Your humble blogger got tied up with real world stuff and was not able to record a new episode of Radio Free Charleston on Monday, so instead, this week we will debut our free-format program on Thursday at 2 PM, on The AIR. Tuesday we’ll run a specially-selected encore edition of the show. Either way, 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.  

Rather than leave you hanging with nothing much else here in PopCult today, how about I share just a few photos from my recent trip to Lexington, Kentucky for the Lexington Comic Con and Toy Show?

There are more photos and video on the way, and this show actually took place almost two weeks ago, but back-to-back trips meant I couldn’t even look at the images until yesterday. So over the next week, expect a few surprises. We’ll preview some of the fun here, like my comic-book nerd convention shirt that you see up at the top of this post.

We got back from Lexington on a Sunday, then left on a train for Washington, DC the following Wednesday. I didn’t take any cameras with me on that trip, preferring to spend a couple of days as a civilian for a change, but we did see a killer production of Pacific Overtures at Signature Theater. I’ll tell you about that on Friday.

For now, here’s just a taste of Lexington…

We got there really early, and got this photo of a nearly-empty hall Friday morning.

Thusday night, the VIP passes got us into the vendor area early. Man, they had tons of crap there.

We also got a free shirt each.

As a toy collector, I was a little disappointed to discover that 99.9% of the toys were from after 1980, and I really don’t collect Star Wars stuff at all, but if that’s your deal, there was a ton of it.

These were either cosplayers or delegates to a GOP convention.

This full-size dragon thing from “Avatar: The Last Airebender” was impressive as hell, and probably would be even more impressive if I had thought to include a human in the photo so you could tell that this thing was probably12 or 15-feet tall.

Kentucky Ghostubusters with an impressive Ecto-One, which wasn’t theirs. They said some guy just left it and told them not to let anybody sit in it. And also it didn’t run. It looks cool, though.

The reason we went. Tom Kenny signs a SpongeBob print for Mel (in the foreground). Video coming Sunday.

Aside from the convention, we went to visit the real-life Cocaine Bear. Actually it’s the stuffed carcass of the real-life Cocaine Bear, since he didn’t really go on a rampage and instead dropped dead on the spot, but that’s him! We’ll have more photos from the Kentucky 4 Kentucky Fun Mall in a day or two.

Outside the fun mall.

Just around the corner from Cocaine Bear we found an Army Surplus store. We’ll probably do a photo essay on them, too.