March 30 – April 5 (2020) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

This made me laugh SO hard. How DO rattlesnakes walk dogs? And where were the rattlesnakes when Drew found them walking his dogs?

We never know why the songs that pop into our head from time to time take up residence in our subconscious, but I’ve been humming “Straighten Up and Fly Right” all week. Here’s the amazing Nat ‘King’ Cole!

Monday the 30th – WALLY’S ‘LEAK’! – Since I had slept all night on the couch, I was up and at ‘em at 9am sharp! But as I was doing some work around the house, I took some things down to the garage. That’s when I noticed my garage floor was wet. I looked up and saw that a small portion of my garage ceiling was leaking through the drywall. It was all because of that damn overflowing toilet in my downstairs bathroom! I guess I didn’t get the water cleaned up off the floor soon enough, and some of it leaked through the bathroom tile and down into the ceiling below! (See my cat litter fiasco story from the previous Wally’s Week!) So I shot a video of it and sent it to my contractor Handy Don. He agreed to come over later in the afternoon and open the ceiling to let it dry out. Per his instruction, I put my trash bin under the leak and poked the drywall with the end of a broom handle to open it up a bit to leak out. Then I got cleaned up and headed over to my mailbox to pick up my packages. I hit McDonald’s for some drive-thru lunch, and then I went home to work in the garage putting some stuff away. I pulled my car out and parked it elsewhere so Handy Don would have enough room to work when he arrived. This stuff had been sitting around in my garage since the beginning of the year, as much of it was tax-related stuff that needed to be put into the waterproof plastic bins I use for storage. It was a warm, gorgeous sunny day out, so it was rather fun working in the garage and getting some progress made. I also took some time to organize some of my fabric into certain bins, and log which items were in which bins for future reference. As I’ve been making these plush items for my kid’s book project, as well as the numerous puppet projects I’ve been working on, I’ve become flooded with all sorts of furs, fleeces and fabrics. I was still working when Handy Don arrived and opened up a 3’ X 3’ square section of my ceiling to let it dry out. He said that luckily, there were not pipes broken. But the overflowing water had to go somewhere. His main concern now was that the tile in my bathroom wasn’t water tight and now there’s a potential mold issue. The tile may need to be replaced someday. He’ll come over in a few days and seal the ceiling back up again. I went upstairs to shower, and then I worked for a bit on the computer. In my packages I received the dyed ostrich feathers that I needed for my Animal Muppet cap I’m making. So I did a little work on that. I need to take it over to have my seamstress Shelley sew the nose on it, and then I can start placing the eyes and eyebrow based on that. I grabbed a short nap, and then got up later to do auditions, feed the pets, and design a “mini-booth” for my recording area. Now that people are working from home, I have to “up my game” on my home studio. I never bought a recording booth for my set-up, because I always wanted to keep my home system strictly for recording auditions. I did this consciously for two reasons. 1) I like to compel producers to hire and use REAL recording studios for sessions. Not only does it support the bottom line of my friends who own studios, but I don’t want them getting too comfortable knowing that they can save money by making me become both talent AND engineer. 2) I have always been very vigilant about keeping my home and work environments separate. My home is for my home-life. And while I don’t mind recording auditions on my own time in my home studio, I don’t want the whole “work” thing encroaching on my tranquil home life. When home becomes too much like work, it loses its charm. But now that’s all changed, because all the studios have closed. While it’s too late to install a recording booth in my house, I can design some acoustic “panels” that I can use to surround my recording set-up to baffle extraneous sound. Hopefully Foam Mart is still open so I can drive by and get some pyramid-shaped foam sheets to glue on to big sheets of rigid cardboard. I can attach three panels together with Velcro and have a little three-sided barrier. So I took some measurements for what it would require and did some drawings for the plans. I walked Roxy, typed out Wally’s Week, and hit the hay for an early session on Tuesday morning in my home studio.

Tuesday the 31st – AT&TEED OFF! – Right at 10am I got up and set up my home studio for a directed session for a project. The directors would be calling in on my landline to direct me as I recorded the files in my system. Then once the session was over I’d clean them up and send them over via Wetransfer.com. The session only took 15 minutes and it was great! I did some more work designing my 3-panel acoustic shell, but when I called Foam Mart I found out they have been closed indefinitely. I do have a big sheet of regular foam rubber that I bought for puppet making, shortly before the lockdown, so maybe I could use that instead. However the directors I worked with earlier were very happy with the sound quality from my home set-up, so perhaps I don’t need the panels after all. I ordered a Domino’s pizza for lunch, made some calls. I tried to call AT&T to have an unused second land-line in my house disconnected. I waited on hold for about 20 minutes and got somebody in the Caribbean. But the quality of the line was horrible, and it eventually ended up dropping. Since I was on my landline, the horrible line quality was purely on their end. I tried to call back, but after 40 minutes on hold I gave up. Ironic that a phone company like AT&T has really crappy line quality. I did work all afternoon and handled some e-mails. I decided to try to get on with AT&T again. After 58 minutes of being on hold, and listening to their sickeningly repetitious on-hold music, I finally got somebody! But even though I called the number listed on my phone bill, the guy I spoke with said he only handles calls for DirecTV. As luck would have it, I needed to talk to DirecTV anyway, so I had him handle my needs for my satellite TV. Then he was kind enough to connect me over to their telecom side so I could get my unused landline disconnected. It took a lot of time out of my day, but it was worth it. The DirecTV guy was scheduled to come out the next day and replace my two receivers; one downstairs in my home theater and the other in my upstairs bedroom. I went out to my garage and saw an absolutely stunning sunset. With all the craziness going on in the world, it was nice to take a comfy chair out into my garage, open up the door and just sit there and watch the amazing show. I came back inside totally tranquil and relaxed and grabbed a nap. I got up later for my nightly auditions and to do some work around the house. I took a piece of foam rubber and a little pair of sharp scissor and I started sculpting a fang for my “Beautiful Day” puppet, just to see how it would turn out. It looked pretty good, actually! I’d like to start on that puppet, finally (I’ve had plans to start on him for some time now) but I’d like to get my Oscar completed, as well as my Robin the Frog before I move on to something else. I made a delicious tuna sandwich and some soup to enjoy another episode of “Bronk” before bed. It was a FANTASTIC episode. I’m really starting to see why I liked this show so much as a kid. Jack Palance was the coolest!

Wednesday the 1st – DIRECTV IS COMING! APRIL FOOL! – Waking up to the sound of your dog barfing on the carpet is no fun. Nothing gets my butt out of bed faster than the sound of my dog or cat retching and preparing to lay out a big pile of goo on my carpet. I realized that she probably went to sleep with an empty stomach; always a bad idea. I had to get up to meet the DirecTV guy at noon anyway, so I did some auditions and stayed up. There’s a program called Source Connect that allows you to do sessions over the internet and be directed by a producer. I must make a concerted effort this week to get that program functional on my system. I’m not very technical, so I’m reaching out to several people I might be able to hire to assist with its implementation. While the window of opportunity the DirecTV people gave me for the tech to arrive was anywhere between noon and 4, at 3:30 they texted me to say the tech was on his way. But five minutes later a new text arrived to tell me that he wasn’t going to be coming at all. WHAT?! And DirecTV wonders why they’re losing a million customers a month. Gee, ya think?! Great. I started moving some things around in my home studio to accommodate the acoustic panels. I made a little shelf for my audio interface box which sits above my internet router. I put together a few pieces of L200 (similar to foam rubber but more rigid) and some ABS plastic. I have been seeing people walking out behind my house, and some of them stand awfully close to each other. I thought it would be funny to shoot a video of my Oscar the Grouch puppet looking out the window and yelling at people who pass by who aren’t “social distancing.” I just wish he was finished. I took a nap in the evening, but was once again awakened by Roxy puking. Perhaps something more is wrong with her than what I originally thought. She had been eating very well all day, as I switched her to a bland diet of rice and chicken. So I relegated her to the bathroom area so if she got sick again the cleanup was easy. Then Spook started in on the puking. I’m kinda wondering if animals, being the intuitive beings they are, can sense all the stress in the world and it’s manifesting itself in their illness? About 5:30 in the morning I called the all-night emergency vet. The vet said “nothing in, nothing out” for the rest of the day. Nothing. I had a call into Roxy’s regular vet explaining the problem, so she’ll probably call me back later in the morning. I slept on the couch until around 9am.

Thursday the 2nd – STORE SCORE! – As I suspected, when Roxy started vomiting yesterday morning because her tummy was empty, it irritated her stomach and started a domino effect. So regardless of what was put into her tummy after that, it was going to come up again. So the vet suggested that she fast all day, and I feed her a tablespoon of food later to see how it would go. She said her tummy needed to settle down a bit. She suggested giving her a Pepcid AD (Sassie used to have to take that too) and seeing how she did. I scanned some checks to prepare a bank deposit and I set out for the grocery store to get some much-needed items. BINGO! Early bird gets the worm, as they say. I was there by 11am and found virtually everything I needed! EVEN paper towels! I was ecstatic! I drove over to the bank to make a deposit, and then came home to put the groceries away. It was such a gorgeous day I wanted to get the Gran Torino and make some people happy. It had been sitting for so long the battery was dead, but I jumped it with my little portable jump starter and went out to Taco Bell to get some food at the drive-thru. (I REALLY miss eating out!) Then I stopped by my mailbox to get my packages and headed home. My pal Andrew from Voice Trax West got on the phone with me and walked me through setting up Source Connect on my computer. Thank God he helped me, because it was WAY more complex that I had imagined! I hopped back in the Torino and went out to get some gas (gas is really cheap here now so I took advantage and filled the giant Torino tank!) and stop by my seamstress Shelley’s to drop off some work for her. People were loving the Torino and it was great to see them all smile! When I got home I gave Roxy a tiny bit of food and grabbed a nap. When I got up later she had kept it down! So I’m going to continue her bland diet for a while just to make sure she’s good to go again. Lesson learned: NEVER let her go to bed on an empty stomach! I made hot dogs on the grill and watched another episode of “Bronk.” Then I did some cleaning up for the maids, who were arriving Friday afternoon. The DirecTV guy was supposed to come then as well, but we’ll see.

Friday the 3rd – PEOPLE AT MY HOUSE! – Both the maids and the DirecTV guy stated that they would be coming any time between noon and 3. So even though I woke up at noon, I did auditions until they both arrived around 2. It was interesting keeping the DirecTV tech out of the way of the maids. Not only because I didn’t want them interfering with each other’s work, but because of the whole “6 feet away social distancing” thing. But it worked out well. He went up on the roof to put a few new adjustments on my dish, and then he replaced my downstairs box. Unlike before, when I had two independent receiver boxes (one in my bedroom upstairs and one downstairs in the theater) their new system is to put one main box downstairs, and make the second box a “piggyback” device which feeds off of the main box. I didn’t like this new set-up at all. Because if the main box fails, you lose the upstairs feed as well; which was never the case with the independent boxes. BOTH WILL BE DOWN! I don’t understand why a company like AT&T and DirecTV actually did something to make their service WORSE than before, but that’s their new business model. VERY shoddy! Even the tech agreed that this was a very bad idea. When they left I experimented with a large piece of foam rubber to see if I could deaden the ambient sound in my recording area. I tried configuring it in several different ways, but oddly enough it didn’t seem to make any difference in the sound quality. Andrew from Voice Trax West used Source Connect with me after we set it up, and he said my system sounded terrific without any acoustic panels. I did a few more auditions, and then my friend Helen came over to do a little work. Later in the evening I napped in the Puppet Room for a while. Then napped on top of the bed in my bedroom, and then got up to feed the pets. Then I laid down on my couch and napped there for a while. I was fairly restless. I took a shower and then hit the hay for the night to get some real sleep.

Saturday the 4th – SVEN, SALAD, & SPACE! – Roxy was pretty smelly, so I walked her over to the groomer’s to get her a bath. I came back home to do some work and kill some time, and then I walked back to get her. I decided to go out wearing a bandana as a face covering, as it seemed to be the thing to do. But as I was out I didn’t see anybody else wearing a face covering, even though the L.A. Mayor is suggesting everyone cover their faces. I felt like a fool with my bandana on. Roxy looked really good with all of her winter coat brushed away. My friend Patrick suggested I watch Svengoolie, a horror host on ME-TV at 8pm. Since I’m normally doing movie night I never get to see the show, so I figured I’d make a pot pie and check it out. Besides, he was showing “The Mummy’s Tomb” and it (allegedly) starred Lon Chaney Jr. Even though there’s some scuttlebutt that Universal just used his name and it wasn’t actually Chaney at all. With the heavy mummy make-up, it could have been anybody. I started to doubt that it actually was Chaney, because he was a big guy. And in some of the shots the mummy looked small. Hmmm. After the mummy movie I took a short nap, and then got up later to do some work around the house. I made my traditional Saturday Night Super Salad and got ready to begin watching “Space 1999” season 2. WOW! There were lots of changes from season 1! Some of the regular characters were no longer on the show, and they added a lot of color and a better film stock. Before the show looked dim and pale. The sets and costumes didn’t have a lot of vibrancy, and it always looked like it was being shot through a sheet of gauze. But in the second season the gauze had been removed and the clarity was amazing! They got rid of some of the characters I didn’t like, but they also got rid of a character I REALLY liked; the character of Victor. But from reading the “Space 1999” wiki page, apparently the actor had a salary dispute and walked off the show. Oddly enough, the missing characters were never explained.

Sunday the 5th – AN ANGEL ON SUNDAY! – Late in the afternoon I walked Roxy around the complex and chatted with a few of my neighbors, who are going as stir crazy as I am. I did an audition that came in, and looked up how to distill water on the internet. I was running out of distilled water for my Neti bottle and was curious how to make my own. But it didn’t work very well so I abandoned the effort. It’s supposed to rain very heavily all night, and through most of the week. I made some phone calls to catch up with friends, and enjoyed a late evening nap. I got up later to clean up, feed the pets, and drive over to Denny’s to get some food to go. It had started raining a little bit, but shortly after I returned home in the Torino with my food from Denny’s, it unleashed! A torrential downpour all night! I got ready for bed, counted my blessings, and prepared to watch a movie from 1984 called “Angel” on Blu Ray. My pal Scott Maguire and I loved this movie when we were kids, seeing it many times over. In fact, we still quote it to this very day. I was curious to see how it aged. One of the things I really liked about it, was that it was shot entirely in Hollywood circa 1984. He and I sat in that theatre watching it over and over, and I marveled at how amazing Hollywood looked. Within three years I’d be living there! The movie was made for $3 million and made about $17 million. So I guess Maguire and I weren’t the only ones smitten with it! Even though I love the movie it’s not one of those that is appropriate for my usual Saturday night movie night. It’s a little “salty” and bloody. After all, it’s about a psycho killer who murders Hollywood hookers. But it was great, not only seeing it in Blu Ray clarity, but seeing it with different eyes. In 1984 I watched it through the eyes of a kid wanting to experience the eccentricity of the Hollywood lifestyle. And now in 2020, I’m watching it through the eyes of someone who’s lived here for 33 years! I loved looking at all the filming locations that I know very well now! Not only was it great seeing the movie again, but to watch the bonus materials about how it was made; things I never KNEW about the movie when watching it obsessively back in 1984!

And how was YOUR week??!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

While organizing my collection of Bazooka Joe comics, I found a few that prove that Bazooka Joe and company were pure prophets! UTTERLY AMAZING! More coming next week!

While enjoying some time watching TV in the Tranquility Zone, it looked as if my lava lamp was having a good time on its own! This made me laugh so hard, I just had to snap a picture!

Just because, enjoy some more beautiful dove pics.

Dreaming of better days in my “happy place” of Palm Springs California. With dry 103 degree days, and gorgeous 68 degree nights watching the moon set behind the mountains. I CAN’T WAIT TO GO BACK!