Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 191 of 581)

On Monday, Astral Theatre Collective issued the following press release:

Special Announcement!

Astral Theatre Collective Announces “Teacher’s Night”
Thursday, March 22, 2018

Astral Theatre Collective, in association with the Alban Arts Center, will be holding a special performance for our local teachers this Thursday evening beginning at 8pm. All teachers showing proper credentials will receive free admission to Astral’s performance of “Wolf’s Head – A Tale of Robin Hood and the Sheriff.” Guests (family, friends, and students) will pay $5.00 for their ticket, with that entire amount going to provide scholarships for the Alban Arts Academy for continued education in the Arts in the community.

Astral Theatre Collective would not be in existence had it not been for a teacher who made an impact on its founder, introducing him to the Arts at an early age. Realizing that first contact with the Arts generally comes to children from their teachers, the cast and crew of our production would like to say “Thanks!” to our wonderful educators who stand and fight for the children they inspire.

200 seat capacity. Tickets will be available at the door. Doors will open at 7:30pm. This performance is reserved only for our teachers and their guests, and is not open to the public.

We told you about Wolf’s Head – A Tale of Robin Hood and the Sheriff last week, and this is a great chance for teachers to see it for free. If you are not a teacher and want to see this original retelling of the Robin Hood saga, you have three more chances this weekend, Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 2 PM, at the Alban Arts Center.

A few weeks ago I showed off two paintings based on another person’s work of art, “The Thinker,” by Auguste Rodin. Once again I find myself i the position of answering my calling as an artist to interpret another artist’s work.

This time, it’s a digital Impasto of “Big Boy,” by Bob. This one is just striking, if I do say so myself. It’s not like anyone else will. Click to make Big Boy even bigger.

Above you see a video recap of the highlights of ToyLanta 2018,. which was held March 9-11 2018 at the Marriott Century Center in Atlanta, Georgia. I’ve been writing about it for a few weeks now, and have brought you video snippets, audio  and photos over the last week.

I have to be honest with you, your PopCulteer has been far under the weather since he returned. I think it was a double whammy of a week’s exposure to fine Southern allergins combined with arriving back home just in time for a ridiculous blast of winter weather, but I’ve been living on cold medicine, and that has slowed me down considerably. This video should have been done days ago.

Some of this clip may seem a bit familiar to my readers and viewers. I attempted to post a video of the first day of ToyLanta, but a combination of me not having the proper software installed on my laptop and the hotel undergoing a very loud renovation resulted in the video clip I posted nine days ago having dodgy audio at best. So I re-edited much of that clip and used it in this all-encompassing round-up, with vastly improved sound and more thought put into the video. This is the first time that I’ve  let so many ToyLanta regulars speak, and I think it gives you a pretty good idea of the fun and family atmosphere at this show.

I tried to strike a balance between showing as much ToyLanta fun as possible and keeping the clip short enough so that more people would watch. In the coming days or weeks I’ll be posting some full panels and maybe some bonus footage from the show. I will also be posting a photo essay devoted to the custom figure and diorama contest later this week. I’d like to do this in a more timely manner, but cold medicine makes my brain not work too good.

This clip also includes the resolution of the saga of my first GI Joe, a Talking Soldier. My first attempt to get him repaired last August in Louisville by master Talking GI Joe repair guru, Scott Wilde, didn’t work out too well. Watch this clip to end to see if Scott was able to restore the voice to my oldest action figure.

Die hard fans of Radio Free Charleston may recognize the song, “Forbidden Dance” by the legendary band Feast of Stephen, which just seemed like the perfect tune for the background of our Dealer’s Room footage.

Stay tuned to PopCult for more coverage of ToyLanta, and news on next year’s shows and other cool toy shows coming up later this year.

This week we go back toMay, 2011 for an episode of Radio Free Charleston featuring host segments shot at The East End Yard Sale (seen right) and music from the then-current Charleston Light Opera Guild show, The Drowsy Chaperone. This edition of the show does indeed feature a song from The Charleston Light Opera Guild, a jazz tune from C2J2, animation from Frank Panucci, and a couple of surprises.

Our first musical number this week was “Toledo Surprise,” from the Charleston Light Opera Guild peoduction of The Drowsy Chaperone. We were invited to bring our cameras in to a dress rehearsal of the show and had a ton of fun recording this tune. Our animation this time was “Changes,” the 47th piece of DEVO Energy Dome animation by Frank Panucci that we’ve featured on RFC. Rounding out the show this week was C2J2, a jazz quartet consisting of four veteran maestros, Chris Mickel, Jamie Skeen, Chris Hudson and Josh Cannon.

You can read the full production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
March 16, 2018

You may have noticed that PopCult has been largely devoted to toys for the last few weeks. We had the International Toy Fair in New York last month, and this month we’ve been bringing you lots of pre- and post-ToyLanta coverage (with more to come). However, we have to take a moment to talk about the biggest story in the world of the toy industry this week, the not-unexpected impending demise of Toys R Us.

Last year I wrote about the real cause of TRU’s woes. It was not a downturn in sales or competition from Walmart on Amazon. Toys R Us was the victim of a perfecly legal, yet lethal, financial transaction, a leveraged buyout.

In 2005, Bain Capital, a firm that had already systematically destroyed KayBee Toys in exactly the same way, teamed up with two other private equity firms to buy TRU and take it private, and in the process they saddled the company with a debt load that could only be paid off if sales went up and all their competition went out of business.

The surprising part of what happened was that Toys R Us was so big that it took them thirteen years to run the company into the ground, with somewhere between five and eight Billion dollars in debt (reports vary). That’s “Billion” with a “B.” Outside of military contractors, it’s hard to run up a loss that huge.

The most important lesson that should be taken away from this is that, perhaps, the government should consider whether or not the practice of leveraged buyouts should even be legal. I realize that the prevailing philosophy among those currently in power is that all government regulations are bad, but that philosophy is evil and self-serving.  We need banking reform and new regulations on Wall Street, and we need to consider banning such predatory financial manuevers as short-selling, derivative trading and leveraged buyouts.

A leveraged buyout, in too many cases, is just the act of a money vampire. Private equity firms borrow money to buy a healthy (or in the case of TRU, a still-viable, but damaged) company and then transfer the debt from that purchase to the company, meaning that they don’t really put out much of their own money, and instantly plunge the company that they just bought into debt. Then they install their own board of directors and high-priced consultants, all of whom get paid before anyone else, and drain as much money as possible out of the company, while not investing any more capital to keep that company competitive.

In the case of Toys R Us, the company had been adrift without competent management since the death of its founder in 1994.  The management team that came in after him had no understanding of the toy industry or the original concept of the stores, and hobbled the competitive edge that TRU previously had over everyone else in the field.

The whole reason that TRU was so phenomenally successful was that they were the place to go that carried almost every toy made.  That was the attraction. It was costly managing that much inventory, but it was really the only thing that made them different from other toy retailers. In the mid-1990s the new CEO made the decision to drop more than half of the products they carried, and that put a serious dent in their appeal. That was when they started losing market share rapidly to Walmart, Target and KayBee Toys. If KayBee hadn’t been snatched up and destroyed by Bain Capital, they would’ve passed TRU as the top dedicated toy retailer by the year 2000.

So Toys R Us was already in trouble when Bain Capital lazily raised their head from the carcass of KayBee Toys and decided to just go ahead and kill another toy retailer.

And that brings us to where we are now. There is still a tiny glimmer of hope that some of the Toys R Us stores will remain open. I stumbled across a plan late last year that I had to agree to keep quiet about. A group of investors, lead by a toy company executive, approached TRU with a plan to buy their Canadian divsion along with 200 of their top-performing stores and also the Intellectual Property of KayBee Toys. Toys R Us bought the KayBee trademarks and website out of liquidation and still owns them.

The plan would be to rebrand the US stores as KayBee Toys and operate them out from under the unmanageable debt load that was pretty much obviously going to sink the company.  I was asked to keep my mouth shut about this plan, which was easy to do.  Chances are that it wouldn’t happen. TRU could not continue without their top 200 stores. But there were contingency plans to buy the same assets out of liquidation.

I can talk about this now, because these investors have gone public. The Washington Post reports, “A group of toymakers led by Isaac Larian, chief executive of MGA Entertainment, the giant behind brands such as L.O.L. Surprise!, Little Tikes and Bratz, on Wednesday submitted a bid to buy Toys R Us’s Canadian arm, which includes 82 stores, according to Larian. He added that he is also looking into buying as many as 400 U.S. stores, which he would seek to operate under the Toys R Us name.”

When I accidentally found out about this, even a hint of the plan coming out would jeopardize it. It’s still iffy. They have to get their financing in order and the bankruptcy judge has to determine that their offer will bring in more money than a total liquidation of those particular assets. Right now I’d give this plan less than a fifty percent chance of happening, but I really hope it does.

No “white knight” was going to take on the company’s debt load. Very few people have eight billion dollars laying around, and those that do are more likely to spend that money buying elections than they are to rescue a failing retailer. But a consortium of toy companies would be the best bet for TRU to find a management team that will take them back to their original philosopy of being THE toy store, and would be more intent on making the company work.

The Private Equity firms involved aren’t losing any of their own money on this deal, and they’ve already made tens of millions of dollars in management and consulting fees. To them, even with TRU going into liquidation, this was a profitable deal.

Unless things change rapidly, I wouldn’t expect a ruling from the judge before next week. Toys R Us has announced that they will honor gift cards and rewards points for the next thirty days (probably 28 by the time you read this), and the start date for the liquidation sales has not yet been announced. To your left you see a map of all the remaining TRU stores in the US (courtesy of CNBC).

If a specialized liquidation team is brought in to sell off the inventory, don’t expect any bargains during the first week or two. As anyone who’s been to the St. Albans K Mart can tell you, the first thing they do when they liquidate a store is mark up all the prices to ten or twenty percent more than the suggested list price. Then they discount it from there. In many cases that means that the day before a liquidation sale you can find stuff for less than you will the day after it starts.

It’s not until they get further along that the real bargains will pop up. If you wait until they advertise “50% Off,” you might find some decent discounts from their inflated starting prices.

It’s sad to see Toys R Us come to this, and I really hope that some of the stores can be salvaged, but to those of us who watched what Bain Capital did to KayBee Toys, this was inevitable when they took over TRU back in 2005.

ToyLanta Swag

Just so that this PopCulteer is not a total bummer, I know that you really want to see some more ToyLanta photos, so in this post I’m going to show off what I bought, and tell you a little about the dealers. We’ll kick it all off with this year’s convention exclusive figure, available with the Commander’s Packages, it’s the Descend Into Danger set, featuring work by Cotswold Collectibles, Felipe Monaco and the talented ToyLanta crew.

Bryan Tatum has been creating cool mini-diorama pieces to go along with the convention figures for the past few years, and this year he came up with a really cool radioactive alien scene, complete with a working strobe light…

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Another one of the highlights of ToyLanta is the film festival, which has been curated and presented by Tim and Lisa Weedn for the last few years. They also provide the “main event” each year, which is the debut of their latest Studio Joe production.  This year it’s their biggest film to date, “Toys Will Be Toys,” and it’s filled with the cosmically-aware slapstick comedy and cool animated toys that we’ve come to expect. You can watch it above, but make sure to go back in time and travel to last weekend in Atlanta so you can watch all the films that Tim and Lisa discovered.

This time around an undercover agent is trying to apprehend Chugga Lugga, who is alleged to not be a naturalized citizen of this planet. But the poor little guy means no one any harm, and only wants to eat his beans in peace. Astronauts and Interdimensional Pirates show up, and there’s a beautiful non-sequitor interlude about potatoes, so you know it has to be good. The potato song is courtesy of G.B. Hetrick and his band, Motel Jesus.

Right at the end of ToyLanta Tim hunted me down for a photo. We’re both worn out after so many days of cool toy overload, and I’m still trying to figure out how to take a selfie without looking like I’m trying to figure out how to take a selfie, but that’s us to the left.

Hanging out with Tim is always a blast and one of these days we’ll figure out a way to collaborate on a project somehow.

Next up in PopCult (probably early Friday) I’ll have photo essays showing off what I got, how cool the dioramas and custom figures were and a quick look around the dealer’s room.

Tomrrow’s PopCulteer will be an obit for Toys R Us, with just a teensy glimmer of hope.

ToyLanta (formerly JoeLanta) is in the books for another year, and your PopCulteer is back home and rested enough to start giving you some comprehensive reports. As always, it was a huge amount of fun as long-time toy collectors gathered around their favorite playthings to socialize and buy, sell and trade. We had a few interesting things happen this year, but it was still a wonderful experience.

Among the “interesting” things we encountered when we checked into the Marriott Century Center in Atlanta was the ongoing renovation of the hotel, and a boil-water advisory due to a massive water main break about five miles from where we were. Being from West Virginia, the mini-water crisis was old hat. We lived through the the chemical water fun of a few years back, so this was nothing.

The ongoing renovations, however, played a bit of havoc with my plan to post videos every day of the show. I didn’t bring headphones, and was editing on my laptop for the first time. I was able to post a report on the first day, but the audio was nowhere near my normal standards. I couldn’t hear too well over the jackhammers and pounding, so rather than just do a short video for each day, I plan to re-edit the “day one” clip and incorporate it into a general round-up video that will hopefully be ready by this weekend.

The show was also invaded by cows, but nobody was seriously harmed, and professionals were on hand to treat anyone who suffered from Post Bovine Stress Disorder.

Aside from the minor adversities, we had a fantastic time. I bought way too many toys and Mel even got up and sang two songs with Radio Cult. In fact, another factor that threw off our schedule of posting videos a bit was that Saturday became a bit of a crowded day. I was up at 6 AM, planning out the video shoots for the day, and we got to go to sleep sometime well after midnight.

We actually checked into the hotel on the Wednesday before the convention so that we could meet up with old friends like Buddy Finethy, E.J. White, Marten Jallad, Brian Becker, Steve Charlton, David Lane, Scott Beckmann and many others who will probably be mad at me for forgetting to mention them.

It was also great trun into Mike Gardner (right) who stepped in to run the diorama and custom figure contest this year when Dave (Tanker) Matteson had to bow out due to a Disney emergency. Mike is one of the master class of diorma and custom builders in the hobby, and the contest was in good hands with him in charge.

Also in the photo is Tony Stroud, who makes some amazing custom and reproduction boxes for GI Joe and other action figures.

Wednesday we went to Lucky’s for dinner, and some of the party devoured two twelve-pound giant hamburgers.  It’s become a tradition, one in which I will not participate (sorry folks, I hate bacon and don’t eat much red meat).

Thursday more folks arrived, like Tim Weedn, Jack Hall and Andrew MacGready. Andrew stayed at another hotel, so we didn’t really get a chance to see him until Friday, but we’re glad we did because a medical emergency Friday night caused him to miss the panel he was hosting on casting and sculpting.  All is well now, and he’s planning to make up for it next year.

Friday night the folks who bought Commander’s Packages were able to register and pick up their convention figures, and also had an early crack at the vendor’s area. Of course, the vendors are also old friends, and it was great to mingle and throw money at Greg Brown from Cotswold Collectibles, James Wozniak of Classic Recasts and other fine folks like Alan Dawson, Steve Stovall, Bryan Tatum, Barry Pippen, Aaron Luck, Rush McAllistair, Chuck Van Voorhis and many, many more.

Our next post will present Tim and Lisa Weedn’s latest Studio Joe Creation. After that, I’m going to show off my ToyLanta swag. In the coming days you can expect photo essays of the vendor’s rooms, the diorama and custom figures and finally the big wrap-up video.

Your PopCulteer is hard at work editing the ToyLanta 2018 wrap-up video. There will be a post with a detailed run-down of the show and photos later today, but we wanted to give you a heads up that you can hear part of ToyLanta Thursday on Radio Free Charleston International, Thursday at 3 PM on The AIR. Tune in at The AIR website, or on this particularly cool embedded radio player…

This week we bring you a special episode of Radio Free Charleston International. This is a bootleg recording of Radio Cult at ToyLanta, recorded March 10, 2018. Radio Cult is the house band for ToyLanta and every year they put on a heck of a show in one of the conference rooms at the Marriott Century Center.

The cool part is that they have convention-goers join them onstage. In this show you will hear Mike Gardner and Alex Massey guest on guitar, JD Luck on bass, a couple of guys whose name I didn’t catch on drums and Jas Ingram on Theremin. You’ll also get to hear guest vocals by Dan Cioffi, David Lane, Jas Ingram and Mel Larch, among others.

It was a real kick to see Mrs. PopCulteer join the band late in the show on “Country Roads” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit, ” since she wasn’t really feeling up to singing at the beginning of the show.

This recording, like our Rubber Soul Beatles marathon, is bootleg-quality, so don’t expect a lossless 5.1 audio mix or anything. I do think it conveys the pure fun of Radio Cult’s performance. You’ll hear a few Radio Cult originals and covers of everything from AC/DC to KISS, to Skynyrd to Nena and Madonna. There’s even a snippet of Queen in there.

You can hear this special edition of Radio Free Charleston International Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM and 10 PM, Saturday at 1 PM and Midnight, Sunday at 3 PM and next Tuesday at 11 PM, exclusively on The AIR.

Above you see a trailer (excellently produced by Carrie McCracken) for Wolf’s Head: A Tale of Robin Hood and the Sheriff, a play opening this weekend at the Alban Arts Center in Saint Albans.

Based on the ancient ballads of Robin Hood, this stage premiere was adapted by John Johnson, who does double duty as the Sheriff of Nottingham.  Our old pal Kevin Pauley takes on the role of Robin Hood, and a cast of the area’s finest accompanies the titular duo.  Robin Hood is a major literary character, and perhaps the first great hero in the fight for income equality. The time is ripe for us to hear his story again.

For more details we go to the description from the Facebook event page: “Sometimes when a greater evil comes along, you find that your allies aren’t always who you might expect. Many films, stories, plays, and songs have explored the story of Robin Hood. This play explores more the relationship of Robin and the Sheriff of Nottingham, based on history and the ballads of days gone by. Expect good nature fun, sword play, and honor in this play. ”

Brian Kidd directs, from Johnson’s script, and the fight choreography is handled by William Rouse.  You can see some behind-the-scenes footage of the battle staging below…

You can see Wolf’s Head: A Tale of Robin Hood and the Sheriff beginning Friday at the Alban Arts Center, located on Main Street in Saint Albans. Showtimes are 8 PM Friday and Saturday with a 2 PM matinee on Sunday. The show runs for the next two weekends, and tickets can be purchased at the door or online.  Admission is fifteen dollars for adults, ten dollars for children and seniors.

This is the latest from Astral Theatre Collective, and looks to be another fine entry in their growing catalog of contemporary adaptations of literary classics.  They always manage to preserve the integrity of the original works while finding creative ways to bring the classics to the stage in a way that appeals to modern audiences.

It’s Wednesday, and that means we have a brand-new episode of Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle Wednesday at 1:30 PM and 7 Pm on The AIR. Check it out at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

This week Michele follows last week’s show on water with a half-hour rumination on the importance of movement in your life. Instead of staying in one place, Michele urges her listeners to get straight, go forward and move ahead. That way, if a problem comes along, you can whip it.

You can hear Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle Wednesday at 1:30 PM and 7 PM, with additional replays Friday at 9:30 AM and Monday at 12:30 PM. This Sunday at 7 PM The Talk Block will present three hours of the best of Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle.

The rest of Wednesday’s schedule is made up of encores of the finest choice episodes of your favorite programs from The AIR, because your PopCulteer is hard at work on wrapping up this year’s ToyLanta coverage. You can hear part of that on Radio Free Charleston International Thursday, as we present two hours of Radio Cult, with special guests, recorded live at ToyLanta last Saturday night.

You can also stay tuned to The AIR for the best of our music programming, as well as stimulating and entertaining talk and comedy.