PopCult

Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

Feel Like Dancing With MIRRORBALL and Feel Alive With Sydney’s Big Electric Cat

The PopCulteer
April 25, 2025

Music helps you feel alive on The AIR Friday afternoon as Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL and Sydney Fileen’s Sydney’s Big Electric Cat return with new episodes.  The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear our shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Rejoice and prepare to feel four or five decades younger (where applicable).

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have a new episode of MIRRORBALL where Mel Larch once again presents a selection of the best and brightest of the classic Disco era.

Don’t believe us? Check out the playlist. It’s got filled to the rim with Disco…

MIRRORBALL 114

Tina Turner “Love Explosion”
Miami “Disco Weekend”
Stargard “You’re The One”
The Natural Four “Try To Smile”
Blue Magic “Welcome To The Club”
The Meters “Disco Is The Thing Today”
Norma Jean Wright “Sorcerer”
The Undisputed Truth “Let’s Go Down To The Disco”
Eloise Lewis “1,000 Laughs”
Curtis Mayfield “Move On Up”
Tasha Thomas “Shoot Me (With Your Love)
Gene Page “Wild Cherry”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Sunday night at 11 PM and throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM plus there’s a mini-marathon that includes the latest episode Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, it’s Big Electric Cat time as Sydney Fileen delivers a special NEW mixtape edition of her show that brings you an all-star LIVE IN CONCERT mixtape of the greatest hits of the New Wave era performed in front of actual, living hoomin beans.

Most of these are vintage performances, recorded during the New Wave era, but Sydney has slipped in a few recently-recorded ringers, and being the sly fox she is, she isn’t saying which tracks are old and which are newish. You’ll just have to figure it out for yourself. Rest assured, all of the songs are indeed recorded live in concert. She swears it.

Check out this killer playlist…

BEC 127
Live Mixtape

Thompson Twins “Hold Me Now”
The Tubes “Talk To Ya Later”
Human League “Don’t You Want Me”
DEVO “Somewhere With DEVO Medley”
Blondie “Rip Her To Shreds”
Shriekback “My Spine Is The Baseline”
Talking Heads “Psycho Killer”
Ramones “Pinhead”
The Cars “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight”
Elvis Costello “Radio Radio”
The Police “Can’t Stand Losing You”
Cyndi Lauper/Blue Angel “Can’t Blame Me”
Joan Jett “Bad Reputation”
Joe Jackson “Friday”
The Alarm “Sixty Eight Guns”
ABC “How To Be A Millionaire”
Camoflage “Computerliebe”
The Teardrop Explodes “Ha Ha I’m Drowning”
Annie Lennox “Here Comes The Rain Again”
Heaven 17 “Temptation”
Lene Lovich “Lucky Number”
The Dickies “You Drive Me Ape”
Gang of Four “At Home He’s A Tourist”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon,  Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

That’s it for this week’s PopCulteer, check back for all our regular feature, with fresh content, every day, even when we sneak one town over to see a musical.

The Glory of Aurora Model Kits

The PopCult Bookshelf

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 1 – The 1960’s
compiled by Anthony Taylor
APT Publishing
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8312227680
Paperback $35.99
Hardback $64.99

This book, the first of two volumes, is manna from heaven for fans of Aurora Model kits. A huge, mainstream hobby from the 1950s into the 1970s, and still a popular pastime today, one of the most creative companies making these assemble-it-yourself kits was Aurora Plastics.  I’m reviewing the first of two volumes here because it was a gift from Mrs. PopCulteer for Easter. I’ll be getting the second volume in a few weeks.

In this book, after a brief intro by Anthony Taylor, you get over 320 pages of pure gold–ten years worth of retailer sales catalogs from Aurora from the 1960s.

These catalogs were available in most hobby shops so kids (and adults) could make wishlists and see the full product line. A special treat for collectors of today is the presence of the original suggested retail prices, which are hilariously low. Back then you could get a top-notch model kit for less than what you pay for a candy bar today.

The catalogs are reproduced in full color, close to their original size, and they trace the evolution of the hobby over the course of the 1960s. The early years see the catalogs dominated by airplanes and cars, with just a few historical figures in the mix.

As the years progress, we see a virtual explosion of pop culture topics, as Aurora’s selection reflects the passions of the day, from the space program to James Bond and spies, to superheroes, Batmania, hit TV shows and movies and even “original equity” creations designed to cash in on the burgeoning counter culture.

And we can’t leave out the monsters. “Monster Kids” loved model kits, and one of the major forces driving the hobby was the Universal Monsters, with additional kits featuring Godzilla, literary horror and other scary subjects. At one point they even combined the monsters with hot rods. The package art shown here is incredible and the product descriptions priceless.

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 1 – The 1960’s is a brilliant time capsule of a hobby that is still going strong. In fact, at the end of May I’ll be going to WonderFest USA, the countries biggest convention devoted to model kit building and horror, and I intend to hook up with Anthony there to buy the second volume, which is devoted to the 1970s.

That means it’ll have Prehistoric Scenes, Monsters Scenes and other model kits that I grew up attempting to assemble.

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 1 – The 1960′s is a must-have for any model kit collector, and will be of great interest to anybody interested in pop culture from the 1960s, and one of the most creative ways to ever play with toys…building models.

You can order the book from Amazon, through Anthony Taylor’s website, or track him down at one of the many conventions he’ll be attending and/or organizing this summer.

STUFF TO DO For The Rest of April

We find ourselves rapidly approaching the one-third mark in 2025, and as this year flies by, both too fast and also not nearly fast enough, there is a ridiculous amount of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston, WV, this coming weekend and beyond, so let’s jump and maybe beef up the boilerplate a bit.

This weekend there is a lot of stuff happening in Huntington.  Wednesday, Marshall’s production of of The SpongeBob Squarepants Musical begins its run. The Appalachain Film Festival happens at the Foundry Theater starting Friday with  showing of Danny Boyd’s Invasion of the Space Preachers (with the director and cast members on hand), and also on Friday, some RFC faves appear at The Loud. You’ll find graphics for all these events below.

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, 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. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that 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.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend’s shows are not yet known to our intelligence sources.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Clendenin Browing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and 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. You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

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 illlnesses 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.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events that I was able to scrounge up online…

Continue reading

New Music From Byzantine and More, Plus a Weird Covers Mixtape on Radio Free Charleston

We have exciting premieres, great tunes from the past and a special hour-long mixtape of weird covers on an all-new Radio Free Charleston for you today 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.

We open this week’s show with the premiere of “Floating Chrystanthema,” the lead single from Byzantine’s upcoming album, Harbingers, which is due out June 13. You can pre-order the album now HERE, or save that link and order it on May 2, when you can get it on Bandcamp Friday, the day when Bandcamp doesn’t take a cut, and the artists get most of the money. Pre-orders get the lead single now, with the rest coming on the day of release.

We also have new tracks from Matt Berry/New Street Adventure, Nellie McKay, Julian Lennon, The Settlement, the Heavy Editors, Hawkwind and more.

Our third hour, largely based on a 2002 album called “When Pigs Fly,” is a mixtape of weird and offbeat covers. Some are masterpieces, like DEVO covering Neil Young’s “Ohio.”  Other tracks feature more questionable choices, like Lesley Gore covering AC/DC or Don Ho covering Peter Gabriel. All of them are at least interesting. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if they’re interesting in a fun and exciting way, or if they’re interesting in a Chinese curse way. Tracks from that album are supplemented with additional oddities from my collection.

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in the first two hours of this week’s show where possible…

RFC V5 222

hour one
Byzantine “Floating Chrysanthema”
Matt Berry, New Street Adventure “Silver Rings”
Massing “Waffles & Pancakes”
The Heavy Hitters Band “90 Degrees (live)”
Nellie McKay “Queen Mary”
Saycouth “Phantom Love”
Julian Lennon “Love Don’t Let Me Down (Lo-fi)”
The Settlement “Work”
The Blues Brothers “Theme from Rawhide”
Ringo Starr “Come Back”
Tim OBrien and Jan Fabricius “Lonesome Armadillo”

hour two
The Heavy Editors “Be That Way”
David Synn “Infusion”
Hawkwind “Space Continues (Lifeform)”
Avamanyar “Did You Know”
James Whitely “Reaching Out”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Sour”
Hello June“Dance (M Walker Remix)”
Siouxsie & The Banshees “This Wheel’s On Fire”
Sophie Ellis-Bextor “Relentless Love”
The Darkness “Rock and Roll Party Cowboy”

hour three covers mixtape
DEVO “Ohio”
Kon Kan “I Beg Your Pardon (I never Promised You A Rose Garden)”
The Box Tops “Call Me”
Nina Hagen “Personal Jesus”
The Fixx “These Boots Are Made For Walking”
Guided By Voices “I Think I Love You”
The Connell’s “Insane In The Brain”
Billy Preston “Girls On Film”
Andrew Gold “Ghostbusters”
The Oak Ridge Boys “Carry On My Wayward Son”
Herman’s Hermits “White Wedding”
T Rex “Sitting On The Dock of the Bay”
Lesley Gore “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”
Ani DiFranco & Jackie Chan “Unforgettable
Don Ho “Shock The Monkey”

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 we give you an encore of two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 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 Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Monday Morning Art: Reflections

We are back to real-world physical art this week with this small acrylic-on-illustration board study inspired by your humble blogger looking at cars in the parking lot at a local big-box store earlier in the week whilst waiting for Mrs. PopCulteer to finish shopping (I’d left the store before her so I could rest my aging knee).

With this I tried to capture the reflections of reflections that you see when cars are parked close together. It actually creates some weird optical illusions when you stare at them long enough. In this case, without photographic reference (I was too lazy to retrieve my phone from my pants pocket), I tried to recreate this weird visual of a car reflected in one car (not shown), then that reflection being reflected in another car, so that you see what appears to be a funhouse mirror reflection of a car that’s actually behind the car it’s being reflected by multiple times. It’s all due to angles and curves.

It looked weird in a cool sort of way, so I tried to paint it.

Admittedly, this is more of a doodle than a study. I doubt I’ll actually get around to doing a huge canvas painting of this one, but it does look sort of nifty.

To see this week’s art bigger try clicking HERE.

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 an also classic edition 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.

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.

At 8 PM you can hear the very first episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of The Swing Shift, my weekly (ish) show devoted to Swing Music. This batch of ten shows has a heavy emphasis on 90s revival Swing acts like The Brian Setzer Orchestra and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

Sunday Evening Video: Mr. Cartoon Redux

We lost Jules Huffman ten years ago last week at the age of 91. The retired WSAZ weatherman was better known to generations of kids as “Mr. Cartoon,” the host of a daily (later weekly) cartoon show on WSAZ that for most of its run aired at 5 PM, right after school. I am recycling this Sunday Evening Video post from ten years ago because it’s Easter (and Wrestlemania) and a lot of folks will not be online…and also because Jules Huffman loved Easter.

The outstanding thing about Huffman was that he was a genuinely nice man. I met him a couple of times as an adult working in the television business, and he treated everyone, from a major TV executive to a lowly production assistant, with respect.  I’ve heard dirt on almost every local broadcaster, and he’s one of the few people that had no dirt to tell. He was just the same nice guy that you saw on TV.

Last year, thanks to a wonderful documentary produced by WVPB in conjunction with WSAZ-TV, Huffman finally got his flowers. You can see that documentary HERE.

Today we’re bringing you two video clips of the man in action. That’s a ten-minute excerpt up top, with a longer video below from the 1985 Charleston Regatta. He was the last of a generation of cartoon-show hosts, and a lot of “Cartooners” were really bummed out by his passing.

The RFC Flashback: Episode One Hundred Thirty-One

Up top, direct from the last day of May 2011, you see episode 131 of Radio Free Charleston. “Thenewno2 Shirt.”  This was a special episode of RFC that was devoted to promoting a great triple bill of live, original music held on Saturday, June 4 of that year featuring local favorites Tofujitsu and Mother Nang and Washington DC’s, Wiley Sonic.

Wiley Sonic was the then-new band fronted by Joe Vallina, who has a long history with Radio Free Charleston, having appeared as the one of the first in-studio guests on the radio version of RFC back in 1989.  Back then, Joe was half of the punk duo Blind Blue Leper Society.  The other half of that duo was local bartending and jam band legend, Washboard Dave.  More recently I’ve played tracks from Joe’s current band, The Heavy Editors, on the RFC radio show on The AIR.

Joe provided the music video for Wiley Sonic, and we had video in our archives of then-recent performances by Mother Nang (recorded at The Blue Parrot) and Tofujitsu (live at The Empty Glass). Animation is by Frank Panuci with music by yours truly. Host segments were recorded at the Grove City Outlet Mall, about an hour North of Pittsburgh for reasons I have totally forgotten. The show’s namesake shirt featured the band, thenewno2, which was the musical vehicle then being used by Dhani Harrison. Dhani was an early supporter of RFC back in the MySpace days. And for some reason, there are planets running alongside the credits in this episode.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

Confessions of a Temu Fashionista

A portly dude wearing a hat

Your PopCulteer, having written this post, then realizing he was going to have to model these shirts and hats to go with it.

The PopCulteer
April 18, 2025

A weird thing happened to me recently. Somehow, without really trying, I became stylish. And I did it without spending much money.

Now, to be honest, I have been accused of being stylish a few times before. I never quite know how to deal with such accusations. Once, maybe sixteen or seventeen years ago, one of the features editors for The Charleston Gazette, the lady in charge of the fashion articles, no less, looked me dead in the eye and sincerely said that I had a definite and strong sense of style.

To this day I still consider that to be one of the most absurd moments of my life.

I’ve always considered myself to be sort of a schlub when it came to style. My fashion sense had always been dictated by whatever was cheapest and most comfortable. I never understood the siren call of exotic sneakers, and to this day I only wear black socks. I did start wearing fedoras about twenty years ago, but that was because my once-unruly hair had departed for less visible parts of my body, and I could finally wear a hat without worrying about hat hair.

Plus, I’m not a big fan of melanoma.

Luckily, it wasn’t too hard for me to find a photo of me looking like hell wearing a T Shirt.

Lately, however, as I have lost weight, I’ve decided that I like button-up shirts more than I like the T-Shirts that had become my Radio Free Charleston trademark during the heyday of the video version of that show. Each show was named after the T-Shirt I was wearing, for the most part. That means I bought more than a couple hundred T Shirts to wear on RFC over the years.

Now, being somewhat slimmer, and not looking too much like the stereotypical fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt, I’ve changed up my look a bit. Part of this is because I’m sort of swimming in my older shirts.

I’ve got a few wonderful shirts from the Fleischer Animation folks and RockinPins, but they’re also a bit hard on the wallet (deservedly so–we’re talking high-quality shirts here). I’m at a point in my weight-loss journey where I’ve dropped a bit of weight, and have likely hit a  brief plateau, at least for now. And that means either getting some new shirts, or wearing old T-Shirts that look like muumuus on me now. The problem is, I don’t want to spend a lot of money on shirts that I will hopefully shrink out of in a couple of months.

A Rat Fink action figure

Blame him! This Rat Fink started it!

Enter Temu. Last December, after making the popular Chinese retail site the butt of my jokes for a few years, I decided to try it out as a source of cheap action figures and accessories. I was stunned at the fast delivery, and the quality of the product.

I mean, I’m sure it’s not all licensed, but cheap is cheap and the lure is strong. I noticed that they had tons of enamel pins, almost all certainly unlicensed, but still cool as hell, and cheap as dirt. Many were less than a buck. None were more than a couple of dollars. They also had some cheap costume jewelry that made Mrs. PopCulteer extremely happy. I even got a really nice Rat Fink figure for two bucks and change.

The way they hook you is to build an algorithm of what you’re interested in, but they also slip in tons of stuff that’s totally unrelated, just to see what catches your eye. I’d get an email offering a huge discount, go to the site and get fed an assortment of action figures and enamel pins, but they’d mix in all sorts of other things.

That’s when I noticed that they had button-up, Hawaiian-style graphic shirts for insanely low prices.

I took the bait and ordered one. I have had very bad luck ordering clothes from China before (don’t get me started on Wish), so I wasn’t expecting much, but I figured I could gamble a few bucks on what looked like a vintage bowling shirt.

It arrived, and fit me like a glove (well, actually, like a shirt). It was comfortable, looked good, and was probably highly flammable, but this was a way to beef up my wardrobe without breaking the bank. These shirts were extremely affordable.

I’m talking, like as low as four bucks and change. I have yet to pay more than seven bucks for a shirt from Temu. If you see one that you like that costs more than that, just keep scrolling, it’ll show up for half that price eventually.

Over the last few months, I’ve ordered close to twenty button-up shirts from Temu. Only once was I unsatisfied, when they sent me the wrong design. They refunded it in seconds and I’ve already re-ordered and received the correct shirt. Plus I got to keep the other design, which is not something I would be seen in public wearing, but it will make a nice gift for a heavy metal singer friend.

Guy in a hat and a wrinkled shirt

Also…some of the shirts need pressing when you get them.

Of course, this puts me in a bit of a dilemma. There are all sorts of reasons that people despise Temu. They have little regard for intellectual property rights. They probably pay their workers slave wages. They have an unfair advantage in terms of free shipping and a (now endangered) customs exemption. And they are the antithesis of shopping local.

I understand all that. However, I also understand that, if I’m going to buy a shirt that I may only be able to wear for a couple of months before I drop another twenty or thirty pounds, I’d rather buy a cheap, flammable one that looks good than spend big money on one that I’ll have to replace soon.

So I don’t feel too guilty about doing what works for me right now. Your milage may vary.

Having explained that, I have to come to terms with another problem. When I wear one of these shirts out to dinner or somewhere else, people stop and compliment me.

I’m not used to that. My gut reaction is to think that they’re having a joke at my expense, or I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe or something. But it’s happening too frequently to be a joke, unless somebody is putting a lot of effort into following me around and paying actors to pull an elaborate prank.

That seems somewhat unlikely.

I’ve even tempted fate by deliberately ordering shirts that are spectacularly hideous. I have one that looks like an AI Hippy threw up on it. Another has a Picassoesque face on it. I wore that one to a talk about rock photography at the Metropolitan Library in Columbus last weekend. My dear friend, John “Sham Voodoo” Estep was sitting behind me, and afterward I apologized for my shirt staring at him the whole time.

A guy wearing a hideous shirt while another hideous shirt looks on.

Oh, you thought when I said one shirt looked like “an AI Hippy threw up on it” I was joking? Folks…fashion is serious business. There’s no joking in fashion!

Person wearing New Wave designs and shades

They 1980s called. They said they don’t want their shirt and hat back.

it seems that, the more hideous the shirt, the more compliments it gets. Somehow, by living long enough to stop caring about being in style…I have become, at least momentarily, in style. This is absurdity bordering on surrealism.

I told my friend Pixie, in Liverpool, England about my Temu addiction and she thought it was hilarious. She said that I had somehow become a Millennial, and needed to start a Tik Tok channel.

My beautiful wife, Melanie, tells me I look good in these shirts, but as my wife she’s sort of obligated to do that. Thus far she has not forbade me from wearing any of them in public.

Temu also sells hats. That was a dangerous discovery, but it’s hit-or-miss for me because I have such an enormous head. Two fedoras (under six bucks each) fit just fine, and the ballcaps are adjustable (even the one that Mrs. PopCulteer does discourage me from wearing in public), but the bowler hat was too small, unless I wanted to walk around with it pushed forward while puffing on a huge cartoon cigar.

Dumb guy wearing a dumber hat

Bluto did it!

I ordered a Captain’s nautical cap with an anchor on the front, but instead of making me look like Captain Action, I look more like Bluto wearing it.

Between the bowler hat and the Captain’s cap, I’m out six bucks and change, so it’s not a huge financial hit.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and our current administration has gotten around to ruining Temu as part of their campaign to systematically destroy all things that might give non-wealthy people any small pleasures.

The current Tariff exemption and postal treaties are set to end on May 2, unless our deranged president changes his mind an odd number of times before then. As a result, Temu, Shein, and a larger percentage of stuff at Amazon than Jeff Bezos wants to admit, will suddenly be tarriffed out of (affordable) existence, as the insane baby-man’s game of “How Fast Can We Cause A Global Depression” continues it’s path of economic obliteration.

We have about a week to order tons of cheap shit before the axe falls.

In the meantime, I will enjoy what should, by all rights, be my very brief life as a fashion plate.

I will be fine returning to living the life of a schlub. Heavy is the head that wears the probably flammable crown covered with AI designs.

That’s this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day, plus all our regular features and our sister internet station, The AIR.

Nine Years Later…

Nine years ago this week, I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis.

Hardly a week goes by in PopCult where I don’t mention it, but I haven’t given a full-blown update in quite some time. About a week after I was diagnosed, I wrote a long post about it here,  but it’s been a while since I’ve gone into detail about how it’s changed my life.

For our new readers who “TLDR” the original post, Myasthenia Gravis is an auto-immune disorder where your body attacks the membranes that transmit signals from your nerves to your muscles. I was diagnosed as having it in April, 2016, but I had been having major symptoms of it for at least eleven years prior…since before I even started writing this blog. I was cool with the diagnosis. I’d feared it was something worse.

I am very fortunate in that I have an extremely mild case. It only affects my fingers and eyes. I have had friends and met other people who had it way worse. They could not walk, swallow or even hold their neck up. I am very lucky.

The trade-off of having a mild case is that, since going on the medication, it’s pretty much been the same. I sporadically show signs of a near-remission, but for probably 80% of the time I’m at a very tolerable baseline.

Prior to treatment, a “bad day” meant that I couldn’t open a water bottle or operate the shift on my car. Buttoning buttons was a chore, and producing physical works of art was simply not even something I could consider. On a good day I had trouble holding a pencil or brush.

Now, most of the time I’m fine. During a “flare-up,” my worst days are better than my best days before I began my treatment. I’m painting and drawing again, and have found that years of painting digitally have actually made me a better artist. I’m still mainly doing smaller studies instead of full-blown canvases, but that’s more due to my limited time than to my limited ability.  I do still have trouble with touchscreens, which is why I don’t text, much to the consternation of almost everybody who knows me. If you send me a text, I’m not going to see it until the one or two times a year I have to check my messages for two-step verification.

I am much less of a social animal since my diagnosis. Much of that is due to the medication I take, which makes me sleep like a normal human for the first time in my life. I don’t get out nearly as much as I used to, but I have to admit that some of that is my age (I’m old), and the realization that I want to spend as much time as possible with my beautiful wife, Mel, as much as it’s due to the limitations of MG and the related medications I take to control it.

Since Charleston has always been a very late-starting city in terms of our musical venues, I just can’t make it out four or five nights a week like I used to back in the heyday of the Radio Free Charleston video show. When you start dozing off by 10 PM, and most bands don’t start playing until 11:30, it gets a bit tricky. I’m lucky to crank out one video show a year now.

But, I’ve refocused on the RFC radio show, which I still have a blast doing. It’s way less work. I can produce a three-hour radio show in an afternoon, whereas a twenty-minute video show takes hundreds of hours of shooting, editing, rendering and all the other stuff I need to do behind the scenes.

Monday Morning Art features way more physical art than it did when I began posting my art in the early days of this blog.

The reason for this post is, a lot of friends have been asking about it lately. I feel pretty great most of the time, except for having 62-year-old knees. I’m dropping weight. Melanie and I are travelling more. I’m still doing what I can to “Support The Local Scene” via PopCult‘s internet radio station, The AIR and our weekly STUFF TO DO post.

Tomorrow I’m going to write about a fun little diversion that’s probably coming to an end soon, and then PopCult will soldier on, bringing you my take on pop culture, plus local news and music, and whatever TV, Movies, Toys, Comics, Food and anything else I feel like writing about in this space.  Once in a while, I’ll talk about something personal, like today.

 

Whatcha Gonna Do When Eastermania Runs Wild Over STUFF TO DO, Brother?

This weekend sees the rare harmonic convergence of Easter, the end of Passover and Wrestlemania, making it one of the holiest times of most people’s lives. And on top of that, ArtWalk happens in Charleston this Thursday, too. With all that happening at once, there is a ridiculous amount of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston, WV, this coming weekend and beyond, so let’s dive in, shall we?

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, 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. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that 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.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend’s shows are not yet known to our intelligence sources.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and 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. You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

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 illlnesses 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.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events that I was able to scrounge up online…

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

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