Month: October 2016 (Page 4 of 4)

Saturday at Ridenour Lake in Nitro you can get in the Halloween spirit with three free movies. There will be cool stuff going on all evening, with J. R Earls doing caricatures, a pumpkin-carving contest, local artists and photographers, hot dogs, a Tiki Bar, face-painting and more! All of it family-friendly and with no admission charge. The highlight will be the after-dark showings of the classic horror movies, Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman. There will also be local filmmakers on hand. Tim Arnott of Third Floor Comics and Collectibles is the mastermind behind this cool event. Check out the details below…

The PopCulteer
October 7, 2016

Your PopCulteer is heading North next week for a little Myasthenia Gravis-related jaunt, so it’s time for a short Friday column, composed of random items.

The PopCult Gift Guide Returns In November

You loyal correspondent is already slaving away on the twelfth annual PopCult Gift Guide, which should begin running in this blog the week before Thanksgiving. Because I am so focused on bringing you the best gift ideas from the worlds of toys, books, DVDs and Blu Rays, music, home decor and anything else neat and keen, some of our regular features may occasionally fall by the wayside, like The PopCult Toybox and The PopCult Bookshelf did this week. Those two stray fellas should return next week, but our other offerings might be a tad skimpy in the early part of the week while your PopCulteer’s time will be occupied with poking and prodding.

By the way, this year’s PopCult Gift Guide will be the biggest ever!

Return of the Caped Crusaders

The new animated take on the classic 1966 Batman TV series will have a one-night premiere this coming Monday, October 10, at the Nitro Regal Stadium Cinemas, at 2 PM and 7:30 PM. You can order tickets HERE. The next day the movie will be available as a Digital HD download, and on November 1, hard copies will be in stores so you can watch them on a DVD player like civilized people. This production sees the return of Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar as the voices of Batman, Robin and Catwoman, and in this new animated take on the classic series, they use the real Batmobile, the only “first official Batmobile,” the one designed by the late George Barris.

At a New York Comic Con panel Thursday night, as reported by Dan Greenfield at The 13th Dimension, it was announced that a sequel is already in production, and that it will feature Two Face, a villain who never appeared on the Batman TV Show. Providing the voice of Two Face will be none other than William Shatner.

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Can you believe that it’s once again time to talk about the cool programming on The AIR. Listen in at the website, or on this arrogant little radio player…

Thursday afternoon now means Radio Free Charleston on The AIR! At 3 PM you can tune in for the premiere of a new episode of Radio Free Charleston International, where your host (and PopCulteer) Rudy Panucci brings you two hours of whatever he feels like playing.Check out the playlist at the bottom of this post. This week’s show is loaded with new music from the likes of Peter Garrett, Kansas and Regina Spektor and extra-long tunes from artists like Paul McCartney, Jon and Vangelis and Simple minds.

At 5 PM you can hear this week’s local-oriented Radio Free Charleston, this week opening with Deadknot, an international supergroup that includes Charleston’s own Mark Wolfe. We also dive deep into the archives with classic tracks from The Rose Garden, Happy Minor, Doctor Curmudgeon and Mother Nang, and bring you new music from Crazy Jane and Hurl Brickbat. See the full playlist HERE.  This is followed at 6 PM by the RFC Interview with Mark Wolfe, where you can hear him tell the tale of Deadknot.

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I’ve been covering IWA East Coast since the first month of this blog, and I’m happy to report that Charleston’s own indie wrestling fed will be back in action this weekend, and it’s all to benefit the flood-afflicted Elkview Middle School sports programs.

This Saturday IWA East Coast returns to Kingsway Outreach Center, 302 21st ST in Nitro, WV (The former Nitro High School) at 7:30 PM with ALL PROCEEDS GOING TO ELKVIEW MIDDLE SCHOOL ATHLETICS to replace equipment lost in historic flooding this past June. In addition to a first-rate wrestling show, there will be a raffle, with incredible stuff available. The WWE and others have provided items to raffle LIVE at the event. Proceeds will be matched by the Modern Woodmen Local Chapter, up to $2500!

So far announced on the live event:
* IWA East Coast champion Chance Prophet defends against “Bombastic” Bruce Grey
* Mega Plowers (“Gigolo” Jock, “Magnum CK” Chris Kahn) vs. O.V.E.R. (Christian Kobian, Shane Kryzak)
* International star Mad Man Pondo vs. TJ Phillips
* Cole Cash vs. Viper
* The Sons of Necro (Smokey C, Chuey Martinez) vs. Elkview Adam and Colton Collins
* Also, the return of Mickie Knuckles and more!

Get tickets or make a donation by clicking “Shop Now” at the IWA East Coast website. To become an event sponsor or donating items for raffle, contact iwaeastcoast@live.com.

You can show support on Facebook at the event page and follow IWA East Coast on FB, and Twitter too.This is going to be a great night of fun, all for a good cause. Not only will we get to see the IWA East Coast champ, Chance Prophet, in action, we’ll also get to see IWA EC’s founding father, Mad Man Pondo, and the return to action of the beloved Mickie Knuckles, after a far too-long absense. It’s going to be a blast!

We have a stellar line-up of great programming all day Wednesday on The AIR. All-new episodes of Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum, The Gibby Hunters, The Comedy Vault. Curtain Call and The Swing Shift are joined by a special replay of the very first RFC Interview with Mark Wolfe, which now includes the song he recorded in Wales as part of the band, Deadknot.

Wednesday is loaded with great talk, comedy and music. Listen at the website or on this sweet little radio widget…

At 1 PM we kick things off with an encore of On The Road with Mel‘s guide to traveling for West Virginia football. At 1:30 PM Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum presents an interview with Chad Lindberg, star of the movie October Sky. You can read more about this very special episode (and Michele’s book signing on Thursday) HERE. A repeat of this show will air this evening at 6 PM.

At 2 PM, instead of running The Best of The Real with Mark Wolfe, we will bring you the RFC Interview from July where your PopCulteer turns the tables and puts Mark on the other side of the microphone to talk about his trip to Wales to record as part of an international supergroup.

This interview has been newly-edited to include the song, “Losing My Dreams” by the band, Deadknot.

You can hear this interview again tonight at 9 PM, following a special replay of this week’s Radio Free Charleston, where we debuted the song, at 8 PM.

At 3 PM on Curtain Call Mel Larch presents a one-hour salute to Stephen Sondheim, bringing you music from several of his shows, as well as the voice of the man himself discussing his music and introducing some of the tunes. You will hear performances by Sondheim, as well as Nathan Lane, Chita Rivera, Madonna, Bernadette Peters and more. The full playlist appears at the bottom of this post.

Not to be outdone, yours truly brings you a one-hour salute to Duke Ellington on The Swing Shift at 4 PM. In this show you will hear Duke Ellington and his orchestra, along with performances of his compositions by Frank Sinatra, Lady Gaga, Royal Crown Revue, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgeral, Joe Jackson and more. The full playlist for this show also appears at the bottom of this post.

At 10 PM it’s a brand-new edition of The Gibby Hunters. with Brian and Jerry with special guest Rah Rah Emmler, as they talk about their recent misadventures in Manhattan. This show is followed by The Comedy Vault, which this week presents a full hour of uncensored, vintage George Carlin. At Midnight the astonishing and unpredictable overnight shift brings you music and comedy all night long, including Firesign Theater, No Doubt, The Pixies, Richard Pryor and more.

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Michele Zirkle Marcum, the host of Life Speaks, the newest show on The AIR is in the middle of a very busy week.

Over the weekend she attended the Rocket Boys Festival in Beckley, where she caught up with Chad Lindberg, star of the movie October Sky, which was based on Homer Hickam’s memories of building rockets in McDowell County.  Michele interviewed Chad about his role in October Sky, as well as his roles on the television shows Supernatural and Ghost Stalkers.

You can listen to Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum Wednesday at 1:30 PM (with a special replay Wednesday at 6 PM) on The AIR, at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

That’s Chad with Michele in the photo at the head of this post. You may notice that Chad is holding a copy of Michele’s new book, Rain No Evil. Michele will sign copies of Rain No Evil from 6 PM to 8 PM Thursday at Taylor Books.

Michele will also appear at the West Virginia Book Festival Oct. 28 -29 in Charleston. She is donating a portion of book sale proceeds to West Virginia flood relief.

The book is available now at her website, or you can purchase a copy at the signings and have it personally autographed by the author.

With Monday in our rear-view mirror it’s already time for the Tuesday line-up on The AIR, this week with a fresh installment of Radio Free Charleston as well as encore episodes of  Radio Coolsville and  Six Degrees of Separation featuring Johnny Compton, plus we have an encore of last week’s Radio Free Charleston International.

As is always the case, you can tune in at The AIR website or on this special little embedded radio player widget…

It all kicks off at 10 AM with a brand new Radio Free Charleston, which opens with “Losing My Dreams,” the song recorded earlier this year by Deadknot, an international supergroup that includes Charleston’s own Mark Wolfe on guitar and backing vocals. Mark was invited to Wales to record this one-off song with Ron Griffiths, Marko Kovacevic and Richard Godly.

We spoke at length about Mark’s overseas recording adventures back in July on the RFC Interview, and later this week we will re-present that interview, with this song edited in so you can hear the stories behnd its creation. but we didn’t want to wait until then, so we’re opening this week’s regular RFC with it, too.

After we debut Deadknot, we dive head-first into our archives, bringing you the 1968 hit, “Next Plane To London, by The Rose Garden, with lead singer Diana DiRose, from Parkersburg, and we dig out a few live recordings and mix them with old and current album tracks, to give you a gigantically pleasing and enlightening local music sampler. You can hear it again Tuesday night at 10 PM, and Thursday at 5 PM.

Check out the playlist here:

Deadknot  “Losing My Dreams”
The Rose Garden  “Next Plane To London”
Happy Minor  “Foolish Games”
Dr. Curmudgeon  “My Demon Math Metal Tune Just Ate Your Artsy-Folksy Americana Song…Sorry”
Whitechapel District  “Revolution”
Mother Nang  “Painter”
Crazy Jane  “Alienation”
600 lbs of Sin  “Too Big To Fail”
Amon’s Horn  “Options”
Hurl Brickbat  “Brooke”
Jason Barnhouse The Wounded Project  “If I Were You”
The Amazing Delores  “Stop Messin’ With My Mind”

Throughout the rest of the programming day, you’ll hear special programs devoted to The Beatles, Elvis Costello, Macy Gray and more, as well as a classic Radio Coolsville and Johnny Compton on Six Degrees of Separation. Last week’s Radio Free Charleston International replays at 11 PM, followed by an all-night New Wave Music marathon with Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.

“I know he’s around here somewhere.”

We kick off this week with a digital painting based on a photo by my lovely wife, Mel Larch. I decided to turn this into a mash-up of The Ghostbusters and The Adventure Team GI Joe. It made sense. I was sort of dressed for it.

This photo, of course, was taken during ShockCon 5, which wrapped Sunday, and which may well have been the most fun ShockaCon yet. It was a blast reconnecting with old friends that I hadn’t been around for some time and checking out the cool panels, vendors and cosplayers. Friday I co-hosted a panel on Fifty Years of Star Trek Toys with Mark Wolfe, Lee Harrah and Tim Arnott, and Saturday played assistant to Mel as she conducted Walking Dead Trivia. The Ghostbusters were not only on hand, but were also out in full force. Thanks to the guys for letting me borrow their captive Marshmallow Man for the image above.

Since I was wearing an Adventure Team shirt and pith helmet, and had just bought a small stash of Adventure Team goodies from Tim Arnott and Third Floor Comics and Collectibles, I decided to try and paint the photo in the style of the classic GI Joe Adventure Team box art, and give it an Adventure Teamish title. Click to enlarge.

With Halloween looming and ShockaCon 5 wrapping up today, we’re going to bring you the Radio Free Charleston Halloween shows from 2012 and 2013, which were shot at the first two ShockaCons. Your PopCulteer is on doctors orders to lay off the video editing, so this year there won’t be an RFC Halloween show, but we will revisit some of our previous Halloween spectaculars from years past all month long.

The shows we’re bringng you tonight are loaded with tons of cool stuff and performances by HarraH, The Nanker Phelge, The Renfields, The Big Bad, Foz Rotton, The Wayward Girls School of Burlesque and more. One year I even interviewed people, which I hardly ever do on RFC. Above you see our show based around the very first ShockaCon, from 2012.  Below it’s a two-parter from 2013.

From March 2007, This episode is called “A Place Of Solace Shirt” in honor of the Huntington band who didn’t appear on RFC until many years later. Our musical guests on this episode are John Radcliff and Al Carey.

Radcliff is an old buddy from way back in my radio days, and Al was unknown to us, but submitted a music video with a striking, but dated and ham-handed political commentary. Rad sings the very XTC-like “Rainbows,” while Al provides us with a song which, in the intervening years, has pretty much lost any relevance that it had at the time.

Also in this show is animation by Stephen Beckner, a short film by Frank Panucci and a vintage Major Matt Mason toy commercial. Read the original production notes here.