After months of watercolors or pastels, this week I decided to go with a black-and-white ink wash.
The subject matter is a composite of five or six photos I’ve taken this year, some standing still, some from a moving car and some from the Amtrak Cardinal. I threw all these together into an ink wash drawing/painting.
I might’ve tackled this in color after I did my rough pencil sketch, but I didn’t think it’d work in color because of the odd composition. It’s sort of an ersatz hourglass shape, with the trees.
I’m still considering tightening this up with markers, but it sort of works in a blurry-photograph way as it is.
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 do the same with an encore of a more recent episode of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.
You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page. PsychedelicShack 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.
Beginning today, RFC Daily is no more. After studying the number of listeners and taking into consideration how much server space it eats up keeping that many extra episodes of a three-hour show online, combined with the fact that we’ve run through the complete series of RFC Volume Five three times and most of those shows are archived here in the blog, I decided to pull the plug. Now, every weekday at 5 PM, you can tune in for The AIR Showcase, which will bring you three hours of random programming from our archives. Today you’ll get to hear early episodes of Prognosis and Psychedelic Shack. Tomorrow…who knows?
Tonight at 8 PM, tune in for a classic 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.
The highlight of this video is the music by Tearle Ashby. Tearle is a creator of spectacular custom outfit sets for 12″ action figures like GI Joe, and he’s also an amazing musician and composer. Tearle provided some great instrumental tunes for our video, ( “Mirror Mirror,” “Flashback” and “Circular Reasoning”) but you can check out his latest album with vocals at iTunes and other major streaming services.
As for the video, while it shows you just a bit of the fun, the vintage toys, the happy collectors and the sheer awesomeness of this great toy show, the video itself is not up to my usual standards, and I apologize for that.
I tried using a new (cheap) video camera for part of this shoot, and it did not play well with the flourescent lights. I also didn’t bring our famous monopods, so the footage I shot was shakier than usual because I’m out of practice these days.
Then when we got home I had various computer issues that weren’t resolved until I had to uninstall and reinstall dozens of video codecs and stuff like that, which was time-consuming.
None of that takes away that The 2026 Hershey Action Figure & Toy Show was a wonderful and extremely fun event, and we are seriously considering making a return trip next year, as part of our lucky thirteenth wedding anniversary trip.
We got to see lots of friends and actually spend time hanging out a bit and socializing instead of just running around with the cameras, and I bought way too many toys. I also finally got my first Paul Knapp custom piece, even though it broke the cardinal rule of going to a toy show…don’t buy something huge that takes up a big chunk of the rental car’s trunk on the first day of a week-long trip. It was worth it to get a custom vehicle that was on my wantlist for years.
I didn’t know that I’d find another large-scale vehicle on my wantlist the next day at an antique mall. I’ll share photos of all this cool stuff once I find the time to unpack. Septemember has been a bit of a blur, with all the curicular activities going on.
I’ll drop one last photo from the show here, just for the heck of it…
This week we go back to December, 2014 for an episode of Radio Free Charleston with music from Chad & Sean, The Big Bad and Travis Egnor. This show also includes a short film by Frank Panucci plus a bunch of vintage toy commercials.
The show is named after a shirt from the band, The Dread Crew of Oddwood, whose new single, “Rust and Glory,” opened last week’s episode of the Radio Free Charleston radio show, on The AIR.
Let me explain. This year my friend, Greg Brown, the owner of Costwold Collectibles, revived The Hershey Action Figure & Toy Show after it had been on hiatus for a few years, and this year your humble blogger and his lovely wife incorporated this extremely fun toy show into our week-long celebration of our wedding anniversary.
It wasn’t all that we did on our trip. We also managed to squeeze in a video tour of The Fiestaware factory, a trip to the Warhol Museum, and some fun meandering and shopping in Frostburg, MD, Akron and East Liverpool, OH and Pittsburgh.
The plan was to bring you coverage of all that here in PopCult, once we got back from the trip.
However, we came back home to discover toilet misadventures, then I had some (still unresolved) blog issues. That was quickly followed by a computer crash that delayed my ability to edit video, and then an influx of mundane but well-paying outside gigs. So here we are four weeks later, and I’m just now bringing you photos from Hershey. I have to confess that I haven’t done a photo essay on the cool stuff I got on this trip and at this show because we still haven’t had time to unpack yet.
The show was such a success that dates have already been confirmed for next year, and your PopCulteer and his wife are seriously considering a return trip. I had a great time and got to catch up and socialize with a lot of friends and fellow collectors that I haven’t seen for quite some time. I was halfway in civilian mode for this show.
The thing is, my photos didn’t come out great. I only used the phone this time, and my hands were just a little shaky from MG.
However, we have much better video. Mel was all-in on getting great coverage, and if all goes well, and the new video codecs I duct-taped to the hard drive hold, we will bring you a special music video presentation of The Hershey Action Figure & Toy Show this Sunday. Even better…the music will be provided by Tearle Ashby (you’ll see him below), who is not only an incredible musician and composer, but is also a master GI Joe customizer who creates spectacular custom boxed outfits, many in collaboration with Scott Ferguson.
But that’s for Sunday. Today we have fifteen or so photos that managed to be presentable, and I offer my apologies for taking so freaking long to get these posted.
We still have more photos to bring you from other stops on the trip, and then I have stacks of toy, book and comic reviews to bring you in the coming weeks.
But let’s get on with the pics…
There were dozens of vendors crammed into one very large ballroom at the Hershey Lodge
Master GI Joe vehicle customizer Paul Knapp (right) with Stacey from The Man Cave Podcast. I bought an amazing Big Jim Rescue Rig that Paul converted into an Adventure Team GI Joe Fire Truck, and it took up about a fifth of our rental car’s trunk for the rest of the trip.
It was a treat to get to chat a bit with the amazing artist, Larry Selman. Larry is acclaimed for his military and historical paintings, and has created many memorable pieces used for GI Joe packaging over the years.
After knowing him for over a decade, and posting tons of photos of him in front of his booths at toy shows, I finally remembered to get a selfie with Ace Allgood, one of the nicest guys on the planet!
In the center there is Tearle Ashby, who creates exquisite custom outfits and accessories for 12″ Gi Joes, and whose music will be the soundtrack for our video on Sunday.
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 wrap up Summer and hope that on the first day of Autumn the temperature instantly plummets 20 degrees and the thunderstorms go away for about six months.
Our featured event this weekend is up in Point Pleasant, and it’s the Mothman Festival. You can read all about it HERE, and check out the graphic below…
Plus we remind you that tonight in Charleston, it’s ArtWalk time…
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. I can’t promise that I’ll run it here, but chances are I will unless it’s something completely offensive or an event happening in South Carolina. If it looks original and charmingly weird and not like something AI farted out, you have a better chance of seeing it here.
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.
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.
Please remember that viral illnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff. If somebody asks you to refrain, please respect their weishes and don’t be a jerk about it.
Here’s a few select suggestions for STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and Huntington this weekend…
So, last year I wrote about how disappointing the annual Holiday HESS Truck was. You may remember it. It’s one of my most-read posts from the last ten months, and it seems like thousands of folks who read it have stuck around to keep reading PopCult.
I am very happy to report that the folks who do the HESS Trucks have had a major rebound, at least with a new bonus, limited-edition two-truck set.
When I say “limited-edition,” I’m not kidding. This set went on sale Monday morning, and I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t sell out by next week, if not earlier, even at double the usual price of their holiday truck.
That’s why I’m devoting a whole post to it today. I know it’ll be long gone before The PopCult Gift Guide begins in November (and to clarify, this is a special bonus set, there will be another holiday truck unveiled sometime in October).
To save myself some typing, I’m just going to quote most of the press release here:
A New Chapter in the Hess Toy Truck Story:
The special 2026 Hess Collector’s Edition Tanker Trucks marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Hess Toy Truck as a Hess family business. Created in extremely limited quantities, this newest Hess Toy Truck Collector’s Edition commemorates more than 60 years of a proud and beloved heritage and affirms the tradition’s future for generations to come. Carried forth on a foundation of unmatched quality, superb craftsmanship, innovation, and an endless determination to be ‘better than ever’, this new Hess Toy Truck is the most impressive vehicle ever created by Hess, with a look unlike anything before.
The larger, free-rolling, triaxle Modern Tanker pairs the first-ever matte-green body finish with a stunning, chrome-colored reflective finish that sparkles from every angle, enhanced by a remarkable array of multicolor lights that flash in 6 unique patterns. Realistic sound effects bring this already impressive toy to life, along with a cargo tank rear door and slide out loading ramp that allows for easy deployment of the Vintage Tanker.
The Vintage Tanker creates a powerful connection between the Company’s origins and its future. Inspired by the early Hess fuel delivery trucks, it features the premium matte green finish and yellow accents that ring true to the original Hess vehicles. It’s accented with sparkling chrome-look embellishments, lights, and a pull-back motor that propels it into classic action play.
The 2026 Collector’s Edition Tanker Trucks sets a new illumination record for a single Hess Toy release, with an incredible 137 lights and 6 unique animated lighting patterns; and it includes 5 individually activated sound effects.
Each set is carefully packaged in a specially crafted display box which includes a removable display base, a Certificate of Authenticity, and a special printed message from John B. Hess commemorating this milestone release, making it an ideal gift and coveted collectible.
MODERN TANKER
Sparkling chrome-colored reflective coating on all surfaces traditionally finished in white—a first for any Hess vehicle
Premium matte green finish on the cab and body—a distinctive non-gloss, premium surface treatment.
109 working lights with steady and flashing modes—the most lights ever on a single Hess vehicle.
6 unique flashing light patterns – the most ever on a single Hess vehicle
5 realistic sound effects, including 4 cab-top activated sounds (engine start/idle, horn, back up alert, fuel pump) plus a ramp-activated hydraulic sound
Rear door opens to deploy an internal loading ramp for the Vintage Tanker
6 free-rolling wheels on 3 axles
3 AAA Energizer® batteries included
Approx. size: 13.625” L x 4.5” W x 4.875” H
VINTAGE TANKER
Inspired by early Hess fuel delivery trucks
Premium Matte green finish – with yellow accents that are true to early Hess fuel delivery trucks
Highly reflective chrome-look embellishments
28 bright, steady-on lights
‘Pull-back and release’ motor for classic action play
6 wheels on 3 axles
Designed to load into and deploy from the Modern Tanker
3 A76 (LR44) Energizer® button cell batteries included
Approx. size: 5.75″ L x 2.125″ W x 2.0″ H
COLLECTOR-GRADE PRESENTATION 137 total lights across both vehicles—the most ever in any Hess release
Certificate of Authenticity
Premium display-ready packaging with silver reflective foil detailing and removable display backdrop featuring the New York City skyline as seen from the shores of New Jersey, where the Hess Toy Truck story began
Printed message from John B. Hess commemorating this milestone
The 2026 Hess Collector’s Edition Tanker Trucks is sold exclusively at HessToyTruck.com for $69.99 plus tax, which includes Energizer® batteries and free standard shipping.*
To be fair, following last year’s dud, the race car set, HESS has released another nice fun plush car (a monster truck), as well as the already-sold-out HESS Minis, which came and went earlier in the summer, and both of those were really well-done.
This limited edition is really a home-run of a collectible. The very first HESS Truck was a tanker, in white, green and yellow, and the vintage tanker in this set is a really nice homage, updated with matte green and chrome.
The larger tanker is more modern and very impressive. This is an extremely nice addition to any HESS collection, and you can order it HERE.
This year’s releases leave me very optimistic about what HESS has in store for the holidays, and make me think that they may regain their spot opening up The PopCult Gift Guide.
Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR and today we prove it again with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston AND a new edition of The Swing Shift, too!
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. That’s particularly significant this week because we are wrapping up our week-long celebration of ten years since The AIR officially became the internet radio station of PopCult!
You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.
Radio Free Charleston offers up a great new hour of local and independent music in its first hour, then we bring you what might be the last episode of Radio Free Charleston International that we haven’t recycled into Volume Five of our show yet.
The show opens with the one-two punch of brand-new singles by The Dread Crew of Oddwood and Sierra Ferrell. The Dread Crew are a gang of Pirates who play “Heavy Mahogany” music, which is sort of like Heavy Metal, only played on wooden instruments. Sierra, of course, is Charleston’s multiple Grammy-winning pride and joy, currently wowing audiences all around the world.
The Dread Crew of Oddwood, who are based in California, sailed into The Empty Glass thirteen years ago, and I’ve been a fan ever since. We recorded them for the RFC video show then, and it’s always great to have new music from them. Interestingly enough, “Rust & Glory,” the new single (from an upcoming EP) is not on their 2024 album, which was called…”Rust & Glory.”
I first met Sierra seventeen years ago, when we recorded her at an open mic at Sam’s Uptown Cafe and brought you video from that in PopCult and on RFC. Sierra’s new single will be released in November as a Zoetrope single, which you can pre-order at the link in our playlist.
Our first hour includes a set of Country-leaning music and also a set of songs about Zombies, so you know we’re still flying that Free Format flag.
For our second and third hours we go back more than eight years for what, I think, is the last episode of RFC International that hasn’t been recycled yet. It’s a wild mix of some of my favorite music with no discernable theme.
Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page in the first hour…
hour two Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello “The Lovers That Never Were”
Gary Brooker “No More Fear of Flying”
DEVO “Somewhere With DEVO”
The Aquabats “Sequence Erase/Giant Robot-Birdhead”
Polysics “Code 4”
The Dickies “My Pop The Cop”
The Units “High Pressure Days”
Oingo Boingo “Insanity”
The Stranglers “Unbroken”
hour three
Procol Harum “Conquistador”
Wall of Voodoo “This Business Of Love”
Ultravox “The Voice”
Transvision Vamp “The Only One (extended mix)”
King Crimson “21st Century Schizoid Man”
Madness “Can’t Touch Us Now”
Thomas Dolby “Evil Twin Brother”
Lo Faber “Those Damn Kids”
The Beat “Twist and Crawl”
Postmodern Jukebox “Who Can It Be Now”
Slade “Look Wot You Dun”
The The “Angels of Deception”
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. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and 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.
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 this week The Swing Shift brings you the first of two episodes featuring the music of Raymond Scott, both with his Quintette and with his Orchestra. Scott, of course, composed many of the melodies that were adapted by Carl Stalling for use in the classic Looney Tunes shorts, but he was also one of the most successful bandleaders of the late Big Band era.
You may not recognize his song titles, but you’ll definitely recognize the tunes. Check out the playlist…
The Swing Shift 184
Raymond Scott Part One
Raymond Scott, His Quintette and His Orchestra
“Power House”
“Huckleberry Duck”
“Caterpillar Creep”
“The Quintette Plays Carmen”
“Four Beat Shuffle”
“The Girl At The Typewriter”
“Tallahassee”
“Copyright 1950”
“Eagle Beak”
“Business Men’s Bounce”
“Siberian Sleigh Ride”
“Just a Gigolo”
“Keep Cool Fool”
“Two Guitars”
“When The Cootie Left The Duke”
“On The Jersey Side”
“Blues My Girl Friends Taught”
“Manhattan Minuet”
“Three Little Words”
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.
Surprise! This week we have a pastel crayon piece that, for the first time in weeks, is NOT inspired by a photo I took from The Amtrak Cardinal on the way out of Chicago last July.
This one is, well to be honest, just a glorified doodle. It began life as a potential abstract (and it’s not a big piece–this is pastel crayon with ink drawing on a small sheet of cold press paper, maybe a little bigger than 8″ x 10″), but when I realized how green it was, I made it into trees. I hope they’re sorta surreal, since that was what I was going for, but I realize that they do just look like trees, with a little bit of sky in the corner.
Honestly, this was basically an exercise in limbering up the fingers, then it came out looking better than expected, so it made its way here.
Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, our internet radio station brings you new episodes of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM,Prognosis, Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century. You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.
At 2 PM, Nigel Pye presents an hour of Pyschedelic Rock from all over the map…although a lot of that map seems to be based in France for some reason.
Check out the playlist…
Psychedelic Shack 113
Gillian Hills “Tut Tut Tut Tut”
Les 5 Gentlemen “Si Tu Reviens Chez Moi”
Babe Rainbow “Dream Gasoline”
Klaatu “Sub-Rosa Subway”
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band “The Road To Babylon”
The Gentrys “Sunshine”
People “The Epic”
Strawberry Alarm Clock “The World’s On Fire”
Storybook “The Pretty Song From Pysch-Out”
Brigitte Bardot “Harley Davidson”
Air “Don’t Be Light”
The Limiñanas “Migas 2000”
PsychedelicShack 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.
At 3 PM, for the second episode in a row, Herman Linte brings you a two-hour mixtape of BRAND NEW Progressive Rock, all released in 2026, on Prognosis. It’s a wild mix of veteran acts and new and barely-known artists.
Check out this cool playlist…
Prognosis 140
Muse “Hexagons”
Rolf Zero “The Medley”
Marco Ragni “The Radical Act”
Darrel Treece Birch’s Atlantea “Begin Again”
7keys “Chaos et Divinitas”
Harmony Bytes “Digital Shadows V2”
Gong “Dream of Mine”
Devin Townsend “Orion”
The Necks “Causeway”
The Anchoress “She Knows Her Place”
Plantoid “Daisy Chains”
YES “Countermovement (alternate mix)”
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.
As an aside, I’m not sure, but to me it sounds like Nigel and Herman are imitating each other’s voices and ghost-hosting each other’s show, but they’re denying it vehemently. Listen in and let me know what you think.
Tonight at 8 PM, tune in for a classic 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.
A brief note about today’s post: The original plan was to bring you a music video look at the 2026 Hershey Action Figure & Toy Show in this space, but while editing the video, some technical issues arose that will delay that project until Wednesday or Thursday of next week. In its place we are re-presenting an original Sunday Evening Video post from roughly fifteen years ago. Because the coding was messed up on the original post, and the video is no longer visible in that post, here it is again, loaded with great, local and regional, Metal Music…
Originally posted September 11, 2011:
Above you see highlights from this weekend’s inagural edition of Mission Coalition. Eleven bands over two nights brought firey heavy metal thunder to the Capitol City. Concert-goers were treated to performances by HarraH, The Suede Brothers, Linework, The Scrap Iron Pickers, The Number Six, Karma To Burn, John Lancaster,Tomorrow Burns, Dead Face Down, Nuns On Fire, and Saprogen with hysterical introductions by Chris Ojeda and Skip Cromer of Byzantine.
This is raw video and audio. Fully-produced versions of entire songs were seen in subsequent episodes of Radio Free Charleston.
This week we go back to November, 2014, for a loaded full-length episode of Radio Free Charleson.
This week Radio Free Charleston presented music from Anthony Hoey, Diablo Blues Band and The Company Stores, plus Third MInd Incarnation and Frank Panucci animation from the RFC vault and more.
This show was called “Hellblinki Doll Head Shirt.” and you can read the full production notes HERE.
The PopCulteer
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