Month: December 2024 (Page 3 of 4)

Above you see a not-safe-for-work video travelogue, wherein you humble blogger wanders through the Spirit Christmas Store in Erie, Pennsylvania for about fifteen minutes, making snarky comments (many of them off-color) while shakily shooting video of the massive holiday retail overload.

I’m sure all my readers are familiar with Spirit Halloween stores, which move in like a hermit crab and occupy vacant storefronts for a few months each year to hawk their fine Halloween wares.

This year they’re taking baby steps toward bringing the concept of seasonal retail to Christmas. They only opened ten stores, nationwide, and the closest one to us is in Erie, Pennsylvania, a six-hour drive.

We turned it into a three-day trip, visiting Sir Troy’s Toy KIngdom, the Grove City Outlet Mall and my sister, Debbie, along the way. And we did this all the week before Thanksgiving.

You probably saw the short video I put together for our return trip to Sir Troy’s.  I decided to do something slightly more ambitious for the Spirit Christmas store. I basically just turned the camera on and rambled an ad-libbed narration as I walked through the store for the first time.

What you see in the above video is lightly edited.  I sped up some of the dead spots but didn’t edit them out completely. I’m also uncensored, so maybe you don’t want to blast this loud at work. There’s one f-bomb, and a harshly-scatalogical reference to poo a couple of times. There are also some obscenities displayed on the ugly sweaters and one reference to buttplugs.

In all fairness, we were pretty much caught up in the irreverent spirit of the store, which had more cynical, goofy, alcohol-fueled and profane celebrations of the holiday than wholesome or religious ones.

And to be honest, that was a bit refreshing. It’s sort of like when you get burned out on “Oh, Holy Night” and want to hear “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.”

‘Tis the season, I guess. This is our third PopCult Video Christmas Card this year.

It’s all meant in the spirit of good fun and if you are offended by any of it, after reading this, then I am so sorry you are offended by that.

Below are a few still images, in case the shaky video induced motion sickness…

You enter the store through Gingerbread Lane. I still don’t know why the snowman is bleeding chocolate from the neck and torso.

Maybe I should’ve run this nice photo of the mall entrance to the store before going dark with the previous caption.

Letters to Santa, along with an instant declaration of whether you’re naughty or nice. Prepares kids for instant credit checks when they get older.

Impulse buys as you check out.

A selection of not-obscene light-up ugly sweaters.

They had tons of inflatables

Your PopCulteer, looking like Salad Fingers thanks to the gingerbread house behind him.

Somehow Tuesday has happened once again on The AIR.  As such, we have a new episode of  Radio Free Charleston for you. 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 boatloads of replays throughout the week.

Today we have another episode that combines a new first hour with two hours of Radio Free Charleston Volume Three, from May, 2015, as originally broadcast on Voices of Appalachia Radio.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because I did the same thing last week. In fact, I recorded this show right after that one because I’m in Chicago now celebrating my wonderful wife’s birthday.

Our first hour includes new music from Dinosaur Burps, Emmaline, The The, William Matheny, Yonder Mountain String Band, Rick Wakeman and The Polkamaniacs.

Hours two and three start out with one set of then-new music (from 2015), and then brings you four-song sets by six different bands (and a two-song set by one more). It’s a fun show that hasn’t been heard by anyone in more than nine years.

The links in the first hour of the playlist will take you to the pages for the local and independent artists…

RFCV5 205

hour one
Dinosaur Burps “Space and Time”
John Radcliff “Goodbye”
Emmaline  “Everything’s Breezy”
The The“I Want To Wake Up With You”
William Matheny “Mind For Leaving”
Corduroy Brown “Getting Older (live)”
Yonder Mountain String Band “Wasting Time”
Rick Wakeman “Yessonata”
The Polkamaniacs  “She’s My Little Pierogi”

hour two and three
Byzantine “Agonies”
Talented “Put Ya Gloves On”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “Firest of Dreams”
QiET “Cosby Sweater”

The Company Stores
“Street Corner Blues”
“Dear Universe”
“Pocket Change”
“Lips”

Highway Jones
“I Get Numb”
“Cigarettes and Liquor Stores”
“Beautiful and Grace”
“Gimme Back My Radio”

Total Meltdown
“Silverine”
“Bad Bad Leroy Brown”
“Country Roads”
“Wake Me Up When September Ends”

Andy Park and the True Lovers
“I Got Some Swag”
“Drones”
“Black Chicken”
“A Little Attention”

Zeroking
“Dead Rock Star”
“Love Is Dead”
“Girls of California”
“Showtime Revolution”

Hillbilly Deathride
“I Am”
“Necessities”
“Bilderburger”
Weaponized”

Tape Age
“Tell me Why”
“You Need Me To Need You”

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, Sunday at 8 PM 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 classic 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.

This week’s art is in the spirit of our last two weeks of Monday Morning Art.  Unlike the first two in this sort-of series, it is not  based on photos I took during a return trip from shooting video in Canton and Erie. This time, having perfected my technique of drawing winter trees, I just did a bunch from scratch, still using my mixed-media polyglot approach.

On thick illustration board, this painting was created using acrylic paint, watercolor, Winsor Newton ink, white-out, razor blades and X-acto knives, a variety of brushes and straight edges. I didn’t use the GI Joe hand on this one.

I’ve got one more winter scene, not yet finished, but I might hold off on that and finish it next summer, when we might need a reminder that it can get cold.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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.

At 8 PM you can hear a random encore of a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we devote ten hours to five more episodes of Prognosis.  For the rest of this year we will be alternating between Prognosis and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, because we’re going to be pulling the early episodes of those shows from the server soon to make room for newer programs. After they’ve been offline for a year or so, we’ll bring them back into rotation but for now, you can hear them Monday evening into Tuesday morning, and then those episode will go on hiatus.

Above you see our second PopCult Video Christmas Card for this year.

A couple of weeks ago Mel and I went to Light The Night at Charleston’s Go Mart Park. It’s a wonderful light show, underwritten by several generous corporate sponsors, and I decided to shoot some shaky video on my soon-to-be-replaced phone.

I had enough footage to cut together a brief music video, and for the music I decided to re-use a song that was recorded for a Radio Free Charleston Christmas episode a dozen years ago.  It’s Mel singing, accompanied by our dear, late friend, Mark Scarpelli.  The song is the Vince Guaraldi classic, “Christmastime Is Here” from the first Charlie Brown Christmas special.

And we send it along to you with our fondest holiday wishes while we are celebrating Mel’s birthday in the City of Wind.

This week we go back to October, 2010 for Radio Free Charelston 112, “Toxic Soup Shirt.”  On this show we had three bands making their RFC debuts–Crossroads, Doctor Curmudgeon and Happy Minor.  We also had a movie trailer for the documentary, “Toxic Soup,” and one for “Jazz From Hell,” which never quite got finished.

This was an overlooked gem of a show, and we beat Charleston’s baseball team to the Canary in the Coalmine joke by a dozen years. And that epic sight gag was provided by Stefani Andrews, who was also behind the camera for our host segments.

The PopCulteer
December 6, 2024

About 51 weeks ago I published a post and video here celebrating Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom in Canton, Ohio. It’s the largest brick-and-mortar toy store in the country now, and as such, it is very much a fun place to visit.

So a week or two ago, your humble PopCulteer and his beautiful and nicely-recovering wife made a trip North to shoot video at a couple of really cool places.  One of them was a return visit to Sir Troy’s, this time intent only on making a short video “Christmas Card” for our readers.

And this is it here…

The music is courtesy of our friends, Clownhole (and we made a music video for this song also about a year ago), and the shaky video is by yours truly.

It’s basically just a bit of fun to drop in this spot and share some holiday cheer while we are away in Chicago celebrating Mel’s birthday.

I didn’t shoot any still photos at Sir Troy’s, except for this one, which I took to send to cheer up my friend, Pixie, in Liverpool…

…looks like we’ll have to make time to go back to Canton to shoot more photos and video in the spring.

By the way, in the intro to this I talk about making the first video “two years ago.” That was my bad. In my defense, 2024 has seemed very much like it took a year or three to get through.

That is this week’s PopCulteer.  Check back for all our regular features, with fresh content every day, and if you haven’t already, go check out The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide for loads of pop culture gift suggestions.

Since I took the whole month of November off from providing my readers with STUFF TO DO in Charleston, around West Virginia and just beyond our borders, this week we’ve got a bonus STUFF TO DO that will focus on the ridiculous amount of holiday-themed events, which all seem to be happening this weekend.

There’s way more than this going on, but these are the events whose organizers were kind enough to leave nice graphics with coherent information laying around for me to find…

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For the entire month of November, STUFF TO DO went on hiatus so that your humble blogger could bring you The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide.  With that excuse no longer valid, it seems I have run out of reasons to not write this post.  Besides, there’s still  tons of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and the rest of the Mountain State over the next few days so you can just read below and find out all about it. To make up for my slacking off, you can even expect a holiday-themed bonus edition tomorrow.

Even with our newly-arctic weather, there are still outdoor events happening, so I will continue to implore you to not be a dick and vape or smoke around other humans who may not share your addictions. Lots of folks get really sick when exposed to that garbage and it would’ve been really nice to to to Light The Night without having to smell nasty tobacco and weed odors.

As I have been copying and pasting for some time now, 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. And if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook or Twitter.

Live Music is on tap at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  This week’s shows are not yet announced.  Last week they didn’t put up FB event pages until the day of, so think of it as “blind box” musical entertainment.

As  always, The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about. Thursday at 5:30 PM, Swingstein & Robin return with Hot Cub stylings for a good cause.  Friday Tim Courts holds down the forts for Happy Hour.  Check the graphics dump below for more upcoming events at The Empty Glass.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern with the ‘rona still lurking about all robust and reinvigorated and now with Fahrvergnügen™. Plus there are nasty seasonal ailents, Pumpkin Spice Farts, excited deplorables, flying reindeer droppings and other damned good reasons to be careful. Many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order…

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We travel through time this week as we reach back to the spring of 2015, while simultaneously looking forward one week on Radio Free Charleston!

Tuesday means a new RFC on The AIR.  And this week  Radio Free Charleston presents three hours of listenting enjoyment for you. 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 boatloads of replays throughout the week.

We open with an all-new first hour this week because your humble blogger and radio Svengali is leaving for a week in Chicago, and doesn’t want to deprive his listeners, so I recorded two episodes of the show back-to-back on December 2.  Our second and third hours this week are a tribute to Tommy Medvick, the late drummer for The Swivels and Feast of Stephen, who passed away shortly before this show originally aired in April, 2015.

That first hour features new music from Bad Keys of the Mountain, Dinosaur Burps, The Spackles, Wendy James, The Polkamaniacs,  SPACE FREQ, The Heavy Hitters and more. It’s over-loaded with local and indie musical wonderfulness.

The remainder of the show revives a tribute to Tommy that was originally an episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Three, on Voices of Appalachia radio, the predecessor to The AIR.

Tommy was a great guy and one of the most powerful drummers I’d ever seen. Always upbeat and hilarious. He was a frequent guest on the original Radio Free Charleston broadcasts and he was not just a good friend, but a great friend. I am going to miss him terribly, and I’m hoping that this tribute can help his friends remember him, and let those who didn’t know him understand what a wonderful person he was.

Over the course of two hours you will hear music from The Swivels and The Feast of Stephen, two of the major musical projects Tommy worked with. You may also remember, if you are elderly enough, that The Swivels started out as The Swivel Rockers, then shortened their name late in 1989.He was also the lead figure in Tommy Spear and The Mints, but sadly I don’t have any of their music in my archives.

What we do have is pretty incredible. Tommy was an amazing musician and I hope that you can get an idea of how fantastic he was in this show. This show includes some rare demos that the Swivels recorded, which come to us courtesy of Tom’s bandmate in both the Swivels and Feast of Stephen, John Radcliff. We also have some excerpts of The Swivels, including Tommy, on one of the original RFC broadcast shows. We also have tracks from Feast of Stephen, which were supplied by the band’s producer, Dave McClanahan, as well as a few tracks from the Feast of Stephen reunion on RFC in 2007.

Links in the first hour of this playlist will take you to the artist’s page, so you can buy their music. Keep in mind that the first Friday of every month is “Bandcamp Friday,” so if you buy their music from Bandcamp on that day, they get to keep all the moolah.

RFC V5 204

hour one
Bad Keys of the Mountain “I’ll Get By”
Dinosaur Burps “Interstellar Dust”
The Spackles “Spy In The House of Frankenstein”
Wendy James “The Crack And The Boom Of The Creeps And The Goons”
Rat Ship “The Roots of Our Teeth, Intertwined”
Tim Heidecker “Bows and Arrows”
Father John Misty “She Cleans Up”
The Polkamaniacs “Dream Water Wheel”
SPACE FREQ “Spacetripper”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Ornithology (The Story of Icarus) live”
Astral Magic “Over The Edge”
Propaganda “Vicious Circle”
The Settlement “Be Yourself”
Skafish “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone”

hour two
The Swivels

“On My Own”
“Redemption Song”
“I’m Me”
‘Chemical City”
‘Panama”
“Cinnamon Girl”
‘No Vaccination”
“Chemical City”

Feast of Stephen

“Forbidden Dance”
“Bank Robber”
“Scratch Out The Belly”
“Tired of Sinking”
“Superfund”
“No Vaccination”
“Battle With The Sun”
“Falling”
“Gas”

hour three

Feast of Stephen

“Coal Tattoo”
“Watch Me Plow”
“Urge To Care”
“Blinded Baby In A Cage”
“Revolution (World’s On Fire Tonight)”
“Mighty Gomec
“Season of the Wizard
“Escape The Man
“Sound 9
“Mystery Hole

Feast of Stephen 2007 Reunion

“Tired of Sinking”
“Bank Robber”
“Mystery Hole”
“No Vaccination”

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, Sunday at 8 PM 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 classic 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.

This week’s art is a bit of a sequel to last week’s.  Like last week, it’s a small  mixed media painting  based on photos I took the week before last during a return trip from a secret mission that you will learn about in a few days.

On thick illustration board, this painting was created using acrylic paint, watercolor, Winsor Newton ink, white-out, razor blades and X-acto knives, a variety of brushes and straight edges. For this one I actually used an old-school GI Joe hand–the one with the pointy fingers, to get a solidly thick line.  This idyllic winter scene is another based on a series of photos I took on the drive back home down I-79, after Mel took over driving.

This one was actually taken at a rest area before I turned over the wheel. I made the creative choice to omit some of the scenary, since I wasn’t in the mood to paint signs instructing people where to take their dogs to poop.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of the legendary and exquisite silliness of Spike Jones on last week’s new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we devote ten hours to five more episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  For the rest of this year we will be alternating between Prognosis and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, because we’re going to be pulling the early episodes of those shows from the server soon to make room for newer programs. After they’ve been offline for a year or so, we’ll bring them back into rotation but for now, you can hear them Monday evening into Tuesday morning, and then those episode will go on hiatus.