Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 10 of 581)

Until my March trip to ToyLanta I had never heard of Buc-ee’s.

On the way down to begin our trip, as we passed through Richmond, Kentucky on Interstate 75, my lovely wife let out a sqee, the likes of which she usually reserves for spotting a Sephora or something related to SpongeBob, The Walking Dead or the playwright, Tracy Letts (four things which rarely exist in the same spot).

It was a Buc-ee’s store under construction. Apparently Mel was well-acquainted with the chain of humongous convenience stores through YouTube, and she was really excited at the prospect of eventually visiting one, even though this one was clearly, not quite ready to open yet.

A couple of state lines down the road, and with plenty of warning from frequent billboards, we came upon the Buc-ee’s in Calhoun, Georgia, not far North of Atlanta, so we were able to go in and see what all the fuss was about.

Let me explain what Buc-ee’s is. Technically, it’s a convenience store. However, they’re located and laid out sort of like a truck stop, only it seems that they don’t go out of their way to welcome trucks. They are HUGE, maybe one-third to one-half the size of a Walmart. They tend to have between 80 and 120 gas pumps.

And the big attraction is…they have the cleanest restrooms currently available anywhere on the planet Earth. Seriously, they are the number one place to go number one, or two. The stalls are private and clean and as soon as you leave one a team of forty or fifty people rush in to sanitize it.

The chain was founded in Texas in 1982, and in recent years they have started expanding beyond the borders of the Lone Star State.

They are tourist attractions as well. People will get on a bus and ride for hours just to pull up at a Buc-ee’s, relieve themselves, and partake of some of the ridiculous amount of foodstuffs, clothing, toys, and various knick-knackery available at Buc-ee’s twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all year long forever and for all eternity.

The food is pretty darned impressive. They have their trademark brisket, pulled pork (fine if you like it–personally the smell of pork cooking nauseates me) plus they have roasted nuts, a beef jerky bar, a fudge bar (very nice), Dippin Dots, a bakery and a whole range of their own brand of snacks, including “Beaver Nuggets” or “Buc-ee’s Nuggies,” which, to be honest, don’t sound that appetizing to me. The kitchen (which is out in the middle of the store), the fudge and beef jerky bars and everything in the store is open 24 hours a day. Let me quote their website here…

Fresh hot food is available made to order 24 hours a day. At our travel centers, breakfast starts at 4:00 AM and ends at 11:00 AM. At our travel centers, made to order lunch items are available starting at 11:00 AM. We also have fresh homemade grab and go items available 24 hours a day. Our jerky, bakery, fudge, and Dippin Dots counters are always open!

They have a mascot, Buc-ee Beaver (inspired by the Ipana Toothpaste Beaver, who was just before my time), and he is seen in plush form and on hundreds of items ranging from shirts to shoes to hats to bikinis to chips, dips and soda and maybe even on home pregnancy tests.

When we came upon the Buc-ee’s in Calhoun, all the plush they had in stock was little keychain Buc-ee’s.

Fast-forward a couple of months, and Mel and I were looking for a quick weekend trip that would be less stressful than riding the Amtrak to New York for 31 hours in Manhattan. We’d heard that the Richmond Buc-ee’s had opened in April, and we love the shopping and hotels in Richmond and nearby Lexington, so last weekend we drove down Friday after Mel got off work–and it was a wonderful afternoon to drive–and checked into the hotel, waited two hours and drove to Buc-ee’s after 10 PM.

Why so late? Well, I didn’t mention it much, but Buc-ee’s can get a bit crowded in the daytime. Buses filled with day-trippers who have loaded bladders, and damned near ever single person who saw one of their five hundred or so billboards on the Interstate all converge, and…it was more crowded than going to Yankee Stadium on free bobblehead day.

And we’re still nervous about this pandemic thing. So we wanted to see what it was like late at night, since they are open 24/7. Turns out it’s much more pleasant, but hardly deserted.  Basically we drove almost three hours to wait until after 10 PM to go to a place to pee and buy fudge, and it was worth the trip. Take a look at these photos and see for yourself.

Did I mention they have a lot of gas pumps? These aren’t close to being all of them.

Buc-ee is even more impressive at night, presiding over his petroleum empire.

He’s well-represented inside, too.

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For several years, every May Mel Larch would presente a special episode of Curtain Call devoted to the Tony Award Nominees for Best Musical.  Wednesday afternoon on The AIR, you can hear samples of the nominees for this year’s Tony Awards for Best Musical for the first time since 2019, as Broadway gets back to normal, and so does Curtain Call.  You can tune in at the website, or if you’re on a laptop or desktop, you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking over in the right-hand column of this blog. If you’re reading on your phone, scroll down and you’ll find the radio player hiding below the posts.

At 3 PM Mel Larch presents a new hour of great musical theater on Curtain Call. It’s our annual Tony Awards preview, with songs from each of the nominated musicals, which took a bit of doing since some of the shows aren’t releasing their Original Broadway Cast albums until next month.

In this show, you’ll hear four songs from A Strange Loop, three each from Paradise Square and  Girl From The North Country and two from Mr. Saturday Night, and then one each from MJ: The Musical and SIX. The song selection was dictated by what was available to use on the show.

A Strange Loop, written by Michael R. Jackson, who sings on the third song that you’re about to hear, follows Usher, a Black, Queer writer writing a musical about a Black, Queer writer writing a musical about a Black, Queer writer etc. The title refers to a cognitive science term coined by Douglas Hofstadter. It’s a funny and challenging show with incredible songs and a terriffic cast.

Paradise Square is a stage musical, with music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Masi Asare and Nathan Tysen, and a book by Christina Anderson, Marcus Gardley, Larry Kirwan and Craig Lucas. Set in New York City during the Civil War, the musical follows conflict between Irish Americans and Black Americans.

Girl From The North Country is a depression-era tale of a family in trouble, living on the shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota. The story, which is sort of a cross between The Grapes of Wrath and a soap opera, is carried by the songs of Bob Dylan.

Mr Saturday Night is a musical adaptaion of the 1994 Billy Crystal movie, with Crystal reprising his role as an aging comedian with a complicated family life.

MJ: The Musical is a jukebox musical that tells the story of the life of Michael Jackson, using his own music.

SIX is a British musical comedy with book, music, and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss.The musical is a modern retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII presented as a pop concert, as the Queens take turns singing and telling their story to see who suffered the most due to Henry and should, therefore, become the group’s lead singer. This is a great show, and Mel’s been playing songs from earlier productions of it on Curtain Call for years.

The 2022 Tony Awards will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount + on June, 12, so you can tune in and see who won this year’s prize.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evenings starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

If you wanna hear something funny,  tune in to The AIR Wednesday night at 11 PM where we will offer up a new episode of The Comedy Vault, this time featuring an hour of random comedy bits by Steve Martin.

It’s Tuesday on The AIR  and you know what that means. Just like last week, it’s time for yet another one-third-new, three-hour  episode of Radio Free Charleston. You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website).

Yes, it’s one more hybrid edition of Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.   This week we open with a full hour of  local and independent music, and then we hit you with two hours of classic Radio Free Charleston International from January, 2019.

Our first hour, opens with new music from J. Marinelli You’ll also hear cool music from The Heavy Editors (featuring former Feast of Stephen six-stringer, Joe Vallina), The Amos Steel Co., The Settlement and Corduroy Brown. We also have a new music from Julian Lennon and Def Leppard and a song from The Black Keys featuring Sierra Ferrell on backing vocals.

The second and third hours of our show re-present a mixtape edition of Radio Free Charleston International from January, 2019, when yours truly wanted to see how weird he could get.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

RFC V5 089

hour one
J Marinelli“Are You Terrified”
The Heavy Editors “Alien Lover”
Corduroy Brown“To My Younger Self”
Amos Steel Co. “Dead Man Whiskey”
Aaron Fisher “Drive”
Hello June “Spruce”
Spencer Elliott SE3 “Torque”
Julian Lennon “Every Little Moment”
The Settlement  “Extinction”
Def Leppard “Take What You Want”
Jeff Rosenstock “NO U”
We Are The Union “100 Years”
The Black Keys (with Sierra Ferrell ) “Your Team Is Looking Good”

hour two
Barnes and Barnes “Gumby Jaws Lament”
Tubeway Army “That’s Too Bad”
Skankin’ Pickle “My Hair”
Nina Hagen Band “Superboy”
Midnight Satellites “Long Lost”
Nicky Hopkins “Shout It Out”
Mi Sex “It Only Hurts When I’m Laughing”
Roger Glover “Dreams of Sir Bedivere”
Spazzchow “Cats”
MIKA “Love You When I’m Drunk”
The Parlortones “Skeletons”
Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra “Storm Rider”
Ugly Blondes “Bottom of the Ocean”
Tiki Tonga “Island Paradise”
The Soulutions “Do Right”
Nu Tra “Superhuman”

hour three
Black Dyke Mills Band “Thingumybob”
Small Affairs “Back To China”
Silent Treatment “Life On Earth”
Busty and The Bass “PS, I’m Pregnant”
Macy Gray “Nothing Else Matters”
Polysics “Black Out Fall Out”
Spacehog “Candyman”
Super Furry Animals “Don’t Be A Fool, Billy”
The Dollyrots “The Addiction”
The Woggles “Morituri Te Salutant”
Tracy Bonhom “Your Night Is Wide Open”
Fitz and The Trantrums “Fool”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different 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 MIRRORBALL at 1 PM. At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

Our art this week is another quick and sloppy small study for a potential large-scale painting later. I’ve been doing these more lately due to a combination of not having enough free time for art, and having a mild resurgence of Myasthenia Gravis that’s been trying my patience a bit.

This is a watercolor and acrylic study based on a series of photos taken in Times Square. When I do this one full-size I’ll go for the high-detail look that I’ve used in the past for Times Square paintings, only this time it’ll be a physical painting, and not digital.

To see a bigger version try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a new mixtape edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  Herman will be presenting a three-part tribute to the late prog-rock keyboard legend, Vangelis.  This will include his first group, Aphrodite’s Child, his solo work and his work with Jon Anderson.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

Tonight at 8 PM you can hear an hour of the last project by Rik Mayall on The Comedy Vault. Wednesday evening at 10 PM, we’ll have another new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Then, at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of Prognosis, this time with five episodes that feature music by Genesis and the former members thereof.

Vangelis, the electronic-music pioneer who won an Oscar for Chariots of Fire and composed such other landmark film scores as Blade Runner, died Tuesday in France while being treated for COVID-19.

I was a big fan of Vangelis, going back to before he teamed up with Jon Anderson for several hit singles and became an acclaimed film composer, so tonight PopCult pays tribute to Vangelis Papathanassíou with a prety wild concert video of the man from 1991. Tomorrow, Herman Linte will present a tribute to Vangelis in a special mixtape episode of Prognosis, on The AIR.

This concert was organized by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs to promote and celebrate the “Eureka Project”; an initiative to stimulate international scientific cooperation between European companies. Vangelis was asked to provide the highlight of the event.

At the docks in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. A floating stage was built. Vangelis sat in the middle, surrounded by his synths and some classically Greek styled props. He was supported by a choir.

To accompany the music, some buildings in the neighborhood were used for projections with colors and laser animations. In addition, there were participating helicopters, boats and mobile cranes.

Jon Anderson appeared as a guest for the “Italian Song” and Markella Hatziano (who reportedly tripped over the wiring afterwards) appeared for “Glorianna.”

It’s a cool way to remember a pioneering musician who left a grand musical legacy.

RFC 99 "Porkchop shirt" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.

This week we go back to May, 2010 for our 99th show, “Porkchop Shirt.”  This time we produced what was then an extra-long show, with music from Highway Jones, OVADA and HARRAH, plus a visit from IWA East Coast Heavyweight Champion contender, Chris Hero, a short film by Murfmeef and some really cute, but disgusting animation.

This was the first show where we used the Kodak Zi8 video camera, which was then-new, and is today obsolete, but it’s still our weapon of choice as we now have five and a half of them. (Don’t loan your cameras out to other people, kids)

It was also the first appearance of HARRAH as a band, although Lee Harrah had been part of the show since episode 19.

The promo for Chris Hero was shot for us by Bo Vance, and is notable because Chris spent years at WWE’s NXT brand as “Kassius Ohno,” and in this clip he challenges Roderick Strong, who is still a star in NXT, and name-checks other wrestlers he’d faced, like Billy Gunn, Jerry Lynn and current AEW star, Jon Moxley.

All  in all, it’s a pretty solid show, loaded with great music and plenty of weird extras to help you pass the time. Original production notes are HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 20, 2022

This week, in keeping with the original spirit of The PopCulteer to do something different every week, we are bringing you two very short PopCult videos.

Think of them as video essays.

While they seem to have nothing in common on the surface, the fact is, they were recorded within fifteen hours of one another.

These are holdovers from our lightning trip to New York City three weeks ago. We’re going to show them to you here in reverse order from wence they was shot.

First up you’re going to see a very short video I shot on Sunday, May 1, from the window of the Amtrak Cardinal. We were passing the C&O Railway Heritage Center, and I got footage of the back end of the museum, including some of the rare and ancient cars they have in their railyard alongside the Amtrak tracks.  If you are a Charleston Gazette-Mail subscriber, you can read a cool article or two about the C&O Railway Heritage Center that were published earlier this week.

Anyway, here’s the quick video…

Our other video is a totally different story.

While we were in New York to see The Minutes, we chose to see a matinee so that we could run around Times Square a bit in the evening (and get some Junior’s Cheesecake while we were there).  When it was time to get back to the hotel, we had a hell of a time flagging down a taxi.  However, our knight in shining SpongeBob gear appeared with his Pedi-Cab, and said he could get us to our hotel in less than eight minutes, which he did. It was a blast.

I wrote about it HERE, but I also shot video of the ride, sped up just a little to match the background music (we had to use approved music so that YouTube wouldn’t flag us), and here is the very shaky result…

And that is our PopCulteer this week because yours truly is off on a very quick (and much closer) day trip this weekend, and didn’t really feel like writing word things. Be sure to check PopCult for fresh content every day, because that’s what I do. If there isn’t fresh content, there’s probably something wrong.

Okay, it’s time once again for your guide to things you can do in and around Charleston, Huntington and other places nearby during this post mid-May week in our latest edition of STUFF TO DO.

A special note: ArtWalk happens again in Charleston Thursday from 5 PM to 8 PM.  This free event is open to the public as art lovers can walk to all the usual suspects and take in the majesty of the art. Some galleries will have music and/or munchies as well. It’s a really cheap way to support the local scene and get out and mingle a bit…if you are so inclined. Several  Art Walk-related events are listed below.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Dina Hornbaker. Saturday sees David McGuire (from Bad Keys On The Mountain) at Charleston’s Bookstore/coffeehouse/art gallery institution.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet, and now only the stupidest of people are going without vaccinations. 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.

If you wanna hear something funny,  tune in to The AIR Wednesday night at 11 PM where we will offer up a new episode of The Comedy Vault, this time featuring an hour of the comedy of Gilda Radner.

In the meantime, if you’re up for going out, here are some suggestions from folks who were kind enough to provide graphics and make my job easier…

Thursday

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Above you see the Kickstarter pitch video for a new trading card game created by Richie Ray.  Area music fans may remember Richie as the front man for Shindig (We had the band on RFC back in 2009). Richie has pointed his creative energies in a new direction, strained hard, and pushed out a trading card game called “Oh Crap.”

Think of it as Pokémon, only with poop instead of monsters.

I’d better let Richie explain…

This game evolved from making up silly songs with my wife into a full on collectible trading card game.  With my knack for poop jokes (and graphic design) and my friend Gavin’s insane artistic talent, we created a game that is as funny as it is fun.  Playable like most TCG’s, these are fun to have and quickly become a topic of discussion when they come out.

So…if you have the proper sense of humor, then this is the game of craps you want to support. With his buddy Gavin MacDonald, Richie has come up with a fun game that fans of trading card games can really run with. There are ten days left in the campaign, and it’s near its goal, so it’s not like you’ll gamble and lose. You will want to be in on this when it comes out.

Seriously, this game is like a steamer full of fun…from Cleveland. Some folks might find a game like this to be nutty or corny, but if it cracks you up, then you know that you gotta go to the Kickstarter page and drop your support into the bucket. Don’t pass on this. You’d be flushing away your chance to get in on the ground level of something that could be massive.

There are several levels of support, including a full 36-card starter deck for fifteen dollars, and other levels with bonus cards and other goodies.

You can support the campaign HERE, and follow their progress at the Oh Crap Facebook page.

It’s Tuesday on The AIR  and you know what that means. Today it’s time for yet another one-third-new, three-hour  episode of Radio Free Charleston. You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website).

Yes, it’s one more hybrid edition of Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.   This week we open with a full hour of  local and independent music, and then we hit you with two hours of classic Radio Free Charleston International from 2019.

Our first hour, opens with new music from Amos Steel Co., who you will be reading about here in PopCult as they play more local gigs. You’ll also hear brand-new music from The Heavy Editors (featuring former Feast of Stephen six-stringer, Joe Vallina), The Smile, Bane Star, The Settlement and making his RFC debut, Corduroy Brown. We also have a new tune from Jim Lange and a song from Chicago’s all-girl punk band, Mystery Action.

The second and third hours of our show re-present a mixtape edition of Radio Free Charleston International from July, 2019, when yours truly was in rough shape after a quick trip to Chicago when the heat index was 117, This fever-dream playlist makes no sense on paper, but it sure sounds good.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

RFCv5 088

Amos Steel Co. “The Ballad of Amos Steel”
The Heavy Editors “Time Travel”
The Smile “Thin Thing”
Bane Star “You Should Have Seen Her”
The Settlement “Riff Destroyer”
Dubioza Kolectiv “Traktorska”
Mystery Action “War Beat”
Corduroy Brown (featuring Alro McKinley) “Secret Wars”
XTC “I’d Like That”
The Black Keys “War Child”
Jim Lange “Early Morning Affirmation”
Jazz Sabbath “Paranoid”
Minor Swing “Limehouse Blues”

hour two
Children of the Sun “Her Game”
Joe Jackson “Steppin’ Out (live)”
Elvis Costello “This Town”
Rosalie Cunningham “House of the Glass Red”
Tim Heidecker “Insomnia”
Agwabom “POTUS The Alien”
Harry Nilsson “I’d Rather Be Dead”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Beast of Burgandy”
Plasmawine “Sell Yo Mum”
Manfred Mann “Chicago Institute”
Perspective Vortex “Out of Time”
The Ivory Elephant “Maybe I’m Evil”
Mini Mansions “I Should Be Dancing”

hour three
The Shadows “Atlantis”
Quiet Life “Get Up”
Terry Draper “Once Upon A Memory”
Soundgarden “Black Hole Sun (Live)”
Paul McCartney “Frank Sinatra’s Party”
The Alarm “Armegedden In The Morning”
Space Raptor “Psychedelic Warfare”
Violent Femmes “Hotel Last Resort”
Stray Cats “Devil Train”
Shriekback “The King In The Tree”
Matt Berry “Lord Above”
Kitty Rose and the Rattlers “Missing The Train”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different 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 MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and Ska Madness at 2 PM. At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.