Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 9 of 581)

This week we go back to June, 2010, for the one-hundred first episode of the Radio Free Charleston video program. “Viewmaster Shirt” includes music from Josh Buskirk, The Gypsy Nomads and The ButtonFlies, plus a sequel from MURFMEEF and a trailer for the film, “Toxic Soup.”

Our host segments were shot on a warm, windy Saturday afternoon in front of the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse on Virginia Street, for absolutely no reason other than the fact that we hadn’t shot there yet.

Our musical guests were Josh Buskirk, playing guitar and singing at Taylor Books; Frenchy & The Punk (new album coming soon), back when they were known as The Gypsy Nomads, recorded at The Empty Glass; and The Button Flies, also recorded at The Empty Glass. We also have a music video from Murfmeef, the title of which we will not type here.

The PopCulteer
June 3, 2022

This week we have a somber episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, devoted to Depeche Mode, who lost a key member last week when Andy Fletcher passed away.

It’s a bit sad, but you’ll get two full hours two findly remember Depeche Mode Friday afternoon on The AIR.  The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM, we have an encore episode of Mel Larch’s DISCO showcase, MIRRORBALL! Mel will return with a new episode next week. You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, Sydney Fileen delivers a special mixtape edition of her show that presents two full hours of the music of Depeche Mode, following the death last week of the band’s founding member, Andy Fletcher.

Fletcher was only 60 when he died unexpectedly.  He’d contributed keyboards to every Depeche Mode album, and had actually been in the band before they had that name. While he was self-deprecating about his own musical abilities, he was the de-facto manager of the band who over the years also managed other bands and ran his own record label, as an imprint of Mute Records.

Sydney was close with the band and wanted to devote her show to the memory of “Fletch.” She actually pulled a show that was in progress last week so that she could produce this installment of her New Wave showcase instead.

Everything counts, so take a look at this brilliantly-sequenced playlist…

BEC 091

Andy Fletcher/Depeche Mode
“New Life”
“Puppets”
“Dreaming of Me”
“Just Can’t Get Enough”
“Leave In Silence”
“My Secret Garden”
“A Photograph of You”
“Shouldn’t Have Done This”
“Everything Counts”
“More Than a Party”
“Pipeline”
“Two Minute Warning”
“Everything Counts (Reprise)”
“Something To Do”
“Stories of Old”
“People Are People”
“Master and Servant”
“Blasphemous Rumors”
“Black Celebration”
“Sometimes”
“Stripped”
“Here Is The House”
“But Not Tonight”
“Never Let Me Down Again”
“Behind The Wheel”
“Nothing”
“Agent Orange”
“To Have and To Hold”
“Strangelove”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and loads of or regular features.

A PopCult Theatre Review

A month ago your PopCulteer and his lovely wife went to New York to see The Minutes. This is a new play for Broadway written by Tony and Pulitzer-winning playwright, Tracy Letts. Letts is also a Tony-winning actor, and Mel is a huge fan of his work, and has turned me into one as well.

Such big fans are we that we actually saw the world premiere of The Minutes at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in 2017. So I have a bit of a different perspective, having seen the earlier production, but there have been changes, and I was curious to see what they were.

As for the play itself, The Minutes, on the surface, is a very insightful comedy about the eccentric quirks and dysfunctionality of a small-town city council meeting. During the course of the 90-minute running time of this brisk play, that surface gets worn away, and we are treated to a sharply satirical and scathing look at the whitewashing of history and the denial of the racist and genocidal past of our country.

That may seem like quite a turn, but it isn’t, and that point underscores how ingrained American mythology and historical revisionism is in this country.

Without giving away too much of the plot, The Minutes opens as members of the Big Cherry City Council are arriving at their weekly meeting during a pouring thunderstorm. We meet the characters in this very powerful ensemble, as they bring the newest member of the council, Mr. Peel (Noah Reid) up to date. He’d missed the prior meeting due to the death of his mother.

It seems that the prior meeting, the one which Mr. Peel had missed, was quite eventful. One council member has mysteriously left and the minutes for that meeting are not yet prepared, so Mr. Peel can’t find out why.

Each council member has their own agenda and Mr. Peel has the type of personality that makes him want to do anything to fit in, which turns out to be a key part of the story. We are treated to various harebrained schemes of the council members like “Lincoln Smackdown” a proposed fund-raiser that would feature a professional wrestler dressed as our 16th president.

When the discussion turns to the heritage festival, the entire council re-enacts the story of the founding of Big Cherry for the benefit of Mr. Peel. This is downright hilarious and shows a comedic ensemble firing on all cylindars with slapstick precision.

Then we discover the true story behind Big Cherry, and this is where the play turns serious.

My memory is not crystal clear, but I think there has been some re-writing or at least some re-arranging since I saw the play in 2017 in Chicago. The narrative seems tighter and the pacing improved. Another big change is in the cast.

Some of the cast of the 2017 production has returned, one of them in a different role, but there is a chemistry in this new production that was not present in Chicago. I’m sure some of this has to do with the fact that this production was slated to open in the Spring of 2020 before the pandemic hit, and this crew had been rehearsing via Zoom for a few months early in the COVID shutdown before resuming in March.

Also, this is the first time I know of that Letts has acted in one of his own plays. He is perfect in the role of Mayor Superba, overseeing the city council and trying to maintain order…in more ways that one.

There are so many amazing performances woven into this work. Noah Reid perfectly captures the essence of. Mr. Peel, the naive council newbie who inadvertantly stirs up trouble while trying to fit in. Cliff Chamberlain, who played Mr. Peel in the Chicago production, is Mr. Breeding here, and assays the role with a note-perfect Pete Dooceyian level of clueless douchebaggery that garners a great deal of laughs from the audience.

Each ensemble member brings to life their own archetype of small-town politics. Blair Brown is the cranky, older, Karen-esque senior lady on the council. Austin Pendleton is hilarious as the doddering and defensive longest-serving council member, whose major concern is his parking spot. Jeff Still is the shady businessman with a shady brother who’s the police chief. Being from a pretty small town, these are all familiar to me.

I could go on and name the entire ensemble. The Minutes should be exhibit “A” in the argument that The American Theatre Wing should establish a new Tony award for Best Ensemble, because it is so hard to single out one performance out of this well-oiled machine.

When I saw The Minutes Joshua David Robinson played the role of Mr. Blake, the lone Black council member, and you could not tell he was an understudy. He fit perfectly and made me forget any disappointment I had at not seeing the excellent K. Todd Freeman that day.

One slightly controversial element of The Minutes is the use of that most vile of racial slurs. It is used once, for shock value, but is absolutely vital to the play. It’s the point where The Minutes makes the full transition from being a happy ensemble comedy about a small-town city council meeting to being a biting satirical comment on a very topical matter.

When that word is used, it’s like watching a zany pie fight, where suddenly one of the pies has a brick in it.

At that point, everything becomes crystal clear. This is when you realize that The Minutes may be the most honestly American play written in the last century. It is scathingly relevant while remaining fall-down funny.

I hope that this production, which runs until July 24th at Studio 54 in New York, has been recorded for Great Performances or a streaming service. It should be required viewing in every high school history class.

Credit has to go to Letts, the playwright, as well as the director, Anna D. Shapiro and David Zinn for his remarkable set design. Everything about The Minutes is perfectly-executed.

It was well worth spending 25 hours on the Amtrak Cardinal (up and back) to see The Minutes on Broadway.

Steppenwolf’s production of The Minutes is playing now at Studio 54 in New York, You can visit the website HERE and order tickets HERE.

Now that we’ve made it to June it’s time once again for your guide to things you can do in and around Charleston. Be advised that there are a lot of Pride Events happening all over this weekend. There’s also a biker rally in Charleston, and a big-deal pop culture convention in Huntington with Chuck Norris, David Koechner and the voice of Batman, Kevin Conroy.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s BRRO. Saturday sees Lady D herself, Doris Fields at Charleston’s Bookstore/coffeehouse/art gallery institution.

Our lead item this week is Fairview, the Pulitzer Award-winning play that opens Friday at The Alban Arts Center and runs through next weekend.

Fairview was written by Jackie Sibblies Drury, and is described as  “a biting, comedic look at a middle-class Black family whose birthday celebration takes a dark twist and challenges the gaze of race and the very structures we hold so close.”

Be warned that the performance includes adult language and themes. Directed by Stuart Frazier, “Fairview” will be presented at 8 PM Friday and Saturday; 2 PM
Sunday; 8 PM June 10 and 11; and 2 PM June 12, like it says on the poster below.

Tickets are $17 for adults, and $12 for seniors and students. To order tickets, call 304-721-8896 or got to the Alban Arts Center website.

Mel and I are planning to attend at some point during the run, but I would like to take some time once more to strongly suggest that all of our local community theater groups give some consideration to designating one performance during the runs of their shows where proof of vaccination and masks are required.  I’m only asking for one show, out of the four, six or eight that they do, have this stipulation. I realize that it’s a huge turn-off for a lot of folks, but for those of us with immunity issues, it’d be a nice gesture to have one performance where we could feel a bit safer.

As far as I know, The Alban is not doing this with Fairview, but Mel and I are willing to take the chance to support the local scene, the director, Stuart Frazier and see an acclaimed play. I do hope the folks in charge of the various local theatre troupes consider implementing one special performance during their runs with extra precautions.

Because…we all need to 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.

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…

Continue reading

It’s Tuesday on The AIR  and while that usually means new music on The AIR, for the first time in a few months, your humble blogger and radio host has been waylaid by a flare-up of his Myasthenia Gravis.  Rather than just drop in a rerun of RFC today, I opted to go back, record one new intro and then splice three very old and offline editions of our flagship show into one new(ish)  episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Five. To hear it, 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 seen elswhere on this page.

You can hear this “scrapbook” edition of Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.   This week we compile three episodes of the show from way back in our Voices of Appalachia days, in 2014 and 2015.

This was back when the marching orders for RFC were to present music from the Appalachian Region, and I did that by stretching the definition as far as possible to include not only local WV musicans, but artists as diverse as Dean Martin,  Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Crack The Sky and others. The structure of the show may be a bit confusing. Back then I’d do an hour of “regional” music, followed by an hour with a distinct theme. Since I was combining three two-hour-long shows into one three-hour program, I just lopped off a couple of the theme hours and smooshed everything together. The second hour of this week’s show is a theme hour devoted to the Shepardstown band, World Without Fear, with the rest of the show excised. This is a rare chance to hear a full-length West Virginia Alternative Rock album from 1989.

These shows have been offline and unheard by human ears for over seven years, so for most of our listeners they’ll be new.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store…

RFCV5 090

hour one
Todd Burge “Longer”
The Nanker Phelge “I’m Coming Home”
Kevin Scarbrough “Divorce”
John Radcliff “It Might Work Out”
The Company Stores “Rollin’ In”
Hellblinki “Row”
Bud Carroll “I’m No Stranger”
Mark Bates and the Vacancies “Spiral Down”
Astromoth “Paranoia Swing, Swing”
John Lancaster “Water Under A Burning Bridge”
Stone Ka Tet “Patton’s Blues”
Science of the Mind “Kaoss”
Stark Raven “Every Time You Say Goodbye”
John Palumbo “Walk On The Wild Side”
Scarlet Hill “Where is Your Heart Tonight”
Hydrogyn “You Ought To Know”

Second hour: World Without Fear

World Without Fear

“Here’s To You (I Love You)”
“What Chance”
“Absolute”
“Look Who Fell”
“Neighbor”
“I Died Today”
“Prayer For The Strategic Defense Initiative”
“The Last Yesterday”
“If Only”
“Agape”
“The Lorax”
“I’ll Be Here”

Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “That’s Life”

hour three
Go Van Gogh “I Am The Walrus”
Miniature Giant “Dawn”
69 Fingers “Die Happy”
Time And Distance “Copperfield”
Whistlepunk 2.0 “Satellite”
Don Baker “Keep On Walking”
The HepCats (Doug and Paul) “I Never Slept With Alan Ginsburg”
Professor Mike “Greater Good”
The Big Bad “The Omen”
HarraH “Blood Moon”
A Place of Solace “Sing”
Against “My Better Half”
Scooter Scudieri “The Price We Pay”

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.

This week’s art is a mixed media piece that basically exists because the old Myasthenia Gravis has flared up with the hot weather, and I needed to take some physical shortcuts. Plus this post will be published on Memorial Day, which is one of those holidays where hardly anybody visits this blog, so I didn’t want to go all-out on something elaborate.

In this case, I created a basic design digitally, then printed it out on cheap matte-finish photo paper, then painted over it with acrylics that I’d watered down to the point where they behaved like watercolors.

And then I microwaved it to speed up the drying, which actually added some distortion to the finished piece that I feel improved it somewhat. If you squint, it looks even better. Close your eyes completely and it looks spectacular.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent edition of 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 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 great stand-up by Robin Williams 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 Mel Larch’s Musical Theater showcase, Curtain Call, with the first part of it dedicated to Tony Award nominees for this year, and year’s past.

Your PopCulteer is having a particularly rough weekend with Myasthenia Gravis (my first in months), so we’re going to go back and revisit a Sunday Evening Video post that originally ran here in 2015.

Tonight it’s a nifty half-hour compilation of brief clips from Saturday Morning Cartoons and Commercials of the 1960s and 70s.  Just think of it as the TV equivalent of sucking down a bag of sugar, all at once.

This is pretty much the quintessential PopCult post.

If you’re old enough to get every reference in PopCult, you’ll enjoy the heck out of this rapid-fire array of clips. If you’re too young, this is a sample of what you were missing. Kids today have an almost endless supply of high-quality animated programs available on demand. Back then we had to wait until the one weekend morning when we were able to tune into cartoons–many of which were delightfully unwatchable dreck. And we liked it!

This week we flashback to a huge milestone, our one-hundredth episode, from May, 2010.  This edition of the show, titled “M.C.Escher Shirt,” was, at that time, our longest show, with the most bands. It featured the RFC debut of  The Nanker Phelge, the second appearance of Eva Elution,  local superstar Jeff Ellis, the return of Hellblinki Sextet and the kickoff to “Stark Charleston,” an animated travelogue project I’d started with music by David Synn.

My co-host for this show was my imaginary daughter, Kitty Killton.  We shot host segments at Top O Rock, which was in pretty derelict condition at the time, but at least it was still standing, which is no longer the case…dammit.

Who woulda thunk we’d still be doing Radio Free Charleston as a weekly radio show and annual video show twelve years later?

The PopCulteer
May 27, 2022

This week we have a new episode of MIRRORBALL to tell you about, but first I’m going to run a slightly-re-written PopCulteer item from six years ago, by popular demand (two people asked me to do it) and just ramble a little here because we’ve all had a rough week.

This is not the blog to talk about the tragic school shooting earlier this week, and it really sucks that two days later we lost Ray Liotta, Alan White (the drummer for YES, and The Plastic Ono Band) and Andy Fletcher (keyboardist for Depeche Mode).  So I just want to get one thing off my chest: If you think that this week is the perfect time to post on social media that “there are no such things as assault rifles” I just want you to know that you are precisely the type of person who should have a golf umbrella inserted in your ass…and then opened. Now on with The PopCulteer…

 The Memorial Day Shuffle (re-written from May 27, 2016)

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and while there is a ton of stuff going on, this is a holiday weekend that doesn’t really affect me that much. Let me explain.

When I was growing up, Memorial Day always meant traumatic and stressful running around for my family. My aunts and uncles and grandmother all had family buried all over the state. They were all hung up on making sure, each year, that all the graves were decorated. it was a major family obligation. The graves absolutely had to have new (plastic) flowers every Memorial Day, even though we didn’t have a lot of military folks in the family. By the time I came along the holiday had evolved from its original intent to honor veterans and had turned in a generic “honor all dead folks” day, an economic stimulus for florists and Chinese plastic flower factories.

While this was an obligation that my aunts and uncles were intent on keeping, they always had other things to do, so my dad and mom wound up doing the bulk of the Memorial Day heavy-lifting, and that meant picking up flowers in Dunbar to take to Clarksburg, taking my non-English-speaking and very excitable grandmother with them, getting flowers in Clarksburg to take to Shinnston, hitting up the florist in South Charleston to get flowers for the graves at The London Cemetary, buying supplies to make the flower arrangements for the vases in the Mausoleum at Cross Lanes…you get the picture.

My entire extended family felt an obligation to honor the dead, but they were perfectly happy to delegate that obligation, so it fell to my parents to do all the work. Rather than an obligation, my parents felt, deep-down inside, that it was a waste of time and money and also a huge pain in the ass.

As my parents apporached the ends of their lives, they made me and my brother and sisters promise that we would never put flowers on their graves and that we would end the nonsense of driving hundreds of miles to decorate the graves of people we’d never even met.

They basically granted us Memorial Day Amnesty so that we will never have to take flowers to any of our ancestor’s graves again. I still consider this one of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me. They so hated doing the whole graveyard shuffle every Memorial Day that it would have been an insult to their memory to carry on this grand and wasteful hypocritical tradition.

Thus, free from such inane obligations, I get to enjoy a long weekend, and think fondly of my parents, instead of griping about having to run around throwing money away on plastic flowers and visiting with dead people that, in some cases, I didn’t really want to visit while they were alive. Many of them I never even met.

The best way to celebrate the memories of those you love is by living life the best you can and quietly thanking them for their part in making you who you are. It means way more if you do this while they’re still with us. Plopping plastic flowers on their graves is pretty much an afterthought for most people. If it makes you feel better, then do it. If you think it makes them feel better, somebody needs to explain this whole life/death thing to you.

Ultimately, spending time with the people you love, either at a cookout or watching cars drive around in circles, binging the new Kids In The Hall on Prime or whatever, is a better way to celebrate life than trudging around decorating graves. This holiday is for military families to honor the service of their loved ones. It’s not a mad dash to every grave you can think of.

Fresh Disco For The Living

Why mourn the long-dead when you can tune in for a new episode of MIRRORBALL on The AIR, PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player at the top right column of this blog, or scroll down to the bottom of this post on your phone.

At 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents a wild collection of classic Disco tracks from the classic era of people dancing their cares away. This week Mel has a mix of big Disco hits, and latter-day dance classics from the waning days of Disco in the early 1980s. She even opens the show with a vintage Disco tune that she discovered while watching Rocko’s Modern Life.

For one hour you can go back to the Golden Age of Disco, where the sideburns were long, the skirts were short and the dancing was endless.

Check out the playlist…

MB 52

Quango and Sparky “Do The Boogaloo”
Oliver Cheatham “Get Down Saturday Night”
Tavares “Don’t Take Away The Music”
The Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”
Hi Gloss “You’ll Never Know”
Freez “Southern Freez”
Earth Wind & Fire “Let’s Groove”
Womak & Womack “Teardrops”
Evelyn Thomas “High Energy”
The Three Degrees “When Will I See You Again”
Sylvester “You Make Me Feel”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, we are honoring the request of Sydney Fileen and delaying her show for a week. She had opened her program with Depeche Mode, but following the death of Andy Fletcher, she has decided to re-work the episode to be a full-blown tribute to the late Depeche Mode keyboardist.  We’ll run that next week, and in its place this week we’ll be playing her tribute to the New Wave bands of New Zealand.  You can read about that show HERE.

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

Friday at 9 PM you can tune in for a 12-hour marathon of The Comedy Vault, presenting classic humor from Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, National Lampoon, Bob Newhart, Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford, Stan Freberg, The Bonzo Dog Band and more. You can also hear The Comedy Vault Mondays at 8 PM and Wednesdays at 11 PM, only on The AIR.

That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and loads of our regular features.

Okay, it’s time once again for your guide to things you can do in and around Charleston,  during this Memorial Day Weekend in our latest (truncated) edition of STUFF TO DO.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Steve Himes and Phil Washington. Saturday sees Sandy Sowell and Gary Collyard at Charleston’s Bookstore/coffeehouse/art gallery institution.

Our lead item next week will be Fairview, the Pulitzer Award-winning play that happens in June at The Alban Arts Center. Mel and I are planning to attend at some point during the run, but I would like to take this time to strongly suggest that all of our local community theater groups give some consideration to designating one performance during the runs of their shows where proof of vaccination and masks are required.  I’m only asking for one show, out of the four, six or eight that they do, have this stipulation. I realize that it’s a huge turn-off for a lot of folks, but for those of us with immunity issues, it’d be a nice gesture to have one performance where we could feel a bit safer.

As far as I know, The Alban is not doing this with Fairview, but Mel and I are willing to take the chance to support the local scene, the director, Stuart Frazier and see an acclaimed play. I do hope the folks in charge of the various local theatre troupes consider implementing one special performance during their runs with extra precautions.

Because…we all need to 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.

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…

Friday

Saturday