Month: March 2011 (Page 3 of 3)

Tonight’s clip is a cool promo, made by Austin Susman, for the Contemporary Youth Arts Company production, “A Service For Jeremy Wong.” A shorter version of this will appear tomorrow in Radio Free Charleston’s next episode.

The play, written by Dan Kehde, addresses the aftermath of a fatal gay-bashing incident of a high school student. The national media descends as the kids left behind have to deal with their own issues of tolerance, grief and their developing moral sense of what’s right and wrong.

“A Service For Jeremy Wong” opens Thursday, March 10 at 8 PM at the WVSU Capitol Center Theater, 123 Summers Street.  Tickets are $10 for adults, $6 for students. Additional performances are March 11 and 12, and March 17-19, all at 8 PM. Come out and see the area’s most talented young performers take on a meaty, serious issue.

The PopCulteer
March 4, 2011

I don’t know if my regular PopCult readers have noticed this, but I try to keep a generally positive tone in this blog. I don’t just write fluff, but part of my mission is to share with my readers those things for which I have genuine enthusiasm.

Which is not to say I won’t criticize or rant when it’s needed, but I don’t want to turn this blog into a prolonged whine session about everything that the neo-hipsters think is wrong with Charleston. There are plenty of websites like that, cranked out in dingy basements and filled with bile all over the internet. It’s really easy to be negative all the time. That’s not what PopCult is about.

But I don’t want to leave you guys with the impression that I like everything I come across, so today I’m going to share with you a dozen things that I DON’T like. Some of them I detest with glee, others I feel the need to explain. There are some items on this list about which I’d like to change my feelings, but have yet to be able to, successfully. The point of this is so that you can learn more about what shapes my tastes. If I consistently heap praise on something you don’t like, this list may help you understand my position. If I casually dismiss something that you find spectacular, this list might tell you why. You might be shcocked at some of the stuff I DON’T like. Continue reading

Episode 121 of Radio Free Charleston, “Thrilling Detective Shirt,” is online now, right at the top of this post. This installment of RFC features a double-dose of Beaver Knievel, a quick blast of folk/punk stomp from Dennis Hopper’s Army, plus vintage animation from Frank Panucci and a visit from Robot Commando.

Host segments were shot at Haddad Riverfront Park, and the show’s title shirt comes to us courtesy of Retro A Go Go. Soon you should be able to find their cool shirts and other items at The Salvage Yard in The Charleston Town Center.

Before we jump into the show proper, just know this: Robot Commando wants to help you. He really does.

Opening and closing the show, musically, this time is Beaver Knievel. You heard them last week running through the song “Get Loose” during a soundcheck. This week you get to hear them tear up the whole song. They also kick in with “I’m You’re Man.” Continue reading

In the 1970s there was an explosion of pop culture that can best be called “post-psychedelic faux-deep cosmic psycho-babble.”  I’m talking about gloriously incomprehensible creations like the movies “Zardoz,” “The Wicker Man,” and “Phantom Of The Paradise,” and comic books like much of the work of Jim Starlin at Marvel, in addition there’s a raft of spectacularly bombastic art rock concept albums that, merely by existing, defy contemporary logic.

These are the relics that make you tilt your head in awe and silently mutter, “WTF?”

Much of the blame for this inexplicible burst of untethered creativity can be placed at the feet of Stanley Kubrick and Timothy Leary. Kubrick unleashed “2001: A Space Odyssey” on a world that was only open to it because almost everybody was high. Drugs made that movie, or at least the mainstream acceptance of that movie, possible.

I mean, you tell me what the hell that last half-hour of the film is about. Continue reading