Despite the dark cloud hanging over the United States Postal Service for the last few years, they have managed to release several cool and highly-collectible stamp sets recently.
Stamp collecting is nowhere near being the mainstream hobby that it was decades ago, but it is still a thing, even in today’s world, where many people go months or years without buying a first-class stamp.
However, that hasn’t stopped the USPS from releasing cool new sets that pay tribute to the greats of literature and philosophy, such as August Wilson, Ursela K. Leguin and Yogi Berra, as well as really neat cultural touchstones, like this multi-design set devoted to Tap Dance…
Of major interest for Pop Culturists is this set, just released a few months ago, devoted to Star Wars Droids, with ten different designs…
The most recent release celebrates the Lunar New Year and The Year of the Tiger, which is near and dear to your PopCulteer…
You can order the latest quarterly USA Philatelic catalog for free HERE, and read more about the sets listed above, as well as first-day covers and special albums and framed editions, plus you can find out about upcoming sets like the Title IX stamps, due out in March, and order previous stamps that they still have in stock, like their Scooby Doo, Hot Wheels and Marvin Gaye stamps and collectibles.
We may not NEED stamps as much as we used to, but it’s still okay to want them.
We have a cool new Kickstarter Project from Robert Jiminez to tell you about today. Last summer I told you about his latest Fearsome Weirdos trading card set, and now he’s taking his monstrous talents into the world of sports with Startling Lineup Trading Cards.
Startling Lineup is a 36 card baseball player parody set written and illustrated by Jiménez. A companion set of sorts to the Fearsome Weirdos sets, it features 24 bizarre ball players along with a collection of MVPs, Most Vile Products. Card backs feature conceptual sketches of the design on the front, and these will be printed on old-school cards, not that fancy bright-white stuff that lacks the charm of vintage cards.
Included with each set is a wrapper card with checklist, a sticker and two different authentic, unfolded wax wrappers!
Robert’s work has appeared on album covers, in publications such as THE THING: ARTBOOK, VISIONS FROM THE UPSIDE DOWN: STRANGER THINGS ARTBOOK, Tiki Magazine and Pinstriping & Kustom Graphics Magazine, and has shown in galleries including Disneyland’s Wonderground, Harold Golen, M Modern, Creature Features, and Bear & Bird among others.
You can also see Robert’s work in trading card sets for Topps, Cryptozoic, and Upper Deck on licenses such as Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, Mars Attacks, Star Wars, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Rick And Morty, Ghostbusters, Adventure Time and more. Most notably, Robert worked on 8 paintings for the Upper Deck trading card set FIREFLY THE ‘VERSE and 9 paintings for WACKY PACKAGES GO TO THE MOVIES by Topps.
Robert is also the author and illustrator of the books LAST CALL AT TIKILANDIA, STRANGEWISE NO.9, CHIMPS & TIKIS AND RAVEN-HAIRED BEAUTIES: AN ADULT COLORING BOOK, NOSFERATU’S CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK and WEIRD-ASS FACES VOL.1, SOPHISTICATES AND WEIRDOS and the trading card set FEARSOME WEIRDOS.
With Startling Lineup, Backers will be able to add-on some original art along with extra wrappers and previous Zerostreet trading card sets.
Also, sketch cards are available as an add-on! And as with the original Fearsome Weirdos set, Jiminez invited a few guest artist friends to help create a very limited amount of them. Only a handful from each guest, these sketch cards will be randomly placed in orders.
The basic set is $35 plus shipping, and the campaign has already met its funding goal in just its first few hours. In fact, your PopCulteer kicked in yesterday and when I was done, I realized that my pledge was the one that happened to hit the goal. If you kick in now, you are guaranteed to get this cool trading card set.
Startling Lineup is a great set for fans of baseball (which might be facing a strike this year) and the macabre (which never goes on strike), and especially for folks who like both. You can find the Kickstarter campaign HERE, and check out the video below…
Once again we have come to Tuesday on The AIR but our boilerplate is a bit different this week. Today we deliver unto you a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, and a brand-new edition of The Swing Shift but as a bonus we have a special treat as Dexter Checkers, the host of Ska Madness, who stepped down a few years back for health reasons, returns again for a special episode of his show that brings you a mixtape of a classic Two-Tone Ska band and their related atts.
So that’s five hours of particularly nifty and new internet radio! You simply have to take your cursor over and point it at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website).
We have a wild and eclectic new Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. This week we open with a new song by The Paranoid Style, a band that includes WV’s own, William Matheny, and we pay tribute to the late George Crumb, with some selections from his vast ouvre.
In our second hour we’ll bring you The Kronos Quartet, and their rendition of Crumb’s work, The Black Angels. The rest of our three-hour show is jam-packed with new music from Jim Lange, Minor Swing, Byzantine, Korn, Nomadic Narwhal, Paul Calicoat, Jethro Tull, Billy Bragg and more.
Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages)…
hour two Hello June “Fight, Don’t Fight” Paul Calicoat “Clown Face”
Jethro Tull “Mine Is The Mountain”
The Anchoress “My Confessor” Jordan Andrew Jefferson “I’m Still Here”
U2 “Your Song Saved My Life”
Diablo Blues Band ‘Hell To Pay” Kronos Quartet “George Crumb’s Black Angels, I, II, and III”
Feast of Stephen “Gomec”
Liam Gallagher “Everything’s Electric”
The Jam “English Rose” A Story Told “Fall Back”
You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, and Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different 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 an encore of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and a special new Ska Madness at 2 PM.
Dexter Checkers returns with the first new episode of Ska Madness since last November at 2 PM. He has recovered nicely from his serious health issues and has returned to work at The Haversham Recording Institute. He’s been threatening to give us a new Ska Madness, and this week he was in the mood to give us a mixtape that combines music from The English Beat with tracks from their spin-off bands, General Public and Fine Young Cannibals, plus some solo material from Ranking Roger.
We didn’t get a playlist, but he promises that it’ll be a skankin’ show.
Ska Madness will be repeated this week Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 11 AM and late Saturday afternoon.
At 3 PM we have a special new mixtape edition of The Swing Shift that brings you an hour of Western Swing. This show gives you classic Western Swing artists like Bob Wills and Sapde Cooley, and tosses in just a couple of modern bands playing tribute. We even get Ella Fitzgerald’s foray into the genre.
Western Swing is very important in the evolution of American pop music, and provided part of the musical DNA for what would become Rock and Roll. Just as you wouldn’t have Chuck Berry without Louis Jordan, you wouldn’t have Bill Haley without Bob Wills. And without Chuck Berry and Bill Haley, we wouldn’t have Rock and Roll as we know it.
Best of all, Western Swing still swings!
Check out this playlist:
The Swing Shift 126
Brazos Valley Boys with Hank Thompson “Woodchopper’s Ball”
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys “San Antonio Rose”
Noel Boggs and His Day Sleepers “Stealin’ Home”
Curly Williams “Southern Belle”
Spade Cooley “Boggs Boogie”
Johnny Lee Wills “Milk Cow Blues”
The Light Crust Doughboys “Pussy, Pussy, Pussy”
Bob Wills “Sioux City Sue”
Dickie McBride “Tulsa Twist”
Fort Worth Doughboys “Sunbonnet Sue”
Leon Mcauliffe & His Western Swing Band “Panhandle Rag”
Ella Fitzgerald “Cow Cow Boogie”
Noel Boggs-Wade Ray “It’s All Your Fault”
Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers “When You’re Smiling”
Modern Mountaineers “Everybody’s Trucking”
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys “Across The Alley From Alamo”
Jesse Ashock “My Bank Account Is Gone”
National Radio Station “Hesitation Blues”
Arthur Smith “Fingers On Fire”
Kitty Rose and The Rattlers “Might As Well Be DEad”
Hank Penny and His Radio Cowboys “Won’t You Ride In My Little Red Wagon”
Al Petty “Al’s Steel Guitar”
You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 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.
After a month of paying tribute to Edward Hopper by dabbling in realism, this weekend I decided to cut loose with a little abstract expressionism.
What you see above is an acrylic on cheap-ass canvas board study for a possible larger work later. I wanted to evoke the feeling of stormclouds gathering over a suburban area, only without resorting to any photographic reference.
Which is not to suggest that Expressionism is simply laziness, but in this particular case, that did play a small part in it. This one didn’t take any less time than the Hopperesque pieces, though, so it wasn’t quite the shortcut I’d imagined. Also, this one may seem a little fuzzier here than it should because this is not a scan of the painting, but a photo taken with my phone and a five-dollar ring light. The paint was still too wet to put it in the scanner and I didn’t want to smear it with an acetate cover.
I may go back and work on this more. The light colors photographed much lighter than they look to the naked eye, but that made me have second thoughts about the color composition.
If you want to see this painting larger, just click on it.
Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent 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 at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.
PsychedelicShack 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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.
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. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.
Our Monday Marathon, beginning at 8 PM, brings you eleven hours of one of our “on hiatus” Haversham Recording Institute shows, Ska Madness. Dexter Checkers is threatening to return to this show on a semi-regular basis, so we decided to drop a marathon here to encourage him.
Bob Marely would have turned 77 today, had cancer not taken his life in 1981. In his honor we are bringing you two full concerts featuring Bob Marley and The Wailers
Above you see the Reggae legned just two days after a political assassination attempt was made on his life – resulting in him getting shot along with his wife Rita & manager Don Taylor – he boldly continues on his musical mission to play at the Smile Jamaica Concert at National Heroes Park in Kingston, Jamaica on the 5th of December, 1976.
Below, you’ll find Marly in concert in Santa Barbara, Califonia, in 1979.
From October 2009, this week’s flashback brings you a show loaded with great music from Shindig and Joseph Hale, some prehistoric animation and the big reveal of who won the Great Guitar Giveaway from Route 60 Music. Our host segments were shot at Route 60 Music in Barboursville, and those segments were shot by none other than Flare Baroshi, who you will see performing in next week’s flashback.
We recorded Shindig at the Labelle, in South Charleston, and the late Mr. Hale was recorded at Taylor Books in Charleston.
For the full story on this show, check out the newly-restored production notes HERE.
At the end of a very busy week, your PopCulteer has had his attention once again focused on secret projects for the future, and as a result, today’s column is again devoid of a bright and shiny new essay or photo feature for you this week.
Coming to my rescue is a great new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat to share, courtesy of Sydney Fileen. As you probably now by now, The AIR is PopCult‘s sister internet station, and you can listen to it without even leaving the blog.
Following an encore of a recent MIRRORBALL at 2 PM, Friday brings a brand-new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat to The AIR. The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player at the top right column of this blog if you’re reading on a desktop.
At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a very special mixtape episode devoted the musical production genius of one Trevor Horn. Having helped define New Wave music as the lead singer/songwriter of The Buggles, and after a strange detour that saw The Buggles join the progressive rock band, YES, about forty years ago Horn stepped back from performing and turned his talents toward producing other artists.
Those artists included Frankie Goes To Hollywood, ABC, The Art of Noise, Propaganda and many others, and Horn’s distinctive production style set the tone for much of the next decade’s music. Sydney has assembled a mixtape of Trevor Horn’s greatest productions, with a few obscure tracks tossed into the mix, just to keep you on your toes.
Just check out the playlist to see for yourself…
BEC 085
The Buggles “Video Killed The Radio Star”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Relax”
Propaganda “Dr. Mabuse”
ABC “Poison Arrow”
Grace Jones “Slave To The Rhythm”
The Art of Noise “Beat Box”
Dollar “Mirror Mirror (Mon Amour)”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Wish (The Lads Were Here)”
The Pet Shop Boys “Left To My Own Devices”
The Buggles “Johnny On The Monorail”
ABC “Valentine’s Day”
The Art of Noise “Moment In Love”
Godley & Creme “Cry”
The Buggles “Adventures In Modern Recording”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood”
The Buggles “Adventures (Reprise)”
Propaganda “Femme Fatale (The Woman With The Orchid)”
Grace Jones “Jones The Rhythm”
Malcolm McLaren “Buffalo Gals”
The Buggles “I Am A Camera”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “The Ballad of 32”
Dollar “Hand Held In Black and White”
The Art of Noise “Close To The Edit”
The Buggles “Fade Away”
ABC “The Look Of Love”
Dollar “Videoteque”
The Art of Noise “Snapshot/Battle”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Rage Hard”
The Buggles “Clean Clean”
Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.
That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check this blog for fresh content every single freakin’ day. I’m cool like that.
This Friday The Charleston Light Opera Guild will present Paradise Park The Musical at their Tennessee Avenue Theater. Based on the 1992 cult movie by Daniel Boyd, this musical features a book by Boyd and music and lyrics by West Virginia Music Hall of Famer, Larry Groce (who was in the original movie).
Theatre West Virginia premiered the musical in 2018 at Grandview State Park’s Cliffside Ampitheatre and repeated it in 2019. Now Charleston’s Light Opera Guild will tackle this show at their workshop theater, which is great for folks who can’t handle outdoor theater in the summer.
The story contains themes familiar to citizens of West Virginia: poverty, religion, hopes and dreams and centers on people caring for other people through hard times, through natural disasters and through everyday life. The musical tells the story of an elderly woman in a West Virginia trailer-park who dreams that God will come to their community and grant them all a wish.
The large cast is filled with a great assortment of West Virginia-based talent, like Mark Bates, John Inghram, Julie Miller, Phil Washington, Ted Brightwell, Clint Thomas, Jim Damron and many more. Direction and choreography are by CLOG mainstay, Nina Denton Pasinetti. The musical director is David Patrick, and Tom Pasinetti is the technical director. You can find the full cast list HERE.
The show runs February 4-6 & 11-13, 2022 at the Charleston Light Opera Guild Theatre at 411 Tennessee Ave. Tickets can be purchased online HERE. For folks who are squeamish about attending a show during the pandemic, note that Masks are required at all times in the theatre regardless of vaccination status. Friday and Saturday shows begin at 7:30 PM, while Sunday shows are 2 PM matinees.
If you are comfortable attending a live show in person, Paradise Park The Musical is your chance to support the local scene and witness the work of many great local creative talents. See the cast below (photo credits: Brian Marrs).
For over a year I’ve been telling you about ZURU’s 5 Surprise Mini Brands and their spin-offs, Toy Mini Brands and Mini Fashions. They have exploded in popularity and become one of the hottest collectibles on the market. Kids are snapping them up just to collect, while adult hobbyists are grabbing them for dioramas for their Barbies and GI Joes.
It’s become a cool pop culture phenomenon that’s been featured everywhere from The New York Times to Slate to CBS News.
Now we have a new entry from ZURU, a collaboration with Disney. That means a whole new batch of minature collectibles featuring Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney Princesses and of course Mickey & Friends will be coming your way in the 5 Surprise Mini Brands: Disney Store Edition.
{UPDATE: You can pre-order Disney Store Edition Mini Brands directly from Target now at THIS LINK}
There’s even a tiny Grogu (Baby Yoda), which is also available as a rare gold variant.
As soon as we get our hands on these, we’ll bring you an unboxing video here in PopCult, but for now, check out the press release with all the important details:
Exact Replica Miniature Collectibles from Marvel, Disney Princess, Pixar, Mickey & Friends, and Lucasfilm, To Debut in 5 Surprise Mini Brands: Disney Store Edition
LOS ANGELES – Award-winning toymaker ZURU has collaborated with Disney to miniaturize some of the most beloved Disney products, in 5 Surprise Mini Brands: Disney Store Edition. Perfect replicas of favorite toys from Marvel, Lucasfilm, Disney Princess, Mickey & Friends, and Pixar offered exclusively by Disney will debut in miniature form, down to the barcode, in the latest capsule collection of ZURU’s wildly popular, highly sought-after Mini Brands portfolio.
“The appeal of Mini Brands is truly a global phenomenon, with more than three billion views of surprise videos to date,” said Aneisha Vieira, Global Brand Director of ZURU. “There is no doubt the addition of rare Disney Store Exclusive Toys from Disney’s treasured portfolio of brands will take our collectible frenzy to new heights and make 5 Surprise Mini Brands: Disney Store Edition the ultimate collector’s item.”
With each 5 Surprise Mini Brands: Disney Store Edition, collectors, kids and Disney fans will experience the thrill of unwrapping, peeling and revealing five mini toys and toy store accessories, to recreate a tiny Disney Store of their own! The first Series features more than 70 minis, plus ultra-rare gold minis, including the likes of Marvel heroes Spider-Man Talking Action Figure (also available as a Super Rare Gold variant), Iron Man Action Figure, Marvel Toy Box andCaptain America Shield, Star Wars C-3P0-inspired Die Cast Figure and R2-D2-inspired Talking Figure, and Pixar fan-favorites Woody Talking Action Figure, Buzz Lightyear Talking Action Figure (including a Super Rare Gold variant) and Lightning McQueen RC Car.
The line also includes Disney Princesses like the Disney Animators’ Edition Snow White and Belle Classic Doll as well as a selection from Mickey & Friends, and more.
Launching first to market at Target for the month of February 2022, 5 Surprise Mini Brands: Disney Store Edition are priced at $7.99 and designed for ages four and up.
It’s another double-shot of new shows Tuesday on The AIR as we deliver a new episode of Radio Free Charlestonand a new edition of The Swing Shift. That’s two new programs totalling four hours of great musical enjoyment that might just take us into February with a swing. You simply have to poke your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website).
We have a killer new Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. This week we open with a track from a brand-new album from our old friend, Paul Calicoat, and offer up new local music from Minor Swing, Disarm The Fallen and The Mediogres, plus lots of other great local artists as well as the best independent music we can find from around the world, and a track or two from legends like Elvis Costello.
Paul actually opens up our first and our second hour, and Minor Swing manages to cross over into today’s new episode of The Swing Shift.
Our third hour is an encore of an episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Four from four years ago this week. This one-hour show was a preview of the epic Rubber Soul Beatles marathon, which happened February 2, 2018. You’ll hear Rubber Soul with special guests Casey Litz, Erin Elizabeth and Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch, plus we have other local bands offering their takes on Beatle classics.
Check out the playlist below to see all the cool tunes (live links will take you to the artist’s pages)…
hour three Rubber Soul with Mel Larch “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”
Rubber Soul with Casey Litz “The Devil In Her Heart”
“I’ll Cry Instead”
“Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby”
Rubber Soul with Erin Elizabeth “I Me Mine”
Rubber Soul in rehearsal 2011
“Back In The USSR”
“Dear Prudence”
“Yer Blues”
Go Van Gogh “I Am The Walrus”
Under The Radar “Eleanor Rigby”
Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen “Across The Universe”
Go Van Gogh “Requiem For Pepperland”
Rubber Soul in rehearsal 2009
“Help”
“All You Need Is Love”
Rubber Soul with Mel Larch “Cry Baby, Cry”
You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, and Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different 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 MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and NOISE BRIGADE at 2 PM.
At 3 PM we have a brand-new episode of The Swing Shift. This week the show is a mixtape tribute to Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli and The Quintette du Hot Club de France (which I manage to refer to as “The Hot Five” at least once during the show). We open the show with Minor Swing, a Charleston based band that takes their name from one of Reinhardt and Grapelli’s classic tunes. Minor Swing is Ray Singleton – guitar, Alasha Al-Qudwah – violin, Jim Martin – bass and Andrew Winter – guitar, and you can hear them on today’s new RFC, too.
You’ll hear a wild mix of swinging guitar and gypsy violin, and a few surprises as well.
Check this playlist.
The Swing Shift 125
Minor Swing “Minnie’s Manouche”
Django Reinhardt “Confessin'”
Pink Turtle “Money Money Money”
The Monkey Swingers “Swing 2”
Steve Howe “The Continental”
Stephane Grapelli “Tangerine”
Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grapelli “Crazy Rhythm”
Hot Sugar Band “Blue Drag”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Little Mother In Law”
Vigilone, Creni, Gattone Gypsy Jazz Trio “Django Tiger”
The Quintette du Hot Club de France “I Got Rhythm”
Duke & Dukies “After You’ve Gone”
Minor Swing “Evil Woody”
Stephane Grapelli “Lover Come Back To Me”
Django Reinhardt “Minor Swing”
You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM, Friday at 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.
Despite the dark cloud hanging over the United States Postal Service for the last few years, they have managed to release several cool and highly-collectible stamp sets recently.
You can order the latest quarterly USA Philatelic catalog for free HERE, and read more about the sets listed above, as well as first-day covers and special albums and framed editions, plus you can find out about upcoming sets like the Title IX stamps, due out in March, and order previous stamps that they still have in stock, like their Scooby Doo, Hot Wheels and Marvin Gaye stamps and collectibles.
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