RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK
At church Sunday night, after enduring a 100 degree day in Hollywood, my friend Amanda’s dog Zeus takes a quick time out to cool his tummy on the floor of the church. Cute!
During a very dramatic scene in the “Magnum, p.i.” episode “Unfinished Business,” the Music Supervisor on the show decided to underscore the scene with this song from Genesis called “The Brazilian.” It’s an amazing instrumental piece that I’ve never heard from them before, but once I heard it I was hooked!
Monday the 10th – HOME SWEET HOME! – Almost like magic, I automatically sprang awake in my Palm Springs hotel room at noon, leaped from my bed and started packing up to go home. It had been a very relaxing trip, but I was ready to get home. I left the room by 2, gassed up and hit the road. Traffic was great for a Monday afternoon. After only a few hours on the road I reached my house in good time, with a quick stop off at my mailbox first to pick up my packages. Once I got back and gave Roxy and Spooky some pets, I started unpacking a bit. I checked my mail, answered some e-mails, and did some work around the house. Then I grabbed a short nap on my couch. When I got up later to do my auditions I found that I was actually a little rusty! It took me a while to get with the groove again. I made a plan for the new week and headed to bed. It had been a great weekend trip to Palm Springs, but it was good to be back.
Tuesday the 11th – FAREWELL TO A FRIEND; PART 2! – There were lots of reasons to go see my doctor, so at noon I got up and prepared for my 2pm appointment. My allergies had been simply awful lately. Lots of sinus drainage had made my vocal cords inflamed; between a combination of the drainage itself and the constant, necessary clearing of my throat. I had also been having a lot of sinus headaches because of the engorged sinuses. To top it all off, I had developed some sort of weird heat rash on my right elbow. But good ol’ Dr. A got me all fixed up with a new sinus medication (the other allergy medicines he had tried with me had some pretty nasty side effects). He also gave me a cream for the rash, and renewed a prescription for some powerful cough medicine I use when my nasal drainage gives me coughing spells. It minimizes the urge to cough and strain my vocal cords. I went off to my local AAA office to see about transferring the title of my first Gran Torino to my sister and brother-in-law in South Dakota. But they weren’t aware of how South Dakota handles such transfers, so I need to acquire some more information before I transfer it. As you know my brother-in-law Roger has been working hard on getting the old girl running again; no easy task. Now that it’s running, he can get it down to the body shop for some minor repairs that occurred to the body when the transportation company who hauled it to South Dakota dinged it on their trailer. I stopped by McDonald’s to get some food, and then went home to do some tracks for Go 96.3 in Minneapolis. Luckily my voice was able to produce those effectively. Then it was time to go over to Bang Zoom studios in Burbank to do some more work on Project X. The session went fast but was difficult because of all the throat-clearing I had to do because of my allergies. I’m looking forward to seeing how this new medicine the doctor prescribed for me will work given my issues. Fingers crossed! I got home and met up with my assistant Sara so we could go have dinner at Jerry’s Famous Deli. A friend from South Dakota called me with some bad news they had heard. My ex-wife Jamie, the mother of my children, passed away on August 3rd due to lung cancer. I knew she had been dealing with it in the past, but I heard she had beat it and was doing well. But apparently it returned and ultimately claimed her life. After losing my pal Terry a few weeks ago, this news seemed like a double whammy. After I got back home and did my auditions, I just sat around and engaged in some deep thoughts and prayers about my absent friends. Though I hadn’t been in contact with her for about 15 years, it’s never good news to hear that someone you’ve known so well in the past is no longer around. In particular it’s sad to know that my kids no longer have a mother. Though we didn’t exactly see eye to eye, I always thought that in our advanced age we may return to speaking terms so we could laugh about how stupid we both were in our youth. But alas, that is not to be.
Wednesday the 12th – UH OH! – Bright and early I was up and ready to go for another “Sonic Boom” Voice-Over session. But as soon as I opened my mouth I knew there was trouble. My voice was having serious issues. I had particular problems doing my Cubot voice. The part of my vocal cords that I use to perform the Cubot voice is the exact section that is suffering inflammation. So I went in to the session with advance apologies to director Jack Fletcher. Strangely enough, a few other castmembers were dealing with voice and health issues too. So it’s not just me, apparently. I had to cancel the US Airways session I had scheduled for later in the day, as my voice was simply not cooperating. I got home and could muster enough voice to do some more stuff for Go 96.3 in Minneapolis (that voice is a different vocal placement than the Cubot voice and the US Airways voice) so when I finished that I took a nap and vowed not to say another word the rest of the day so my vocal cords could repair. When I got up later I cleaned my desk, sorted through old files and cleared stuff out, paid bills, and I could manage enough to do some auditions. Oddly, my lower register was unaffected. Thankfully the auditions required me to use that area of my vocal cords exclusively. It was the higher register I was having difficulty with. Hopefully it will all be better tomorrow when I returned to do more Project X stuff. I made some soup and a sandwich and watched another “Magnum, p.i.” episode.
Thursday the 13th – A VEXING VISIT! – Roxy and Spook seem to know when it’s high noon, because it’s consistently around that time when they get on the bed and start craving attention; crawling all over me. I guess there are worse ways to be awakened. It was a very hot day out, as we’re starting a heat wave in Los Angeles which will last several days. It was nice to be inside most of the day. I did some more work on transferring the title to the Gran Torino, and then worked on some more stuff around the house. I was still having serious voice issues, and sadly the only way for the vocal cords to truly rid themselves of the inflammation is uninterrupted voice rest. That is, do NOT talk for several days! Well, with my schedule, that’s rather impossible. So I’ll just have to muddle through somehow. I went back to Bang Zoom in the evening to do more Project X stuff. It was a very rough session, and I was thankful it was short. But it was a struggle for sure. When the session was over I met up with Sara and my pal Emily for dinner at Paty’s. I was drained from the session, and I stayed mostly quiet. I was glad they had each other to talk to. I went home and grabbed a quick nap, and then got up for some auditions. While I was on my computer around midnight doing some work, with Roxy sound asleep on the floor downstairs in the living room, the strangest thing happened. Just over my fireplace on a custom-built rack, I have 3 of the Master Replicas “Star Wars” light sabres; Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader. When you turn them on they have lighting and sound effects like an actual light sabre. But in order to turn them on you have to physically move a switch from the OFF to the ON position. As I’m sitting there minding my own business, completely out of nowhere the Anakin Skywalker light sabre TURNS ON! Roxy got up from a dead sleep and ran over to the light sabre on the mantle and stared at it as it continued glowing and humming. I was wondering what the heck was going on. When inexplicable stuff like that happens your mind goes through a million different thoughts in a millisecond. How did it happen? Is that a built in mechanism to let me know the batteries were getting low? What’s a logical explanation for it? I ran downstairs, moved Roxy out of the way and turned the switch back to the OFF position. Then I was filled with a sense of what may have truly happened. Was it my friend Terry returning to mess with me, which he always used to like to do? People say that spirits sometimes have an attachment to the things they were close to in life. And oddly enough, right next to my light sabre display, is my Robo-Elvis mannequin. And the Robo-Elvis mannequin is wearing the boots Terry used to wear when he performed as Elvis. He gave them to me several years back when he got too ill to do his Elvis act any longer. I pictured him laughing wildly as I scrambled to turn the light sabre off, unable to explain its activation. There was no other logical way to justify it, other than to surmise that my best friend Terry Crisp…had stopped by to mess with me one final time…and say a final goodbye in his own unique way.
Friday the 14th – A VERY TOUGH DAY! – This day should have, for all intents and purposes, been a Friday the THIRTEENTH instead of the fourteenth. When I got up at 9 for the rescheduled US Airways session, I decided to take Roxy to the groomer’s first for a bath. And when I got in to Voice Trax West and started the US Airways session, we all agreed that my voice was not up for the task. This project in particular is something I need 100% of my vocal abilities for. Because stuff that I record today, needs to match up with stuff I recorded months, even YEARS ago once the computer starts compiling the sentences from the bank of vocal tracks in the system. So we agreed to meet next week and try it again after a weekend’s worth of voice rest. I called my other two gigs I had scheduled for that day; a pick-up session for the amusement park ride in Abu Dhabi and a Marvel cartoon session, and explained that I wouldn’t be making it for vocal reasons. They fully understood. Disappointed by this, I went to get some groceries in a state of utter silence. I got home and put them away, and then went to Michael’s Crafts to look over my Lassie cel. The way the framer did it initially wasn’t to my liking, so I told him I would come by at some point and we would redesign it together. We took the set-up apart and did some work. It looked like the matte was going to have to be recut with a smaller aperture because the registration lines on the bottom of the cel were clearly visible. Those lines were put on the cel by the animators to let the camera operator know how the shot was to be framed. Like all of the other black outlines on the cel, it had been Xeroxed on by a photo copier; a technique they used to call Xerography. Instead of paying a team of inkers to trace the animated paper sheets on to animation cels, they developed a technology to run the cels through a photo copier and achieve roughly the same (though less vibrant) result. Back in the 60’s when this was developed; it sped up the animation process, but put lots of inkers out of work. Well, these Xeroxed lines come off a cel fairly easily with alcohol. So I asked Juan the framer guy if he had any alcohol. He said no, but I spied a First Aid kit hanging on the wall. I told him there would most likely be alcohol wipes in the kit. He dug some out and I started working on the registration lines. It took a little elbow grease, but they did end up coming off fairly nicely. So now the aperture wouldn’t have to be recut, because the offending lines had been removed from existence. They told me they would reassemble the matte and have it ready for me by five that afternoon. I also wanted the foreground cel to be “floated” above the figure of Lassie. That way it would have a “3-D”/multi-plane effect when finished. So they set about working on that as well. I hit Taco Bell on the way home, picked up Roxy at the groomer’s, and then went to my house to relax. It was a beast of a day out. It hit 101 in Hollywood yesterday, and today it got up to 98! But it’s August in Los Angeles and that’s fairly a normal, expected occurrence. The maids came to clean up Planet Wallywood. When they left I went to CVS to get my cough medicine prescription, and then it was off to Michael’s Crafts to pick up the finished Lassie cel; which was amazing! I went home as the sun went down to take a dip in the Jacuzzi. My neighbors were there and I was chatting with them, which I shouldn’t have been doing. I should have been inside shutting my mouth and resting my vocal cords. My pal Brittney Powell came by to say hi, and when I was finished with my hot-tubbing we went to dinner at Miceli’s. Brittney was craving lasagna. We finished up dinner and we were both beat. Brittney headed home and I headed to my couch to grab a nap. I got up later to do some work around the house, and hang the Lassie cel. It’s very long, being a “pan” cel, so it was difficult to find some available wall space in my house to properly display it so viewers could see the dimensionality aspect of the piece. I took down a “House of Dark Shadows” movie poster near the landing of my stairs. The poster is quite gory and had been scaring some of my younger visitors to Planet Wallywood. So I took it down and moved it to the stairway heading to the garage. I figure Lassie would be a nice replacement. That meant moving a lot of other posters around to make room. When I finally retired for the evening, I made some dinner and watched an episode of “Magnum, p.i.” called “Unfinished Business.” It was very dramatic and one of the best of the season so far!
Saturday the 15th – BAM! BANG! BOOM! – After having just gotten to bed around 8am, I was awakened at noon by the sound of my new neighbors demolishing the interior of their house. Great. Sometimes the nocturnal hours I keep are a sacrifice. So I brought up a VERY loud fan from downstairs, and grabbed some earplugs. Between the white noise of the fan and the really beefy ear plugs, I could get a few more hours of sleep. I got up later and headed back to Michael’s Crafts to get some movie poster-sized frames which, thankfully, were on sale! I took down a different “House of Dark Shadows” movie poster I had in my hallway upstairs. There were two different of styles of posters for that film…a gory one and a non-gory one. I have them both. But the non-gory one was a piece I purchased at a Dark Shadows auction. This particular poster had the pedigree of adorning the office walls of DS creator Dan Curtis for many years. I decided to move the poster to a lighter frame (the original one was VERY heavy) and display it next to the lifesize Barnabas Collins figure I have in the Chaney Room. It took a bit of work to make it happen, but it looks amazing now. I spent the rest of the afternoon reframing some posters, moving some things around, and pounding nails to hang the new poster frames on. My movie night guest began to arrive and a few of them took a swim in the pool before the movies. My voice is better, but still not completely back to its usual strength. I now have until Monday afternoon to heal; when my next session for an animated feature will occur. Then if Tuesday arrives and I’m still not much better, I’ll just have to do the sessions that are most urgent, and explain to the others that we’ll have to give it more time. Logically, there’s not much else I can do so there’s no use getting stressed about it. But it’s absolutely imperative that I shut my mouth for the next few days. After movie night I did some more work around the house, and then made my huge, traditional Saturday night salad to enjoy while watching another episode of the old “Persuaders” series. Having been out of town last weekend, I missed my normal Saturday night “Persuaders” episode and I was really looking forward to seeing another one. I love this show!
Sunday the 16th – WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES! – It’s weird how life works. A year ago about this time I was fretting that I didn’t have enough work going on in my career. It’s an awful feeling to NOT be busy enough. It wasn’t a money thing. It was more of a “relevancy” thing. Now, this year I have SO much work going on I’m having difficulty maintaining my vocal stability given my allergy issues and the intense schedule of sessions. Weird, huh? I’ve learned that, in either case, I need to just keep the faith and carry on. It’s hard to believe that 38 years ago Elvis Presley passed away. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a very odd day back then on August 16, 1977. I got up at 2 and did some work on the computer. It was still much too hot out to walk Roxy over for evening church, so I hopped in my car and drove over by myself. Church was very impactful for me since the recent deaths of my buddy Terry and my ex-wife Jamie were weighing heavily on my mind and soul. And now a quick note about The Lord’s Prayer: normally when we recite the Lord’s Prayer in church I do it silently. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into since being at my Grandma Hazel’s 101st birthday party a few years back. My folks asked me to lead the family in prayer at her birthday celebration, and I was happy to do so. We ended by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. My grandma, who was seated to my right, recited it loudly and proudly with the rest of the family. With my eyes closed I could hear her very prominently in my right ear; softening my own voice so I could hear her more clearly. I loved the sound of her voice. I realized at the time that, when she’s no longer with us, I would always remember the sound of my 101 year old grandma reciting the Lord’s Prayer in my mind. Well, a few weeks ago my friends Joe and Zandra came to church with me. They brought their seven year old grandson Jamison with them. He’s a terrific young gentleman with impeccable manners and poise. He sat to my left in church and recited the Lord’s Prayer perfectly. So now, when the rest of the congregation says the prayer, I follow along silently. Hearing young Jamison’s voice in the left side of my head, mixed with the voice of my 101 year old grandma in the right side. It’s very nice. Singing along with the songs at church went pretty well, as my voice seemed to be in fairly good shape. I came home after church and my pal Bruce Kulick came over with his wife Lisa, along with her son Anthony and his wife. Bruce wanted them to see Planet Wallywood so I gave them a tour. After they left I grabbed a nap on the couch, and then got up to do some auditions. I ended the night with some work around the house, and prepping for a new week anticipating a ton of sessions. If my voice holds out I’ve got a three-hour session for an animated feature on Monday, then Project X on Tuesday, a Sonic Boom cartoon session and the rescheduled pick-up session for the Abu Dhabi amusement park ride on Wednesday, more Project X on Thursday, and the make-up sessions for US Airways and the Marvel cartoon on Friday. Whew! Wish me well! Keep the faith and carry on!
And how was YOUR week??!!
