RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

So, when you see a group of shopping carts gathered together in a parking lot, do you call it a “cart-glomeration” or a “cart-gregation?”

This is a great song to listen to while you’re on a brisk walk. The All-American Rejects with “Walk Over Me.” PERFECT tempo for walking!

Monday the 3rd – MOVIN’ MONDAY! – Because I had been up all night working in Planet Wallywood, I slept in pretty late. Once I arose I checked my e-mail, made some phone calls, and found out my buddy Scott in Sioux Falls acquired four tickets to the Jeff Lynne’s ELO concert in St. Paul this coming July! It’ll be a fun trip. And my pal Officer Mark will be making the trip with me! We’ll fly into Sioux Falls on day one, two days before the show, drive into Minneapolis the next day, hit the concert on day three, on day four take a tour of Paisley Park and then I’ll drive back to Sioux Falls. Officer Mark is going to stay in Minneapolis and hang out with his girlfriend who will already be there visiting family! Perfect! I did some more work moving some stuff around in my place. Everything’s looking great! I’m very happy with the renovated displays. I drove over to Barone’s to get a pizza to go and then headed home to do some work and record my nightly auditions. I took a short nap, and then organized a few more things around the house and typed out Wally’s Week.

Tuesday the 4th – HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN! – Just as I was settling down to get some sleep around 9 in the morning, I got a hotline call from my pal Troy at the “Ellen” show. He needed a quick bit recorded for a pitch he was doing that day. So I hopped out of bed, recorded the bit and sent it over to him. I got a few hours’ sleep and then my pal Edi came over to pack up a few things to mail off. She needed a few of my boxes, and since I collected up a nice selection of boxes for my eBay stuff, she had her pick. She found the right sizes, she packed up the stuff and off we went to the post office. We ate at Paty’s in Toluca Lake with our dogs. I had Roxy and she had her little dog Bunny. The dogs really like the grilled chicken there, and as soon as we pull into the parking lot Roxy starts in with an excited cry. It was a gorgeous night, and I came home to relax. I slept a bit (since I hadn’t gotten much sleep earlier in the day) and got up later to do work around the house. It started to rain, which was really nice. We were in for a very wet next couple of days.

Wednesday the 5th – SAVED BY BOO BERRY! – My busy day started with a trip to Michael’s crafts to get a specific frame. Since I had moved Andy Kaufman/Elvis into the kitchen, so he could stand next to Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton, I needed a frame to match the previous one I had posted next to Tony. Then I went over to Prints Charm’n to pick up an 8 X 10 print of Andy as Elvis from the first season of “SNL.” I had gotten several nice prints through the channels at NBC when I worked on “The Tonight Show,” but they printed them as 11 X 14. I scanned one of them and had an 8 X 10 made to match the size of the Tony Clifton print I had. I headed over to Fast Signs to pick up some new signage I had printed for my “Halloween 2” Michael Myers bust, and then got a quick lunch at Arby’s. Next it was over to Milt and Edie’s to pick up some dry cleaning, and I stopped by my box to pick up a package. I received the newly released Blue Psycho Ranger figure! After 20 years, they finally released an action figure of a character I voiced on Power Rangers a few times. I guess the Psycho Rangers are fan favorites so the toy company bowed to pressure from the PR enthusiasts. I made it home to beat the heavy rain just in time! I fed the pets, and knowing that my friend Sara was coming over at 6:30 I sat down on the couch around 6:20 to chill. But the sound of the rain (and the cushions on the Most Comfortable Couch in the Universe) put me right to sleep. Sara was running late and was texting me, but my phone was off so I didn’t hear the texts. I woke up several hours later, surprised that Sara wasn’t there yet. I contacted her and she said she wasn’t sure if it was still OK to come over. Now that the night was spent, I got busy recording my nightly auditions; two animation auditions, and two commercial auditions. Then when there was a slight respite from the rain, I called Denny’s. I found out they have salad again! So I placed my order and got over there and back between rainstorms. The late-night “rain” crowd is odd. The rain really brings out the weirdos! There was one guy sitting in a booth reading a Kung Fu magazine. I caught a glimpse of the cover and the magazine looked to be about 40 years old! There was a couple in formal wear hanging outside smoking. They had a 9 year old boy in tow (also in formal wear) who was running in and out of the restaurant. Mind you it was 3am! What is a 9 year old boy in formal wear was doing up at 3 in the morning struck me as strange. Then some guy was tearing around the place claiming that he had accidentally dropped something valuable in the booth when he was eating there earlier. The staff brought out the flashlights and combed through the booth (much to the dismay of the guy who was sitting there eating) but they found nothing. The guy was sure that the busboy had found it and had stolen it. He was demanding to see the security camera footage and was threatening to call the manager. I couldn’t get my food and get out of there fast enough. After doing a little work around the house I got ready to watch a few more “I Dream of Jeannie” episodes and eat my Denny’s before retiring for the night. (I’m enjoying season 3 so much, I ordered seasons 4 and 5 on the internet) It had started POURING rain again; really heavy this time! It was a nice time watching “Jeannie” episodes, eating comfort food and watching/hearing it rain outside. After “Jeannie” was over I turned off the TV and nodded off for just a bit. At this point it was about 7am. But I had a dream about eating a delicious bowl of Boo Berry cereal. I sprang awake at 9am and decided to put my dishes away and have a bowl of Boo Berry like in the dream. When I set foot outside my bedroom my foot went SQUISH in the carpet. I knew it wasn’t either one of the pets’ doing, because they were in my room with me. Nope, I had a leak. Plain and simple. Apparently, when the roofers were doing roofing work recently on our units, they didn’t close something right in my air intake duct. The vent for my air intake is directly over the upstairs landing just outside my bedroom and the guest bedroom. Luckily I had a filter in there, because that soaked up much of the water. After I found a bucket and placed it under the leak, I made an immediate call to the association and they sent a guy over to take a look. Had I not had that yummy Boo Berry dream, I could have been asleep for hours. And when I woke up later that day I would have had a river outside my bedroom door! Thanks Boo Berry!

Thursday the 6th – RAINS RETREAT! – When I got up later in the day I found urgent, last-minute audition in my inbox. I recorded it quickly and then walked and fed Roxy. Sara and I met for dinner at Ernie’s Taco House. The rain had stopped and it was a gorgeous, clear night. I got a few grocery items, went to the pharmacy to buy a water flosser and floss picks (Dentist’s orders) and then went home to do some work all evening. I took a short nap until 2am, fed the pets, did a bit for my pal Troy at the “Ellen” show again, recorded a short home-studio session for American Airlines, recorded several auditions, e-mailed out my movie night invites, and filled out a very lengthy form for a TMJ specialist I’d be seeing on Friday. When I walked Roxy it was a very cold, clear night. So I came inside, made a sandwich and some tomato soup and watched the first two parts of a four part “Jeannie” episode!

Friday the 7th – I WILL GLADLY PAY YOU TOOTH-DAY! – I finally got a chance to see a TMJ specialist in Burbank named Dr. Dmerjian. Both my dentist and my ENT told me that the pain I had been feeling in my jaw and head, and the ringing in my ears, were most likely due to TMJ. He checked my bite and examined me very comprehensively. He said I’m a “clencher,” and most likely the clenching I’m doing in my sleep is exacerbating the problem. Also, my bite seems slightly out of alignment. He’s going to study the x-rays we took and I’m going back in next week to hear what the treatment options are. It’s nice to finally be on the trail to figuring out what I can do to get rid of this problem! I stopped by my box to get some packages, and then hit McDonald’s for some lunch. When I got home my mouth was hurting a bit. The pressure tests he did around my jaw and neck area were fairly painful. I did a few auditions, did some work around the house, and then took a nap. I got up later to do some work around the house, including changing out the audio clip in my new Andy Kaufman/Elvis and Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton display Previously I had a digital repeater that would play a clip of Andy as Tony singing “Carolina in the Morning” from his Carnegie Hall show. But now that Andy as Elvis was sharing the space, my pal Scott Sebring and I put together a composite clip. I made the audio clip into an MP3, put it on my iPod, and hooked the iPod into the audio input in the digital repeater. It went fairly smoothly, but when I hit the button to play it back, the first part of the audio was “crackly” and full of static. I figured it was because of the age of the unit. So I went down to the garage where I had a brand new digital repeater in storage. I had been keeping it since the early 2000s when I first bought a bunch of them. But the same thing happened with this unit. Apparently there’s something about these units that require them to have a certain level of audio when they’re initiated. So I decided to put about a second and a half of space before I encoded the clip to give the digital repeater a chance to “get its act together.” That’s the best way I can describe it. Sure enough, putting a small amount of space at the beginning did the trick! Unfortunately it took hours for me to discover that! I made some food and watched the final two parts of the four part “Jeannie” episode and got ready to turn in. I walked Roxy one last time before we hit the hay, and it was now 8 in the morning. There was a hawk lazily soaring around above our complex. I hate the hawks because they eat the lovely mourning doves who nest around our area. Occasionally I’ll find a pile of feathers in the grass as I’m walking around, and I know that some little dove met a horrible end. I tried to throw a rock at the hawk to dissuade him from hunting in our area, but fearing that the rock would come back down and break something, I wasn’t able to get a good solid throw going. But he didn’t find what he was looking for and he moved on. Soon after that, a few pair of mourning doves came down from the trees in which they were hiding and started fluttering around. As we were going back in to the house a local cat was hanging out by the pool. I had no idea we were that close to it (and neither did Roxy) but we got right up next to it. In fact, had we not heard the cat hissing at Roxy we would have passed by it unnoticed. Poor Roxy didn’t know what to do, but she knew she didn’t want to tangle with it. But the cat ran off into the pool area and stared at us as we walked back inside.

Saturday the 8th – A NEW PAIR OF EAR “RINGS!” – As I woke up at 4 to start the day I had bad ringing in my ears. I must’ve been clenching quite a bit in my sleep. I busily worked around the house to get ready for movie night. I had been “jonesing” to see “Diamonds Are Forever” for several weeks. It was Sean Connery’s last James Bond movie, and though it certainly wasn’t his best, it does have a certain charm. A lot of it has to do with great Bond girls and a bitchin’ red Mustang! After my guests left I figured I’d take a chance and try snoozing on the couch again. I had been neglecting to nap there as a test to see if my TMJ issues got better or worse. It was a bad idea. When I woke up to feed Roxy I had a headache and the ringing in my ears was really bad! I worked all night around the house, made some preparations for a new week, made my traditional Saturday Night Super Salad and watched an episode of “SNL” from the second season with Ray Charles as the host. It was a delightful episode from the first second to the last! But when it was done I wasn’t that tired, so I kept working around the house. I didn’t get to bed until 2 in the afternoon! My schedule certainly is nutty! But, I eat when I’m hungry, and sleep when I’m tired. Simple as that.

Sunday the 9th – SUNDAY, SSLEEPY SUNDAY! – After just a few hours of sleep, my body clock woke me up at 4:30 so I could get ready for evening church. Roxy and I walked home, I made some phone calls and did some work. My pal Pat Evans was supposed to come by so we could do some strategizing for a new display I’m working on, but he had transportation issues so we postponed our meeting to another night. I took a short nap, got up later to do an audition, cleaned up around the house, and hit the hay for a busy Monday!

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

The kids turn on their “cute” faces to get some treats while we watch “I Dream of Jeannie.”

A neighborhood cat keeps a careful eye on Roxy as we walk past…

…while a neighborhood bird perches atop the lamp to keep a sharp eye peeled for hawks.