Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 163 of 581)

SpongeBob Squarepants The Musical Original Cast Recording

This CD came out last year, but I didn’t get to see the show until near the end of its run last summer, so I am recommending this for any fan of the SpongeBob Squarepants cartoon, any fan of Broadway musicals, and any fan of just plain great music that happens to be a lot of fun.

SpongeBob Squarepants The Musical may well be the quintessential Broadway Musical experience. It has the perfect combination of music, cast, direction, art direction and story to make it stand head and shoulders above any of the classics of the stage. The only musical close to this in terms of over all quality is The Book of Mormon, and unlike that show, SpongeBob Squarepants is family-friendly.

Taking the familiar characters from the Nickledeon cartoon, and placing them in a compelling story about the potential end of the world works surprisingly well on stage, largely due to the efforts of the cast and the creative team.

The show is a spectacle in every sense of the word. The set design is brilliant, both figuratively and literally, and the costume design manages to perfectly capture the characters of the cartoon series without resorting to using mascot uniforms. However, on the album you can really focus on how amazing the music is.

The music is incredible and hangs together very well, despite being written, for the most part, by rock musicians with no prior stage experience. In addition to They Might Be Giants, composers include David Bowie and Brian Eno, Jonathan Coulton, Cyndi Lauper, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Yolanda Adams, Sara Bareilles, John Legend and members of Lady Antebellum, The Flaming Lips, Panic at the Disco, The Plain White Ts and Paic At The Disco.

SpongeBob Squarepants The Musical will not being going out on tour until next year, so the only way you can experience this fantastic show at the moment is through this Original Cast Recording, which you ought to be able to find or order from any place that sells CDs, or you can order it from Amazon.

Check out a brief sample below…

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
by Nancy MacLean
Viking
ISBN-13: 978-1101980965
$28.00

This is a great gift for the person on your holiday gift-giving list who is fascinated with politics, and needs to know what’s really going on with dark money flowing into campaigns. This book tells the true story of James McGill Buchanan, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who developed the philosophy and the strategy by which the right-wing elite of this country have spent the last six decades systematically destroying the very foundations of our Democracy. You might not want to give it to your crazy aunt or uncle who thinks the president is a decent human being, but they may be the people who need it the most.

Democracy in Chains is not a tinfoil-helmet conspiracy. This is a meticulously researched and brilliantly written book that traces Buchanan’s influence using his own archives, which are housed at George Mason University. Miraculously for such a secretive movement, one that is steeped in re-writing history to suit their goals, the disciples of Buchanan made little effort to hide his personal archives, and MacLean had unfettered access to his entire written output, including personal correspondence. This book so scared the people pulling the strings that they attempted to discredit it with a smear campaign against the author, but it blew up in their face and only confirmed what she wrote.

Essentially Buchanan was a pioneer in articulating the concept of “I’ve got mine, screw everybody else.” He was stirred to action by the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that set the ground for school segregation. Buchanan was so outraged at the prospect of his tax money paying for the education of young black kids that he founded an entire movement to take over the government and defund every public program imaginable.

He didn’t get very far with this philosophy, until he encountered a new disciple in the 1970s, Charles Koch, who put billions of dollars into placing his carefully chosen candidates in office across the country. Koch, after giving up on getting anywhere with the Libertarian Party, decided to load up state legislatures with hand-picked minions who would gerrymander political advantages for his candidates for higher office. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as frightening as this true story of how people who seem to be evil incarnate have successfully undermined the basic tenets of our Democracy.

It was the success of Democracy and the rise of a middle class that alarmed Buchanan. To quote from the cover blurb, “In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.”

To put it bluntly, these are people who don’t think anyone but them should vote.

In this book we learn how Koch, using his money, took over the Republican Party and turned it into a “dream team” of zealots hell-bent on breaking unions, privatizing Social Security, Health Care, Education and our Interstate system and suppressing as much of the vote as possible. Along the way they’ve made willing stooges of evangelicals, who are too blinded by their own political passions that they don’t care that they’re following the grand plan of a militant atheist. Another weapon in the Libertarian Elite arsenal is the mistrust of the media that they’ve bred by financing “alternate news” sources like FOX News, Brietbart, and ministers of disinmoration like Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Predictably, there is an organized campaign to “review” this book at Amazon and give it a one-star rating. You can guess who’s behind that.

MacLean spent ten years researching this book, and it’s gotten quite a bit of acclaim since it was released last year, but it’s not being read enough. This book should be mandatory reading for anybody who plans on voting. This is scary as hell, but the public must know about this, before it’s too late. You should be able to find or order Democracy In Chains anywhere books are sold, using the ISBN code.

The Creeps Magazine Fan Club

Our final gift suggestion today is a slightly goofy, fun and fairly specific gift you can give somebody if they are a big fan of horror comics. Specifically, if they are fans of classic Warren horror comic magazines like Creepy, Eerie or Vampirella, or if they’re fans of the new magazine from Warrant Publishing, The Creeps. As I’ve told you before, The Creeps Magazine is a lovely and affectionate homage to Creepy and Eerie Magazine. Folks of a certain age probably remember these magazine-sized black and white horror comic anthologies that featured intelligent stories and high class art. You could find them on almost any newsstand. Warren Publishing, the folks who gave us Famous Monsters of Filmland, published Creepy and Eerie (and Vampirella and others) from the mid 1960’s into the mid 1980’s.

For a few now, Warrant Publishing has been recreating the magic with this now-quarterly magazine that duplicates the look and feel, down to the fonts and newsprint and some of the creators of the original Warren books. They have just stepped up their game a little in the nostalgia department.

Back in the 1970s, during the heyday of Warren Publishing, they offered a fan club for their magazine’s horror hosts that included a poster, a button and a membership card.

Well, now you can join The Creeps Magazine Fan Club. It’s a lifetime membership, and it’s a great bit of nostalgia, or a happy little gag gift for the horror comics fan on your list. It’s twenty bucks and includes a button, card and mini-poster, plus a membership number. If you don’t think that makes a good gift on its own you can poke around their website and grab a few back issues to toss in to make it a full-fledged gift. Follow the links, or click on the “coupon” below to purchase a fan club membership.

Local Spotlight: Oddbird Emporium

Our first local business recommendation this year is a great little shop that’s been with us for a few years now. While we’re plugging it, we must also congratulate the owner, Naomi Bays, who landed an at large seat on Charleston’s City Council last night. I’m talking about Oddbird Gift Emporium, located at the corner of Capitol and Lee Streets, right across from the Lee Street Triangle. Oddbird offers a collection of quirky, fun gifts for the home, office, beauty, baby, garden and everywhere in between.

Open six days a week, Oddbird Gift Emporium has a good number of items made right here in the Mountain State. Oddbird also carries the clothing lines, Mata Traders and Kavu. and has a really cool assortment of gift wrap paper, and they’ll do the wrapping for you if, like your PopCulteer, you are unable to wrap anything without making it look like a suspicious package.

Aside from the clothing and ornamets, Oddbird Gift Emporium is loaded with cool housewares, knicknacks, cooking items, custom-made soaps and candles and more. You’ll also find art prints, pottery, dinnerware, mugs and tons of other neat things.

You’ll even find printed towels, aprons and umbrellas. Best of all, instead of wracking your brain trying to pick out the perfect gift from this awesome collection of unique giftery, you can simply purchase of gift certificate from Oddbird Gift Emporium and shift the burden of labor onto the lucky receipient on your holiday shopping list.

Oddbird Gift Emporium is open Tuesday through Thursday from 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM; Friday from 10:30 AM to 7:00 PM; and Saturday from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. You will find this shop at 247 Capitol St (right across from the Lee Street Triangle) and you can call (304) 344-2473 or email oddbirdgifts@gmail.com, for details on purchasing gift certificates. You can also visit their website and their Facebook page for more details.

Dr. Demento: Covered In Punk

Our first pick today for The 2018 PopCult Gift Guide is a tribute album that was released early this year. It’s a testament to the power and glory of Dr. Demento.

In case you don’t know who that is, since 1974 Dr. Demento has hosted a weekly radio show devoted to the occasionally-abandoned art of novelty records, and he’s been a starmaker in the worlds of comedic music and audio bizarreness. The Dr. Demento Show holds a place in pop culture’s humor wing alongside Mad Magazine and The National Lampoon.

His biggest discovery was Weird Al Yankovic, who famously slipped him a cassette of one of his original songs when Hansen visited his high school back in the mid-1970s, but he was also responsible for bringing Barnes and Barnes, Richard Cheese, Judy Tenuta, Emo Philips and others into the mainstream. Hansen not only discovered these artists, but in many cases he nurtured and encouraged them.

last January a punk rock tribute to Dr. Demento was released by Demented Punk Records. Dr. Demento: Covered In Punk was the brainchild of John Cafiero, of Osaka Popstar, a life-long Demento fan who is also a producer and manager. The record consists of punk rock covers of classic novelty tunes that have been played on The Dr. Demento Show. The album includes new recordings by “Weird Al” Yankovic, the Misfits, the B-52’s Fred Schneider, William Shatner, the late Adam West, Los Straitjackets and more

It’s a match made in heaven, as Demento was an early champion of punk rock, playing tracks by The Ramones, The Dickies, The Sex Pistols, Ian Dury and others back before punk entered into the mainstream. Among the songs on Dr. Demento: Covered In Punk are such Dr. Demento Show favorites as “Shaving Cream,” “Surfin’ Bird,” “The Monster Mash,” “Lydia, The Tattooed Lady,” “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama” and Yankovic’s “Eat It.”

All but one of the 19 tunes on Dr. Demento: Covered In Punk, were recorded especially for the set. Only a never-released Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ version of “Science Fiction/Double Feature” from The Rocky Horror Show already existed. On the record, Dr. Demento provides newly-recorded commentary between songs, so that it recreates the experience of listening to The Dr. Demento Show. It’s like an extended episode of his show, with all-new music.

The standout tracks are Adam West’s cover of the Phil Harris classic “The Thing,” and Yankovic’s first-ever studio recording of a non-parody cover, The Ramone’s “Beat On The Brat.”

You should be able to order Dr. Demento: Covered In Punk from any record store that carries new releases, or you can turn to Amazon or the record label.

Check out a sample with this music video, Osaka Popstar’s cover of the Barnes and Barnes classic, “Fish Heads”

William Matheny: Moon Over Kenova/”Christian Name”

For our local pick in today’s 2018 PopCult Gift Guide we have a recent album and brand-new single from Mannington-born, Morgantown-based singer/songwriter, William Matheny. Matheny has been on the scene for some time, working solo and in a variety of bands. His musical style has been compared to the likes of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Marshall Crenshaw, and The Modern Lovers’ Jonathan Richman.

Earlier this year Matheny released an EP, which thanks to bonus tracks has been expanded to full-album length. “Moon Over Kenova” now includes fourteen tracks of Matheny’s trademark witty songwriting and catchy alt-country tunes.

Track Listing:

1) Moon Over Kenova
2) Tonight & Every Night From Now On
3) That’s How I Got to Memphis
4) Blood Moon Singer (alternate version)
5) Just Be Simple
6) God’s Left Hand (Live on Mountain Stage)
7) Out for Revenge (Live on Mountain Stage)
8) Blood Moon Singer (Live on Mountain Stage)
9) Moon Over Kenova (Live on Mountain Stage)
10) Living Half to Death (Live on Mountain Stage)
11) 29 Candles (Live at the Loft, Huntington, WV)
12) God’s Left Hand (Live at the Loft, Huntington, WV)
13) Living Half to Death (Live at the Loft, Huntington, WV)
14) I Wish I Was Back in West Virginia With the Sun Shining on my Face (demo)

In addtion, there is also a new single, with songs not on “Moon Over Kenova.” You can get “Christian Name” b/w “Flashes and Cables” as a 7″ vinyl single with a custom sleeve featuring artwork by Bryn Perrott. “Christian Name” was written by William Matheny, while “Flashes and Cables” was written by Will Johnson, originally recorded by Centro-Matic.

You can purchase both the “Moon Over Kenova” CD and the “Christian Name” single, plus his earlier recordings and merch at William Matheny’s website, or you can check to see if they are in stock at our local record stores. And you can watch the official video for “Christian Name” right here…

Yeti In My Spaghetti

Next up in the 2018 PopCult Gift Guide is a fun gift that’s great for kids, or for an entire family. Yeti In My Spaghetti is a fun, silly game that can occupy your time for hours on end as your family members try to master the art of Yeti-Spaghetti Zen. We reviewed this game earlier in the year, and couldn’t think of a better kid-friendly gift at a low price.

Yeti In My Spaghetti is recommended for ages four and up, but it’s got an addictive quality that makes it hard to resist at any age. The premise is simple. Inside the box you find a bowl, thirty pieces of plastic “spaghetti,” and a little plastic Yeti. You’ll also find the rules in English and Spanish. They aren’t very complicated.

You lay the “spaghetti” across the bowl, building a platform on which you place the Yeti. Then the players take turns pulling out the “spaghetti” strands, one by one, until the Yeti falls into the bowl.

It’s sort of like a cross between pick-up sticks and Jenga, with the added ingredient of snow monsters and pasta.

In a two-player game, the person who pulls out the spaghetti strand that makes the Yeti falls is the loser. With more than two players, the winner is the one with the most spaghetti.

It’s simple. It’s goofy…and it’s a lot of fun. This is not a game that requires a lot of brain power. There is skill involved, but it’s not like you’re going to have to “phone a friend” or anything.

Yeti In My Spaghetti is a great throwback to the goofy, fun games of my youth, and you ought to be able to find it anywhere that games are sold. Some retailers have it for under ten bucks now.

Comic Book Implosion
by Keith Dallas and John Wells
TwoMorrows Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1605490854
$21.95

Our first entry in today’s 2018 PopCult Gift Guide is the perfect gift for the fan of mainstream comics history on your shopping list. Forty years ago last summer one of the most traumatic events in the lives of young comic book readers occurred. DC Comics, just a couple of months after launching a bold initiative that saw their books expanded to include more story pages at a higher price was ordered by the corporate execs at Warner Communications to slash their publishing output by 40%, cut their regular books back to the standard 32-page size and lay off several members of their editorial staff. This came to be known as “The DC Implosion,” a takeoff of their ad campaign proclaiming “The DC Explosion.”

In Comic Book Implosion, Keith Dallas and John Wells have assembled an oral history using new interviews, combined with contemporaneous news reports and interviews from the comics fan press (which was quite vital at the time), and sales reports and house ads from the comics involved. They have done a tremendous job creating a definitive record of what was a major turning point in the history of the American comic book.

It’s a fascinating look inside the comic book business of the 1970s, which was in a serious decline and was very close to dying out completely. Not only does this book capture this turmoil in detail, it also sets the record straight on a woefully mis-reported event in comics history.

About ten years ago one of the many comic book news sites ran a very long article to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of The DC Implosion, and it was a remarkable piece in that it was so filled with misstartments, misiniformation and even a basic misunderstanding of when the event happened, that it took years to correct all the errors in fact that had arisen from it. Folks who were ignorant of the true history cited this online article and spread a wealth of wrong info around the web in record time. The piece in question turned out to have been written by someone who hadn’t even been born when all this took place…and it showed.

That’s a major reason that this book is so important. Another is that it reveals hard facts about a time when the comics industry was in great peril. In the 1970s we lost several major comic book publishers as Dell and Gilberton shut down completely, Charlton, Harvey and Gold Key went through periods of using all reprints, and eventually all shut down, Atlas Comics came and went in little more than a year and DC and Marvel watched sales plummet to the point where both companies undertook massive reductions in the amount of titles they published in 1978. Marvel actually cancelled more books that DC did, but they didn’t do it all at once, so it wasn’t as noticeable.

Comic Book Implosion is highly-recommended for anyone interested in comic book history. It’s a great read, filled with tons of information and detail and even has side-chapters on DC’s infamous “Cancelled Comics Cavalcade,” a couple of limited-run xeroxed collections of stories that DC had commissioned during the 1970s which had never been published (they also have a handy guide to the stories from these collections that did eventually see print). Dallas and Wells do a tremendous job of establishing the context and consequences of this fateful and drastic business move. It’s also lavishly-illustrated with photos of the key players and plenty of examples of the comics in question, including eight pages in full color.

You can order the book directly from the publisher, or at a discount, from Amazon. You can also order it from any local bookseller by using the ISBN code listed above.

Bastard Battalion: A History of the 83rd Chemical Mortar Battalion in World War II
by Terry Lowry
35th Star Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-0-9965764-1-3
Price: $39.95

This newely-republished historical overview written by local historian (and ace guitarist) Terry Lowry, is the perfect gift for the history buff on your list with an added interest in World War II and local contributions to our military campaigns.

When the 83rd Chemical Mortar Battalion was deactivated on November 26, 1945, at Camp Myles Standish, Taunton, Massachusetts, their record read: 3 Distinguished Service Crosses (all posthumously), 5 Legions of Merit (one posthumous), 9 Soldiers Medals, 39 Silver Stars, 97 Bronze Stars, 5 Croix de Guerre, and 876 Purple Hearts and 91 Oak Leaf Clusters. 3 Unit Citations, 508 days in combat, and an estimated 500,000 rounds fired. They also supported 17 infantry divisions, 3 armored divisions, 2 airborne divisions, and numerous task forces, including Rangers and British commandos, and fought under 6 American Corps, 1 French Corps, 2 American armies, and 1 French Army. They fought on two continents and participated in 6 campaigns, including amphibious and glider assaults.

Their firepower was felt in Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. Places such as Gela, San Pietro, Ceppagna, Anzio, Minturno, Venafro, Briancon, the Vosges, Colmar Pocket, Zellenberg, and Riquewihr saw them at their best. The battalion also lost nearly half their number in the sinking of LST 422, one of the worst naval tragedies of World War II. And after all this they were classified as Service Forces not entitled to wear the combat badge they repeatedly earned.

West Virginia contributed over 30 men to the battalion, including the author’s father. Charleston resident Rupert Burford’s unpublished wartime memoir is often quoted, as are the letters and personal correspondence of the many West Virginians and other members of the 83rd.

The author spent nearly ten years researching this book, interviewing numerous veterans, spending countless hours at the National Archives reading official reports, attended reunions, and gathered thousands of photographs. This book is truly a great World War II book and a fitting legacy to the men of the 83rd.

Chapters include: Edgewood Arsenal, Camp Gordon, Camp Myles Standish, Atlantic Crossing, North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Chiunzi Pass, Venafro, San Pietro, Anzio, LST 422, Southern France, Briancon, Vosges, Colmar Pocket, Germany, Occupation Period, and more….

Bastard Battalion: A History of the 83rd Chemical Mortar Battalion in World War II can be ordered directly from the publisher, or from any bookseller, using the ISBN code above.

The Prisoner Jack Kirby Gil Kane Art Edition
Titan Comics
ISBN-13: 978-1785862878
List Price $79.99 (discount price at Amazon, $49.37)

Drawn by two of the true great comic book legends, Jack Kirby and Gil Kane, this is a facsimile collection of a ‘long-lost’, unpublished legendary comic book based on the cult classic 1967 British TV show, The Prisoner, co-created, written, directed and starring Patrick McGoohan (Scanners, Braveheart).

This giagantic book (size-wise, not page count-wise) is a stunning showcase for two of the greatest comic book legends: Jack “The King” Kirby and Gil Kane. This art-sized hardcover book collects long-lost pages by Kirby and Kane, never before published, based on the cult classic 1967 British TV show, The Prisoner. The art is printed original size, which means the book is nearly a foot-and-half tall and over a foot wide. The high-quality reproduction makes it seem like you’re looking directly at the original artwork.

It also contains facsimiles of the original script by Steve Englehart, and bonus features and creator bios written by Englehart and Bob Wayne. Unlike some of the other “Artist Edition” type books, this volume contains work that was not previously published. Save for a few sample pages published in fan magazines, this is all-new stuff for most readers.  In the mid-1970s Marvel Comics made two aborted attempts to adapt the British cult hit TV Show, The Prisoner, into comics and they’ve remained unseen until now.

The first attempt, written and drawn by the legendary Jack Kirby, was abandoned before the book was even finished. Some of the art in this book is complete, with inks by Mike Royer, while the rest of Kirby’s story is printed directly from his original pencils.

A second attempt was written by the great Steve Englehart, and drawn by another legend, Gil Kane (Green Lantern, Spider-man, His Name Is Savage, among others). It’s presented with full-page reproductions of Kane’s un-inked pencils, then again in lettered form with Kane’s pages presented next to Englehart’s corresponding script. This entire story remains un-inked, save for one page that was repurposed for a convention program cover (seen left).

Not only do you get to read two previously unpublished works by masters of the form, but you also get to see the process and learn more about what comic book art looks like while it’s being made. One of the bonuses in this edition is an elaborate two-page spread drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Mike Royer, which has been colored by Mike Allred, just to give you an idea of how much color brings to the finished product.

This book is the perfect gift for fans of The Prisoner, or Jack Kirby or Gil Kane, or just anyone who loves the art form of comics and wants to appreciate the artwork close-up.

Originally slated as a suggestion for “Big Ticket Day” here in The 2018 PopCult Gift Guide, this book has now been so heavily discounted by Amazon that it’s now just a regular entry.