animation on TCM
Winsor McKay’s Gertie
Monday night, for the first time in a couple of years, Turner Classic Movies will devote six hours of airtime to rarely-seen animation. This time around they’re bringing us tons of TCM premieres of rarely-seen silent cartoons.
Beginning at 8 PM, animation historian John Canemaker will co-host a batch of cartoons by the legend, Winsor McKay. McKay, the creator of the Little Nemo comic strip, does not get enough credit for his pioneering work in animation. Ten McCay shorts will be shown including Little Nemo (1911), Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), How A Mosquito Operates (1912), The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), The Flying House (1921) and Gertie On Tour (1921). Some of you may remember that I used an edited and colorized version of The Sinking of the Lusitania for a music video by The Scrap Iron Pickers.
Following that, a collection of cartoons by Bray Studios will be show, co-hosted by animation curator/collector, Thomas Stathes. Glen Bray invented the animation cel, which made possible most of the animation created before the digital age. Cartoons included in this collection include Farmer Al Falfa Sees New York (1916), Bobby Bumps’ Pup Gets the Flea-Enza (1919), Colonel Heeza Liar, Detective (1923) and Dinky Doodle in Lost and Found (1926)
VAN BEUREN STUDIOS began in 1920 as the “Aesop’s Fables Studio,” founded by Amedee Van Beuren and Paul Terry, coming into its own in 1929 and releasing its cartoons through RKO Studios.Van Beuren was almost a forgotten entity until their cartoons starting showing up on hundreds of different budget-line cartoon DVDs in the past fifteen years. TCM screenings will include The Fly’s Bride (1929), an “Aesop’s Fable”; A Swiss Trick (1931), featuring Tom and Jerry (not to be confused with MGM’s famous cat-and-mouse team); Pastrytown Wedding (1934), The Sunshine Makers (1935) and Ted Eshbaugh’s early Technicolor animated version of The Wizard of Oz (1933). Animator/director/historian Steve Stanchfield co-hosts.
All of the McKay and Bray animation, and some of the Van Beuren shorts are silent. These prints are restored and should look spectacular.From 12:15 AM animated feature films will be screened. Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1927), Max Fleischer’s Gulliver’s Travels (1939), Toei Animation’s Magic Boy (1959) and Chuck Jones The Phantom Tollbooth (1969) fill out the schedule. Most of the above info came from TCM’s press release and Now Playing magazine.
Stuff To Do
Friday all the music we have info on is free, except for the show at The Empty Glass and the all-ages show in Cross Lanes. At 5 PM Marshall Petty and The Groove will be at Five Corners Cafe. The legendary Carpenter Ants take the stage at Taylor Books at 7:30 PM. Spurgie hankins and Friends invade Bruno’s on Leon Sullivan Way at 9 PM. Hogan’s Goat starts at 9 Pm at Crumbpeckers in Saint Albans.
The Fever is described as “LA punk rockers from Germany.” THE FEVER offer up some ballsy Neo-Wave tunes reminiscent of some of the best bands from NYC and San Francisco circa late 1970’s. They will be supported by The Setlement, and 8-piece jam band from Huntington. The cover is seven bucks and the show will start later than they say it will.
Satruday’s free music includes Lovejoy and the Killjoys at 7 Pm at Bluegrass Kitchen and The Carpenter Ants at 9 PM at Roni’s Pizza and bar in Elkview.
The RFC cameras will be on hand for the return of WATT4 at The Blue Parrot, with Ouralias and Seth Kitchen. Five bucks gets you in the door.
Rod Run Photos
Here are a few. I’ll post more next week. Until then, check out the video up at the top of this post.
That’s about it for this week. Look for more ShockaCon videos starting up in a few days, plus all our regular features right here in Charleston’s original Pop Culture Blog.
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