Month: November 2015 (Page 8 of 9)

It’s hard to believe, but this post marks the beginning of the Tenth Annual PopCult Gift Guide.  True to form, we are utilizing a completely different format from any other gift guide we’ve done.  Each gift suggestion will appear in its own post, with at least three of them each day, and they will be posted after 8 PM in the evening.

We will not be dividing our holiday gift suggestions into any specific categories.  You will find holiday gift ideas that include toys, videos, books, music, apparel, accessories, perhaps the occasional edged weapon, and anything else that we think would be a fun and imaginative Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Solstice/Yule/Festivus or Superman’s Birthday present.

We will try to include the following information in each post.  First, what it is.  Two, who it may be a good gift for.  Three, where you can get it. And four, how much it costs.

We hope you enjoy the Gift Guide this year and appreciate the ridiculous amount of slavish effort that your PopCulteer put into compiling this, the bestus in the world gift guide you could possibly imagine.  If you wish to show your appreciation, please feel free to purchase multiple items from this Gift Guide and mail them directly to your PopCulteer in care of the Charleston Gazette-Mail.  Please note that the bit about buying the gifts and sending them to me in care of the newspaper is only a joke and should not actually be done because it may get me fired.

And so, for the tenth year in a row, prepare yourselves and LET THE GIFT GUIDE READING BEGIN!

This week’s RFC MINI SHOW was recorded last Saturday at the first Mountain State Pop Expo, it’s Lee Harrah, Kenny Booth and Sheryl Lovell from the band HARRAH, performing an acoustic set on the main floor of a very active and loud pop culture convention.

Despite the very loud environment, we decided to bring you this special show as an artifact of the inagural Mountain State Pop Expo, which was a fundraiser for Children’s Home Society of West Virginia, a group that aids in the placement and adoption of foster children here in West Virginia.

To learn more about CHS WV, visit their website. You can see HARRAH’s new music video in the Halloween episode of Radio Free Charleston, and expect to see them again soon because we’ll be on hand to record their first official show with their new full line-up next month.

This week’s art is a digital painting that is only slightly creepy, due to the title. It’s a semi-abstract extreme deconstruction of a photo, rendered unrecognizable by multiple applications of patterns and digital distortion. Click to see it bigger.

Check back later Monday for The RFC MINI SHOW featuring Mountain State Pop Expo Unplugged with Lee Harrah, Kenny Booth and Sheryl Lovell. Even later Monday evening, it’s the kickoff of The Tenth Annual PopCult Gift Guide, which will run at least three weeks.

Rather than bring you videos that remind you of a band from yesteryear, this week PopCult presents a whole bunch of videos (slapped together in the above playlist) from a relatively new band, The Struts. With a sound like Freddy Mercury and Brian May of Queen fronting a New Wave band, The Struts mine some underexploited veins of rock history while combining their influences in a fresh, new sound.

Consisting of Luke Spiller – vocals. Adam Slack – guitar, Jed Elliott – bass, and Gethin Davies – drums, The Struts have been a band since Spiller and Slack met in 2009. With one album and two EPs under their belt, the band relocated to Los Angeles from their native England earlier this year, and made their American Television debut in August.

According to Wikipedia, the Struts have been described as “unabashedly over the top retro-fetishist classic rock,” “glamourous and dangerous” and as “having a chance to spark a real rock revival with their hooky glam sound, which manages to pay tribute to the classics, while remaining impeccably modern.” All I know is, its been  long time since I’ve heard a new band on a major label that I’ve enjoyed as much as I do The Struts.  Rock isn’t dead. It’s still strutting strong.

The PopCulteer
November 6, 2015

We begin this week’s PopCulteer on a sad note. Early Thursday morning, legendary car customizer, George Barris, passed away at the age of 89.

Barris was most famous for creating the first offical Batmobile in late 1965 for the Batman TV show, which premiered on ABC in January the following year. While his transformation of the one-of-a-kind Lincoln Futura into the only car with a legitimate claim to be the first Batmobile was his signature moment, he created and customized dozens of other legendary cars for films and television.

Fans of the movies, “North by Northwest” and “The Time Machine” and TV shows like “Knight Rider,” “The Munsters” and “The Beverly Hillbillies,” were treated to the imagination and craftsmanship of this automotive and artistic genius.

DC Entertainment released the following statement:

George Barris was a true creative genius and we are saddened to learn of his passing. George’s design contributions to the legendary 1966 Batmobile thrilled fans of the classic “Batman” TV show, left an indelible mark on Batman legacy and lore, and is still recognized as one of the most iconic vehicles of all time.

“Growing up I wanted to fight crime just so I could drive George’s Batmobile,” said DC Entertainment Co-Publisher Jim Lee. “It was my great honor to get to meet him in person recently and to thank him for his contributions to the world of Batman, and there was no greater thrill than getting to sit in that Batmobile from my childhood.”

 

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The PopCult Bookshelf

Over the past couple of years I’ve written at length about the Charlton Neo movement, a revival of an important, but obscure, piece of comic book history. Charlton was the perennial “also ran” of comics. Never a contender for the top spot in the industry (or even the top three), Charlton made up for their low pay, iffy distribution and downright peculiar printing by offering veteran comics creators creative freedom, and also by allowing talented amateurs like Jim Aparo, Don Newton, John Byrne, Bob Layton, Roy Thomas, Denny O’Neil, Joe Staton, Mike Zeck and others the chance to turn pro and go on to legendary careers in comics.

The story of Charlton Publishing and its founders is an entertaining, convoluted and under-told tale that involves prison time, tangles with the music industry, epic flooding, big-time licensing deals, brushes with fame, reputed mob-ties and shoestring budgets.

Now a crowd-funding effort is under way to raise money to produce the definitive documentary on Charlton Comics. Charlton Comics : The Movie is in production, and the producers are trying to raise money to make this the best possible oral history of one of the most interesting comic book companies that ever was.

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There will not be a PopCult Toybox entry today. It’s okay, though. We have a good reason. At the moment your PopCulteer’s energies are focused on THE TENTH ANNUAL POPCULT GIFT GUIDE, which will kick off Monday and run for 21 days. Each day there will be at least three great gift suggestions.

Since many of our selections this year will be toys or books, the regular days for those PopCult posts will probably fall by the wayside for the next three weeks. Rest assured that you will be treated to plenty of gift ideas and mini-reviews of all the coolest toys, action figures, books, graphic novels and other cool stuff. By “other cool stuff” we may mean apparel, food, weaponry, artificial limbs, tactical nuclear weapons and local gift certificates.

It all starts Monday, right here in PopCult!

This Saturday sees the inaugural Mountain State Pop Expo at the Charleston Town Center Marriott. You can expect a collection of cosplayers, gamers, toy collectors, comic book fans, movie buffs, genre fiction fans and more like-minded individuals, all coming together in one big celebration of pop culture.

All proceeds go to benefit the Children’s Home Society of West Virginia, to provide aid to Foster Children and adopted familes. Admission is only five dollars, with kids under ten admitted free with an adult. There will be a game room and tournaments and an all-ages cosplay contest, plus a special unplugged musical performance by HARRAH. The PopCult and RFC crew will be milling about all day, too.

This is all Saturday, starting at 10:30 AM at The Charleston Town Center Marriott. Follow the jump for a full schedule and more details.

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(L to R) Kevin Lancaster, bass player, Rick Stiles

This is a unique episode of The RFC MINI SHOW. It features archival footage of a band that hasn’t played together since shortly after this was recorded, back in 1990. No reunion will happen because at least three of the five members have passed away.

The band is FNG, which stood for a more blunt variation of “Freaking No Good,” which, as the drummer explained to me, was the first reaction the band got when they auditioned for a club owner. There were four core members of the band, Rick Stiles on guitar, Kevin Lancaster on vocals, Anton Robertson on guitar and Joe McComas on drums.Rick is the only surviving person of the core members of FNG.

Anton Robertson, Joe McComas

This recording includes a bass player that I couldn’t identify, and just as we were going to press, Jon Steele was able to fill in some information on him: “I think it was “Skele” on bass, can’t remember his real name, but he liked to walk over the top arch of the south side bridge after drinks at The Levee.”

Since Jon mentioned the bit about the South Side Bridge, I do remember a guy who used to do that, so it might be the same person. If he did stuff like that, it’s very possible that four of the five musicians on this episode are no longer with us.

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