A few years ago on the late, lamented (RIP Rhonda) Roku Channel, Bizarre TV, I discovered a couple of horror movie hosts operating out of Cleveland, The Mummy and The Monkey. Featuring Janet Decay, Cleveland’s First horror hostess and Grimm Gorri, Cleveland’s Late Night Missing Link, the duo are the hosts of The Mummy And The Monkey’s Hairy Scary Hangout. since we are featuring spooky videos every Sunday this month, we thought it’d be a good time to catch up with the scary movie mavens on the lake.
The Mummy And The Monkey have been part of Cleveland Ohio’s horror movie scene since 2014. They host cheesy movies on their Channel on most Friday nights at 9:45 PM (Eastern Time) and you can watch on YouTube or their Facebook Page. Past episodes are archived, so you can catch up whenever you want. They follow the usual format of the classic horror movie host (think Svengoolie or Elvira) but they put their own spin on it and make it loads of fun to watch. They even have their own merch and also maintain a cool eBay store, stocked with wild vintage items.
Above you see their latest Hairy Scary Hangout show, featuring a chat with The Mads from MSK3k (Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff), plus the movie Teenage Zombies and tons of really fun, bizarre and only mildly disturbing cool stuff.
From the last day of April, 2012 we have Radio Free Charleston 157, “The Mighty Thor Shirt” On this week’s show we are brought you three songs from the then-upcoming production of The Color Purple by the Charleston Light Opera Guild, plus we had some new music from Godmode Broadway, and a heartfelt plea from The Tom McGees. Host segments were shot around The Charleston Civic Center, a good six and a half years before the current remodeling job that elevated it to Colissuem status.
Director Nina Denton Pasinetti invited us into the Guild workshop so we could take in an early run-through of The Color Purple. Melanie and I were mightily impressed. A week out from opening night, the cast had already gelled into a finely-tuned vocal ensemble. Even without the benefit of an orchestra, set or full costumes, they put on a compelling evening of theater. The entire cast was just amazing and the music was incredible.
The Charleston Civic Center Little Theater was the site of the Charleston Light Opera Guild production of the musical version of The Color Purple. The beloved novel by Alice Walker was turned into a Broadway musical a few years ago by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, with a book by Marsha Norman, and it was the spring offering from Charleston’s Light Opera Guild in 2012. The Guild was chosen to be the first community theater troupe to perform the show, following it’s Broadway run and national tour.
Also appearing on this episode of RFC was Godmode Broadway, the greatly-missed progressive hybrid band. We bring you their song, “Arson Wells (The Misadventures of Ray Von Siskle),” which we recorded at their rehearsal space, the same day we recorded “Surfboards and Broadswords,” which you saw on RFC a few weeks ago.
You can find the full production notes for this show HERE.
I wanted to take this week’s PopCulteer to bid farewell to an old friend. Last week I learned that Greg Miller, the former owner of Comic World in Charleston, passed away in late August after an accident at home. He was two days shy of his 74th birthday.
Greg was a good friend at a time when I really needed one. I haven’t written much about him in PopCult, but I did include him in my “Secret Origin.” He was very supportive of CODA, the book my brother and I published in the mid-1980s, and was a sympathetic ear when my first marriage was crashing and burning. Greg was also a big supporter of Radio Free Charleston, which I wrote about in this blog before…
At this point in the narrative, let me digress and share with you a commercial that I wrote and produced. Greg Miller, owner of Comic World on Charleston’s West Side, was a friend of mine, and he wanted to advertise on the show. It fell to me to produce a commercial on spec just to give him a rough idea what it would sound like. So I wrote this fun little exchange between a husband and wife, and started to record it. I was going to do my “wiseguy” voice, and get one of the female announcers at the station to play his wife. My boss, the aforementioned program director, Garrett Majors was supposed to do the bit at the end with all the “money info.”
Sadly, Garrett was having sobriety issues that made him unavailable. Also, the female announcers at the station were either too busy to record the spot, or they were refusing to speak to me. So I had to do all three voices myself. I figured it wasn’t too bad, since this was only a spec spot, and would never be aired.
I forgot about Greg’s sense of humor. When he found out that I did all the voices, including the woman who sounds a bit like a drag queen, he insisted that they use the rough spot on the air. I became known as “The man of a dozen voices.” You can hear for yourself.
If anybody knows Greg’s current whereabouts, leave them in the comments. I haven’t heard from him in years. (Note, I originally wrote that 17 years ago. It’s still true)
I was saddened by the news that he died, but not surprised. What surprised me was that he’d passed so recently. I hadn’t heard from him at all since the last time I saw him, probably twenty-eight years ago.
After losing his store to his ex-wife, who ran it briefly before shutting it down (leaving Charleston seriously underserved in terms of access to comic books for years), Greg became a bit of a recluse. He didn’t want to have anything to do with his former customers when they tracked him down, and nobody seemed to really know what had become of him.
I was a loyal customer and friend of Greg’s from 1982 to 1997, when I had to give up comics for a year when my mom suffered a stroke and I became her full-time caregiver. I just couldn’t get away long enough to make it to Greg’s store to pick up my comics and catch up with my buddy.
Greg was understanding and supportive of my decision to drop out of comics, and we parted as friends, with the hope that I’d be able to return as a customer some day.
During my disastrous first marriage, Greg was pretty much my only point of socialization. He consoled me through the break up, and during the worst days of my marriage, when there was no money to be had, he hired me to draw comics and stickers and things just so he could pay me in comics and keep me in the hobby I loved.
He also listened to me, and I returned the favor as his marriage crumbled.
I’m not going to take sides in that dispute. I didn’t witness anything myself, and it’s not fair to just present one side of a story I was told in confidence. I do know that there was a remarkable amount of bitterness on both sides.
Greg was so bitter that after he lost his store, he didn’t want to have anything to do comics or his former customers. His ex was so bitter that she financed, produced and starred in a feature film that seemed designed largely to paint Greg in as negative a light as possible.
The infamous Air Pirates comic
Over the years that I’ve been writing PopCult, one of the questions I’ve been asked most often is “What the hell ever happened to Greg Miller?”
I mean, even people who worked for him were in the dark. He was a well-liked guy and a major presence in the local comics scene. This was the guy that sold me my copies of The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and special-ordered Love and Rockets and Nexus for me. There was even one time when we bootlegged a few copies of the famed AIR Pirates underground comic, but that’s a story for another time.
He has been missed by many since he left the comics scene so long ago.
I’m sad to know he’s gone. Rest in peace, old buddy.
About Comics And Me
After going almost a year without buying new comics, things improved for me. Mom stabilized and I was able to get some additional caregiver help. I also started bringing in some disposable income thanks to some magazine-writing gigs, and I decided to start getting new comics again.
I was a bit distraught to find that Comic World was gone. It was almost a decade before I found out the whole story of what had happened, but if I wanted to get new comics, I was sort of stuck. There was (and I think still is) Cheryl’s Comics in Kanawha City, but she wasn’t exactly welcoming of Greg’s customers, and it was a bit farther for me to drive.
Then I remembered that Beau Smith and Cliint McElroy, whom we almost published during the CODA days, enthusiastically endorsed Westfield Comics, a mail-order subscription service. I decided to give them a try, and I’ve been a very satisfied customer for over twenty-five years now. . I still highly recommend them. Since I’ve been a customer, I have never missed a single issue of any comic book I wanted. I’ve never been waylaid by a fellow customer who wanted to explain in detail why his taste in comics was better than mine, and I never had to worry about a comic shop disappearing overnight like The Comic Kingdom in South Charleston did back in 1977.
It’s been rather blissful, even if the new comics aren’t nearly as good as the ones that came out back when I was in the target demographic.
And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content and all our regular features every day.
It’s another busy weekend as Bridge Day happens at The New River Gorge on Saturday, and that’s after Thursday’s ArtWalk in Downtown Charleston, and there’s just tons of STUFF TO DO all weekend…even though many of us will be glued to the TV to watch Young Frankenstein on Svengoolie Saturday night. Thursday’s ArtWalk is listed as running from 4 PM to 7 PM, so be aware of that if you are inclined to attend.
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. Seriously, for the last several weeks, by the time the weekend rolls around, I discover several events that I just totally missed out on. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or possibly Elon’s beast, if it should ever choose to forgive me. I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.
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 Travis Vandal and Jay Hill on Friday, and Julien Aklei and Matt Green on Saturday. Sunday afternoon at 1 PM, stop by for Charlie Murphy.
You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam.
Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.
In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.
The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.
The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.
Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans, or at The Cavern on Charleston’s West Side, and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings or Sunday afternoons.
To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something. This week they have SE3 and Minor Swing on Saturday.
You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. I am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon and those look to be incredible.
For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.
Please remember that viral illnesses are still a going concern and 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. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff. If somebody asks you to refrain, please respect their weishes and don’t be a jerk about it.
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 several days that I was able to scrounge up online…
{Note: When his post was originally written in October, 2005, PopCult was hosted at The Charleston Gazette, as a “Gazzblog.” It has been partially restored with existing graphics and is re-presented here to show part of this blog’s history, and also to cover for your humble blogger being called away for a routine doctor appointment.}
Elsewhere here at thegazz.com, you’ll find articles about Wallace and Gromit I wrote with my partner in animation crime, Melanie Larch. You may be wondering how we know so much about the process of creating clay and stop-motion animation. The answer is simple… for most of my life, I’ve been an eyewitness to it.
I had the unique experience of growing up in a house with an animator. My older brother, Frank, started making his own animated films as a young teen in the late 1960s. Being five years younger meant that, not only was I likely to hang around watching him do this, but I was also pressed into service as something else to be animated. Yes, I was a child animation model.
It was better than getting beat up for not doing it.
Now, back in those days, Frank had to use Super 8 film to create his masterpieces. He experimented with all forms of animation. I was used to mimic the popular gas station commercials of the day that had pixilated humans scooting around like they were driving, only without cars. I ruined many a pairs of pants doing that. This technique is still being used for commercials today. In addition to little brother animation, Frank also tried his hand at using typing paper, Terry Gilliam-style cut-out animation, notebook paper, and clay.
It was tedious and expensive work. Film cost nearly $20 for three minutes, when you figured in the processing costs. This was before home video had revolutionized the home movie market. Back then, it was so rare for anyone to shoot home movies that people would actually watch them, as opposed to today, where more than half of the home movies shot on video are never seen by human eyes again.
Frank would work for weeks on some of his clay-animated films. He’d move the models, shoot one frame, move everything else again, and so on. It might take several minutes to move each model for each frame of film, and it takes 24 frames of film to add up to one second. So, there were many days where I would have to be quiet and still for hours. Loud noises or sudden movements could upset the models, which were often precariously balanced.
Frank managed to do some pretty impressive things with the limited resources he had available to him. There were cute alien cartoons, dinosaur fights, and the bloody ultra-violent finale to his “Mugger” series. I remember after the final shot was completed for that one, the set with the dismembered Mugger was left on display in the basement for weeks. Every time Mom did the laundry, she’d have to walk past the table with the little clay guy with his entrails strewn about. I think she eventually made Frank clean it up.
Aside from clay, Frank also made movies starring action figures. The epic adventures of “Captain X” spanned several films, and featured special effects ranging from scratches on the individual frames of film to the later years, when real pyrotechnics came into play. I still have film of my GI Joe Space Capsule getting destroyed. Somewhere in the basement, we still have a Latex-covered animation model of a monster for a film he did in college. Thirty years on, the latex smells just as bad as it did the day it was brewed up.
Anyway, these days Frank is using a new medium for his animation. He’s pretty much mastered computer animation. He has done commercials, educational films and television shows, and is currently working on a movie, which stars IWA East Coast wrestler Mad Man Pondo. While he used live-action actors, all the backgrounds, most of the aliens, and all the vehicles and special effects are computer-generated. You can read more about REPERKUSSIONZ over at Frank’s production blog, here. Frank shot the live-action earlier this year, and expects to be working towards finishing it sometime next year.
Making the story complete, I also show up in the film for two brief appearances. I play a giant spider-legged creature. That’s me up at the top of this post. I don’t really have spider legs. It’s just my amazing acting ability. I also play a few hundred tree-headed monsters. Nearly forty years after first being used in one of Frank’s films, he’s asking me to share my incredible screen presence. I couldn’t turn him down.
Normally Tuesday is a great day to tune into The AIR for a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to lighten your mood and make you forget the real world. But today, we don’t have a new show. I needed a week off. I wasn’t even in town most of Monday, when I usually record the show, so instead I’m running a 24-hour marathon of recent episodes.
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.
Normally you can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.
But today you can listen to eight episodes of the show that were originally broadcast between July and September. They’ll let you catch up and support the local scene, independent music and yadda, yadda, yadda.
I think this is just the third week I’ve taken off from doing RFC this year. We’ll be back with all all-new episode next week, and we might also have new episodes of our other music specialty shows.
But this week you’ll have to be content with reruns. Luckily they’re really gosh-damnned good shows, loaded with incredible local and independent music, plus cult tunes, novelties and oddities, so it’s not like it’s a major loss or anything.
This week’s art is an elaborate pencil doodle that I did while trying to limber up my fingers, and then went back and finished with black and gray markers. I think at one point it was almost supposed to be a peacock feather but then it went off in its own direction.
I’m trying to train my fingers to do what my brain wants again, so I spent about an hour on the initial doodle (Blackwing Palamino on paper for pens) and let it set for a day before I decided I could add more to it and use it here.
It’s less like art, and more like doing random math problems. It’s just an exercise so that I can finish working on regaining my cartooning style so I can illustrate some recent dreams.
Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you an encore of a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we do the same 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.
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. 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 classic episode of TheComedy Vault that delivers music of one Weird Al Yankovic.
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: Psychedelic Shack, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and Prognosis.
As promised, every Sunday in October we are going to bring you something horrific in PopCult.
We didn’t exactly promise that it’d be something good.
This week you will find floating somewhere above this text the 1966 Horror “Comedy” The Undertaker And His Pals.
Here’s part of a description…
Mort the Mortician, and his two friends Spike and Doc (who run the aptly named “Greasy Spoon Diner”), collaborate on an interesting business model. The owners kill and dismember people – with body parts ending up on the following day’s menu – and Mort provides $144.98 funerals to the survivors. Of course, Mort’s add-ons drive the price up a good bit…but he also gives trading stamps to cushion the financial blow.
If you go into it thinking that it’s a bit of a cross between Sweeny Todd, The Munsters and the sitcom, Alice…you still probably have higher expectations than you should.
Be warned that it’s gory, in poor taste and not very well-made. But what it lacks in quality is more than made up for by it’s near-total lack of charm.
From April, 2012 comes Radio Free Charleston 156, “Warning Trioxin Shirt,.” This week we featured music from The Renfields and The Tom McGees, plus we brought you a terrific short docu-drama by Stephen Schmidt.
Charleston’s Ska kings, The Tom McGees perform a song called “Enemy Spy Plane Inbound,”which I mistakenly called by two or three different titles during the show. We also had Three-fifths of The Renfields on this show, to promote the then-in-the-future Zombie Prom at the old Kanawha Players theater. You’ll get to hear our favorite monster cereal band performing “From Beyond” and “Ramones Zombie Massacre.”
Sandwiched in between our musical guests we presented a wonderful short film by Stephen Schmidt. “Give Up The Fuzz, a few words with Clarence Fuzzy Haskins” In this film, Stephen combined an interview with Fuzzy Haskins, with dramatic recreations of some of the events starring such notable local performers as Newman Jackson, Philip Washington and Billy Hambleton. Fuzzy Haskins, who passed away back in 2023, was a founding member of Parliment-Funkadelic, and the interview with him was conducted at a West Virginia Music Hall of Fame event. I want to thank Stephen for letting me share his wonderful film with the RFC audience. It really classed up the joint.
And I’ve taken my battle to stop being interrupted to my front door.
Lately, it’s gotten worse…so much worse. One day, a couple of weeks ago, I counted over 30 telemarketing calls. It got so bad that I was just grabbing the phone and screaming “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” at the top of my lungs.
Startled the hell out of my sister.
I have explained in the past that years of being responsible for the health of various relatives put me in the hard-to-break habit of always answering my landline on the first ring. Even when I no longer had caregiver duties to worry about, my life as a freelancer meant that I couldn’t really afford to miss a call.
This latest round of over-aggressive telemarketers broke me. I finally did something that I should have done years ago. Something that I had foolishly resisted for far too long.
I moved my Caller ID unit from across the room to a spot on my desk that is right in my line-of-sight.
I realize that anybody else would have done this a decade or two ago.
I should also mention that I also have a cellphone. I don’t use it much because Myasthenia Gravis does not play well with a touchscreen. Late last year I dumped AT&T, moved to Mint Moble (with zero regrets) and got new phones for my beautiful wife and myself.
I’m now paying one-sixth what I had been, and get much, much better service.
But I still don’t text. It’s just too hard for me. I use the phone when we travel, mostly as a camera, and sometimes to navigate, but I just don’t text, much to the irritation of many of my friends.
Since I got my new phone, I have not taken it off airplane mode. It does not ring. If it ever made the noise it would make if I got a text, I wouldn’t recognize it anyway. I’d just wander around the house like The Beverly Hillbillies trying to figure out why the music was playing every time somebody rang their doorbell.
Spam calls on my cellphone are not an issue. When I mention over 30 calls in a day, that’s just on my landline. I mainly keep this number because it’s been in my family longer than I have, and I keep it as a landline mainly due to a combination of laziness and inertia.
So…I finally decided to partake in the technology that’s been around more than thirty years and stop answering every call that comes in. Unless it’s someone I know, when the damned thing rings, rather than ignore it, I just lift the handset an inch or so and put it back down without saying anything. I know I should just not pick it up at all, but then it rings and rings, and sometimes they leave crap on the voicemail, and by then my concentration is thoroughly destroyed, so this is quicker and easier, if less efficient in warding off robocaller mojo.
With my new normal, I have learned a few things.
First of all, almost every bogus Medicare robocall lists as its origin some quaint little town in West Virginia which I have heard of, but have never been to, like Follansbee or Iaeger. I guess they’re gambling that I might know somebody there and pick up the phone expecting to hear from Uncle Horatio or Aunt Flamphart.
My favorite calls are the ones that proudly introduce themselves as “Possible Spam.” Thank you for the warning. Click.
I’ve only had one so far that was listed as “Pakistan.” I guess somebody at the office forgot to turn on the phone number spoofer that day.
While I still startle way to easy when I’m in deep concentration, I have found that the quick hang-up lets me get past the interruption without being totally thrown off my train of thought.
Maybe someday, when the volume of calls drops from dozens per day to one or two a week, I may revive my old hobby of playing mind games with the instrusive disembodied voices with thick accents on the other end of the line, but for now, I shall simply wish them to the cornfield, like I do with internet trolls on social media.
And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular features and fresh content every day.
A few years ago on the late, lamented (RIP Rhonda) Roku Channel, Bizarre TV, I discovered a couple of horror movie hosts operating out of Cleveland, The Mummy and The Monkey. Featuring Janet Decay, Cleveland’s First horror hostess and Grimm Gorri, Cleveland’s Late Night Missing Link, the duo are the hosts of The Mummy And The Monkey’s Hairy Scary Hangout. since we are featuring spooky videos every Sunday this month, we thought it’d be a good time to catch up with the scary movie mavens on the lake.
It’s another busy weekend as Bridge Day happens at The New River Gorge on Saturday, and that’s after Thursday’s ArtWalk in Downtown Charleston, and there’s just tons of STUFF TO DO all weekend…even though many of us will be glued to the TV to watch Young Frankenstein on Svengoolie Saturday night. Thursday’s ArtWalk is listed as running from 4 PM to 7 PM, so be aware of that if you are inclined to attend.
To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at 
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