Today’s second entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a collection of items inspired by the carpet pattern from The Overlook Hotel, as seen in Stanley Kubrick’s adaption of Stephen King’s The Shining. 

Any devout fan of the movie will get a kick out of these cool things that let you bring a little piece of the horror and madness home with you.  These are all courtesy of Pop Kulture Vulture, a nifty online emporium of cult coolness that also sells stuff based on Ken Russell, Tor Johnson, The Exorcist and more high-quality terror inducements. But this entry will point you to the Overlook.

I actually have the button-up shirt, which is in low supply. I saw folks wearing this shirt with the distinctive pattern at WonderFest USA in June, and it didn’t hit me where it was from until I got to Anthony Taylor’s table (he’s the guy behind Pop Kulture Vulture and the organizer of Monsterama, which we may go to next year) and saw the hotel keychains.  When the circuits in my brain all connected, I bought one on the spot (and a keychain, too).

The cool part about this shirt (which is heavy duty and high quality) is that not everybody recognizes it. Many folks will just think that it’s a particularly striking pattern…but when somebody does recognize it, it’s like an instant secret handshake.

Now, if button-up shirts aren’t your thing, you can also get this pattern on a wallet, handkerchief, shower curtains, throw blankets, face masks, aprons, socks, license plates, scarves, arm sleeves, neck ties, and more. The rabid fan of The Shining can be decked out nearly head-to-toe in Overlook Hotel swag. And as the person giving the gift, you can enable the obsession, and possibly be spared if they snap and start chasing people around with an axe.

What better way is there to celebrate the big Winter holiday than by celebrating the big Winter movie?

Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy: Bearclaw’s World Presents Vol 1 Plates 1 – 52
by Brion Woods (Author), Janice Wagoner (Editor)
Independently published
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8332906152
$20 from Amazon

Our first pick in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide today is an exquiste art/coloring book by local creator, Brion Woods. Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy collects 52 of his drawings depicting his fantastic creations.

Brion’s intricate drawings bring to life scenes of warriors, monsters, fierce battles and adventures from a fantasy world that will challenge your imagination.  A longtime devotee of Dungeons and Dragons, Woods has created his of characters that just hint at the tales yet to unfold.

We go to the Amazon description:

The first in a series of coloring books, photo arrays, gaming modules and stories from the adventures and imagination of Brion “Bearclaw” Woods. This coloring book contains 52 impressive drawings meant for an adult audience. They are extremely detailed to keep the user entertained as they find themselves being pulled into Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy

Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy is a perfect gift for any fan of Sword & Sorcery and D&D.  It works well as an art book, but is intended as a high-end adult coloring book, which will draw you even further into the worlds that Woods has imagined for you.  Plus you’re supporting a local creator.

Not only is this a special gift of art, it’s also the first of what is meant to be an entire universe of multi-media realizations of Brion Woods’ creative ambitions.  It’s your chance to get in on the ground floor of something…magic. Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy: Bearclaw’s World Presents Vol 1 Plates 1 – 52 can be ordered from Amazon, and you’ll have it in plenty of time for holiday gifting.

This week’s art is me revealing a bit of my process. Based on a few photos I took in Chicago, this is the beginning of a painting of a couple of distinctive buildings. For this small study on textured paper, I’d planned to lay down a rough ink wash sketch in one color, then build on that with a variety of media until I got it looking the way I wanted it.

This was supposed to be the first step, but when I got this far, I decided that I wanted to go with a different shade of blue for my base, instead of the mix of sky blue and emerald that I used here.  (There’s also some indigo and black in the mix for shading). I’ll be starting this one over, probably with a tweak to the composition as well.

However, this version wound up looking pretty good, despite not being what I wanted my final vision to resemble, so I’m sharing it here as a “happy accident.”

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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 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.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of conceptual random comedy a classic early episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we devote ten hours to five more episodes of Prognosis.  That hat Halloween is out of the way, we are back to alternating between Prognosis and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat for the next several weeks, because we’re going to be pulling the early episodes of those shows from the server soon to make room for newer programs. After they’ve been offline for a year or so, we’ll bring them back into rotation but for now, you can hear them Monday evening into Tuesday morning, and then those episode will go on hiatus.

This week we are briging you most of a Sunday Evening Video that ran nearly four years ago.  The reason for this is that I think this is a really cool set of videos that you’ll enjoy seeing again, and more importantly, the video I had planned for this spot got yanked from YouTube right after I composed a long post to go alongside it. So…recycling was the path of least resistance. 

Admittedy, your PopCulteer is not exactly up-to-date as a gamer. I resent any controller that doesn’t have joystick. I still haven’t figured out how to watch Twitch. And to be honest, the last video game system I bought was a Colecovision.

That would be over forty years ago.

However, at the time, owning one made me a cutting-edge gamer.

Tonight we bring you a few brief histories of the Colecovision gaming system. Some of them contradict each other in places. Some of them are from the UK, so they may seem a bit off to US viewers.

This is a public service, so that when you read about videogames here in PopCult, you can see my immediate frame of reference.

From July, 2010, we have what was supposed to have been the sixth, and final installment of our coverage of FestivAll 2010.  In this episode you will see Option 22, Brian Diller, Bare Bones and The Velvet Gypsies. You’ll also get glimpses of Jude Binder, Kitty Killton and the Musical Easels project with Adrian DeQuiros. This might’ve been our first full HD edition of the show, too.

Now, the fun part of this was that I’d shot so much material during FestivAll that, a mere three episodes later, I managed to squeeze out a seventh installment, and even had host segments that I’d shot back in June when I was filming everything else. You’ll see that in a few weeks in this space.

As has been tradition for more than the last decade, the first entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is this year’s HESS Toy Truck. And this year, their sixtieth year of producing a cool toy truck for the holidays, they’ve gone all-out with a triple-threat twist on a classic toy.

The 2024 Hess Fire Truck with Car and Motorcycle is packaged in a specially marked product box that commemorates their milestone anniversary as the official 60th Anniversary toy.

As has been the case every year, this new heroic emergency response trio is the most feature-packed holiday Hess Toy Truck team ever – loaded with a record number of animated lights, sounds, motors, and chrome detailing. It’s more than a fire engine. It’s three vehicles and a light show.

The classic red, cab-forward, aerial ladder Fire Truck is remarkably embellished with white body side striping, glistening chrome details, emergency light bar, searchlights, and a towering ladder. Each of the 4 cab-top buttons activate a unique realistic sound (truck horn, European emergency siren, traditional emergency siren, engine start/idle) synchronized with a different animated light pattern. A switch on the chassis underside enables the truck’s 43 brilliant red, white & blue emergency lights to operate in steady or flashing mode. The triple-tier aerial extension ladder, with click-turn 360˚ rotation and 60˚ elevation, extends to over 15”. The ladder is flanked by two super bright multi-directional searchlights, each with click-turn 180˚ vertical and 270˚ horizontal rotation for maximum search visibility. Two illuminated transport holds house the fire chief car (accessed through a button release rear lift gate and a pull-out ramp which triggers a motion-activated hydraulic sound) and the motorcycle (which can be accessed with a quick press of a button above the dual-purpose fold-down ramp doors on either side of the truck). As the official 60th Anniversary Hess Toy Truck, a special commemorative illuminated ‘60’ insignia is embedded into the front grille and embossed on each of the side ramp doors.

The red Fire Chief car sports ‘racing-style‘ white striping. Completing the sleek design is a rear spoiler, tinted windows, and chrome accessories – including emergency light bar, front and rear bumpers, and wheel covers. A switch on the underside of the chassis activates the 37 multicolor grille, bumper, emergency, and side running lights in steady mode. The speedy pull back motor propels the car for a quick response to any emergency!

The red rescue-style motorcycle carries a rider clad in a safety suit with contrasting white piping and chrome firefighting backpack. A turn of the rider’s helmet activates the 4 head and taillights in steady-on mode. The ‘rev-and-release’ friction motor propels the high-speed bike forward in flat or wheelie position!

The 2024 60th Anniversary Hess Fire Truck with Car and Motorcycle is sold exclusively at HessToyTruck.com for $45.99 plus tax with free standard shipping* and Energizer® batteries included.

It’s a killer toy fire engine, with loads of extras, and it’s a great collectible for kids of all ages.

The PopCulteer
November 1, 2024

It’s November first and that means it’s time to start the most anticipated series of posts in PopCult, our annual Gift Guide.

Because of some unusual circumstances (I have a magazine deadline falling in the middle of the month, and at the same time I’m aiding my lovely wife in her recovery from major surgery) we’re changing the ground rules this year.

Each weekday you can expect two posts.  One will offer up a single gift suggestion, while the second may contain multiple gift ideas (or it may not).  Since the readership for this blog fairly well plummets on weekends, I won’t be running the Gift Guide on those days. Our regular features will continue on their regular days, so we will still have fresh content every day.

The last day for The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide will be November 29. The master list will be in The PopCulteer on the following Friday.

As for what you can expect…look for one more post later today, our first day will be a toy, as always, and our second day will see two posts on Monday.  Beyond that you can expect the usual mix of comics, toys, music, video, trinketry, art and apparel. You’ll just have to check every day to see what pops up.

This is always a little overwhelming for your humble blogger, but it’s also something that people ask about all year long, so this first entry will serve as today’s PopCulteer column and then I’m off to write the first post.

Check PopCult often for new entries in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide and all our regular features and notes on our programming on The AIR.

It seems appropriate on Halloween to bring you a song about one of the scariest things facing us…the possibility of the worst president in history getting re-elected next week and carrying out his plan to destroy the country. Join us in a little whistling past the graveyard as we hope for the best.

A few weeks ago I told you about a new Substack project by Douglas Imbrogno, and old friend and key player in the creation of this blog. Allow me to repeat myself, in case you missed it.

Doug’s new Substack is called Notes Before You Vote, hosted by AMP Media, and it’s a bit of an outlet for him to express overtly political thoughts and musings without intruding on his other projects like WestVirginiaVille and TheStoryIsTheThing.

Here’s what Doug told me about this project…

At the DNC, Michelle Obama exhorted us to “do something,” while Tim Walz urges us “to get in the game,” with under 60 days to the election. Here’s my doing something.

Notes Before You Vote is a collection of short videos compiled and created by Doug that are filled with pertinent, thought-provoking tidbits of information in an easy-to-digest bite-sized form, perfect for sharing on social media.  As the home page says, these are “Some important things to consider before you cast your vote for the future direction of America in the Nov. 5 Presidential Election.”

Today we’re bringing you a music video (seen at the top of this post) that Doug created for his old friend (and mine), Paul Calicoat. Doug writes extensively about Paul’s song HERE.  About Paul, Doug writes…

Paul Callicoat is a fabulous West Virginia singer-songwriter and one of the state’s finest lyricists and turners-of-musical-phrases. Paul’s soulfulness and heart is all over his music.

This is just one of the many songs and videos you can find at Notes Before You Vote . Just Tuesday he posted am excellent song by Chris Haddox, and you might as well subscribe so you don’t miss any of the new entries, which will be coming fast and furious in the coming days. Visit Notes Before You Vote for thoughtful, truthful and common sense infotainment about the most consequential election of our lifetimes.

Your humble blogger is still in caregiver mode, while also trying to get a head start on The PopCult Gift Guide (which starts this Friday), so we are onced again resorting to a stripped-down, graphic-heavy indicator of cool events happening all over the Charleston and adjacent areas.

Mrs. PopCulteer is recovering nicely,  but yours truly is still a bit distracted.

Not too distracted to remind you that clocks “fall back” an hour this weekend, Sunday at 2 AM, to be exact.

Because of real life happenings, this week we’re still skipping the boilerplates, Easter eggs, running gags and all that jazz, and just giving you graphics for those shows whose organizers were wise or kind enough to create images with the important info within them, and then leave those images where I might find them.  So here’s a selection of STUFF TO DO , including Halloween night, All Saints Day and the ensuing weekend, roughly in order…

Continue reading

Really, it’s not a big deal. I mean, this is the second time we’ve hit episode 200, and if you add up all the previous incarnations of the show and toss in The RFC MINI SHOW and RFC International, we’ve done around 775 episodes.

Still, a new week brings a new RFC on The AIR.  And this week  Radio Free Charleston presents three hours of listening enjoyment for you. 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.

To show you how much this isn’t really a big deal, the cool graphics accompanying our post this week are just recycled from episode 200 of our video show. Waste not, want not, you know.

We try to keep things normal in our first hour. We open with a new live track from Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates.  Then we bring you new tracks by Kate Fagan, Corduroy Brown, Skafish, The Surfrajettes and Paul Calicoat. You’ll read more about Paul’s new song, and see a video and link to the cool place from whence it originated on Thursday.

We also sneak in alternate versions of songs by Sierra Ferrell and King Crimson (back-to-back, no less!).  And then we dive into the archives for our video shows.

I had the idea to bring you the songs from the 200th video episode of the show, and once I started, I decided to keep going, filling up the second and third hour with songs recorded for several subsequent episodes, and taking up most of the third hour this week with a documentary about the band 4TET, which expanded to nine members so they could do a mini tour playing the classic Bitches Brew album by Miles Davis.

I feel it sort of shows off the variety of music that we’ve brought you over the last three and a half decades.

Check out the playlist below. Where possible, live links will take you to the artist’s pages.

RFC V5 200

hour one
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “Restless Spirit (live)”
Kate Fagan “2 Good 2 B True”
Corduroy Brown “Cross Your Mind (live at Blenko)”
Sierra Ferrell“Dollar Bill Bar (alternate version)”
King Crimson “Starless (Elemental Mix)”
Orville Rex “Lightning Bolt Chewing Gum”
Rat Ship “When Our Blood Connects In The Cracks Of The Floorboards”
The Surfrajettes “Chiffon Daydreams”
Skafish “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone”
Government Cheese “American Band”
Frenchy & The Punk “Hypnotized”
Paul Calicoat “Only Up (Election Day)”

hour two
Farnsworth “20 Days”
The Laser Beams “Shut Up, I Love You”
HARRAH “Shingles And Tar”
The Velvet Brothers “All I Know”
WATT 4 “I Don’t Deserve You”
WATT 4 “Bad Situation”
Super Heavy Duty “Here I Be”
The Possum Kingdom Ramblers “Godzilla”
HARRAH “Coda (I Gotta Get Outta Here)”
Elephant In The Room “Running From The Stars”
Sasha Colette “You Had Me”
Tyler Childers “Harlan Road”
Anthony Hoey “Parasites”

hour three

Diablo Blues Band “Diablo Blues”
The Company Stores “Billie Jean”
Chad Foss & Sean Sydnor “Where I’m Going”
4TET and More “The Bitches Brew Project Documentary”

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 we continue our special Halloween Programming until 8 PM, then we pick it up again Wednesday afternoon.