PopCult

The PopCulteer
October 30, 2026

It’s that time of the year again.  Halloween is right in our face, and your PopCulteer is already looking past it to the next big (non-Turkey-centric) holiday.  We have a short column this week as yours truly is already hard at work on The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide, which will begin Sunday in this blog to aide you with your holiday gift giving duties, with all recommendations having our usual pop culture slant.

Following the format we’ve used for the last few years, after two special Sunday entries this weekend, this year’s Gift Guide will have at least two entries every weekday, with the plan seeing them posted online by Noon, Eastern time. At least one item per day will be a single item, with a retail price of less than a hundred bucks. After our launch, I’m taking weekends off again, and there’s a good chance that, beginning in our second week, I may have a few days with three entries. All will have some kind of link to pop culture, which is, after all, what I write about in this blog.

There will be entries that include multiple items, and some of our suggestions will exceed that fifty dollar level…a few will obliterate it, in fact. We will also do a few entries that shine our spotlight on some reliably excellent online retailers, and probably a few local shops, too.

Because of the quirks of this year’s calendar, the final day will fall on a Monday. Then, on December 4I’ll run the Master List of everything I recommend, complete with links to the original entries.

This year’s Gift Guide will be comprised of toys, physical media (LPs, CDs, DVD/Blu Rays, real books and other things you can hold in your hands), local, regional and online retailers, plus maybe some decor, clothing items, and various and sundry objects of fine knick-knackery.

Thanksgiving will be “Turkey Gift Day,” once again, because really, who reads this blog on Thanksgiving Day?

I will try to shy away from recommending limited editions of anything. I want people to be able to find the gift ideas I suggest.

I’ve actually done some form of Gift Guide every year since I started this blog in 2005, so this is the 22nd time I’ve come up with a list of gift suggestions for my readers. It really took off about fifteen years ago, and for the last few years I’ve been winding it up in November for two reasons: First, it gives people time to order gifts that can’t be purchased locally; Second, it allows your humble blogger to be done with this massive undertaking in time to make our yearly visit to Chicago for my lovely wife’s birthday.

In fact, this year presents a fun and ridiculous new element of adventure as I will be travelling while we begin the Gift Guide this weekend. What, you may ask, was I thinking?

Another quirk of the calendar this year sees me posting the preview for The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide the day before Halloween. I have not foresaken that holiday. We’re just observing it over on our sister internet radio station today. Beginning at 7 AM Friday (that’s today) you can find Halloween editions of our music and comedy specialty programs, plus a coffinload of special presentations on The AIR.   The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page. We’re going to run that stuff until Midnight, Sunday.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day, plus all our regular features and, starting Sunday, The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide.

About eleven months ago, I told you about a Kickstarter campaign for what turned out to be one of my favorite trading card sets of all time. NostalgiCards’, Metropolis Picture Gum Trading Cards.  This project was also the subject of my final article for Non Sport Update. When the set arrived, I was totally blown away.  From the period-accurate design and packaging and the cards themselves, this was a note-perfect trading card set.

So of course I’m going to recommend the follow-up set, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Picture Gum Trading Cards.  Not only is Caligari considered the other pillar of German Expressionism, it’s a personal favorite of mine, and the bottom of the post you’ll learn more about my connection to this legendary film.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a very influential 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the definitive work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. Some folks consider it a zombie movie, but it really isn’t. It is dripping with style and without this movie, we likely would not have had Nosferatu, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, or any of the other major works of cinematic horror. You can see visual cues swiped from this film in everything from Forbidden Zone to Edward Scissorhands.

NostalgiCards’ Todd Riley began work on Metropolis trading cards back in 1996, when it seemed that the film was about to slip into the public domain. In fact, it was to be their first product. While fate, and the Sonny Bono copyright extension act put the kibosh on that plan, NostalgiCards went on to release sets like Morbid Monster Cards and Galaxy Goons from 1999 to 2003, then Riley took a break from creating his own sets.  Metropolis was his comeback set, and back then he told me what the plan was for his next project.

So I’m really excited to tell you about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Picture Gum Trading Cards, which just launched last week. I’ve already kicked in,  and the funding goals have been met, with stretch goals dropping like flies.

Let me quote the set details from the campaign…

This is our second trading card set in our Silent Film Classic series. This time we are bringing you the quintessential work of early German Expressionist cinema – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A faithful tribute to the non-sport sets of the 1920s-1930s, this is the first time a complete card series has been dedicated to this early horror masterpiece.

The colorful 54-card base set features images from the film and accompanying text of the story. Printed on vintage style, thick 24pt stock.

The card size of 2 7/8 by 2 3/8 inches, is being done to be as authentic to the period as possible. This was the size of the earliest gum cards from the era. It wasn’t until nearly 40 years after the film debuted that the modern card size of 3 1/2 by 2 1/2 inches appeared.

When the film was first seen in theaters, it was actually tinted. Daylight scenes were tinted yellow, night scenes were blue, and scenes inside Jane’s house were pink. So, we have made it so all cards can be found in all 3 colors.

Look for three special limited Biography Cards randomly inserted in the packs. Cards depict director Robert Wiene, Werner Krauss as Dr. Caligari, and Conrad Veidt as Cesare. Odds of finding a Biography Card is 1 in 8 packs. Each can also be found in three different colors.

Card series produced during the era came with gum, and wax wrappers were used to help keep the gum fresh. So, we are also using real wax wrappers for the series to give it that nostalgic quality.

Some of the earliest trading card boxes from the era consisted of a 3-part box including a separate box topper that was inserted along an edge between the lid and the base tray to create a striking display. We are continuing the tradition with our own 3-part box.

There are several different ways you can pledge and get your hands on these cards, from buying a single wax pack, to full sets, unopened boxes and Master Sets where you get everything.  You also have the chance to pick up the Metropolis cards, and extra, including a period-accurate collector’s album.

Since the project funded so quickly, many stretch goals have already been met,  NostalgiCards has already added promo cards, more biography cards and a custom gum wrapper to the package, and they’re closing in on adding three movie poster box-topper cards to the collection.

If you’re a fan of German Expressionism, I don’t need to do a hard sell on this set. It’s fully-funded, NostalgiCards has an imeccable track record and this set is just cool as hell.  Follow THiS LINK to kick in. The campaign has less than two weeks to run, so you don’t want to sleep on this!

And now, after a video break, here’s “the rest of the story.”

Above, you see me basically scratching a 40-plus-year itch.

In the early 1980s, when I was a communications major at what was then West Virginia State College, I was taking a film appreciation class called “Horror and Fantasy in Film.” Because it was so long ago, I’m not certain who the professor was. My fuzzy memory says it must have been Bart Weiss, but my heart tells me it was my old and much-missed friend, Danny Boyd. For the full story on how, four years ago, I decided to take a public domain print of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and set it to the music of The Stranglers, visit the original post from 2022.

Needless to say, this film has been a big part of at least two-thirds of my life, and if you want a hint of why it deserves a trading card set, just watch the video above…or better yet, watch it with a more appropriate soundtrack HERE.

STUFF TO DO is PopCult‘s weekly guide to just a few of the great events happening in Charleston, Huntington and a few other points here in West Virginia, and sometimes a little beyond our borders, in the coming days.  This weekend Halloween happens and we’re going to bring you 13 graphics, roughly in order, for various acts of Halloweenery in which you may indulge.

Each week I try to tell you about a few cool events all around the state that you might not know about.  If you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future you can still contact me via Social Media at Facebook,  BlueSky,  Spoutible,  Instagram  or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote.  I do ask that you send a graphic that includes the date, time and location, of the event, as well as the cost to attend.

Keep in mind that I’ll need this several days in advance, so please don’t send me a graphic on the day of the event and expect it to show up in this feature.

For much more comprehensive guides to things you can get into in our region, check out these two wonderful resources:

Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

Mya Ross at Status Quo does a much better job of compiling a list of local events than I do, and you can find the WTSQ guide to events HERE. Toss ’em a donation while you’re over there.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Among the notable music venues in town are The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe, Live at The Shop in Dunbar, Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, In Huntington, there’s local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club),  The Wandering Wind Meadery is on Charleston’s West Side, Plus there’s music in Charleston at The Blue Parrot, Sam’s Uptown Cafe and Fife Street Brewing. Plus there are free concerts almost every weekend at Taylor Books.

You might also find cool musical events at Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Here’s a few more select suggestions for STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and Huntington this weekend, kicking off with a added feature to WWE’s live broadcast of Smackdown from the Charleston Colisseum on Friday night…

Radio Free Charleston is ALL-NEW as we try to revive everybody’s sagging Halloween Spirit this Tuesday on The AIR!  To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

This week we jump headfirst into Halloween and Halloween-adjacent musics to get everybody back in the mood for the spookiest holiday of the year.

With Halloween hype starting in June, and people looking past the fun of Halloween to the potential horrors that might be unleased on Election Day, it’s easy to lose sight of the fun part of being really scared.

This week we have three full hours of scary-ish music, with brand-new tunes from The Pistol Whippers (just in time for Saturday’s Halloween Hootenanny at The Empty Glass), I. Jeziak & The Surfers, Sgt. Van’s Bionic Marines, Tony Iommi, and more.  Plus we dig into our archives for more spooky stuff, and bring you songs from some Halloween All-Stars.

Check out this playlist, with links to all, of the artist’s pages…

RFC V5 290

hour one
The Pistol Whippers “Siren Baby”
I.Jeziak & The Surfers “Moonlight”
Hannah Gill “Moon Ray”
Sgt. Van’s Bionic Marines “From the Dark Side of the Moon”
John Lancaster “Phantom Moon”
HARRAH “Blood Moon”
The Irreplaceables “Bad Moon Rising”
The Big Bad “Seeking Souls”
Tony Iommi “Over The Violent Sun”
Payback’s A Bitch “Searching For Eden”
The Stranglers “Long Black Veil”
best dressed ghost “Dread and Breakfast”

hour two
Frenchy & The Punk “Bringin’ Out The Dead (Edward Gorey Seance)”
The Renfields “Transylvania High”
Emmalea Deal “Bite”
GRPPLING “Hellbound”
Cricketman w/Quilt Monsters “Get Me Out”
The Aquabats “Fashion Zombies”
The Dollyrots “Rather Be A Zombie”
Flare Baroshi “Vampire Mafia”
The Phantom Surfers “Highway To Hell (The Pina Colada Song)”
Canoe Speed “Stick The Knife In Now”
Custard Flux “Les Mâchoires de la Mort”
The Settlement “Extinction”
Ghoulbox “Necrokiss”
Lost Decades “Nosedive”

hour three
Puddles Pity Party “Toxic”
Pallas “Monster (Swing Version)”
Frank Zappa “The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet”
David Bowie “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)”
Oingo Boingo “Change”
Lene Lovich “The Night”
Morglbl “The Monster Within Me”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, Sunday at 8 PM and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. We bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand. I’m fighting some kind of technical issue, so it’s going to take the form of an embedded video this week…

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM get ready for two classic episodes of The Swing Shift, featuring the some slightly spooky Swing tunes.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM,  Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursdays and Sundays.

Our Halloween programming will continue all week on The AIR, not only in our musical specialty programs, but also at 5 PM every weeknight, and all day Saturday and for good measure, Sunday, too.

This week’s art is an Impressionistic pastel piece inspired by the view out the window of Amtrak’s Cardinal as it approaches the station in Washington DC.

By that point in our trip, on the way to NYC, it was dark and I was barely awake, and with the fog, rain and night, the river and sky had an eerie sheen….which seemed appropriate for Halloween week.

This was done largely with pastel crayons on textured paper, with a bit of acrylic touch-up here and there. It’s a bit of a departure from what I’ve been doing the last few years, but I think it sort of works.

If you want to see this image larger click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR,  we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we kick into Halloween with the “War of the Worlds” episode of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis. Following that, you can expect a brand-new, Halloweeny Radio Free Charleston, and the best of ten years of Halloween-themed music and comedy programs all week long on The AIR.

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page. Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM.

Tonight at 8 PM, tune in for a scary edition of The Comedy Vault. That’s followed by two-hour blocks of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast at 9 PM and 11 PM, and then an overnight assortment of our Haversham Recording Institute programs at 1 AM.

We are less than one week away from the big day for candy, ghosts and goblins. The drunken weekend parties will also be happening, but there’s a chill in the air, and the mood is getting spooky.

Once again kids will get to Trick or Treat on the most spookiful night of the year.

To get you in the spirit of the holiday, tonight PopCult’s Sunday Evening Videos will look at a few of our own videos that celebrate the true meaning of Halloween. In addition to these Halloween videos, you can also tune into The AIR beginning Sunday at 9 AM for special Spooky Holiday programming, with Halloween episodes of our music speciality shows plus special collections of scary music. Following the Sunday marathon, you can hear the scariness all week long, with featured frights for three hours every weekday beginning at 5 PM (EDT).

It’s our last-minute treat, since you can’t give out candy in a blog.

First up today, we go back three years to a music video I assembled for a group that didn’t stick around long enough to do more than this one killer piece of music. V Band (later knowns as Gegen) was local music veterans Jamie Skeen, David Synn, Jason “Roadblock” Robinson, and on video, your humble blogger. My first response on being asked to join the band was, “But I suck at guitar.” However, the invitation was to be the video-making member of the band, and I don’t think I would suck at that.

Here we see V Band take on John Carpenter’s masterful Halloween theme.

Then we have a look at a collection of Ben Cooper Halloween costumes from our first trip to Wonderfest, over a decade ago.

Next it’s a cool Halloween-themed game that we saw at Toy Fair.

Of course we have a short, stupid, Halloween cartoon for you to wrap things up.

This week we jump back to August, 2015, for an episode of Radio Free Charleston that is jam-packed with cool stuff.  This week we had music from Time And Distance, Christopher Vincent from Qiet, American Murder and Chemical Lizards, plus we had our usual animation and other stuff. We open with a quick jingle from our friends at Route 60 Music.

You can read the full production notes HERE .

The PopCulteer
October 23, 2026

With that alphabet soup of a headline, and your humble blogger preparing to dive headfirst into The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide (kicking off November 1), today I’m just going to share some photos from some recent adventures.

Mel and I were in New York last week to take in a performance of Little Shop of Horrors, off-Broadway.  This is part of Mel’s nostalgia tour, 39 years after her star turn as Audrey in the Charleston Light Opera Guild production, and she really wanted to see the latest production with Betsy Wolfe (Death Becomes Her) and Ethan Slater (The SpongeBob Squarepants Musical, Wicked). With a temporary Amtrak shutdown scheduled and looming cast departures, we had to scramble to get tickets, hop the train and spend 55 hours in The Big Apple, before heading back.

Then, just a couple of days after our return, we attended an IWA East Coast show at The New Brickhouse, and got to catch up with a lot of old friends we hadn’t seen in a while and take in an evening of fine indie wrestling.

I did both of these things as a civilian, but grabbed a few photos on the phone, and that’s what you’ll get to see below…

That Large Apple

Mr. & Mrs. PopCulteer, preparing for a promenade around Hell’s Kitchen

One of the theater-themed stores we visited on our trip

Continue reading

STUFF TO DO is PopCult‘s weekly guide to just a few of the great events happening in Charleston, Huntington and a few other points here in West Virginia, and sometimes a little beyond our borders, in the coming days.  This week we have a big, multi-day grand opening for the return of a legendary venue (in a new location), and we also have a few other items of note.

First, however, I need to run a graphic for a show happening Friday night at The Empty Glass. I plugged this in Radio Free Charleston this week (with the opening song, no less), but I didn’t run the graphic full-sized, so  here you go with Hitchcock Circus reuniting as part of the bill with other great acts…

The big story this week is the four-day celebration of the latest reincarnation of The Brickhouse, the famous all-ages venue that spawned many a musical act back in its heyday.

It is now The New Brickhouse, in a new location at 7101 MacCorkle Ave. in Saint Albans (near Jefferson, this building was the original location of the A-Z Outlet). They have an incredible line-up of bands, including RFC faves, The Jasons, GOLDEN, Jerks, Jay Parade, Sheldon Vance, and even a semi-reunion of Hardcore legends, Holden Caulfield, plus several other hard rock/metal/punk acts.

Check out the killer line-up of bands that take the stage over the next four days…

Each week I try to tell you about a few cool events all around the state that you might not know about.  If you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future you can still contact me via Social Media at Facebook,  BlueSky,  Spoutible,  Instagram  or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote.  I do ask that you send a graphic that includes the date, time and location, of the event, as well as the cost to attend.

Keep in mind that I’ll need this several days in advance, so please don’t send me a graphic on the day of the event and expect it to show up in this feature.

For much more comprehensive guides to things you can get into in our region, check out these two wonderful resources:

Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

Mya Ross at Status Quo does a much better job of compiling a list of local events than I do, and you can find the WTSQ guide to events HERE. Toss ’em a donation while you’re over there.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Among the notable music venues in town are The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe, Live at The Shop in Dunbar, Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, In Huntington, there’s local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club),  The Wandering Wind Meadery is on Charleston’s West Side, Plus there’s music in Charleston at The Blue Parrot, Sam’s Uptown Cafe and Fife Street Brewing. Plus there are free concerts almost every weekend at Taylor Books.

You might also find cool musical events at Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Here’s a few more select suggestions for STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and Huntington this weekend…

Monday evening the news began to spread that Tom Daniel, a prolific designer of model and toy cars who was one of the most imaginative and distinctive figures to come out of the 1960’s car culture, had passed away after a series of illnesses. He would’ve turned 90 in December, and he was “the last man standing” from a legendary collection of custom car designers that included George Barris, Dean Jeffries, Ed Roth, and Bill Cushenbery ,

Daniel was an industrial designer with a keen interest in automotive design when he was tapped to join the model design team at Monogram Models, where he created 75 memorable model cars, many of which were later turned into Hot Wheels, when Mattel bought Monogram in the late 1960s.

Chief among those designs, and quite possibly the most famous custom car that wasn’t designed for a TV show or movie, is The Red Baron. Daniel’s second design for Monogram sold over two million model kits, and was later turned into an iconic Hot Wheels car that made such an impression that it was used in the first Toy Story movie.

That was just one of Tom Daniel’s famous design. Prior to joining Monogram he designed vehicles for NASA, and was hired by George Barris to design Munster Coach and Dragula cars, which Barris was contracted to build for The Munsters TV show. He also designed The Bat-Cycle for the Batman TV Show.

His model kit designs were so influential that custom car builders sometimes built full-sized versions of his famous creations, often commissioned by show promoters.

Tom Daniel was the last of his breed. We simply don’t have superstar designers creating fantastic and original vehicles like his anymore. Today’s customizers seem content to just take a stock car, slap on some paint, trim and fat tires, and maybe some LED lights, and pretend they did something original.

Tom Daniel created some of the most iconic car designs of the 20th century, with The Red Baron, The Beer Wagon, The Tarantula, S’Cool Bus and dozens of others.

About twenty years ago, a company called Toy Zone released an entire line of 1/43 and 1/18 scale diecast cars based on his designs, and even used his name for the brand’s logo. I’ve got probably a dozen of those in my office, and many more diecast examples of his work in my toy collection.

I would imagine that almost anybody born after 1960 who owned a toy car or model has owned at least one car designed by Tom Daniel.

PopCult salutes this custom car design legend.