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The PopCulteer
October 31, 2025

We have a short column this week as yours truly is already hard at work on The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide, which will begin Monday in this blog to aide you with your holiday gift giving duties, with all recommendations having our usual pop culture slant.

Following the format we established last year, this year’s Gift Guide will have two entries every weekday, with the plan seeing them online by Noon, Eastern time. At least one item per day will be a single item, with a retail price of less than fifty bucks.

There will also be entries that include multiple items, and some of our suggestions will exceed that fifty dollar level.

Because of the quirks of this year’s calendar, the final day will fall on Black Friday, and will include the last two entries, and…with some luck…the Master List of everything I recommend.

As I mentioned last week, our tradition of opening the Gift Guide with The HESS Toy Truck will be broken this year. I just couldn’t bring myself to recommend what I feel is a very disappointing and overpriced entry in the long history of the HESS Toy Trucks.

I feel I have found a suitable and affordable alternative, which you will see on Monday.

The reaction to this year’s HESS Toy has been largely negative, and I don’t know if that spurred an open letter from John B. Hess announcing that the Hess family, which sold HESS Oil to Chevron earlier this year, will retain the HESS Toy Truck business, and has big plans for the future, with a special collectible planned for next year, but the timing was curious.

I’m hopeful that this indicates that this year’s disappointment was simply a rare miscue, and that next year will see a triumphant return to The PopCult Gift Guide for the HESS Toy Truck.

This year’s Gift Guide will be comprised of toys, physical media (LPs, CDs, DVD/Blu Rays, real books and other things you can hold in your hands), local, regional and online retailers, plus some electronics, clothing items, decor and various and sundry knick-knackery.

Thanksgiving will be “Turkey Gift Day,” once again, because really, who reads this blog on Thanksgiving Day?

I will try to shy away from recommending limited editions of anything. I want people to be able to find the gift ideas I suggest.

I’ve actually done some form of Gift Guide every year since I started this blog in 2005, so this is the 21st time I’ve come up with a list of gift suggestions for my readers. It really took off about fifteen years ago, and for the last few years I’ve been winding it up in November for two reasons: First, it gives people time to order gifts that can’t be purchased locally; Second, it allows your humble blogger to be done with this massive undertaking in time to make our yearly visit to Chicago for my lovely wife’s birthday.

We will be going again this year. No amount of dictatorial showmanship is going to stop us from going to a place where we feel safer than we do in Downtown Charleston.

Another quirk of the calendar this year sees me posting the preview for The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide on Halloween. I have not foresaken that holiday. We’re just observing it over on our sister internet radio station today. Beginning at 7 AM Friday (that’s today) you can find Halloween editions of our music and comedy specialty programs, plus a coffinload of special presentations 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.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day, plus all our regular features and, starting Monday, The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide.

This week we are going to set the tone a bit for the next month. During The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide, I will be running a scaled down version of STUFF TO DO, without the lengthy boilerplate (you can find an example HERE), and with fewer than ten graphics, instead of the ever-ballooning number that has topped 20 at times in recent months. The reason for this is to make your humble blogger’s life a little easier during his busiest month.

Until we get back to normal in December, more than ever, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments.

We very happily remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look. I don’t have graphics, but Friday night, which is crammed full of events, The Carpenter Ants will be at Taylor Books, performing cover-free, from 7:30 PM to 9:30.

Because Kanawha County switched Trick or Treat night from Thursday to Friday at the last minute (sensibly due to the weather), a lot of adult partying plans have been disrupted. Keep that in mind, drive carefully and NOT DRUNK, and watch out for the little ones.

What’s left of the Charleston Town Center will be holding “MallOWeen,” a Trick or Treat night  on Friday, with most of their three remaining tenants participating.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute. At least one of this week’s shows, the Factory Reset improv show at The Alban Arts Center, moved their start time back half an hour, and I was able to adjust the graphic.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening over the next few days that I was able to scrounge up online…

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Tasked with the somewhat difficult task of finding ways to do Halloween-week shows, we still managed to cook up new episodes that debut on Wednesday afternoon, as The AIR brings you new installments of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, each of which try to get a little scary.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you a musical collage of spooky-sounding songs and dialogue produced by The Beatles, together and solo.

As to what that entails…well, I’m not going to tell you. I will let you know that you will hear chunks of “Revolution 9” and some of the soundtrack album for the movie Son of Dracula, which starred Ringo as Merlin the Magician, with Harry Nilsson as the son of the prince of darkness. Woven into this bizarre fabric are songs and snippets of songs by each of the Fab Four solo, as well as a group number or two.

It’s a little different, but it was either do this, or try to build a show around heavy metal covers of Beatles’ tunes.

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel had a bit of an easier time assembling a Halloween-appropriate show, also a mixtape, but she had a lot more spookiness from which to choose.

You will hear songs from Broadway, off-Broadway, London, animation, concept albums and we even have one from The Lyric Opera of Kansas City. In case you were wondering what an Opera based on Stephen King’s The Shining would sound like.

Check out the list of songs, in order…

Curtain Call 161

“La Mort de Marie Laveau” from the World Premiere Recording of Witch Hunt
“Night of the Living Dead” from the Original concept recording Night of the Living Dead: The Musical
“Hell Is Forever” from Hazbin Hotel
“Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” from The Book of Mormon
“These Woeful Days” from The Shining
“Baptism of Blood” from Dreams of Dracula (Original Off-Broadway Recording)
“How To Recognize A Witch” from The Witches OLC
“Til the Day We Die” from Helluva Boss
“50,000 Pounds of Power” “My Futura” from Metropolis (Demo)
“Take Off Your Mask” “Immortal” from Wicked Clone or How To Deal With The Evil (Off-Broadway Cast)
“The Plan” “If You Want Perfection” from Death Becomes Her
“Car Crash Ballet” from Dusk: A Bite-Size Love Story
“Haunted German Wood” “Might As Well Go To Hell” from Gutenberg! The Musical OBC

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

Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to lighten your mood and make you feel less homicidal. This week we have a new edition of The Swing Shift, too!  Making things even better is the fact that both shows get into the Halloween spirit this week.  RFC sort of slips into it, while The Swing Shift goes full throttle into tricks and treats. To listen to The AIR, 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 found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

Radio Free Charleston brings you a new show with three full hours of newly-assembled music. We have great new tunes from Novo Combo, Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Buni Muni, Julian Lennon, John Radcliff, The Cowsills, Lily Allen, Hawklords and more, plus the show gets progressively spookier as it goes on. I mean, it starts out just a little spooky, but by the secound hour we devote entire sets to monsters and De Debbil. Our third hour is just spooktastic. We might even plant a few tricks and/or treats along the way.

‘Tis the season, you know.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

Radio Free Charleston V5 246

Novo Combo “Don’t Fear The Reaper”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Thankful”
Julian Lennon “Because”
The Paranoid Style “Tearing the Ticket”
John Radcliff  “Not Satisfied”
The Cowsills “Couldn’t It Be Love”
Novelty Island “Someone Disappearing”
Buni Muni “Moringa”
Sirius Bluray and David Synn “Oak Tree Dance Mix”
Lily Allen “4chan Stan”
David Bowie “Rebel Never Gets Old (7th Heaven Mix)”
Hawklords “Transmission (Techno Industrial Mix)”
Dinosaur Burps “Doom Lurker (Demo)”

hour two
Byzantine “Red Skies”
A Tale of Two “Devil Did The Deed (Not Me)”
Jeff Ellis “The Devil Has A Name”
The Residents “Dance With The Devil”
Ann Magnuson “Sex With The Devil”
Spinal Tap “The Devil’s Just Not Getting Old”
Kate On Crack “Ride With The Devil”
Sideshow Villains “Monsters”
Ultra Sunn “Broken Monsters”
Midge Ure “Monster”
Trielement “Monster Movie Scenery”
Deni Bonet “Frankenstein”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “Gila Monster”
Skyhooks “Horror Movie”
The Nanker Phelge “The Killer Took A Holiday”

hour three
Possum Kingdom Ramblers “Godzilla”
Radio Cult “Man Made Monster”
Hellblinki “Astro Zombies”
Ghosts of Now “Deathburn”
The Renfields “I Was A Teenage Cthulu Cultist”
The Big Bad “I Wish Every Day Was Halloween”
Frenchy & The Punk “Dark Carnivale (Hi-Fi Hillary Remix)”
The Surfrajettes “Banshee Bop” “Satan’s Holiday”
The Settlement  “Midnight Train”
Messer Chups “The Souvenir of the Witch”
Crack The Sky “Invaders from Mars”
Buni Muni “Nasty Witch”
The Aquabats “Dr. Space Mummy”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, Sunday at 8 PM and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic 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 last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM  The Swing Shift gets a little spooky to, for Halloween week, with a mixtape episode filled with scary and macabre (but still Swinging) tunes. It’s a mixtape show, so here’s what you can expect:

The Swing Shift 176

Swing Ninjas “The Devil In Despair”
Woody Herman “The Devil and the Stoker”
Jimmie Lunceford “Hell’s Bells”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “I Raise Hell”
Pink Turtle “Highway To Hell”
Mills Blue Rhythm Band “Red Devil”
The Puppini Sisters “Spooky”
Tommy Dorsey “Satan Takes A Holiday”
Louie Austen “Shake Your Bones”
Lester Young “Pagin’ the Devil”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Dr. Bones”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Who’s That Creepin'”
Ingrid Lucia & The Flying Neutrinos “Marie Laveau”
Jools Holland & His Rhythum and Blues Orchestra “The Wicked and Weak”
Royal Crown Revue “Deadly Nightcall”
Lady Jaye & Her Bada Bing Band “Sweet Talkin’ Devil”
Devil Doll “You Put A Spell On Me”

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM,  Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursdays and Sundays.

This week’s art is notable for two things.  First, it’s the oldest piece of art of mine that I’ve ever presented here. I did this oil painting of DC Comic’s mystical hero, Dr. Fate, back in my high school art class, in 1979. And it’s also notable because it is the only oil painting that I’ve ever done in my life.

Adding to the notoriety is that I had no idea what the hell I was doing and used way, way too much linseed oil. As a result, the painting took more than four decades to dry.

Seriously…I came across it in the basement a few weeks ago and realized that, for the first time ever, it wasn’t sticking to stuff.

This piece is a testament to my inteptitude. Not only did I have no idea how to paint with oils, as you can probably tell, I had no idea how to depict human anatomy, and my color sense was…to put it generously…not terribly well-developed.

The mutilated signature had more to do with my art teacher frowning on the practice than on my embarrassment at the quality.  He told us that he preferred it if his students didn’t sign the front of their works because he didn’t want to know whose piece it was when he was grading it.

The truth was that he was taking student’s pieces to Ohio on weekends and entering them into juried exhibitions as his own work. I found out when I saw a newspaper clipping of him with one of my drawings that had won a cash prize. I confronted him, didn’t get any of the winnings, and was threatened with a failing grade if I told anybody. As a result of the nasty fallout from that, I decided to never enter my work into a juried exhibition. Also, unless it’s purely digital or a commercial commission, I sign all my work.

There is a happy ending to that story.  He eventually died.

None of that side story changes the fact that this piece sorta sucks. I’m only runnning it here because Jon Raider said he wanted to see it in a Facebook exchange a few weeks ago, and I was too tied up with other stuff to do new work this week. so…there you go.

If, for some ungodly reason, you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a brand-new episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we do the same with 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 elsewhere on this page.

I asked the Haversham crew if they could give us some Halloween-appropriate music this week, and last Friday Sydney Fileen came through with her new proto-Goth edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  This week we did not get playlists, but Nigel Pye devoted his entire program to the music of The Zombies, while Herman Linte gave us two hours of highlights from Frank Zappa’s legendary 1978 Halloween concert. I’d say they came through pretty well for me.

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. 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.

Beginning at 5 PM, you can hear some more great Halloween programming. Tonight we bring you a couple of versions of The War of the Worlds, plus an hour of Halloween Novelty tunes. We’re going to bring you Halloween stuff every day this week.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our newish Monday night line-up featuring two hours each of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, plus six hours overnight with an assortment of our programming from Haversham Recording Institute: Psychedelic Shack, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and Prognosis.

I promised you spooky videos in this feature all month long, but I never said that they’d all be new! For the third or fourth time, here is Radio Free Charleston tackling Halloween.

Above you see a compilation of (almost) every Halloween episode of Radio Free Charleston’s video show, plus a few other holiday-appropriate clips. You can see the episode we left out of this playlist compilation just below. This year we decided to save all this for one last big Halloween video surprise…except that it’s not really a surprise since this post is recycled from previous years.

And don’t forget, we still have Halloween programming starting Sunday at 9 AM and running in spurts all week long on The AIR!

And as an extra Halloween treat, here’s a long-lost documentary about The Braxton County Monster, made by half of the RFC big shots eleven years before the Radio Free Charleston video show. You can read more about it HERE.

JVB, himself

Radio Free Charleston‘s 158th episode, “The Liquid Canvas,” is devoted to the work of Charleston filmmaker, musician, and artist James Vernon Brown. I first met James back in 2007, when we recorded the band Doctor Senator. James was playing bass and had also made several cool short films and music videos featuring the band.

James ended up leaving Doctor Senator and, at a jam session at The Blue Parrot one night, I heard him play guitar for the first time and was blown away with his David Gilmore meets Jimi Hendrix six-string pyrotechnics. I remember going up to him after hearing him play and asking “why the hell were you wasting your time playing bass?”

Because I just restored this post last year, I’m going to go ahead and bring you the entire production notes, with a little updating, after the jump.

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The PopCulteer
October 24, 2025

We have some radio notes for you today as we enter the weekend before Halloween. This will kick off a week of new episodes of our music specialty shows on The AIR, most of which will have at least a slight Halloween aura about them. Next week we’ll be running Halloween programming all week long, as the Daily RFC takes a week off and we dig some moldy old programming out of our crypt. It all begins in earnest on Sunday, but today we give you a bit of a sneak peek, one week out from All Hallow’s Eve.

You can find all these Halloween editions of our music and comedy specialty programs, plus a coffinload of special presentations on The AIR. This afternoon we serve up new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat! 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.

MIRRORBALL

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes a full hour to classic Disco tracks, but alas, there simply weren’t enough Disco Halloween songs left to do a sequel to her 2020 Halloween episode, so this week MIRRORBALL pays tribute to the denizens of THE NIGHT. by serving up an hour of killer Disco classics with the word “night” in their titles.

It may or may not be scary,  depending on who’s trying to dance.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 121

Patrick Juvet “Lady Night”
Venus Dodson “Night Rider”
Skatt Brothers “Walk The Night”
Billy Ocean “Stay The Night”
Taka Boom “Night Dancin'”
Jeree Palmer “Late Night Surrender”
GQ “Disco Nights (Rock Freak)”
Candi Staton “Nights On Broadway”
Bee Gees “Saturday Night Fever”
Alicia Bridges “I Love The Nightlife”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays most weeks  Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a four-hour mini-marathon of classic episodes Friday nights at 8 PM. Be sure to check out the Halloween marathon on The AIR because we’ll run the 2020 Halloween episode of MIRRORBALL multiple times, including in the regular replay slots.

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat explores the Roots of Goth Again

Also on The AIR  at 3 PM (EDT), Sydney Fileen graces us with special mixtape-style new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. This week Sydney revisits the early Darkwave and proto-Goth music, which is perfect for this holiday season.  She tells us that this is to celebrate the season and also expose the roots of one of New Wave music’s more distinctive branches. Two years ago Sydney explored this same topic, but this is an all-new and totally different exploration of the early New Wave roots of Goth.

In this mixtape presentation you’ll hear influential Darkwave artists like Siouxsie & The Banshees, Closed Session, The Bolshoi, Theatre of Hate, Virgin Prunes, The Cult, The Damned, and of course, Joy Division. Sydney also shines the spotlight on some of the bands who were far more influential than they were commercially successful.

This is the music that gave birth to Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Godsmack and the like.  You say they paved the way…a long, dark, spooky alley, to be sure, but these folks paved it nonetheless.

Check out the playlist…

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat 133

Siouxsie & The Banshees “The Sweetest Chill”
The Cult “She Sells Sanctuary”
Sisters of Mercy “This Corrosion”
Fields of the Nephilim “Blue Water”
Danielle Dax “Yummer Yummer Man”
The Mission “Tower of Strength”
Theatre of Hate “Do You Believe in the Westworld”
Play Dead “The Tenant”
Martin Briley “Dumb Love”
The Bolshoi “Auntie Jean”
Closed Session “Firing Beach”
Skeletal Family “Promised Land”
Joy Division “Atrocity Exhibition”
Ritual “Questioning the Shadow”
Actifed “Crucifixion”
Virgin Prunes “Pagan Love Song”
Bone Orchard “Shall I Carry the Budgie Woman”
Salvation “Diamond Child”
Rubella Ballet “Slant and Slide”
In Excelsis “The Sword”
Alien Sex Fiend “I Walk The Line”
The Damned “Curtain Call”

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. Classic episodes can be heard as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon Tuesday mornings at 1 AM. .

That’s it for this week’s PopCulteer, check back for all our regular features, with fresh content, every day. Also, tune in for our Halloween block programming on The AIR beginning Sunday morning.

We are barrelling into the last weekend before Halloween, and there is a scary amount of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston. Let’s see what some of that is, shall we?

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Seriously, for the last several weeks, by the time the weekend rolls around, I discover several events that I just totally missed out on.  Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or possibly Elon’s beast, if it should ever choose to forgive me.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have Bug on Friday, and Minor Swing on Saturday. Sunday afternoon at 1 PM, stop by for Charlie Murphy.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights.  On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans, or at The Cavern on Charleston’s West Side, and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings or Sunday afternoons.

You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment.  I am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon and those look to be incredible.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illnesses are still a going concern and 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. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff. If somebody asks you to refrain, please respect their weishes and don’t be a jerk about it.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

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The PopCult Toybox

Longtime readers of PopCult probably know (and some of them happily anticipate) the annual PopCult Gift Guide. I’m already at work on it, and this year, like last year, the plan is to run two Gift Guide posts each weekday, along with our regular features, for the entire month of November.

If all goes as planned I’ll have the Master List ready to go on Black Friday, thanks to the quirks of this year’s calendar.

Each weekday you can expect one single-item post, and one multi-item post. I will recommend books, music, toys, video, comics, collectibles and maybe even some decor or clothing.

However, this year I am breaking a streak that’s gone on for more than a decade. For over ten years, the first item in The PopCult Gift Guide has been that year’s HESS TOY TRUCK.

This year that isn’t going to be the case. In fact, this year the HESS TOY TRUCK won’t even make the list at all. I just can’t recommend it. I hate this because I generally don’t like to do negative reviews, but I felt the absence of our usual first Gift Guide entry needed an explanation. This is the first time that I have not been incredibly impressed by the HESS TOY TRUCK.

For one thing, it’s not a truck. It’s two Stock car racers. They aren’t even the same scale. One fits inside the other. And the price, which has risen every year for a while now, is just a penny under fifty bucks (including batteries and shipping).

It’s just not a special enough toy or collectible, or a good enough value for me to recommend to my readers. It’s a major disappointment. Every year I look forward to what HESS offers, and this is the first time I’ve ever felt really let down.

It’s not just me that feels this way. The response online, on social media, collector discussion boards and Reddit groups, has been overwhelmingly…underwhelmed.

I’ve never seen people react this negatively to a HESS Truck announcement before, and I’ve been observing this since my days writing for Toy Trader Magazine over a quarter century ago.

I’m seeing longtime collectors state that they will skip this year’s offering. People who buy multiples are saying that they only plan to get one. People who have fond memories stretching back sixty years are taking a pass on this year’s set. One person who posted a comment on Instagram said that, instead of getting this year’s set for their grandkids, they were going to go to eBay and find one from a prior year that was a better value.

I mean, it’s not even a truck. And while they’ve had HESS collectibles that weren’t trucks before, at least they were something special, like a plane or a ship.

Every year you’ll get a handful of people who aren’t happy with the choice of truck or the price. That’s natural. You also get a handful of people who will praise whatever the HESS Truck is, regardless of merit. That’s just how the internet works.

This year it’s different. HESS apparently knew they had a dud, and reached out in advance to “influencers” and minor celebrities and gave them advance copies of the toys and/or paid them to make promotional videos to try to boost the appeal of this year’s choice. Some of these YouTubers actually posted their videos as “reviews” then went on social media bragging about “partnering” with HESS on their video.

Guys…if you got paid to do a video, it’s not a review…it’s a commercial. The mutual ass-kissing on some of the social media accounts was embarrassing and nauseating.

In the past, the HESS Trucks were so cool that HESS didn’t need to do any kind of marketing. They’d put up their website, send out emails to their previous customers, post a short commercial to their social media accounts, and the Truck would sell out, often before The PopCult Gift Guide even ended at the end of November.

Unless they cut production way down this year, I suspect they’ll be stuck selling these cars well into 2026.

For fifty bucks you get a largely hollow larger car (with lights and sounds), about a foot long. The hood and roof open so you can remove the smaller car, which has lights and a pull-back and release feature.

The big car looks to be about a foot long. The smaller one is supposed to be seven inches long. The larger car is essentially a plastic box with wheels that holds the smaller car.

Except for being able to stuff one car inside the other, you can get comparable toy cars for considerably less money almost anywhere toys are sold. Heck, at Walmart you could get two different remote control cars for half what they’re asking for this set, and those also have light and sound features in addition to being radio-controlled.

It’s just not a good enough value for me to include it in the Gift Guide this year. I hope this is just a one-time blip, and not a trend. Ten years ago HESS offered a Fire Engine Platform Truck carrying an SUV with a rescue ladder…a way cooler toy with much more play value…and it cost nineteen dollars less.

I know they can’t do anything about inflation and tariffs, but the difference in the quality of these two HESS Collectibles is pretty striking.

There are claims online that HESS takes ten years to design their annual truck and bring it to market. If that’s true, then they had a full decade for someone to realize what a dud this year’s set was and replace it with anything else. It just looks like they went to the factory in China and asked, “What can you make cheap and easy?” This is all the more confusing because this year’s three-pack of HESS Mini Trucks that they released in June was one of their best ever, and sold out in record time. It’s obvious they can still come up with great collectible toy ideas. Like I said, I hope this is just a one-time misstep.

There are so many great HESS TRUCK ideas floating around out there. Off the top of my head I can name a dozen: A Christmas tree truck; A bucket truck; A loudspeaker truck (with a microphone that kids could talk through): A flatbed tow-truck with a new car with a bow on it (and a working flatbed); A box delivery truck; A garbage/recycling truck; A diesel locomotive engine; A track-inspector truck; A double-trailer semi; An intermodal truck with cargo box; An oil tanker ship (they haven’t done one as their main offering since the 1960s), A surveyor’s truck with launchable drone. Imagine all of those done up in the HESS Oil green-and-white livery.

Any of those would look better than a pair of size-mismatched race cars, and that list took longer to type than it did to think up. You have to wonder what they were thinking.

Having said that, completist collectors who want to keep their streak going and people who look at the photos here and still think that it’s a good deal can order the 2025 HESS “Truck” HERE.