Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 754)

This week we head back to late October, 2012, for an example of how your PopCulteer and humble Radio Free Charleston host can make something out of nothing. For reasons I don’t exactly recall, we did a special best-of Pre-Halloween episode in 2012. I assembled “Skull Shirt,” a one- hour-five-minute compilation show that presented highlights from the first five years worth of Radio Free Charleston Halloween specials. We returned with an all-new show the next week, with one largely recorded at the very first ShockaCon.

Representing our first Halloween special, music-wise, we had half of The Pistol Whippers, Brian Holstine and Bobby Peyton, performing an acoustic version of a classic Whippers punk tune that I keep forgetting the title of. This was one of the highlights of episode eight. Over the end credits of this compilation, you will hear Whistlepunk with “Vampire Love Song.” Whistlepunk was the very first band we had on Radio Free Charleston and this song from episode seven was actually recorded during the same sessions as their song on our first show.

Speaking of Whistlepunk, in 2007, just in time for RFC 29, the now-five-member Whistlepunk hosted a Halloween party at Capitol Roasters and we brazenly hijacked it. You’ll see a few clips from the party, with some costumed party-goers, and you will also see the music video for “Horror Movie Gangster” by Lil Guy from South Park Enterprises. This was the first rap video on Radio Free Charleston and also the first video that was edited, mixed, and finished after the host segments of the show were done. It’s also a great song and a fun video shot in grainy black and white at Spring Hill Cemetary.

In 2008, we were so filled with the Halloween spirit that our two part Halloween special (RFC 54 and 55) grew a third appendage (RFC 64) which didn’t show up until April Fools Day the following year. These three episodes together comprise Radio Free Charleston Horror Theatre and include appearances (mostly in zombie form) by Kitty Killton, Liz McCormick, Brian Young, Melanie Larch, Alan Young, Stephen Beckner, and Mark Beckner. I became “Count Rudolph.” These episodes were loads of fun and feature the most extensive use of green screen technology in the history of Radio Free Charleston.

This episode offers up two musical treats from these jam-packed shows. First we have “Planet Of The Psychotic Women,” a great lost Go Van Gogh music video which combined footage shot by Stephen Beckner in 1991 with a vintage live performance of the band shot by yours truly, also assembled and edited by yours truly in 2008. After that, we had Hellblinki (also known as The Hellblinki Sextet) with “Don’t Go Down To The Woods,” a live performance recorded at The Blue Parrot.

RFC 85, in 2009, was our longest episode to date, running over thirty minutes and incorporating one of the most fun sketches we’ve had on the show. I signed up with the “Big Buddy” organization to take two underprivileged kids trick or treating and things didn’t turn out exactly as they’d hoped. The kids were Mandy Petry and Jeff Bukovinsky of The No Pants Players and we also had appearances by Duncan Stokes of the NPP, along with Amy Williams and Mark Wolfe. Of special note is RFC’s Resident Diva, Melanie Larch, as “Malice Orr.”

Representing RFC 85, we have two memorable performances. First, a pre-disgrace Unknown Hinson performs “Silver Platter,” recorded live at The Sound Factory.  This compilation also features a very cool video by Flare Baroshi, “Vampire Mafia,” co-directed by Flare Baroshi and yours truly, and filmed on the two abandoned floors of desolation above LiveMix Studio.

The original plan for 2010 was to produce an entire movie and post it as our Halloween show. That didn’t happen and “Jazz From Hell” remains our unfinished epic. For this show, I included the trailer for “Jazz From Hell” so you can see that it’s pretty much your everyday, run of the mill mad scientist-creates-pot-that-turns-people-into-zombie-jazz-musicians.

Our host segments for this “best of” show were shot at a cemetary which shall remain nameless. Our title shirt was on sale at Penney’s, I think. I can’t really remember. Oh, since the original shows were in the standard aspect ration, we dumped the widescreen for this episode.

The PopCulteer
January 23, 2026

Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer, is an incredible stage play. It depicts the rivalry between the prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and his contemporary, Antoino Salieri in 18th century Vienna. The story is textured and compelling and may be one of the greatest literary depictions of jealousy consuming a person ever created.

It’s also not even remotely historically accurate. Do not fool yourself into thinking that the depictions of these characters are in any way a reflection of the people on whom they are based.

It is a work of fiction, inspired by an earlier work of fiction, which was itself a rather ridiculous and sensationalistic embodiment of scandalous rumors that were not exactly rooted in credibility.

If you know that going in, you will enjoy the play for what it is, which is pretty damned brilliant.

As for why I’m mentioning it, well, over the last several weeks I’ve been exposed to three distinct versions of the play, and I thought it might be fun to compare them.

Last month, when I was in Chicago, Mel and I saw a spectacular production of Amadeus at Steppenwolf Theater. Directed by Robert Falls, with Ian Barford as Salieiri and David Darrow as Mozart, this production was my first time seeing the work performed live (sadly I missed a legendary 1980s local production starring my friend, Jim Wolfe), and I was blown away.

Performed in the round in the new Ensemble Theater at Steppenwolf, this production was downright cinematic in its staging, with world-class performances and, to be honest, I’d planned to write a much longer review, but…this production closes this weekend, and tickets have been damned near impossible to come by, so I just didn’t get around to it.

Too many obituaries and other things to write kept distracting me.

Needless to say, if you were lucky enough to see this production, it will stay with you for a long, long time.

And that fact actually came in handy because, just a few weeks later, thanks to some friends in the UK, I was able to watch the Sky mini-series, Amadeus, adapted by Joe Barton from Shaffer’s play, and spread out over five episodes.

It’s sort of appropriate because Shaffer’s play was based on the 1830 play, Mozart and Salieri , written by Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin. And that play inspired an 1897 operetta by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

The story, about Salieri conspiring to hurt the career of, and eventually kill Mozart, which historians widely regard as bunk, has certainly gotten around.

Shaffer was in no way faithful to Pushkin’s original three-man short play, which ended with Salieri poisoning Mozart on stage. Likewise, Barton has made major changes to the story for his adaptation. The Venticelli, who were brilliantly gender-flipped in the Steppenwolf production, are completely absent in Barton’s version.

We get a lot more detail in some places. The role of Emperor Joseph II is greatly expanded, with a bit more historical accuracy than the rest of the work. What exactly happens between Salieri and Mozart’s wife, Costanze, is considerably different. Some historical details and dates are inserted in an attempt to lend more credibility to the story, and the entire final episode is an epilogue that, for the most part, has no parallel to Shaffer’s play.

In fact, Alexander Pushkin appears as a character in the final episode, securing the “confession” of Salieri from Constanze Mozart. This almost certainly never happened. We even get a glimpse of Shaffer’s original manuscript being typed.

Still, as a work of fiction, and an expansion of Shaffer’s play, Barton does a decent job of crafting a classy-looking mini-series out of the material. It does not compare to the Steppenwolf production, but it holds together pretty well until the final episode, and the performances are quite good throughout.

Both the Steppenwolf production and the Sky mini-series practiced “colorblind” casting. In no way did this lessen the Steppenwolf production. You just got pulled into the production so quickly and powerfully that you just didn’t notice that the cast was not comprised entirely of wypipo.

With the Sky mini series, it was more jarring. I don’t know if it was the intimacy of watching a cinematic production with close-ups, or the casting choices themselves, but there were brief moments when I was taken out of the world they were trying to create for a second or two. Luckily, the performers were all strong enough to overcome this, but it did distance me from the show momentarily.

Still, great performances by the likes of Paul Bettany, Will Sharpe and Gabrielle Creevy make the mini-series well worth watching.

After watching the Amadeus mini-series, I got curious and dug up a copy of the 1984 movie version, directed by Milos Forman, and starring F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Thomas Hulce as Mozart.

This too is a terrific adaptation. It took home eight Oscars, including one for Shaffer’s screenplay, based on his play. Abraham edged out Hulce for Best Actor.

And the last time I watched this version was more than forty years ago.

It still looks incredible. Abraham’s peformance is revelatory. The direction and cinematography are among the best of the last century.

However, watching it now, Hulce sort of ruined it for me. First of all, while I was momentarily taken out of the experience with the casting of the mini-series, every time Hulce was on screen in this version my brain was yelling “Hey, That’s PINTO from Animal House!”

Second all of, that laugh he used as Mozart…every time he did it, I wanted Salieri to kill him even more. Thank God that David Darrow and Will Sharpe chose not to emulate that sitcom-level guffaw. Having seen their performances made me take a much harsher look at Hulce.

The play and the movie run around three hours each. The mini-series runs for five episodes, each just under an hour.

So, that’s a lot of time invested in watching, and then writing about a play which, admittedly, is based on a premise that puts the “fiction” into “historical fiction.”

Still, Shaffer’s play is something that should be experienced, even if you can only see the movie. The mini-series works better as a a dessert to the main course of seeing the original play. Four of the five episodes are great, with the finale seeming a bit stretched-out to me. We get a much more full representation of Costanze and Emperor Joseph II, but in some ways the mini-series veers even farther from reality than the play does.

Of course, the real challenge after watching Amadeus in any form is getting that damned song by Falco out of your head.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day and all our regular features.

Longtime readers of PopCult probably know that I live in “the teeming metropolis of Dunbar,” a suburb of Charleston, West Virginia. I have lived here for my entire life.

Yesterday, a rumor that I’ve been hearing for probably four years was confirmed. Dunbar is losing it’s Kroger grocery store. Come June we will have to go Krogering  in another city.

This is not exactly a tragedy, at least not for me, personally, but it will really suck for the aged and carless populations of Dunbar who can’t easily hop into a car and drive across the river to the brand-new Kroger that’s opening in early June in the new Park Place shopping center.

See, Kroger is erecting a stately pleasure dome in South Charleston. This Xanadu will be a 122,00 square foot behemoth that will sell, not only groceries, but also toys, apparel, furniture, home goods, farm animals, heavy construction equipment and a modest selection of Tardis-like time travel devices. Oh, and they’ll have a fancy-ass cheese counter, too.

And when this gigantic Kroger, the largest in our small state, opens, then the axe shall fall on both the Riverwalk and Dunbar locations.

Riverwalk is no surprise. It’s right across MacCorkle Avenue from the new store. They are literally just moving across the street.

Dunbar, sadly, makes business sense. It’s only about a two-mile drive between the two stores, and they’ve been degrading the Dunbar location for years now. You would buy an item every week for years, then suddenly it would disappear. If you ever checked in a different Kroger, they’d still have it. The selection has been shrinking in Dunbar as they excised SKU after SKU.

Then there’s also the problem with the Dunbar Kroger keeping shopping carts, especially the smaller ones. Every time they’d get a new shipment of fifty of them in, within two months you’d only be able to find three or four in the store at the same time.

I think it’s from people who walk to the store “borrowing” them to get their groceries home, then deciding they’d sort of like to keep them as pets.

That had to eat into the bottom line. Those carts cost a few hundred bucks each.

Honestly, this will be a minor pain in the ass for me, but I’ll survive. Right now, I’m so familiar with the Dunbar location that I can sleepwalk through it and find everything I need (unless they mysteriously decided to just stop selling it in Dunbar). I will miss that.

The new store will be gigantic, and that means walking much farther with my aging knees. I’ll also probably have to take much longer to shop because they promise a toy department and I’m physically unable to pass one of those up.

Still, it is another sign of time marching on. As long as I’ve been alive, Dunbar has had a Kroger. First it was near the corner of Dunbar Avenue and 16th Street (now the site of a Dollar General), but then in the early 1970s, they moved to their current location as an anchor store in the Dunbar Shopping Center on the riverbank, near 10th Street.

Dunbar won’t be completely devoid of groceries. We still have the first Aldi that was built in West Virginia, but as nice as that store can be, it’s not a great replacement for the full-service deli, pharmacy, bakery and large meat and produce sections that Kroger has.

It would be nice if Kroger at least considered leaving the Dunbar Kroger Fuel Center in operation. It’s handy to have a place close by to cash in our fuel points for discounted gas. That has to be one of the most profitable things that the Dunbar location has to offer.

Now we have to wonder what’s going to happen to the soon-to-be-former Kroger buildings in Dunbar and at Riverwalk. Will they sit empty for years? Is there even a remote chance that another grocer might come to Dunbar? Will one of them be converted into a Flea Market or Peddler’s Mall?

Is some moron going to start clamoring for them to be replaced with a Trader Joe’s?

Another question is, will Park Place get any really cool stores?  I mean, Menards has a killer toy train section for part of the year, and I do wear Skechers, but aside from those, all we know about are a bunch of restaurants that, aside from Huey Magoo’s, don’t look appealing to me. Will they at least get some of the stores that are sure to bail out of the Charleston Town Center?

As with everything, only time will tell.

I do have to admit to being curious about buying some Kroger pants.

It’s supposed to be dangerously cold with conditions ripe for absolutely horrid Winter weather this weekend,  but there’s still things you can get into with our trademark cursory list of cool STUFF TO DO all over the state, noted as briefly as possible.

Check the weather before you go out. Especially this weekend, there’s a chance that events might get cancelled.

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 Twitter.  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.

This week’s feature event is GI Joe Winterfest in Louisville, where your humble blogger will be headed, unless we get blizzard conditions this weekend. You can read about it HERE, from a couple of days ago, and check out the graphic below, along with a couple of pictures from previous shows…

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.  Many Sunday afternoons at 2 PM they also have live music. This weekend they have Travis Vandalon Friday, Marcus Olgesby on Saturday and The Dynamic Duo on Sunday.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Among the notable music venues in town are The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe, Live at The Shop in Dunbar, Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, In Huntington, there’s local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club),  The Wandering Wind Meadery is on Charleston’s West Side, Plus there’s music in Charleston at The Blue Parrot, Sam’s Uptown Cafe and Fife Street Brewing.

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.  You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment.

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…

Continue reading

We’re doing a special encore day Tuesday on The AIR  so that means we’re going back six years for an early edition of Radio Free Charleston Volume 5. 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.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the day I met my wife, and it was also the day I usually record RFC, so choices had to be made.

I’m always going to choose my wife in a case like this. However, that means that you get a special treat. I went back into the vault and dug out the third episode of RFC Volume 5, which originally ran on The AIR six years ago this week. That was just before the pandemic shutdowns had begun in earnest, but it was also before I started uploading each episode to this blog, so you can listen to them on demand. That means the only way you could listen to this episode would be if you tuned into the RFC Daily feature on The AIR, where it has been played three or four times over the last four years.

Today that changes. I will embed this episode below, and eventually we’ll make all of the episodes of RFC Volume 5 available here.

So…while this week’s show is a rerun, at least it’s not one that’s been worn out with repeated airings.

This particular show was jam-packed with great music from Charleston and the whole world. This episode was rich with the local music archives, but we popped in with one big set of then-new music from legends of the past. Which is now also in our local music archives.

Because this is an encore show and Mel is waiting for me so we can head out, we don’t have the usual links in the playlist this week…

RFCv5003

hour one
Feast of Stephen “Needing Only Me”
Cannon Sodaro Band “Mountaineer”
Spencer Elliott “The Promise”
Peter Murphy “That Scarlett Thing In You”
The Animals “House of the Rising Sun”
Jon Anderson “Twice In A Lifetime”
Three Bodies “Gardens of Hope”
The Who “I’ll Be Back”
Jeff Lynne’s ELO “Down Came The Rain”
Sparks “Check Out Time 11 AM”
Howard Jones “Tin Man Song”
Van Morrison “Fame Will Eat The Soul”

hour two
Gypsy Rhythm “Missing”
Sweet “Tall Girls”
Mark Beckner “Sweet Addiction”
Joseph Hale “Time”
John Lennon “God (early version)”
Gary Numan “Down In The Park (outtake mix)”
Metronomy “Salted Caramel Ice Cream”
John Radcliff “Dreaming”
The Black Keys “Lo_Hi”
The Fools “The Runner”
Robert Palmer “Addicted To Love”
Year Long Disaster “Swan On Black Lake”

hour three
Aaron Fisher and Ghostfleet “Firetrucks”
Transvision Vamp “Veleveteen”
Scrap Iron Pickers “Junkyard Jesus”
YES “Machine Messiah (live)”
Tarja “Spirits of the Sea”
Axis Everything “Undersound”

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 is an encore of episodes 3 and 4, just to match up with this week’s RFC encore.

 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.

Today’s art was done very quickly Sunday, quietly so that Mrs. PopCulteer didn’t find out about it.

Not that I paint that loudly.

You see, today is January 19, and in addition to it being the day we observe Martin Luthor King Day this year, it’s also the anniversary of the day I met Melanie Larch at a Stark Raven CD Release party at The Charleston Playhouse.

That was 36 years ago. We’ve been a couple since 1990, and we finally got married in 2014.

Mel is not one to rush into things. In fact, we’d been together 16 years before she ever let me take a photograph of her. Mel hates having her picture taken. Strange for a veteran stage performer, I know, but I do not question the ways of mah queen. Today’s very quick and sloppy acrylic painting on cheap canvas board is based on that photo I took twenty years ago.

Since then, Mel has loosened up a bit, and has allowed me to take her photo nearly four more times. But she really hates it. If you have a photo you took of Mel and are still alive, count yourself lucky.

But, since Mel was very happy with this photo, and since she is the most important thing in my life and the anniversary of the day we met falls on a Monday, I decided to do a real-world painting inspired by that first photo for this week’s Monday Morning Art. I just had to rush to get it done without her finding out. Despite my shaky hands from an MG flare-up, I had to do this for my love.

If 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 classic 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.

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.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our 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. The Haversham stuff starts at 1 AM and tonight it’s all Nigel Pye and Psychedelic Shack.

Tomorrow, Radio Free Charleston will be a special encore presentation because your humble blogger normally records the show on Mondays, and I have other stuff to do today.

Anniversary stuff.

GI Joe Winterfest, the January show put on by the folks who do The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo, happens next weekend, and above you see a music video I made for last year’s show.

Weather permitting, your PopCulteer and his lovely wife will be heading West (it’s really a pleasant drive) to just South of Louisville, Kentucky for the GI Joe Winterfest, a toy show produced by the fine folks behind The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo (which happens in July). Check out the Facebook Event Page for full details and preview photos. I have not decided if I’m going to shoot video this year. I will take tons of photos for the blog, but I’ve got to do some major computer maintenance before I can crank out video, so I may not shoot as much, if any, just to lighten my workload.

I’ll probably at least do a music video, though.

This will be our fourth or fifth Winterfest, and it’s back at the home of The Kentuckiana show.  GI Joe Winterfest happens at the Paroquet Springs Conference Centre, at 395 Paroquet Springs Drive, in Shepherdsville, KY.  It’s not far at all from the South Louisville Antique Toy Mall, so most toy collectors ought to have an easy time finding it. Check out how cool it looks…

Kick off the new year with a a celebration of over 60 years of GI Joe. Find old and new 12 inch and 3 3/4 inch GI Joes, plus Star Wars, Super Hero figures, Marx, TMNT, Transformers and much more. In addition, There will be dozens of vendors  and the show promises lots of old and new Megos, Big Jim, Pop Culture items and much more.

GI Joe Winterfest is Saturday, with a Friday preview. Here’s the hours and details:

Saturday 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Admission Just $8.00
Early Bird Admission at 9:00 AM for $15.00

Friday Night Preview (5:00 PM-8:00 PM) for $30.00
(Preview includes Early Bird admission on Saturday)

All admissions payable at the doors.

Below we have music videos for the previous two years…

This week we head back to the first day of October, 2012, for Radio Free Charleston 170, “Regular Show Shirt.”

This episode is a valentine to Budget Tapes and Records, the legendary music and lifestyle emporium that was just then celebrating forty years of serving area music fans from their Kanawha City location, and managed to hang on almost another dozen years after this.

Our host segments originated from Budget, and we even have two songs by Farnsworth, recorded on location at the release party for their first EP at the legendary store.

RFC 170 also brought viewers a song from the Contemporary Youth Arts Company production of the Dan Kehde/Mark Scarpelli original, The Legend of Ginger and Billy Joe: The Stock Car Musical, as well as animation and a found film compilation by Frank Panucci.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
January 16, 2026

Charleston’s Restaurant Week is coming up from January 26 to 31, and it’s time for my annual reminder that, if you’re in the area, this is a great way to sample some of the Charleston area’s newest or trendiest restaurants at a discounted price.

We’re talking about “fine dining” here, so those discounted prices range from twenty-five to forty-nine bucks for a three-course meal for one person. This is not fast food, and you’ll want to be sure to scope out the menus ahead of time to make sure that the set selections at that price are to your liking.

Each restuarant offers an appetizer, entree and dessert, for one. Drinks are extra. And most of the restaurants give you a choice between two offerings for each course. This makes it more efficient for them, so don’t expect much in the way of substitutions.

You can find graphics with the Restaurant Week menus for each participating restaurant at the Facebook Page for Restaurant Week.

You can also find Steven J. Keith’s  detailed analysis of those menus at his blog.

Steven offers an enthusiastic rundown of the complete menus, and he’s more qualified to write about this event than yours truly because…I have no plans to try any of these special menus.

I think it’s a great idea, and it’s wonderful for the area. Foodies should definitely partake and sample as many of these great restaurants as they can.

But…as I have written about in PopCult many times, I have far too many dietary restrictions and my own sets of tastes and quirks that make attempting to try any of these meals downright dangerous, if not off-putting for me, personally.

Before I go any further, let me explain that I am not complaining about nor am I condemning any of these restaurants. Any restaurant that tried to exclusively cater to my food quirks would probably go out of business in a week. There’s just too much stuff I can’t eat, and an even longer list of stuff I won’t eat.

I posted a silly note about this on Facebook earlier in the week, and my comedic skills must have been diminished because most people reacted as though it were a sad lament. It was not. I was poking fun at myself. This is not a “poor me” column. It’s a “go ahead and laugh at me” column.

It could also be an “easy ways to kill Rudy” column, but hopefully that angry guy from KV Live won’t be reading this.

THINGS I CAN’T EAT

I have a lot of unusual dietary restrictions. I can’t eat mushrooms (or truffles or stuff like that). It’s not exactly an allergy. It’s an extreme toxic reaction. I do not pass anaphylaxis, I go straight to organ failure. I have to avoid mushrooms. It is a matter of life and death for me. Anybody who thinks this is something to joke about is just being an asshole.

I have a standard food allergy to strawberries, as well as many other berries that are supposed to be good for you. With these it’s itching, rashes, general misery, but nothing fatal.

I am allergic to rubbing alcohol, and alcoholic drinks burn enough that I consider myself allergic to them, too. This is no great loss since I could never stand the taste of any alcoholic beverages anyway. This includes beer. I have tasted beer before, just out of curiosity. I have never tasted urine, but I would imagine it tastes about like the beer I tried, so I’ll gladly pass on that.

It’s just as well, since I don’t show the usual signs of inebriation. A doctor once told me that I could drink until I died from alcohol poisoning without ever getting drunk. I’ve never had any desire to test that theory.

A few years ago I learned that avocado somehow counteracts the meds I take to control Myasthenia Gravis. This is apparently a rare reaction, but I managed to learn about it the hard way. It’s part of the joy of being a medical anomoly.

With mushrooms, alcohol, strawberries and avocado out of the question for me, that’s more than half of the restaurant week menus ruled out, and that’s not even taking my personal tastes into account.

THINGS I WON’T EAT

Personal tastes are where I draw a whole new set of boundaries. Some food I just don’t like. Nobody has any right to tell me I’m wrong for having my own tastes, and I don’t judge anybody who loves food that I find repulsive. I see way too much of people demonizing other people on social media because of what they eat or how they eat it. The food bullying is pretty pathetic, and says a lot about the person doing the bullying.

If somebody wants their steak well done, then let them have it well done. Get your head out of your ass and mind your own damn business instead of calling them “evil” on social media because they don’t like their meat cooked the same way as you.

For the record…I don’t even eat red meat anymore. About seven months ago I just lost any desire for it. It doesn’t even look like food to me anymore. Of all the evil things in the world today that you can call people out on, what they eat (unless it’s babies) is not in the top million.

I do have strongly-held opinions about what I will or won’t eat. I do not expect anyone else to conform to my tastes, and to be fair, I will refrain from posting some of my reasons for hating certain foods because I don’t want to do anything to lessen the enjoyment of those foods by other people.

Just accept that I like different things than you, and move on. In fact, you can have my share.

There are foods I find repulsive to the point that they nauseate me. These include mayonnaise, cole slaw, ham, bacon, deviled eggs, oysters, sour cream, candy corn, cucumbers (oddly enough, I like pickles), most jams and jellies and preserves and spaghetti-like pasta (it’s the shape, not the pasta itself). Again, I could write very funny reasons for each of those, but I see no need to possibly ruin them for folks who like to eat that stuff.

I also can’t stand the smell of smoked meat. It smells like a tire fire to me. I have been known to avoid streets where I know one of those BBQ trailers is parked because the smell is so offensive to me. I’ve been like this for years, and maybe that had something to do with me finally losing any desire to even eat a hamburger. I don’t miss it at all. I’m fine with chicken and fish as my main source of meatish proteins.

Of late I’m even feeling a bit tofu-curious.

When it comes to spicy food, I prefer flavor over heat. I just don’t like the taste of Jalapeno or Chipoltle. I’m fine with milder chiles.  And while I love chicken, I hate wings.  Too many of them are like licking battery acid off of a bone.  Anything “Buffalo,” again…you can have my share.

There are also foods of which I am simply not a fan. I wouldn’t starve myself, they were the only thing around, but if I ever eat pancakes or waffles, I skip the syrup. The combination sorta grosses me out. I find it hard to get excited about iceberg lettuce. If I can build a salad on any other green leafy thing, I will.  I find baked potatoes to be boring. It is the C-Span of side dishes.

There’s plenty of foods I love, but again, I don’t care if you like or hate them. You do you.

PICKING YOUR FOOD FIGHTS

My late friend, Lee Harrah, had a deep, unabiding, intense hatred of vegetable soup. I could never understand it, but I never tried to get him to change his mind. I love a good bowl of vegetable soup, but it was one of the things he hated most in the world, and it could Hulk trigger him into a rage.

He felt the same way about mermaids and Diane Keaton, so I just sort of changed the subject and tried not to bring those things up again.

My point there being, respect other people’s tastes. They may love something you hate, and hate something you love, and that’s okay. And if Restaurant Week sounds like fun to you, by all means go to it. It could be a lot of fun.

A last note: I do patronize many locally-owned restaurants, and most of my favorites are not taking part in Restaurant Week. And that’s okay, because most of my favorite places are inexpensive enough that you can feed two people, leave a nice tip and bring home leftovers for less than the price of the average Restaurant Week menu for one.

And I never get any grief for asking them to leave out something that might kill me. It has been my experience that the more expensive a restaurant is, the less flexible they are about adjusting their menu to accomodate your food allergies.

If you find the Restaurant Week offerings a little too expensive, or outside your tastes, let me recommend Dwight’s, Shuckers, Mediterranean Breeze or The Red Line Diner in Saint Albans; Shima’s in Nitro; Roma’s in Cross Lanes/Nitro; Graziano’s in South Charleston; Plaza Mayo in Kanawha City and Leonoro’s in Charleston.

And if you have other recomendations, feel free to leave them in the comments.  Mel and I are always up to try a new place. I just need to see the menu first to see if it’s safe.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and all our regular features.

20 years ago (tomorrow, actually), I posted a “Local Notes” story that tied together brief items on three local things. You can read it HERE.

It wasn’t a spectacular post, but revisiting it gives me an opportunity to address one of the curious things about PopCult.

Due to our origins as part of The Charleston Gazette, the local scene has always been a huge part of this blog. Being a blog about pop culture means that my reach exceeds my local grasp, and as the years have gone by I have written more and more about things that are not necessarily focused on Central West Virginia. I must be doing something right, because last year, while I wasn’t really paying attention, readership of PopCult more than doubled, and I’m confident that we actually have more daily readers than The Charleston Gazette-Mail does now.

Even though my local interest posts only attract a fraction of the readers of my book, toy, movie or cereal reviews or travel photo essays and videos, I keep doing them because it is a way to support the local scene, but it also lets me do something easier than writing a detailed review every day of the week. The weekly STUFF TO DO post, where I run a boilerplate and graphics, is sort of my half-day off, because it takes so little effort.

That’s why PopCult is regarded as a “local blog that isn’t always about local stuff,” as another esteemed blogger once said.

But back to that original post from January 16, 2006, in it I plugged three local things, and sadly two of them appear to be gone for good.

The first item promoted a “Briefs and Shorts” program put on by Kanawha Players. KP was designated as the official theater company of West Virginia for much of their existence, but sadly, it appears that existence has come to an end. The last event they actually held was a 100th anniversary performance of Overtones, the very first show they produced on November 3, 1922. The anniversary show was held November 26, 2022 at the Kanawha County Public Library.

A planned performance of The Vagina Monologues in early 2023 was cancelled. No events have been announced since. Their domain name has expired. The Facebook page has only had a dozen posts in the ensuing three years, none of them saying anything about them still being an ongoing concern.

I suppose that it’s possible that KP might be revived, but for the time being, we have to consider them defunct.

And that is a sad end for a theater company that has been responsible for some of the greatest moments in local theater for a hundred years.

The second item in that post was a plug for The  West Virginia International Auto Show, which happened the weekend of that post.

It wasn’t until I started updating this post that I realized that the WVIAS is apparently also no more than a memory. The last one was held in 2024. Last year’s show was cancelled unexpectedly, and with nothing scheduled for this year, it appears this event is apparently also defunct. The domain name has also expired. Nothing has been announced since last year’s cancellation and the fact that I either forgot that it was cancelled or never noticed in the first place is a clue that, just maybe, not enough people cared about buying new cars to make the event worthwhile.

I know personally, I don’t find much of anything exciting about new cars. Most of them look alike and have touchscreens for controls.  Add in the fact that new cars cost as much as a house these days, and I think we can figure out why this show ended.

On a happier note, the third item in that post was a plug for Rick Lee’s Blog. Rick’s Blog is still up so you can read it and see Rick’s amazing photography….but he has not updated it since 2012. Rick was one of the major proponents of most local blogs, and was very encouraging to me, and several other local blog-makers.  But he has moved on to other things.

And who can blame him? I mean, nobody reads blogs anymore. You’d have to be crazy to still be blogging in 2026.

Happily, Rick is still an active photographer, and you can see his work at his website, or actually all over the place because his work is in such demand.

And, making things even happier, since I’m writing about Rick here,  I don’t think he’ll mind if I swipe one of his images for the feature image today, since the original entry doesn’t have any graphics for me to mine for today’s post. At least I hope he doesn’t mind.

So credit for the feature image at the top of this post goes to Rick. the image (sans my 20 year logo) is  swiped from Rick’s website.  Go hire him if you need some photos taken. The man has an amazing eye and his compositional skills are a superpower.

And that is an updated look at what was in this blog (almost) exactly 20 years ago, today.