Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 192 of 581)

Your PopCulteer has returned home after an eight-day trip that included not only ToyLanta, but also a visit to Senoia, Georgia and stops in Chattanooga along the way.

I have plenty of writing, photos and video to bring you from my travels, but they will begin appearing here tomorrow. Today has been set aside for recovery and catching up with other stuff that needs to be tended to.

At the moment I’m still so loopy that I can’t remember what I’ve posted from the trip thus far. This trip was a blast, with some curve balls included. At one point I was so worn out that I thought that I’d begun hallucinating cows all over the ToyLanta show, but the bottom photo below comes courtesy of Scott Beckmann, who apparently was also seeing them.

Wednesday in PopCult we’ll tell you about a brand-new episode of Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle, which you will be able to hear on The AIR, and we’ll also preview a new play about Robin Hood that opens this week in St. Albans.

If all goes as planned I’ll have a photo essay and report from ToyLanta, with video coming a day or two after that. On Thursday we will bring you bootleg audio from the Radio Cult show at ToyLanta as a special episode of Radio Free Charleston International.

But at the moment, it’s time for a day to settle back in (we arrived home late Monday, expecting to have to fight our way through a blizzard, only to find our home totally devoid of snow).

I’ve got to get back into my routines and start cranking out cool stuff for you guys to read and watch.

This week, still trying out my brand-spanking-new digital painting toys, I came up with this semi-abstract painting with a fun name. If you know where it comes from, shame on you. Click to enlarge.

I should be back from Atlanta later today, so look for plenty of ToyLanta coverage, if I haven’t already been posting from the road.

One of my favoriate bands, The Stranglers, hardly ever tour in America any more. That’s not good because more than forty years in, and almost thirty years since the exit of their original frontman, Hugh Cornwell, The Stranglers are as vital and creative as ever. I posted a version of this concert almost four years ago, but that video was taken down by YouTube. Eventually it was replaced with the even better version you see above.

Still anchored by J.J. Burnel’s epic basslines and David Greenwood’s keyboards, the band is producing progressive punk-influenced rock and roll that can blow most of today’s rock bands off the stage. Drummer Jet Black, now 79, would still play part of the UK shows, but hasn’t appeared on stage since 2015 and is now officially retired.  Jim Macaulay, his former drum tech, had been playing with the band since Black’s illness, and is behind the kit for this show. Baz Warne has been handling guitar duties since 2000, and lead vocals since 2006.

The band is currently touring the UK after a quick jaunt to Australia and New Zealand, but some of those dates have been rescheduled due to the apocalyptic weather they’re having over there. The press for their current tour shows them to still be up to their old attitudes, slightly readjusted for age.

This concert was recorded April 7, 2014, at L’Olympia,Paris, and shows the band running through classic songs as well as tunes from their more recent albums, “Suite XVI” and “Giants.” It’s some pretty meaty stuff, and I’m glad to have it back online for you guys while I make my way back from ToyLanta.

From May, 2011, we bring you Radio Free Charleston episode 129, “Adventure Wars Shirt. ” This week we featured music by Blue Million, HARRAH and Ryan Hardiman.  We also had a preview of a great CYAC show, “Airwaves.”  There was animation by Frank Panucci, too.

Before we got too far into the show, there’s animation by Frank, and we ran the promo for this weekend’s East End Yard Sale again, just to be on the safe side.

Our first musical guest is Blue Million. We recorded Alan, Andy and Gary at The Empty Glass. I’ve known Alan Griffith and the guys for more than 25 years, and I’m always in awe of his songwriting and performing prowess. Blue Million treated us to the lead song off of their then-new 6 Song EP, “Down To A Groove.”

Austin Sussman contributed a great promo clip for the CYAC production, “Airwaves,” which people still talk about nearly seven years later.

Our next musical guest was HARRAH.  This is Lee Harrah’s band, and he’s practically family, so going on and on about him would just embarrass the guy. HARRAH unleashes the song, “Green (Day of Rage),” inspired by Lee’s favorite super-hero, The Incredible Hulk.

Playing us out this week was Ryan Hardiman, the winner of Symphony Idol, star of countless local musical productions like “Jack The Ripper” and “Rent,” and a good friend of RFC. We brought you Ryan, backed by Mark Scarpelli, from the 2010 “Good Night” event, performing a great cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” recorded at Trinity Lutheran Church.

You may, if you wish, read the original production notes HERE.

A quick look at the first day of ToyLanta 2018, as people check in and the vendors set up to sell tons of toys to the masses.

Here is a quick and sloppy trailer for ToyLanta made the morning of March 9 to test the rendering abilities of the new laptop.

Okay, it’s the morning of Friday, March 9 and I’m up early. ToyLanta registration is later this afternoon, so I have time to cover the trip so far in photos and a few words.

To your right you see a bowl of soup from Sweet Tomatoes. This is a chain of restaurants that is known as “Souplantation” on the West Coast, and for many years now one of my favorite bloggers, Mark Evanier, has been writing about their tomato soup.

He has spoken well of this tomato soup, proclaiming it to be the best he’s ever had. The catch is that they only have tomato soup during the month of March. This year I looked into their Southern locations while planning our annual trip to Atlanta for toys and fun, and discovered that there is a Sweet Tomatoes location right off the Interstate in Kennesaw, Georgia, about half an hour before Atlanta creeps up over the horizon.

We stopped there on Monday and I am happy to report that Evanier’s tales of this soup are quite accurate. We’re going to hit them again on our way back home.  It was an epic meal.

Shortly after that, we first laid eyes on the Atlanta Skyline.

And then we laid eyes on the building that houses Adult Swim and Cartoon Network, and CNN, among other channels.

Then there was that whole traffic thing.

We come down to the Atlanta area early the week of ToyLanta so that we can spend a couple of days in Senoia, Georigia, where they film The Walking Dead. Mrs. PopCulteer is a huge TWD fan and will be introducing her Walking Dead Trivia at ToyLanta this year.

We stopped in at the Georgia Tour Company in their new location, and stumbled across a cool mystery that I’ll tell you about in a moment. Mel keeps in touch with all the friends she’s met down here and it’s cool to see her walk into stores that we see once a year, and be welcomed like an old friend.

About that mystery…to the right you see a photo of a phantom sign that’s on the wall inside the Georgia Tour Company. The building they’re in now was built onto the side of an existing building decades ago, and one of their interior walls used to be an exterior wall of the building next door. The wall is covered with phantom signs, probably faded by the weather and age before the new building was built, and one of the phantom signs was a mystery because it was so badly faded.

The folks working there had been trying to figure out what the sign was. You could make out a few smaller like “comedy” and “music” but the two big words were so badly faded that nobody could figure them out.

I was intrigued, and after staring at the sign “magic eye” style, and trying to suss out each letter, I deciphered it as reading “Florida Blossoms,” which didn’t mean anything to me or make much sense until I Googled it along with “vaudeville.”

I discovered that the Florida Blossoms Big Comedy and Minstrel Show was a black-owned travelling variety show that ran from 1907 into the 1940s, and among other things was known as the company that may have discovered Bessie Smith.

The company was founded by Charles Henry Douglass Jr., the son of a former slave who went on to become the richest African American in Georgia.  He founded Florida Blossoms in 1907, and sold his interest in 1912 before going on to found a legendary theater booking ogranization and the Douglass Theater Complex in Macon, which is still open.

That briefly took me down a rabbit hole of early vaudeville and black theater which I intended to explore more fully when I’m not on vacation. There’s a cool coincidence in the fact that my friend Doris Fields (AKA Lady D) is a fan of The Walking Dead, and while standing in a building that plays host to Walking Dead tours, we discovered a phantom playbill for the company that gave Bessie Smith her first paying job. Doris does a great tribute show to Bessie Smith called “The Lady and The Empress.”

After that little mystery, we stopped in a few other places around town. Mel met “German Abraham. We checked out the new carnage and destruction at the Alexandria Safe Zone. We also found the church where the survivors searched for Sophia in season two of The Walking Dead (it’s for sale, if you’re interested). Back in Senoia, we stopped in to The Georgia Mercantile Company, and saw the new “selfie spot” in front of the Woodbury Shoppe.

Wednesday night we met up with some of the early arrivals for ToyLanta and had dinner at Lucky’s, where some of the party indulged in a giant mutant monstrosity of a hamburger that weighed in at twelve pounds and was bigger than most people’s heads. It was scary just sitting near that thing.

That’s your first blast of photos from this trip. The plan is to try to post some short videos over the weekend, but this will be my first time trying to render video on the laptop, so it remains to be seen whether or not that’s possible. Stay tuned.

The PopCulteer
March 9, 2018

This is my true vacation each year. I am at ToyLanta. I may post from the event. I may not. You’ll just have to check back and see. Meanwhile, I’m slacking off on this post. Here’s some of the cool graphics from this year’s show. This is just a small fraction of the cool stuff that’s going on in Atlanta starting TODAY!  The first one is based on the JoeLanta convention exclusive figure…

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The PopCult Bookshelf

Beyond ’94: The Story of the Real American Hero Action Figures after their Original Run
by Thomas Wheeler
Independently published
ISBN-13: 978-1973454601
$9.99 ($8.99 Kindle)

Since we’re all about toys this week, I decided to plug a book by my friend, Thomas Wheeler.  Tom’s an expert on the Real American Hero incarnation of GI Joe, and was actually the first person besides the line’s creator, Larry Hama, to write the files cards included on the back of the packages.

From 1982-1994, the Real American Hero dominated the action figure world. And then, the line came to an abrupt and surprising end.  Hasbro switched to a slightly bigger figure with their Sgt. Savage line, but that was prematurely cancelled with Hasbro reorganized and shipped GI Joe off to their Kenner division, and Joe was reborn in an unfortunate “Extreme” phase.

After the whopping failure of GI Joe: Extreme, just three years after Hasbro pulled the plug on the Real American Hero line, they brought it back, and it’s been around in one form or another since.   This book takes a narrative and often personal look at the continuation of this amazing action figure line – Beyond ’94.

Thomas has a great writing style and shares his insights into how Hasbro’s moves affected the Real American Hero, and how the line proved so durable that it led to two major motion pictures, with a third on the way.

You can order Beyond ’94 directly from Amazon in print or as a Kindle book.

ToyLanta (incorporating JoeLanta, Botlanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention) begins tomorrow. One of the most-anticipated and well-attended panels at ToyLanta 2017 saw Felipe Monaco give a detailed presentation on Brazil’s version of GI Joe, Falcon, and also a look into his own production of custom outfits and figures under the banner of Louco Por Bonecos.

Felipe introduced American audiences to the amazing details of Brazil’s version of GI Joe, which was an amalgam of military GI Joe figures and 12″ versions of the smaller-scale American “Super Joe” line of the late 1970s.

He also presented background information on Brazil’s Estrela Toy Company, which basically had a monopoly on toy production in the South American country while Brazil was under military rule.

You can find more information about Felipe’s work at his website. Felipe will be on hand this year too, with an impressive line-up of custom outfits and heads.

This week’s PopCult posts have been prepared in advance, so that I don’t have to worry about missing a day while we made our way down South. There is a good chance that you may be seeing other posts that are being crafted while we’re en route to ToyLanta, but we wanted the option of taking it easy along the way, so we didn’t make any promises. I will try to post photos and maybe even video this weekend, once all the fun starts.