Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

Last Week In Charleston

We’ve had an interesting seven days here in Charleston, so while Blogger is having one of its “no, you can’t post an image” snits, let’s review:

Last Monday, I delivered episode two of Radio Free Charleston and it went online here at the Gazz. I’m very proud of this show, and I’m hard at work on episode three. Kudos to Steve Beckner and The Sleeping Dons for treating us to fantastic music, and thanks to Frank and Brian for their animated bits. Special thanks to my mole at Warners for getting me the sneak peek at the new Batman trailer.

Tuesday was a quiet day, except for me discovering a slow leak in the shutoff valve to my water main.

Wednesday some rich jerk ate an expensive dinner in South Hills, yet it somehow was deemed newsworthy. You can read an insider’s take here, courtesy of Hippie Killer. I suppose that, if the wait staff had died of heat exposure while trapped in the bus without air conditioning, it would have been an act of aggression, like the suicides in Gitmo.

More importantly on Wednesday, I got to have dinner with Mel at Graziano’s downtown, then checked out The Sleeping Dons at the Vandalia, where they valiantly struggled to perform in a room full of jabbering lawyers. The band was great. The lawyers, not so great.

On Thursday, this week’s Toy Of The Week arrived from Hong Kong. You’ll have to wait until later in the week to see what it was. It is cool, though. Friday was spent waylaid by a toothache.

Over the weekend, something….different happened. I have been actively scouting bands to appear on Radio Free Charleston. For only the second time since I’ve been going to listen to bands (over the last twenty years), I had to excuse myself and take off without meeting the band and offering words of encouragement. They were just so bad. I’m not going to name them, in the unlikely event that it was just a bad night, but man, I don’t think I’ll be giving them a second chance unless I’m forced to at gunpoint. I had to come home and crank up some vintage Beatles just to get the awful noise out of my head.

Ending on a happier note: I also got to babysit my nearly-five-month-old nephew, Willy, and pulled out an old radio broadcast of Radio Free Charleston, from which I will harvest this week’s Song Of The Week. Also cool this weekend, but sadly not online, Rusty Marks had a fantastic article in the Sunday Gazette-Mail about the Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville. Any fan of vintage toys owes it to themselves to seek this out. Rusty always does a wonderful job, and it was great reading about this cool local attraction. I’ve been meaning to go since the museum opened five years ago, but I don’t make it up that way very often. Rusty’s article makes me want to plan a special trip.

So it was an interesting week, from the debut of RFC episode two, to a visit from our puppet-in-chief, to bad music, to babytime and a neat article on Marx Toys. It’s amazing how interesting your week can seem when you’re killing time waiting for Blogger to allow you to post your Monday Morning Art.

6 Comments

  1. Longtime Listener

    Okay, what band sucked? inquiring minds want to know

  2. Pass the Raid

    You were warned not to go listen to the Carpenter Ants!

  3. Rudy Panucci

    I’m not naming names, but it WASN’T the Carpenter Ants. Insects may have been involved, but I’m cool with the Ants.

  4. Aaron the Anteatter

    “The best way to control Carpenter Ants is to find and destroy the nests. This is often easier said than done. Recent studies have shown that carpenter ants follow distinct scent trails between the satellite colonies and the parent nest. Carpenter ants also rely on scent trails to recruit their nestmates to food. With patience and a little effort, homeowners can use this trailing behavior displayed by carpenter ants to locate and eliminate the nests.”

    Source: University of Kentucky Entomology Website

    They have learned how to control this serious problem in Kentucky.

    The strain of Carpenter Ant we have in Charleston is much scarier. The Charleston Carpenter Ant is led by a large egocentric Ant and, when swarmed together, produces a terrible sound. Charleston Carpenter Ants have been known to cause nausea, ringing in the ears and individual Ants often are a blight on Mountain Stage.

    The best strategy for eleminating Carpenter Ants in Charleston is to avoid any venue in which they appear. Charleston Carpenter Ants tend to operate at the expense of other, more talented, organisms. If you spot Charleston Carpenter Ants any place in Charleston, especially in a bar, report to the owner that you will not return until they completely remove these pests.

    By working together, we can end this plague on our fair city.

  5. Anonymous

    So the band that sucked had something to do with the Beatles?

  6. Anonymous

    As a detective sort of guy who is not dumb, I have deduced that Rudy is talking about my band FURRY PALACE. I bet he is the guy who yelled ‘you suck’ and walked out during our third song. He shows the typical mundane disdain for that which he cannot understand, specifically in this specific instance, that we can commune with the spirits of animals, and dress like them, and play music celebrating them, and wear suits that sort of make us look like them with holes strategically cut in the suits so that we can have sex as animals with other people dressed like animals, but never with animals so don’t get all pissed off and stuff.

    While as yet we do not have the social status and recognition of other oppressed groups such as gays, negroes, and them filthy little midgets, we are working towards the recognition true oppression would indicate. As part of the organized effort to keep us from the mainstream of antagonistic society, Rudy has fallen in line with those who ignore us in disgust. Furries are people too.

    If you’d like to read more about my world, please see:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fursuit
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_pony

    And our music is damn good! We’ll be at the Empty Glass next Tuesday.

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