Month: November 2016 (Page 7 of 8)

Tonight we bring you a masterpiece of Schlock Cinema, Zontar the Thing from Venus. This 1966 sci-fi…ahem..”epic” was actually a remake of a Roger Corman movie from ten years earlier, It Conquered The World. It was so famously cheesy that it inspired an episode-long parody on SCTV back in the early 1980s. This film never had a full run in theaters, being cranked out on a $22,000 budget to fill out a television syndication package.

According to Jeremey Lunt’s synopsis from IMDB, “A misguided scientist enables an alien from Venus named Zontar to come to earth in order to help solve man’s problems. However, Zontar has other ideas, like disabling the power supply of the entire world and taking possession of important officials with mind control devices.”

This is one of those “so bad it’s good” movies that’s best viewed in a room full of easily amused people.

RFC 22" Shark Boy Shirt from RFC Archives on Myspace.

From June, 2007, making its return to PopCult after being missing in action for quite some time, we have episode 22 of Radio Free Charleston. In this edition of the show we featured a wild music video from Voices Of Anatole, a breezy acoustic duet from Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen(then known as “Aurora”), hilarious computer animation from my brother Frank Panucci, plus The No Pants Players ate a watermelon.

The PopCulteer
November 11, 2016

Saturday November 12 Mountain State Pop Expo invades the Charleston Civic Center for a day of cool pop culture guests, vendors and happenings, all to benefit the Children’s Home Society of West Virginia. All vendor table costs, admission, and raffle ticket sales will go directly to Children’s Home Society of West Virginia to benefit the area’s neediest kids this holiday season.

Vendors will offer up toys, videos, art, video games, collectibles of all sorts and a grand time is guaranteed for all. You can expect to see artists J. R. Earls, Glen Brogan, Kelly Bryant, Chris Woodall and Jason Pell, plus a Radio Free Charleston favorite band, HARRAH.

You can meet Ghostbusters WV Division, Santana Cosplay, Frank “The Grockle” Browning, Mandalorian Mercs Black Mountain Guard, and Sarkany Studios. West Virginia’s Walking Dead walker, Jeremy Ambler, will be on hand. Writers Edward A. Holsclaw II, James Patrick and my old friend Danny Boyd will be there.

You can experience face painting, music, art and collectibles. Among the area dealers of fine and neat things are Third Floor Comics and Collectibles, Classic Plastics, Hillbilly Willy’s Nostalgic Toys, Four Horseman Comics and Games and way too many for me to list here. There will be raffles of cool memorabilia all day long with autographed photos, toys and more.

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While your PopCulteer is busy compiling the 12th edition of The PopCult Gift Guide, which commences next week, our happy little blog continues to sputter onward with a daily post about our internet radio station, The AIR. Thursday is jam-packed with  music and comedy, including two new episodes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, at 6 PM. . Listen at the website or on this sweet little radio widget…

Check out our full schedule:

7 AM Curtain Call
9 AM  The Mystery Hour (surprising music)
1 PM Sydney’s Big Electric Cat (New Wave Music)
3 PM Radio Free Charleston International
5 PM Radio Free Charleston
6 PM The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
7 PM The Comedy Vault (Monty Python)
8 PM Curtain Call (Showtunes)
10 PM Live From The Empty Glass (Matt cGuire, Travis Stephens)
1 AM Prognosis (The All Nighter)

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

The highlight today is a new episode of Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum at 1:30 PM and 7 PM. The rest of our day’s programming is designed to allow you to relax and absorb the results of yesterday’s election. Here’s the full line-up of all of today’s great programming on The AIR:

9 AM Radio Coolsville
11 AM  The Mystery Hour (Poe Part 2)
Noon Curtain Call with Mel Larch Episode 007
1 PM On The Road With Mel Choosing Luggage
1:30 PM Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum NEW
2 PM The Real with Mark Wolfe with Rudy Panucci
3 PM Curtain Call with Mel Larch Episodes 001 and 002
5 PM The Mystery Hour (No Doubt)
6 PM The Goon Show
7 PM  Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum
7:30 PM Word Association with Lee & Rudy (The Forbidden Zone)
8 PM Prognosis (YES)
10 PM The Gibby Hunters
11 PM The Comedy Vault

Are your nerves shot worrying about the outcome of the election? How about a cool distraction to keep your blood-pressure low and your sanity preserved? Let Radio Free Charleston rescue you from the mental anguish.

Tune in to The AIR at the website or on this nifty little embedded player for a marathon of local, Charleston, West Virginia music, for a full day, starting Tuesday at 9 AM.

For one solid day you can immerse yourself in the product of a vital music scene filled with creativity, talent and enthusiasm. During this full day of Radio Free Charleston you will hear a diverse roster of musical artistes including Chuck Biel, Ona, HARRAH, The Hybrid Soul Project, The Company Stores, Qiet, Speedsuit, The Mark Beckner Group, The Carpenter Ants, Diablo Blues Band, Ann Magnuson, Go Van Gogh, Three Bodies, Spencer Elliott, Whistlepunk, Mother Nang, Superfetch, Foz Rotten, Joe Vallina, John Radcliff, Feast of Stephen, The Mad Scientist Club, The Renfields, The Big Bad, The Tom McGees, Super Heavy Duty, The Science Fair Explosion, Kerry Hughes, Todd Burge, Crazy Jane, Farnsworth, Jeff Ellis and the Forty Days, and dozens of others.

Avoid the anxiety over whether this country will go to the dogs or be saved. Support the local scene and…after you vote…rock out to Radio Free Charleston ALL DAY and ALL NIGHT, By the time we’re done, you’ll know the fate of the country.

I don’t usually do sports-themed art here in PopCult, but since the Cubs finally broke the curse of the billygoat and won their first World Series since 1908 last week, and since Chicago is one of my favorite places to visit, here’s a shot of the wall outside of Harry Carey’s Seventh Inning Stretch Restaurant and Sports Museum, located on the seventh floor of the Water Tower Place Mall. As you can see, what seems to be reanimated corpses of Chicago’s beloved, late Cubs announcer appear to be leaping up to greet you.

Now they seem to be jumping for joy, at least in this photo, which has been run through the “Stark Charleston” filter. Click to enlarge.

And don’t forget to check out our totally-unrelated-to-this-post programming today on The AIR.

As you may know if you read PopCult regularly, your PopCulteer is an afficianado of Swing Music (in addition to local music, toys, comics, animation, etc). Tonight we’re going to bring you one of the greats of the Big Band Era, recorded in 1964. Herman was a musician’s musician and helped Jazz evolve beyond simple music. He was so innovative that Igor Stravinsky composed “Ebony Concerto” for his orchestra after being impressed by Neal Hefti’s arrangements for the band.

Woody Herman is captured live in a scorching one-hour concert from 1964 with the participation of one of the hottest sets of his  orchestra,  “The Swinging Herd”, including the trumpeter Bill Chase, trombonist Phil Wilson and the amazing saxophonist Sal Nistico, and drummer Jake Hanna, bassist Chuck Andrus and pianist Nat Pierce. during the nearly hour-long concert, you’ll hear such classicas as “Lonesome Old Town”and” After You’ve Gone ,” as well as his cover of Charles Mingus” After You’ve Gone.”

Remember you can hear The Swing Shift, hosted by yours truly, every Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays all week long on The AIR.

RFC 21: Yellow Submarine Shirt from RFC Archives on Myspace.

From June, 2007, comes episode 21 of Radio Free Charleston, featuring Under The Radar, The Ghosts Of Now, a short film by Sean Richardson and Alon Kutchinsky, and vintage beer animation. This episodes is called “Yellow Submarine Shirt,” and this is the first time it’s been seen in PopCult since early 2009.

Under The Radar returned with a song written by Charleston’s rock n roll recluse, John Wallace.  “Dog Day Dallas Doo Dah Demons” is a musical ode to JFK conspiracy theories. The Ghosts Of Now made their second appearance on RFC with “Patton’s Blues.”

The production notes for this episode can be found HERE, and they include a mention of the show possibly going weekly, which we did indeed manage to do a few times over the last decade. As you may know, Radio Free Charleston is currently on hiatus as a video program, but you can still tune in to our radio show every Tuesday for an hour of great local music on The AIR.

The PopCulteer
November 4, 2016

It’s going to be a short PopCulteer this week. I am hunkered down in the PopCult bunker, preparing the annual PopCult Gift Guide, which will begin on November 14 with over 120 entries, and that is going to take up much of my time for the next couple of weeks. I’m going to try to keep most of our regular features intact, but be advised that the PopCult Toybox and The PopCult Bookshelf will not happen next week because both of those regular features are going to play into the Gift Guide on an almost daily basis..

However, we do have a big thing happening in this country next week, and though I try to keep PopCult free of politics, I have to mention one political issue that’s near and dear to my heart.

There is the belief among many of my friends that we need to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) because rates are going up. Never mind that rates are going up at a lower rate than the GAO originally projected, or that rates are going up only at a fraction as fast as they were before the implementation of the law, or that the overall cost of healthcare is a mere fraction of what it would be without the ACA, or that tens of millions of people who were previously uninsured now have health coverage. There are people out there who want to kill this program, regardless of the immediate consequences of such a reckless act.

Let me get personal for a moment and tell you exactly what a repeal of the ACA would mean for me.

I am not part of the healthcare exchange or Medicaid. I was able to leave the exchange after being on it only three months and got on my wife’s PEIA policy after we were married in 2014.I had not had health insurance for more than thirty years prior to that. With insurance, I was able to get regular exams and address some nagging health issues that I’d been ignoring. Regular readers of this blog know that I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis earlier this year and began treatment for the chronic disease, which has vastly improved the quality of my life.

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