The PopCulteer
December 24, 2021

I want to wish everyone a happy Christmas and holiday, whichever ones you observe, or don’t. Just have a good time and enjoy your days off. We are once again facing a holiday season and new year filled with uncertainty and justifiable concern.  Melanie and I are taking the time to enjoy each other and we hope that we can get back to some sense of normalcy in the new year. We are cautiously optimistic, with the same amount of caution that we’ve had for much of this year.

To make things easy on myself, we’re just going to have a few links and items today, since most of our readers check us out at work, and a big chunk of our readership is out doing more important things today.

Next week I’m going to schedule “Best of 2021” marathons on The AIR all week, so that I can slack off and enjoy some free time to the end of the year. We’ll still have fresh content every day here in PopCult, but some of it’s going to be half-assed. Expect a photo essay of what I got for Christmas, and maybe a big year-end essay in next week’s PopCulteer.

But today, here’s what we got…

Still reeling from the death of Charlie Tee from COVID last week, this week it was another punch to the gut with the COVID-related passing of J.T. Smith, a friend of over fifteen years from IWA East Coast, Hot Topic and LiveMix Studio.  That’s J.T. at the head of this post.

J.T. was just one of those guys that everybody loved. He never failed to put a smile on my face. I feel that there are many people more qualified than I to write about his life. He loved his daughter, his horror movies and Richard Cheese, and this is going to leave another huge hole in Charleston’s creative scene.

I don’t have any details on a memorial service or anything yet. If I can find out in a timely manner, I’ll update this post.

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West Virginia Native Kelsey Chapman has a great piece at The Independent UK about how it’s okay to be really pissed off at both Joe Manchin and Better Midler after this week’s BS flinging contest between the two. You can read it HERE.

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I try not to cover politics here in PopCult because I usually get too angry, but I do want to take note that anybody who was surprised when Joe Manchin stabbed the Democrats in the back and went into business for himself at the expense of the people of West Virginia really must not have been paying attention in 1996 when Manchin lost the Democratic primary for governor to Charlotte Pritt, and then campaigned vigorously for geriatric Republican Cecil Underwood.  The man can only be counted on to continuously prove that sometimes the lesser of two evils is only lesser by a tiny, almost imperceptable amount.

I actually wound up trimming several minutes of me ranting about politics out of this year’s Radio Free Charleston Christmas special.

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I can’t believe the idiot from those awful local KIA commercials is going to run for governor. Maybe the car dealer in the fairy outfit will run against him.

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Speaking of idiots, if you’re not vaccinated against COVID for anything other than a legitimate medical reason, you’re an idiot. Please grow some freaking common sense and go protect yourself and everyone around you.  If you disagree, feel free to leave a comment, which I will then edit to say something completely different just to amuse myself.  If you don’t like that idea, start your own blog. Back to the original topic, there is some promising news about another new vaccine in the works. You can read about it HERE.

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I’m starting to veer too far into politics here, so I’m just going to call it a day and jump off, wishing you the best this holiday season on the way. Thanks for reading PopCult and keep checking back for fresh content every day.