Month: December 2025 (Page 2 of 4)

I hate having to do this again so soon.

Brian Young, one of the most consequential people in my life, and a huge contributor to this blog through his work with me on Radio Free Charleston, passed away Tuesday afternoon, two days after suffering a stroke.

He was surrounded by his wife, Debra, his daughters, Birdie and Cadance and more family. I hate this for them and send my deepest love and condolences. This has me torn up and I can only imagine how horrible it has to be for them.

Brian was one of my best friends, but we weren’t attached at the hip. We were the kind of friends who could go months or years without seeing each other, and then instantly pick up where we left off when we reconnected.

Brian was a genius drummer, a technical wiz with video and communications technology and he was one of the funniest people I ever met. In the 36 years we knew each other, I can’t think of a single disagreement we’d had. Aside from being hilarious and fun to be around, Brian was also the most competent and reliable person I’ve ever known. You could always count on him.

Brian is also one of the “RFC Big Shots” listed at the end of every video edition of Radio Free Charleston.

I met him at The Charleston Playhouse in 1989, the night I’d been invited there by Johnny Rock. We hit it off, and I hired him to work part time at WVNS, where I hosted the evening show every night, plus the original broadcast radio incarnation of Radio Free Charleston.

It was there that we’d improvise comedy bits for the show and began collaborating on other projects. In the ensuing years he’d call me in to run camera on some of his projects, I wound up co-producing demos for his band, Three Bodies, and we became very close friends.

In the early 90s Brian contracted an illness that had him hospitalized for quite some time. He pulled through, but was on medication that impaired his health a bit. Around the same time my parents started having various health issues, and I wound up withdrawing from most of my social circles to act as their caregiver.

Brian and his daughter, Cadance, at a Halloween show in 2007.

We’d still touch base. He called me the day before his first marriage and we talked for about three hours, and agreed to stay in touch. However, life got in the way, and a decade passed before the fateful day in early 2006 that he called me again, and pitched the idea of reviving Radio Free Charleston as a video show, which would be produced at LiveMix Studio, his new business that he’d founded with Kai Haynes and Greg Wegmann. I’d been hearing about LiveMix, and this was just a few months after I began writing PopCult. We still kept up with each other’s work, and this was a perfect storm for us to collaborate again.

If Brian hadn’t called me, there would not have been any video episodes of RFC, and it’s doubtful that it would still be going as an internet radio show to this day. RFC is my greatest work, and if not for Brian, it would have been long forgotten, consigned to the memories of the folks who tuned in to it on broadcast radio in the middle of the night 35 years ago.

I owe Brian so much, and the Charleston Music Scene owes him a huge debt.

Brian as part of a Zombie Kick Line

I would be remiss if I didn’t go back to Brian’s sense of humor. If he saw this he’d start mocking it and peppering it with high-pitched f-bombs while reading parts of it in goofy voices.

In some ways, Brian was my comedic soulmate. We could always crack each other up. It could be pure silliness, dark absurdity, clever wordplay, or just goofiness, but it was always funny.

And fun.

Thanks to social media, Brian and I were able to stay in touch better than we did back in the pre-internet days. Just a few weeks ago I was reminiscing on Facebook about a day where Brian and I ran amuk at the Charleston Town Center.

About 35 years ago, during the heyday of the original version of Radio Free Charleston, I was running around the Charleston Town Center with Brian Young, and we went into the arcade they used to have in the food court and, using a roll of quarters I had been given by an advertiser (they did weird stuff like that back then), we decided to launch an assault on the arcade’s claw machine.

We traded off, with one of us operating the claw, and the other spotting from the side.

In less than half an hour we burned through most of the roll of quarters.

We had to stop because we had emptied the machine. Brain went to Graziano’s and got a trash bag for us to carry them around in.

Then we proceeded to run around the mall like lunatics giving little plush animals to our friends who worked there, along with a few folks we’d never met. I still had about twenty left, which I gave to the kids in my mom’s daycare center.

Brian responded to this with “Good times.”

Whistlepunk

That was the Cliff Notes version of the story. After we’d emptied the claw machine (perfectly legally and legitimately) the guy who ran the arcade called Mall Security and said we’d broken into the machine and stole the little plush animals.

So while we were running around the Mall giving out the plush gifts, Mall police were attempting to catch us, in the particularly inept way of lukewarm pursuit that only Mall police can manage.

Two grown men, not yet 30 but acting half our age, managed to elude them for over an hour, running all over the mall, ducking in and out of different stores, before escaping to the parking building and freedom.

At one point, one of us, I forget which, but there was instant agreement, yelled, “Let’s run down the up escalator!” So we took off down the up escalator in the center of the mall, got to the bottom, saw all the Mall police piled into one of the glass elevators coming down to where we were, and just stopped running and escalated back up to the second floor.

I think at that point they gave up.

Brian and I brought out the inspired lunacy in each other.

I’m going to miss that. I’m not the only one. Aside from the fun and games and craziness, Brian Young is one of the best human beings I ever met. I know I’m not the only person who feels that way. Everybody loved Brian. My heart is broken for his family.

I will always be grateful for having known Brian. He made this world, and my life, better.

Later today I will be re-recording the third hour of this week’s Radio Free Charleston radio show to bring you an hour of his amazing drumming with a variety of bands. That will debut Thursday at 2 PM on The AIR.  Next month, following this month’s video edition of the show dedicated to Lee Harrrah, there will be a video edition of RFC dedicated to Brian.

There will be no formal service for Brian. Instead, next summer, there will be a concert that will be a celebration of his life. I will keep you posted on that when the plans are made.

Despite all the fun, we were capable of being deadly serious, as you can see by our expressions in this photo.

We find ourselves still a little truncated this week due to some internet and power outages that have played havoc with our PopCulting, so we’re going to try to keep it short and sweet and cover some cool STUFF TO DO all over the state, as briefly as possible. We still have a bit of a monster of a list of things to do.

I felt obligated to say that because of our feature image.

Keep in mind that Winter weather may make going out a very poor life choice, so be careful out there, even though it’s supposed to warm up this weekend. Also, Charleston’s December ArtWalk happens Thursday from 5 PM to 8 PM, so go check it out and take in the Holly Jolly Brawley tree festival while you’re at it.

As always, you should remember 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.

We are very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have The Carpenter Ants on Friday, and Minor Swing on Saturday.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. Pumzi’s has been beefing up their offerings recently, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something. Saturday they have The Steve Himes Connection jazzying up the joint for Christmas.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe.  Wednesday night RFC regulars, SPACE FREQ, hold an open rehearsal starting at 8 PM.  This weekend they have The East End Ghouls featuring Mutter Maggottë, mixing Burlesque with Drag for fun and profit on Saturday.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening over the next week or so that I was able to scrounge up online…

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Today’s entry in The 12 Posts of Christmas goes back two years (and two days) ago, for our first video visit to Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom. In recent months, Sir Troy’s has expanded, opening another massive toy store just South of Cleveland. Here’s a repost of our 2023 visit…

I have to place the blame on FiestaWare.

I speak, of course of the beloved, multicolored dinnerware line, produced right here in West Virginia, and obsessively collected by Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch. That FiestaWare.  That’s how I wound up in Canton, Ohio last summer right after the Marx Toy Show in Wheeling.

A new FiestaWare outlet store opened at the Hartville Marketplace & Flea Market, just North of Canton, and we decided to go there after the Marx show, since we were already fairly close to it.

We went there and Mel got some new pieces and while we were there, we checked out a few other fine shopping destinations. I was on the fence about going to one of them. I saw “Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom” on the Google Maps, and having been burned many times while looking at toy stores in new cities, I was prepared to be disappointed. In fact, I almost didn’t even go.  We stopped on the way out of town because it was practically on the ramp to get back on I 77 South to come home.

Mel stayed in the car, and I went in expecting nothing more than plush, STEM toys and maybe some wooden trains or something.

I was not prepared for the sensory overload of a toy store, stocked with new stuff–not antiques, larger than any Toys R Us that I’d ever been in, and filled with almost any toy you can imagine. I was greeted by a five-foot motion-activated animatronic raptor, and it just got wilder from there.

This is not your average independent toy store.

Sir Troy is actually a longtime LEGO collector who had opened up a couple of shops in malls around the area, before deciding to go whole-hog and open a complete, full-service toy store in The Beldon Village shopping complex in Canton, right off of Insterstate 77.  This location is a 30,000 square-foot behemoth of a toy store, reportedly the largest brick and mortar store devoted to new toys in the country, and it’s a worthy day trip for any toy collector, kid, or adult pretending to have a kid because they love toys so much.

The store is loaded with the newest Hot Wheels, Barbies, Marvel Action Figures, GI Joe, action figures of all kinds, plush animals, model kits, model railroads, boardgames, children’s books, Schleich figures, Playmobil, outdoor toys, educational toys, slot cars…I could go on, but the videos might give you a better idea. Oh, and they have what is likely the largest collection of LEGO sets for sale in the country. This location just opened in November, 2022, and it’s already become a bit of an underground legend among toy collectors. We had to go back last month with the PopCult cameras, arriving just before they decorated for the holidays.  If something about the stores seems familiar, well, you’ll have to watch the videos to find out why.

Seriously, several of the “departments,” like Barbie, Hot Wheels, Breyer, Bruder, LEGO, Marvel Legends and more are bigger than entire other toy stores. There’s a candy and soda section (stocked by Grandpa Joe’s, from Pittsburgh) that’s probably twice the size of the average GameStop.

Above you see the “short” video, which runs nearly ten minutes. There was simply too much visual excitement to cram into a shorter clip. I should warn you that this is a very frenetic video and in places it looks like you’re watching The Blair Witch Project in fast motion. Below you’ll see the director’s cut, which is around twenty-five minutes, and includes a guided tour of the massive LEGO display that takes up one corner of the store (Thanks again, Jeff!).

Below that I have a photo essay, which is mostly made up of screen grabs from shots that I couldn’t fit into the videos. Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom is about a three-hour drive from Charleston, taking Insterstate 77 almost all the way there.

The Photos

This is a tiny slice of a massive Hot Wheels section, wherein each peg holds one style of car, so you don’t have to go digging like a heathen the way you have to everywhere else.

This is the 2023 holiday Breyer Horse, part of a gigantic section of nothing but Breyer’s.

Another cool Breyer horse.

I don’t know if you understand how big this thing is.

A small portion of the gigantic Cleveland-inspired LEGO diorama.

Are you into model airplanes? They have a few.

Holiday Star Wars figures, not to be confused with the Star Wars Holiday Special.

I hear people complaining about not being able to find GI Joe: Classified figures…

…maybe that’s because they’re all here.

And finally, we have The Village People, reunited as Playmobil figures.

Due to technical issues, power outages and horrible news,  this week’s new Radio Free Charleston will debut on Thursday. Today we’ll be running an encore of the 2021 Christmas episode on The AIR at 10 AM and 10 PM.  You can 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.  

This week’s show, which was pretty far along when everything went to hell, will debut on Thursday at 2 PM.

You can also expect another of our 12 Posts of Christmas later today.

Sorry for the delay.

It’s recycling time in PopCult today as we bring you the second of our 12 Posts of Christmas.

Last year I made three (and a half) holiday videos for readers of this blog.

My main motivation for making three of them was to give you some fresh video content to watch while I was in Chicago for Mel’s annual birthday trip.  After we got back I made a really short video to go with our Christmas Tree photo essay (this year’s is coming later this week).

As part of this half-baked idea I had of posting 12 days worth of Holiday content, today we bring you three of those four videos in this post, for your enjoyment. The other one was re-used as a Sunday Evening Video right before we left for Chicago this year.

Our first video is a return visit to Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom, in Canton, Ohio, with music by Clownhole…

Next up, we have our look at Charleston’s Light The Night light show at Go Mart Park.  The music on this one is Mel Larch and Mark Scarpelli taking on a Vince Guaraldi classic…

And for the heck of it, here’s another look at PopCult’s Disco Christmas Tree!  Merry Christmas, folks!

And since you made it this far, it’s only fair to reward you with the news that Christmas programming will begin running on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, and continuing all week long.  You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

This week’s art is a small acrylic painting on illustration board that was inspired by a photo I took out the window of the Amtrak Cardinal in Indiana the week before last on my way to Chicago.

I made several tries before I got the giant windmills lined up just right against the dawn sky.

They looked so serene, yet majestic…towering over the snow-covered landscape like eternal watchmen, making sure that everybody was safe.

I mean, who doesn’t love seeing these windmills? Only a complete idiot would hold some kind of Bizarro-world grudge against them.  I hate to think about such a pathetic Donald Quixote being a real person.  I mean, what kind of loser would dislike free energy that doesn’t pollute.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we kick off our Christmas programming with 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.

Replacing The Radio Free Charleston Daily show at 5 PM is even more of our Holiday shows from prior years. It’ll be like that until Boxing Day, when our presentation of RFC volume Five will resume.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our newish Monday night line-up featuring two hours each of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, plus six hours overnight with an assortment of our programming from Haversham Recording Institute.

Above you see PopCult’s 2025 Holiday Video that brings you sights from a visit we made last month to Kraynak’s Santa’s Christmasland in Hermitage, Pennsylvania.

This is the first post of our “12 Posts of Christmas” this year, where the idea is that we will bring you on Holiday post every day to help get you into the proper mood to enjoy the Christmas season (or whatever particular Yuletide celebration you wish).  You can expect videos, photo essays, word essays and flashbacks to previous years, all leading up to the big day.

Kryanak’s is a Western Pennsylvania institution, located roughly an hour Northwest of Pittsburgh. For most of the year it’s a a huge store filled with floral supplies, seasonal items and toys and general retail items of a particularly cool nature. At Christmas and Easter, a 300 foot long corridor on the side of the building is transformed into a holiday wonderland, filled with lights, trees, decorations and animatronics. You can visit Santa’s Christmasland until December 31.

Let me quote from their website:

Kraynak’s was established 1949 in Hermitage, Pa. There are three divisions of the Kraynak business. The first is the main retail store which is the home of Santa’s Christmasland and Easter Bunny Lane. These walk through displays have become a tradition for many families. This location sells Christmas and Easter decorations, toys, gifts, potted plants from the greenhouse and fresh cut flowers from the floral department.

The second division is the Kraynak’s Lawn and Garden center, located 1000ft behind the original store. At this location you may purchase trees, shrubs, garden supplies, and outdoor furniture.

The third division comprises of six nurseries where trees and shrubs are grown for retail and wholesale sales.

Kraynak’s is a family owned business that promotes fair pricing and quality products. Many families over the years have made Kraynak’s their store for all seasons.

That humble description does not do justice to the elaborate psychotronic and delightfully bizarre holiday displays, which are fully dismantled each year, with completely-new attractions designed and built the next year.  To be honest, our video just scratches the surface of how wild and exciting the Christmas display is. We showed up on a Sunday in November, and if you can go on a weekday, that is probably a much wiser choice. The place was packed, with the line snaking its way through their impressive toy department.

You can see videos of their displays from this year and many previous years HERE.

I’m pretty sure we’re going to be going back in the future. They have a pretty huge toy department, plus a selection of regional candy and some interesting sodas, and to be honest, we were caught off-guard by the size and scope when we went, and didn’t really get enough time to soak it all in. Plus ,I’m really curious about what the store is like in the off-season.

The music you hear in the background is from The December People. The December People is a group of veteran musicians led by Robert Berry, who perform traditional holiday tunes in the styles of Progressive and Classic Rock bands. I’ve been a big fan of Robert Berry since he teamed with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer in the group, 3, back in the 1980s, and he’s still making great music, currently with his band, Six by Six.

And if you want to buy some of his music, merch and related stuff, go HERE.

The music I chose for this video is from the first December People album, and it’s “The Carol of the Bells,” performed in the style of one of my favorite bands, YES.

This is our quick and sloppy, shot on the phone,  non-monetized, holiday music video.  In the next week we’ll be posting a large photo essay from our visit. You can expect more Christmas-y stuff every day for the next eleven days, here in PopCult.

This week we go back to August, 2012 for a special episode of the show that, in reality, takes us all the way back to December, 1989. At the time I called it “my most self-indulgent episode of Radio Free Charleston.” “Wild Adventure Shirt” broke our usual format and used a skit to set up vintage footage of a 1989 concert at the legendary and now demolished Charleston Playhouse by the band Clownhole.

Clownhole was a punk trio consisting of drummer Randy Brown, bassist Chris (Flair) Canfield, and Defectors veteran John (Sham Voodoo) Estep. This concert was held during the Christmas season in 1989 and fell into my lap when Randy got in touch with me and put a copy of it in my hands. In recent years, Clownhole have reconvened, and warmed your humble blogger’s aging  heart by recording some of their classics from back in the day. You can search for them over in the Search Window for this blog and catch up.

I even used some of this video to create an intentionally low-quality video for their re-recorded rendition of “Deck The Halls.”

This was pure nostalgic glee for me. The Charleston Playhouse, which I’ve written about here in PopCult almost since day one, was a very important place in my life. I met many lifelong friends there and even met the love of my life, “Mrs. PopCulteer,” Melanie Larch, about two weeks after this concert took place.

This episode of the show was a blast, and was made even more fun by the silly improvised host segments featuring me, Mel and my imaginary daughter, Kitty Killton. You can read more about this episode at the original production notes HERE.

As a bonus, the night before this episode went live, I posted a NSFW preview using footage that we left out of this show. You can see Johnny Mac and Sham Voodoo hamming it up on stage below.

The PopCulteer
December 12, 2025

Your PopCulteer is back from his annual trip to Chicago to celebrate his beautiful wife’s birthday. Even though she absolutely hates having her picture taken, I’m including a couple of shots of her in this post because she’s the reason we went in the first place. That’s us at right, back at the place where we got married in 2014.

We had a great trip, actually including two different shows at Steppenwolf, plus visits to other cool places, all crammed into a too-short visit.

Actually, we got back Wednesday morning, but we’re still sort of exhausted. I had a few fires to put out when we got home, plus we needed to get the trees (yes, plural) up, and recover from having our Amtrak tickets downgraded both ways, which really messed with our ability to sleep and then function the next day.

What this means for you is, it’s time for a short PHOTO ESSAY!

So here’s some of the images from our trip. I’ll write more about it later, when I’m more awake.

On the way there, we were stuck on the tracks for close to an hour while the engine was downloading new navigation software, but we got to pass the time watching this cool little device go on and off the rails, towing and pushing train cars out of the snow on a side-rail. Now I want one for the train layout I swear I’m going to build one day.

Closer to our destination, here’s where the White Sox play, at “I’m not going to bother learning the mile-long, stupid-sounding corporate name” Park.

Our first stop after checking into the hotel was across the street at Nordstrom’s, which had a pop-up JellyCat boutique. We went on a weekday when you could walk right in to buy some lovely plush. On the weekends, they had crowd control barriers and it was like the Black Hole of Calcutta.

The adjoining mall, The Shops at Northbridge, had its own pop-up, several areas of the mall had been done up in the style of Chicago’s 2D restaurant, where everything looks like a 2D line drawing.

The effect is striking, and very appealing to a graphic designer, like yours truly.

The furniture was functional, and the selfie opportunities were boundless.

It would’ve been cool if the snacks in the snack shop were also in 2D, but the expense couldn’t justify the effort.

The piano in the background was working. Mel actually played a little on it.

After we were there for a while, I started hearing “Take On Me” very faintly in the background. I looked down and my watch had changed. We got the hell out of there before it spread.

Because I’ve done so many photo essays on Christkindl Market, I planned to skip taking any pictures there, but I did want you guys to see the bondage ornaments–a long-standing German tradition!

Saturday night we went to see John C. Reilly as Mister Romantic. I will tell you more about this great show next week.

A quick side-trip saw us back in Giddings Plaza, where Mel went to Enjoy, one of her favorite stores, and I took a photo of the tree…again.

We found the place where they designed the top bunks in Amtrak’s sleeper roomettes.

We hotel-hopped to end our stay at The Wit, in the Loop. This is what we saw out the window.

After droppiing our bags at The Wit on Sunday, we rode the L out to the Fulton Market district to procure Mel’s birthday slice of Rainbow Cake from The Goddess and the Grocer.

Post-cake, we returned to Steppenwolf to watch an amazing matinee performance of Amadeus. Review coming next week.

While checking out the gym at The Wit we found this strange Kubrick corridor, with weird lighting and some funged-up shui.

We leave you with that same photo, color-corrected, cropped and fuzzy as hell.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and all of our regular features. With any luck, we’ll be back to writing form by next week.  And yes, I wore the Fedora and the Picasso shirt to the gym.

So your humble blogger is back from Chicago, still somewhat worn out from all the epic fun, but since yesterday’s STUFF TO DO was so skimpy, how about we do a bonus round today?

Keep in mind that Winter weather may make going out a very poor life choice, so be careful out there.

As always, you should remember 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. Especially this week when I have been very seriously half-assing this collection of things you can get into, if you are so inclined.

We are very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have Steve Himes on Friday, and The String Chiefs on Saturday.

Now let’s go check out the stuff I didn’t cover yesterday…

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