Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 35 of 124)

Today’s second pick in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a bundle of all three treasury-sized issues of G.H.O.S.T. Agents. This is the perfect gift for the lover of Silver Age comics, treasury editions and spy fiction on your holiday shopping list.

I met Rocko Jerome, the writer/producer of GHOST Agents at Kentuckiana a couple of years ago, and I was knocked out by his cool comic book project.  This is an original creation that harkens back to the golden age of spy adventures while also mining nostalgia for the tabloid-sized treasury comics of the 1970s.  It does all this with excellent art and is just loads of fun.

As the PR says, “Published by Cosmic Lion Productions, GHOST Agents is an art-forward anthology series made up of short, self-contained pieces; where every story exists in the same world, and characters reoccur throughout the centuries spanning narrative. If you read it all, a rich overarching storyline will emerge, but you aren’t required to do that, and readers are encouraged to dip in as they please.”

It’s got terrific art, great shorter-length stories and it’s printed on newsprint in an oversized format, which is near and dear to my heart.

Allow me to quote from the website:

Rockin’ Pins

Today’s first entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide revisits an online retailer that I included in last year’s guide. I’m putting them in here again because they continue to introduce really cool new products, and the proceeds go to a wonderful cause that is near and dear to my heart.

Rockin’ Pins started out as a jewelry company, making enamel pins of cool rock stars. They have expanded their range quite a bit lately, and in addition to really nice enamel pins they now make apparel, mugs, books, figures, patches and tons of other cool things, and they don’t just feature rock bands or musicians anymore. I’m partial to their button-up shirts, myself.

Rockin’ Pins has been leading the way in helping to restore classic Max Fleischer and Gumby cartoons. Hopefully they’ll have DVD and Blu Ray collections of these available for sale. Right now the only way to see them is to go to one of the cool screenings they’ve having around the country.  There was one in Saint Albans in 2022.

They also have a full range of merch based on Gumby and Fleischer’s KoKo The Clown, in addition to ultra-cool musicians like Bauhaus, The B-52s, Cab Calloway, Frank Zappa and others. They even have cool stuff with Groucho Marx available.

Over the last year they’ve introduced all kinds of cool new items, like a button-up shirt based on “Swing You Sinners,” one of the trippiest cartoons ever made. They also have a cool Bluto as Sindbad Sweater, a Koko figurine and loads of Betty Boop stuff. 2025 is going to be a huge year for Betty when her musical hits Broadway.

Rockin’ Pins straddle the multiverse of pop culture, bringing together The Little Rascals, Megadeth, Jac Mac and Rad Boy Go, Betty Boop and Pink Floyd, all under the same roof. You can find everything from Beavis and Butthead to Cheech and Chong, as well as Laurel & Hardy and The Three Stooges.

For a top-notch, brilliantly-curated selection of the cream-of-the-crop of nostalgic pop culture that blends classic animation, progressive rock, classic comedy, rock music and more, visit their website and look for the perfect gift for the folks on your list. Fans of classic animation, music or just damned nifty stuff will be thrilled with any gifts you find for them here.

Still under the gun writing The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide, your humble blogger reached into his sketchbook and pulled out a reference drawing I did in charcoal pencil during one of our trips this year. I think it may be from Chicago, but I can’t say for sure because I didn’t date it and when I use charcoal pencils I jump around in the sketchbook so I don’t smutz up all the pages.

Anyway, it’s a pencil drawing of what I think are HVAC units on the roof a building across the street from whatever hotel I was in. I seem to remember considering this scene for a Hopperesque painting, then deciding against it for unremembered reasons.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland we are having some server maintenance done this week on The AIR.  There will be times when the station may go down for an hour or three, and we won’t know exactly when it’ll happen and what shows will be scheduled.  So, to take advantage of this uncertainty, this week I will be skipping Radio Free Charleston for the first time this year (I’ve done a new show every week going back to last December), and will be tossing together some non-vital marathons of our shows that will be great if you can hear them, and won’t be too big a deal if you can’t.

Everything should be fixed by next week, and the plan is to have all-new musical specialty programs during the last week of The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide, which, coincidentally, continues later today.

Tonight we’re revisiting a ten-year old vintage magnum of The Velvet Brothers, while we continue work on The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide, and we’re doing it up all classy with an episode of The RFC MINI SHOW from October 2014.

The legendary Velvet Brothers, had just reunited in September, 2014 when we recorded them at Bruno’s on Leon Sullivan Way in Charleston.  In this edition of The RFC MINI SHOW you can hear them perform “Savannah Rose” and “De Do Do Do, De Dah Dah Dah.”Yes, that latter song is a cover of the old Police tune, rendered in a velvety-smooth lounge version.

The Velvet Brothers were the first full band that I featured performing live on the Radio Free Charleston radio show way back in 1989. We’d had some acoustic performances on the show, but never a full band. The studio wasn’t big enough to hold the entire band, so we ran cables all over the building with the drummer in the hallway, the bass player in the production studio, and the keyboard player in the newsroom. With the guitarist and vocalist in the FM studio with me, the band managed to create a magic moment, even though it was three in the morning and they’d just played a full set at The Charleston Playhouse earlier in the evening.

The Velvet Brothers are still performing together, but Bruno’s is gone.  Still, it’s a good time to take a moment, relax and enjoy the Velvety goodness of this recycled PopCult post.

RFC 109 "Shazam Shirt" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.

This week we go back to August, 2010 for the 109th edition of Radio Free Charleston‘s video incarnation.  This ws our third “show without words,” where we showcased instrumental music and films and animation without dialogue. Our music this time came from David Synn and D.T. Stephenson, who later teamed up to form the band Frequency Down. David is back doing solo stuff again, and D.T. is in Static Fur.  We also had RFC faves, Blue Million, ripping through an instrumental blues jam during a sound check.

Our animation was courtesy of Frank Panucci and we also featured the oldest surviving Plant Ro Duction Mini Movie. We also got a quick, photographic tour of LiveMix Studio, our longtime and much-missed production partner.

Host segments were presented in the style of a comic book.  This way I was able to not speak on this episode.  Full production notes can be found HERE.

STUFFED COKEY THE BEAR
$30 from Kentucky For Kentucky Fun Mall

I’m sure you remember Cocaine Bear, the pop culture superstar, movie legend and object lesson in “Just Say No.” Well, as I have mentioned in PopCult before, he currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky, at The Kentucky For Kentucky Fun Mall.

In fact, your humble blogger and his lovely wife just saw him there yesterday. No lie!

Our next pick in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a plush rendition of this ursine superstar, wearing the State Trooper’s cover he currently sports, while holding three fresh bricks of cocaine…and with a few telltale specks on his nose.

This is a perfect gift for the lover of plush animals on your holiday shopping list. It’s also great for fans of the Cocaine Bear movie. It’s also a surefire winner for folks who just love bears. And it’s also a kick for the person on your holiday shopping list who really loves cocaine!

Let me turn it over to the KY4KY product description:

Kentucky for Kentucky aka The Home of Cocaine Bear aka The Keepers of Cokey aka The Protectors of Pablo have sketched and sculpted and worked and reworked to bring you a fully custom plushie available nowhere else in the world!

We can’t put a price tag on the real stuffed Cocaine Bear so we’ve recreated ole Pablo as a smaller, cuter, and fluffier Cocaine Teddy Bear with bricks of cocaine and signature blue hat. And we added a little nostalgia with a Cocaine Bear™ hang tag complete with Cokey’s birthday and a poem. Get yours today! You never know, they could be selling miniatures of these in Happy Meals someday.

You can read the story of how Cocaine Bear came to reside at the Kentucky Fun Mall here, as well as Cocaine Bear’s numerous press reports.

Super soft black plush stuffed bear. ~10″ tall sitting. Fully custom. Designed by The Hern. Cocaine not real. Hang tag poem reads:

“Straight to it’s heart the cocaine went,
This party animal got completely bent.
From the Chattahoochee Forest straight to you,
Cokey wants a hug and maybe a bump too.”

I have to confess, I got this for Mrs. PopCulteer last year, and we were thrilled to see that they still had plenty in stock. In fact, they have a ton of Cocaine Bear products available, from T Shirts to Christmas Ornaments to “Blow” Globes and more. Check out their website for ordering info.

Because everybody loves snow at Christmas!

The PopCulteer
November 15, 2024

Animal Warriors of The Kingdom
Available from Spero Toys and other online retailers

Today’s PopCulteer entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is for an entire action figure line that you may not have heard of yet. This is the perfect gift for the action figure collector on your holiday shopping list who might be feeling a bit of ennui at the regular offerings, and longs for something new.

Animal Warriors of the Kingdom is an immersive action figure fantasy line created by Spero Studios featuring the many adventures of Pale, the white-fur ape, and his allies as they fight to end the reign of the Tyrant Kahlee and restore peace and prosperity to his home. The story features Animal Warriors of all shapes and sizes throughout the Kingdom and fans can look forward to seeing many more Animal Warriors featured as each wave is revealed.

Each figures stands 6.50 inches tall and feature 26 points of articulation.

I first saw this line at PowerCon in Columbus in 2023 and I caught up with them this year at JoeLanta back at the end of September. Even though I was attending as a civilian, I was impressed enough to grab a few photos and make a mental note to include them in the Gift Guide this year.

Here’s some of the photos I took at JoeLanta that came out in focus…

Each Primal Series Figure includes several accessories with Add-On sets available for even more accessories. Heads, hands, and certain armor pieces can be easily swapped out to personalize your figures.

These figures are based on an original concept by Jason Bienvenu and it combines fantasy and science fiction adventure with anthropomorphic hijinks. It honestly put in the mind of Jack Kirby’s excellent Kamandi series, just based on the looks of the action figures. Coming from me, that’s high praise.

I would recommend the comics, but they aren’t currently available. A trade paperback collection is due out in a few weeks, but the individual issues are sold out as physical items, and I don’t like to point my readers to eBooks, since they are so tricky to wrap.

When the stories are back in print, readers can learn about the world that the Animal Warriors inhabit and experience the adventure alongside the series main protagonist, Pale, in order to thwart the plans of the vile Emperor Kah Lee!

There are over two dozen figures already available in the line. They feature remarkable sculpting and top-notch articulation. Most of the figures sell for around $35 each (these are 1/12 scale figures), with some basic figures available for as little as $15, and very large, deluxe figures topping out over fifty bucks. There are also accessory sets and spare heads for the customizing action figure collector.

This is a wild action figure line, and will light up the face of the figure collector on your shopping list. You can order directly from Spero Toys, and you can also find these figures at Big Bad Toy Store and Amazon. There are several figures you can choose from to start a collection.

Here’s a cool animated trailer, just to give you a hint of the concept…

And this entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is our animalistic PopCulteer this week. The Gift Guide is taking the weekends off this year, but after our second entry later today, it will return with two more entries on Monday.  Meanwhile, check PopCult every day for fresh content.

For the fan of SpongeBob Squarepants on your shopping list, (if they don’t stream everything, that is), today’s second entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is two choices in one: We have a DVD boxed set of every episode of the SpongeBob Squarepants TV show, plus we have a deluxe 4k Blu-Ray of his first movie. Both are loaded with tons of extras and special features, and both could make the SpongeBob fan on your holiday shopping list have THE BEST DAY EVER!

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Best 300 Episodes Ever [DVD]

SHELLEBRATE GOOD TIMES with the best ever 300 episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants! Submerge into 20,000 leagues of waterlogged hilarity and unsinkable friendships featuring hours of your favorite Bikini Bottom Buddies from Season 1 all the way through Season 14. Get ready, get weird and get drenched in this seaworthy 44-disc collection with over 300 episodes. Order up for F.U.N.!

This set is so complete that it even includes an episode that won’t air until December 2. The only missing cartoon is the infamous “Kwarantined Krab,” which was pulled during the pandemic. Otherwise, this is the best way to guarantee that you can watch SpongeBob, even if all the streaming services go out of business.

it’s available for fifty bucks and change from most retailers who still sell DVD, or you can just order it from Amazon.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie [4K UHD + Blu-Ray + Digital Copy]

I’d plannned to recommend the steelbook limited edition of this, but unless you luck out and find it in a distant Walmart or Target, those are sold out. However, the standard edition has all the special features and everything, just in a slightly-less-nifty package.

Dive into a comedy adventure that’s bigger, better and more absorbing than the rest – the movie debut of that undersea sensation, SpongeBob SquarePants! There’s trouble bubbling up in Bikini Bottom, King Neptune’s crown is missing, and Mr. Krabs has been accused of stealing it! Together with his best pal Patrick, SpongeBob sets out to treacherous Shell City to reclaim Neptune’s crown and save Mr. Krabs, in a spectacular adventure filled with “over-the-top, under-the-sea action and non-stop laughs!”

Featuring the voice talents of Tom Kenny (SpongeBob), Alec Baldwin, Jeffrey Tambor, Scarlett Johansson and a special appearance by David Hasselhoff, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is an uproariously funny comedy.

This is also available from any retailer clever enough to still sell physical media, usually for around twenty-five bucks. Or you can hit up Amazon.

Either, or both of these will be sure to put a smile on the face of the SpongeBob lover on your holiday shopping list.

Aging Your Best Until You Stop: What To Expect And What To Do
by Danny Kuhn
Favoritetrainers.com
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1737295341
$16.95

The first pick today in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a new book by an author familiar to the readers of this blog, Danny Kuhn.

His new book, Aging Your Best Until You Stop: What To Expect And What To Do is a departure from his books that have been in previous PopCult Gift Guides. This time he writes about getting older, hopefully gracefully.

Ken Bays, former editor, Blues Revue magazine offers up the following assessment:

It’s not an option: you will age until you stop. Learn all you can about the process and plan to make the time you have left as good as it can possibly be. Based on solid academic research but written in a personal and conversational style, Danny Kuhn tells it like it is and doesn’t avoid uncomfortable topics. What is likely to happen to our bodies and minds? Are we doomed to have fewer and less satisfying relationships as we age? Is sex “still on the table?” What about our stuff?

Diseases, medications, drinking, recreational drugs, exercise, social contacts, and estate planning are all discussed, plus a thorough treatment of that great unknown: what is it really like to die? Many of the answers are personal and individual, but this extensive information from credible academic and medical sources can help you set realistic expectations and bend the rules in your favor. “You’re going to die, but there are things you can do to make the time you have left better. Danny Kuhn repeats those words throughout “Aging Your Best Until You Stop” like a mantra, and your reaction to that hard truth could be an indicator of whether or not this book will be up your alley. If that sort of reminder inspires you to take action, you’ll get excellent guidance here for living out your days with gusto and courage as well as clarity and realistic expectations.

If thinking about your mortality frightens you, then you might have a harder time making it through some of the latter chapters — though Kuhn’s disarming sense of humor goes a long way toward making readers comfortable with even the most difficult subjects, like terminal disease and hospice. (He loves puns; at one point he writes, “Since one of the complaints older people have is that they sometimes feel listless, I am giving you a list.”) This is light reading about a heavy subject, and Kuhn uses stories from his own life, anecdotes from friends and acquaintances, and reputable scientific literature to illustrate useful advice about everything from sex as you age to exercise to avoiding common regrets.

The chapter titled “Old Rules” is alone worth the price of admission; it’s where Kuhn provides the aforementioned “list,” an inventory of eight guidelines for staying happy as you age, the first of which is “never turn down the good because it isn’t perfect.” It’s wisdom like this — common sense ideas that perhaps aren’t so common in practice — that makes this book so valuable

To be honest, the reason I’m quoting Ken here is because I haven’t had time to sit down and read Danny’s book yet. Aside from writing The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide, Your humble blogger has been dealing with some of the very issues discussed in this book. I will say that I’ve skimmed it, and it strikes me as a great instruction manual for making the most of your later days.

Highly recommended as a gift for anyone on your shopping list who would enjoy some helpful suggestions on how to enjoy life to the fullest with grace and dignity. You should be able to order it from any bookseller using the ISBN code, or you could just get it from Amazon.

Zerostreet, featuring the art of Robert Jimenez

Our second pick for The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is actually a whole store full of cool stuff featuring art by a PopCult favorite.

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. Robert also releases his own highly entertaining trading cards, many of them centered around his original concept, FEARSOME WEIRDOS.

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.

At Robert’s store you can find his art on prints, apparel, Tiki Mugs, metal signs, books, trading cards and more. You may very well find the perfect wearable, readable, collectible or displayable gift for the fan of Tiki Art, sick humor, parody and just great art at his site. You’ll find links to his books, cards, T Shirts, Metal Signs, original art and additional shops at Amazon, Threadless and more.