Month: June 2024 (Page 3 of 3)

This week, now that I’m back using my fingers again, we have a quick ‘n’ sloppy semi-watercolor that follows in the footsteps of last week’s tree doodle.

This time, using spent watercolor pens and Winsor Newton inks on paper for pens (with a lot of tissue blotting and smudging for effect), I added color to the mix and painted some trees, from my imagination. It’s a bit of a cheat, using the lack of detail to give the illusion of movement.  I like the way it looks, but it’s basically still a limbering-up exercise. I am trying to capture atmospheric perspective better as I go along, but this isn’t exactly a gallery piece.

As usual, I did a little color-correction and cropping after scanning it, but there were no digital touch-ups.

It is nice to be making physical art again.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM 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 elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack 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. 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. All times listed are Eastern, so if you’re in another timezone, adjust accordingly.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of classic George Carlin on a vintage episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of Mel Larch’s Curtain Call. The Tony Awards are Sunday, so we’re bringing you a marathon of Tony shows from the past, kicking off with this year’s nominations show.  On Sunday, instead of running our weekly marathon of Mel’s musical theatre show opposite the Tonys, we will move it to 9 AM, and wrap it up by 6 PM, in time for fans to watch all the pre-show Tony Awards coverage on streaming services. Then from 6 PM to Midnight, we’ll bring you a bonus marathon of Mel’s Disco show, MIRRORBALL.

Above, In around seven minutes, PopCult looks at some of the custom models on display at WonderFest USA, the first weekend of June. This is a PopCult Video shot by Mel Larch and Rudy Panucci, with music, narration and editing by your humble PopCulteer. Most of the music is stuff I’ve done in the past, but I forgot to credit my brother, Frank, for our collaboration on the second tune you hear in the background.

Below you’re going to see about thirty photos of some of the models we didn’t manage to get into the video. The model room was packed with very-impressed onlookers, and trying to get decent shots made us feel sort of like salmon swimming upstream in wet cement. So to fill in the gaps, here are some still images of the models we didn’t get on video. You can expect another photo essay or two in the next week, but for now, watch the video and enjoy the photos below.

WonderFest USA happens in Louisville every year, the weekend after Memorial Day, and it’s a fun gathering of model kit builders, monster kids, horror and sci-fan fans, aficianados of special effects and make up and folks who just love cool stuff. We always have a blast there and of course, I like to share some of that with you.

Your eyes are drawn to the cool monsters, but Forbush Man is the real gem here.

Just as the tables were packed with models, the aisles between them were packed with admirers.

One of dozens of classic movie scene dioramas.

Continue reading

From November, 2009, this episode of Radio Free Charleston, “Adamfest VI Shirt” features music from The Limbs, The Buttonflies and WATT 4, plus animation from Frank Panucci, and a short video showing off the photography of Clayton Spangler.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
June 7, 2024

As promised, here’s the first big photo essay of our trip to WonderFest USA in Louisville last weekend.

Because of the limitations of this blog, I can only cram in about thirty photos in this one post, so today I’m going to show you some of the guests, some of the cool stuff from both dealer’s rooms, and several models that were on display in said dealer rooms. We made the trip down because Mrs. PopCulteer is still a huge fan of The Walking Dead, and that show’s makeup guru/producer, Greg Nicotero, was on hand and available for autographs. That’s him at the upper right of this post with Frank Dietz, who moderated his buddy Nicotero’s talk.

I also got to meet Danny Roebuck, whom I’ve traded online comments with a few times over the last twenty years or so. Danny is a noted character actor who has been in every Rob Zombie film (he was Grandpa Munster in the recent Munsters reboot) and has acted with such notable stars as Andy Griffith, Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Bruce Campbell and Grumpy Cat. Seriously, he’s been on so many TV shows that I can’t list them all here. Danny also, buried under extensive makeup, played one of the great monsters of the screen…Jay Leno.

Danny also made me go look at something in the dealer’s room that absolutely blew my mind. You’ll see it below.

I also got to see William Stout again. I’ve been a fan of his artwork since way back in his underground comic days, and among the SEVEN books he has in the works, is a compilation of all his underground comix, so that was really cool.

I’ll be including extensive captions with each photo, but I have to warn you…we’re not going to the model room today. On Sunday, I’m going to bring you a short video of the model room, along with about twenty photos. We might have more of those next week, along with a very special mini-photo essay devoted to a classic toy that was on display in one of the dealer rooms.

So  let us dive into the photos…

Mr Greg Nicotero. Insert your own “describing someone’s weiner” joke here.

Frank Dietz, writer, actor, animator and the moderator for his sometime collaborator, Nicotero.

I finally got to meet Danny Roebuck in the real world, and we hung out and talked for maybe half an hour, and as I was leaving the room, I realized that I hadn’t taken any pictures of him, so he obliged me with a thumbs-up before we left. He also sent me to look at the coolest thing in the world, which you will see below.

William Stout, the guy who drew the movie poster for “Rock N Roll High School,” did all the production designs for “Return of the Living Dead,” has published several books of dinosaur art, and is also one heck of a nice guy.

Continue reading

As we pause to observe D Day and enjoy the last couple of weeks of Spring there is still plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond, which we will get to right after a quick Kickstarter plug

We have a cool new Kickstarter Project from Robert Jiminez to tell you about today. For a few years now I’ve been telling you about his Fearsome Weirdos trading card sets, and now he’s taking his monstrous talents into the world of gaming, with Fearsome Weirdos: Gaming Ghouls.

Gaming Ghouls, the 6th Fearsome Weirdos set, is a parody trading card set featuring 8-Bit Beasts and Video Game Ghouls. The base set is made up of a Wrapper/Checklist card, 20 Characters, and 3 Decayed Arcade cards. The set also includes a lenticular card, a holographic sticker and 2 promo cards, all packaged in a nifty tuck box.

Also available as rewards and add-ons are sketch cards, original art and more (although the original is going fast). If you’re new to Fearsome Weirdos, all previous sets are available as add-ons as well.

The set is written and illustrated by Robert, with some writing assists by Paul Harris and Peter Zeis. Check out the cool trailer…

Fearsome Weirdos Theme Song by The Intoxicators! 8-Bit intro and end music by Fesliyan Studios. This set was fully-funded in about an hour, so you can be sure you’re going to get it, and it’s cool as hell, so you know you want it. Go Kick in now!

And now we return to our live events and stuff…

As I have been copying and pasting of late, this a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. I ain’t omnipotent, y’know.

This week’s Live on the Levee features local legends The Spurgie Hankins Band opening for Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears. The music begins at 6:30 PM.

Your PopCulteer is back from last weekend’s WonderFest USA in Louisville, and we had a great time. The plan is to bring you a huge photo essay this Friday, and a short video on Sunday, but for today, we’re going to go with ten or so randomly-chosen photos of the model kits on display.

At right you see a life-size model of the Robot Maria from the classic Fritz Lang film, Metropolis. She was tucked away in a corner of the model room. Nobody puts Robot Maria in a corner!

Friday you’ll get to see more photos of the models, but I also have a few shots of the dealer’s rooms, and I remembered to take a handful of photos of some of the guests.

I also plan to bring you a couple of shorter photo essays next week of some of the non-competition displays.

But for now, here’s a teensy-tiny teaser that doesn’t even scratch a cube chipped off of the tip of the iceberg…

This was a gigantic model kit of some kind of space monkey sumbitch.

A very cool, yet simple and effective diorama of The Walking Dead.

Okay, this is half of an amazingly intricate, detailed diorama based on the show, Fraser. Everything is reproduced to exact scale and every detail is perfect. It was really impressive, even to me, someone who really hates that show.

Three Zombie Nazis photobombed by Vampirella’s ass.

There’s a lot of cool stuff here, but that Metaluna Mutant really stands out.

A really nice tribute to Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop-motion animation. His daughter was one of the guests at WonderFest this year.

A table full of impressive model kits, with a generous helping of cheesecake in the middle. I’m a little suprised that the overly-sexualized Velma trope has managed to survive that awful cartoon on MAX.

A table full of primo Kaiju, at least one of which is really neat.

An impressive (and huge) sauropod. I’m not going to get more specific than that.

Finally we have an incredible paint job on a Torosaurus. I know I got this one right because, I didn’t realize it until I got home and looked at the photo, but I bought this same kit (unpainted). When I paint mine, I’m taking a different approach, but this looks freaking fantastic.

We have a cool new episode of RFC today on The AIR.   Radio Free Charleston, is two-thirds new/one-third classic this week.  To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.

We have two hours of new RFC this week, followed by a classic episode of RFC Volume 4 that hasn’t been heard in over six years. I’m very happen to open this show with a new track from Speedsuit, as I have been a huge fan of Stephen Beckner’s songwriting since I first met him at The Charleston Playhouse in 1989. Speedsuit has released another new tune that you can hear next week, or you can go over to Bandcamp at the link provided below, and buy it on Bandcamp Friday in a few days,  because that’s the day Bandcamp forgoes their cut and the band gets all the proceeds from their sales.

And that is true for all the artists listed below who have Bandcamp pages, so maybe save up and then splurge on June 7 instead of rushing right over like you normally do.

We also have new music from Frenchy & The Punk, Crowded House, Messer Chups Ginger Wixx and more this week.  We also have three tunes courtesy of our Chicago connection, August Forte, who turned us on to Well Tempered Madness, Saycouth and Jud & Lace, and you can follow the links below to learn more about them.

Our third hour, from almost exactly seven years ago,  is loaded with even more cool local and regional music, and it’s a wild time capsule of what was happening musically back then.

Oh, and if you’re a fan of the “mystery bonus tracks” at the very end of our three-hour show, you don’t want to miss this week’s. They are three precious gems, about which we shall not speak again.

Links in the artist’s names below will take you to a website (where available) where you can find our more about them and maybe buy their music. Check out the playlist.

RFC V5 179

hour one
Speedsuit “Hush”
Frenchy & The Punk “Like In A Dream”
Well Tempered Madness “Psycho”
Crowded House “Magic Piano”
Saycouth w/Freaks of Nashville “Pharoah”
Messer Chups “Sexploitation From Outer Space”
Hurl Brickbat “World of Fire”
Jud & Lace “Incarcerated One”
Galen and Paul “The Lighthouse Waltz”
Sierra Ferrell “Lighthouse”
Gyasi “Tongue Tied (live)”
John Bunkley “Hey Mr. DJ”
Tom Batchelor Band “Toe Truk”

hour two
Ginger Wixx “Arcade”
Daniel Glass Trio “Smoke On The Water”
The Settlement “Riff Destroyer”
Chuck Biel “Jam For Kagon Rez’
4 OHM MONO “The Death and Resurrection of a Salesman”
The Bob Thompson Band “Fly High”

hour three
Weedhaven Laughing Academy “2s & 5s & 3s”
Scarlet Revolt “No Quarter”
Pale Nova “In Your Direction”
Bon Air “Sometimes Hot But Always Broken”
The Smoky Room “No Escape”
Blue Million “Catch U”
Michael Cerveris “Evangeline”
Douglas Imbrogno/GarageCow “Godless Appalachian Haiku”
Ann Magnuson  “FOF”
Payback’s a Bitch “Cancer Stick”
Membrane Cell  “Frozen”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 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 classic 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 last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we give you an encore of two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 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.

Real world art is back after going away for a month while I waited for a Myasthenia Gravis flare up to subside.  It ain’t much, but I drew with my own slightly-less-afflicted-at-the-moment hands.

It’s a pencil doodle of wintery branches, which I always think look pretty cool. Also, you really don’t need photo reference for them. This was started as a limbering-up exercise after not touching a pencil for a few weeks. As it progressed, I got happy enough with it to use it here. It took about four hours, spread over a couple of days.

It was drawn with my trusty Blackwing Palamino on slick paper. I did a little color-correction and cropping after scanning it, but there were no digital touch-ups.

It’s nice to be making physical art again.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM 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 elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack 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. 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. All times listed are Eastern, so if you’re in another timezone, adjust accordingly.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of Halloween novelty songs on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. In fact, you’ll hear the first five episodes, from 2016. Next week we’ll do this with Prognosis. July marks the tenth anniversary of both shows on The AIR.

Daniel, My Brother from Daniel Roebuck on Vimeo.

I have to admit to slacking off a bit. I’ve run this video twice before in this spot, back in 2015 and 2021 (on Super Bowl Sunday both times). It’s a video about the really cool collection of Daniel Roebuck.  I’m running it again because I’m on my way back from WonderFest USA (photos and video next week), and Daniel was a guest. He was actually the replacement guest when Joe Dante had to bow out.

Daniel and I have been online friends for a couple of decades through various Captain Action and monster toy email groups and Facebook groups, and with any luck, by the time you read this I got to meet him in person and chat a bit. If his name seems familiar, there’s a reason. It’s always cool to meet folks in real life when you’ve known them online for years.

Daniel Roebuck is a big-time Hollywood actor who’s been in everything from Lost To The Grumpy Cat Movie, and he also played Jay Leno in the HBO Movie The Late Shift. He’s been in The Walking Dead webisodes, episodes of CSI and Weeds and in the movies The Devil’s Rejects and John Dies At The End, among dozens of other movie and television roles.  He was Grandpa Munster in Rob Zombie’s take on the beloved scary sitcom, and I think he may be in every movie Zombie directed.

He’s also a hell of a nice guy and a collector of really cool toys and monster movie memorabilia, and in this short and very funny film (which you can see above) we get to see a tiny part of his epic collection. Keep your eyes peeled for quick shots of GI Joe, Captain Action, Captain Lazer and way more cool things.

Next up in our mostly-chronological trip through the history of Radio Free Charleston is one of our most celebrated episodes, our Halloween 2009 show. This one is loaded with music from The Big Bad, Flare Baroshi, CYAC and more, and has a storyline and skits provided by members of The No Pants Players, Mark Wolfe, Amy Williams and Mel Larch.

You can find the original production notes HERE, and enjoy Halloween in June.