After taking a year off, and with no popular demand at all, we once again bring you a collection of Christmas-themed short films that are, shall we say, “less traditional” than those you might normally watch to get into the holiday spirit. Against all common sense this has become a new tradition! Some of these you may have seen before here in PopCult, while some are new to our readers. All of them, are pretty messed up, in their own ways. These are our olive branch to those of us who have more of a “Bah, Humbug” attitude toward the holiday on this Christmas season.

Our opening video this year is a heartwarming cartoon about ways to die at Christmas…

Returning from 2020, it’s a music video by The Dollyrots, conveniently called “Messed Up Christmas,” and it was written using contest entries from their fans that asked “What messed up thing do you want for Christmas?”

We continue with a short film from 2017 called “Sleigh,” starring Matt Berry and Nigel Planer…

Next up we bring you a parody of the 30th Anniversary of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” by the comedy crew of 22 Minutes…

Finally we bring you Ken Russell’s heartwarming holiday classic, “A Kitten For Hitler”…

In the spirit of the holiday season, I say, “There, that oughtta hold the little buggers.”

This week in the RFC Flashback, we re-re-re-present one of our most acclaimed episodes, our second “Show Without Words,” Radio Free Charleston 57, “Grumpy Shirt.”

We’ve had lots of requests to bring you this episode again. It’s loaded with great instrumental music, silent film, and tons of animation, and folks really love it. Maybe I need to keep my mouth shut more often.

Here we go, from January 2009, with music from Elemental Devices (AKA James Vernon Brown), Chuck Biel’s Punk Jazz and The Scrap Iron Pickers, plus a short film by Drew The Dramatic Fool and more. You can read the production notes here.

If you’re wondering about the gap of over a month between episodes 56 and 57 of RFC, in between these shows yours truly had a misadventure with black ice that claimed the life of the beloved red Cutlass Supreme. Nobody was harmed except for the car and some groceries. But there were no full-length episodes of the show for over a month.

Our chronological presentation of Radio Free Charleston will continue every Saturday as in The RFC Flashback.

The PopCulteer
December 8, 2023

Today in our weekly columnish post, we will continue to update you on our AIR Marathons, plus we have a wee bit of STUFF TO DO, while your humble blogger is on his way back from an undisclosed location (unless I decided to disclose it already, in which case, nevermind.

The AIR Marathon: Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and More!

All this week on The AIR, we have brought you marathons of our music specialty programs. This is  a great way to give new readers and listeners a chance to sample our shows, and also give our staff a week off from having to produce anything new.

The marathons will begin at 7 AM and run for 24 hours. If you miss anything, don’t worry. We’ve found ways to keep these shows in rotation.

Friday is the normal day for new episodes of our New Wave Music showcase, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat to debut at 3 PM, so today we play 24 hours of some of the best music of our lifetime.

Sydney Fileen (not her real name) brings you classic New Wave music from the golden age of roughly 1976 to 1986. As I’ve explained before, our friends at Haversham Recording Institute use psuedonyms in part as a tribute to their roots in the UK pirate radio scene (from wence Sydney was first heard as “Kelly Brown”), but also because they are all highly-paid and highly sought-after voice talents in the UK, and don’t want people to know that they’re doing these shows for free.

Following her days as a pirate radio Deejay, Sydney then began her career in legit radio and television announcing, and the rest would be history, if she were using her real name to present Big Electric Cat.

Friday you’ll hear classic episodes from the second and third year of Sydney’s show.

Saturday we will let Haversam’s Nigel Pye commandeer The AIR for 24 hours of mind-expanding music from Psychedelic Shack. Sunday it’s a departure as we bring you the best of The Comedy Vault from 7 AM until midnight.

And after that, The AIR will revert to its normal Schedule.

STUFF TO DO

Since this is being written a week in advance, we don’t have the full details for what’s happening this weekend, but here are a few highlights from folks who were kind enough to give us some advance notice. As I have been doing of late, this a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive (especially this week), and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday Minor Swing takes the stage. Saturday Sean Richardson, Eric Robbins and Ryan Errickson perform at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.  Thursday at 5:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin return with Swing for a good cause. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. The Appalachian Melting Pot, Ashley Best & the Set ‘Em Up Band are making their debut at The Empty Glass, Friday October 7th at 10 M.  With Ashley Best,writing & performing Country/Blues/Rock…a bit of Cow Punk if you will. Sunday at 10 PM The Carpenter Ants host the post-Mountain Stage Jam, after the second of two loaded 40th Anniversary editions of Mountain stage. We have graphics below for the rest of the weekend shows at The Glass.

Speaking Mountain Stage, it’s been a big couple of weeks for West Viginia’s musical calling-card to the world…

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern with the ‘rona surging again. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, expelled habitually-lying members of Congress, drunken elves, birds with attitude and other damned good reasons to be careful. 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.

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

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the weekend, roughly in order…

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer. Check PopCult for fresh content every day, even when your humble blogger is not physically in town. Come back for our regular features, too.

 

All this week on The AIR, we bring you marathons of our music specialty programs. This is  a great way to give new readers and listeners a chance to sample our shows, and also give our staff a week off from having to produce anything new.

The marathons will begin at 7 AM and run for 24 hours. If you miss anything, don’t worry. We’ve found ways to keep these shows in rotation.

Beatles Blast is hosted by your PopCulteer, and presents an hour of Beatles and Beatle-related music each week.  Today’s marathon cherry-picks 24 of the best episodes of the show, and will thrill and delight any die-hard Beatlemaniac with its mix of group, solo, rare and previously unknown music by the Fab Four, along with a bevy of interesting and incredible covers of the band’s greatest musical triumphs.

Some episodes also bring you rare interviews and documentary-style presentations that will enlighten you about some of the more obscure corners of The Beatles’ history.

Each week Beatles Blast is heard Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the week.

Check PopCult every day this week to see what show we’ll feature as our daily marathon while your humble blogger crawls off to recover from The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide.

All this week on The AIR, we bring you marathons of our music specialty programs. This is  a great way to give new readers and listeners a chance to sample our shows, and also give our staff a week off from having to produce anything new.

The marathons will begin at 7 AM and run for 24 hours. If you miss anything, don’t worry. We’ve found ways to keep these shows in rotation.

Wednesday’s marathon features my wife, Mel Larch, and her program devoted to the world of Musical Theatre, Curtain Call.

At 3 PM each Wednesday we offer up two hours of Curtain Call. Mel Larch brings you an hour of the best of musical theater, followed by a replay of a previous episode. Mel has over 130 episodes in the can, so you can expect a top-flight slab of Musical Theatre, carefully curated by Mel and showing off her expertise. You might hear classics of the stage, brand-new experimental works, or songs from the top shows currently running on Broadway or The West End.

The batch of Curtain Call editions in this marathon include anniversary celebrations of major shows, loads of salutes to new musicals, spotlights on overlooked shows and career-retrospectives of some of the greats of the stage.

Mel’s other show, MIRRORBALL, her celebration of all things Classic Disco, was featured as a marathon last Saturday, but will return with a bonus ten-hour marathon next Monday.

Check PopCult every day this week to see what show we’ll feature as our daily marathon while your humble blogger crawls off to recover from The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide.

All this week on The AIR, we bring you marathons of our music specialty programs. This is  a great way to give new readers and listeners a chance to sample our shows, and also give our staff a week off from having to produce anything new.

The marathons will begin at 7 AM and run for 24 hours. If you miss anything, don’t worry. We’ve found ways to keep these shows in rotation.

Today we showcase our flagship show, hosted by yours truly, Radio Free Charleston. To be specific, we’re running eight recent episodes of Radio Free Charleston Volume Five.

In case you’re wondering, haven’t heard, or just want to read it again, RFC Volume One was broadcast on WVNS Radio starting in 1989. RFC Volume Two is the video version of the show, which shines the spotlight on local music. RFC Volume Two is still an ongoing concern, although I produce it much less frequently than I did from 2006 to 20016, when I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis.

In 2014 I began RFC Volume Three as a weekly two-hour local showcase for Voices of Appalachia Radio.  When VOA mutated into The AIR a couple of years later, I re-christened it RFC Volume Four, and cut the running time to one hour per week. That was also when I began doing RFC International, which was where I played whatever non-local music I wanted for two hours a week.

In January 2020 I basically combined Radio Free Charleston and RFC International into one three-hour show, which oddly enough makes it almost exactly like the show I did for broadcast radio back three decades ago. Sometimes we recycle old episodes of RFC Volume Four and RFC International to fill out the three-hour show, and sometimes we just rip loose and do three full hours of coolness.

The end result of combining RFC and RFC International was creating a show that is not only more fun for me to do, but also has garnered way more listeners than any other online version of the program. So if you haven’t tried it yet, give it a listen all day Tuesday on The AIR.

Check PopCult every day this week to see what show we’ll feature as our daily marathon while your humble blogger crawls off to recover from The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide.

This week’s art is a hilariously tiny pastel crayon study that I cranked out a few weeks ago, and may turn into a more detailed painting at some point.

Essentially, I was trying different ways to do a city scene where it looked like it had just rained. This one came out best. These were done with pastel crayon on the back of large index cards.

While I’m employing some of the lessons I’ve learned from imitating Hopper here, I also tried to capture some of the elements of light and reflection that he didn’t focus on too much.

Basically, I wanted to try to do a street scene right after it rained. This was not based on any photo reference, but it was at least subliminally inspired by sights I saw walking around Chicago last summer after the tornados passed through.

I may run a small study based on a photo from that experience next week.

To see this one bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, all this week on The AIR, we bring you marathons of our music specialty programs. This is  a great way to give new readers and listeners a chance to sample our shows, and also give our staff a week off from having to produce anything new.

The marathons will begin at 7 AM and run for 24 hours. If you miss anything, don’t worry. We’ve found ways to keep these shows in rotation.

Today we showcase Herman Linte, and his progressive rock program, Prognosis.  Herman is a prominent UK voice talent and producer who has graciously agreed to provide us with a regularly-scheduled two-hour blast of the best progressie rock of the last fifty-plus years.

Of course, he does this under an assumed name so that he doesn’t violate any of his exclusivity contracts. Herman and his colleagues at Haversham Recording Institute have been doing shows for The AIR since 2016, and we are pleased to have them on board, especially since they do them for free.

Check PopCult every day this week to see what show we’ll feature as our daily marathon while your humble blogger crawls off to recover from The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide.

On this day in 1947, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire premiered on Broadway, starring Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Marlon Brando. In honor of this, above you see the acclaimed movie, boiled down to its essence.

Below you can see the even more acclaimed musical adaptaion of Streetcar…

Episode 56 of Radio Free Charleston, “DEVOBAMA Shirt” hails from November, 2008. This episode features searing hot rock from Dog Soldier, a really cool music video from The Button Flies, encore animation from Frank Panucci, and a trailer for the film “The Bride & The Grooms,” which was written and directed by Charleston native, Butch Maier.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been so long since we put this show together. Time flies, y’know. Check PopCult each week as we continue our chronological presentation of  Radio Free Charleston‘s past. You can read the original production notes HERE.

Speaking of chronological, here’s a bonus “half” episode that we did the following week, featuring music from the CYAC production of Scarpelli and Kehde’s MARY.  You  still have two chances to see this year’s production!

The PopCulteer
December 1, 2023

It took the entire month of November, but we have finally arrived at The Master List of every single thing I recommended in The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide.

I made changes to The Gift Guide again this year. Two years ago I started combining every day’s recommendations into a single post. This forced me to be more concise in my descriptions, which was a good thing. Instead of writing 4,000 words every day about three gift ideas, I managed to cover five gift ideas a day in about 1,500 words. This year, due to outside committments, I decided to cut back further. My original plan was to just have three gift ideas a day, in a single post, and wrap it all up the day before Thanksgiving. Then I’d do retro picks and retailer spotlights on the weekends.

This was working great, but after wrapping up my magazine deadlines in the middle of the month, I decided to keep going past Thanksgiving, and just have one Gift Guide post every day of the month. By the last week I was back up to including five gifts at a time, just to try to get everything in.

Because of the nature of how I did the gift guide this year, the links will take you to the post that includes the items listed, but you may have to scroll down a bit to find the exact item you’re looking for. I’ll leave out the Flashback Picks and group all the retailers at the bottom of the list. I’m also not going to bother listing the Turkey Day gag gifts.

With that said, let’s dive into the Master List…

TOYS

The HESS Holiday Truck: 2023 Police Truck & Cruiser

The Member’s Mark Elite Adventure Corps 4-Action Figure Pack

AUTO WORLD RALLYE 4+4 SLOT RACE SET HO SCALE

Barbie Fashionistas

Menards Rocket Launching Tower Model Railroad Structure

Merchant’s Row VII — Kit  Walthers Cornerstone

Drive ‘n Dine  Woodland Scenics

Bachmann Trains – Santa Fe Flyer Ready To Run Electric Train Set

UNION PACIFIC ROCKET BOOSTER TRAIN

The Great Garloo Action Figure

Ukrainian Defenders

Tura Satana Action Figure

BOARD GAMES

Monopoly Scrabble

Disney Space Mountain, All Systems Go

Adventure X: Jurassic World

BOOKS

GI Joe: The Military Years 1964-1968: The Unauthorized Action Figure and Accessories Checklist

The Charlton Companion

The Pacific Comics Companion

DIRECT CONVERSATIONS: Talks with Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators

Kahiki Scrapbook, The: Relics of Ohio’s Lost Tiki Palace

Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling

Ernie in Kovacsland: Writings, Drawings, and Photographs from Television’s Original Genius

Dressing Barbie

KEITH EMERSON (SIGNATURE EDITION)

Jack & Jill: Fury Hill-by Frank Conniff

Lunch Box Memories-by Jason Young

The Starchildren Saga (Tales from the HoloDrome;The StarHaven Tales: Beyond the HoloDrome)
by Thomas Wheeler

Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans by Kenneth Womack

The Beatles Please Please Me to With The Beatles (Beatles Album Series) by Bruce Spizer

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present (Paperback) by Paul McCartney

Polynesian Pulp: The Tiki Art Of Robert Jiménez

GI Joe: Action Soldier: Celebrating 60 Years of America’s Movable Fighting Man! 

Berserker!: An Autobiography by Adrian Edmondson

COMICS/GRAPHIC NOVELS

The Complete Hate

Superman For All Seasons

MIGHTY MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 1 

THE COMPLETE DON NEWTON CHARLTON PHANTOM

Murky World by Richard Corben

The Collected Works of Mike Vosburg

Boy Maximortal by Rick Veitch

MUSIC

Klaus Nomi-Nomi

The Pretenders-RELENTLESS

Various Artists-Produced By Tony Visconti  

Who’s Next / Life House

The Beatles “Now and Then”

The Beatles-Red Album (1962-1965) & Blue Album (1966-1970)

Ringo Starr-Rewind Forward

Pink Floyd-The Dark Side Of The Moon 50th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set

Theatre of the Absurd presents C’est La Vie-Madness

John Wetton: An Extraordinary Life

Dear Boy-Brian Diller

Artifacts- Hello June

Seed-Todd Burge

Gravel (Remix)-63 Eyes

That Grand Old Feeling-William Matheny

DRINKWARE

Munktiki Import – Whittle Exotica Mug

Tiki Farm RONGO-RONGO TIKI MUG

Trader Vic’s NOTU MUG (BLACK AND RED)

VIDEO

The Barbie Movie

Making Mr. Right

Guest House Paradiso

Fantastic Planet

FM

Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons The Complete Series

The Vincent Price Collection

RETAILERS-BRICK AND MORTAR

Kin Ship Goods

Nitro Antique Mall: The Kanawha Valley’s Pop Culture Emporium

Appalachian Books. A Moveable Feast Bookstore

Plot Twist Books

Taylor Books

Eclectic Goods Market

The Purple Moon

Budget Tapes & Records

Sulllivan’s Records

Orbit’s Records

Cheap Thrills

RETAILERS-ONLINE

Dammit Tees

House of Tabu/ Tabu Recordings

Rabin’s Relics

Nightmare1984: The Art of Adam Weaver

The Zerostreet Threadless Shop

HepCatz Design by Brenda Pinnell

Glen Brogan

MItch O’Connell

Cotswold Collectibles

Archie McPhee

American Science & Surplus

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe

Sierra Ferrell’s Store

Rockin’ Pins

Retro-A-Go-Go

And that is the end of that. Thank you for reading The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide. I hope you found it helpful and/or entertaining. I have to say, I think it turned out pretty good, considering that I was so frazzled that the first batch of graphics I posted in the blog had the year “2024” instead of “2023.”

That is today’s PopCulteer.  Check PopCult for fresh content every day, including several reliable regular features…and have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever floats your boat.

Next week, The AIR will run a different marathon each day shining the spotlight on one of regular programs. This will kick off Saturday with MIRRORBALL until Midnight,  and then Sunday will see 24 hours of The Swing Shift.  Starting Monday I’ll have a post every day to let you know what you can expect on our sister internet radio station.