September 19 -September 25 (2016)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

A friend recently informed me that the Urban Dictionary attributes my last name to meaning something really great. I thought this was really cool, even though the British meaning of my first name is still quite uncomplimentary! I guess they cancel each other out.

I’m still singing songs by Electric Light Orchestra, as the amazing concert on 9/11 is still running through my mind. The song I’ve been humming most of the week is “Evil Woman.”

Monday the 19th – T.T.F.N.P.S. – My eyes shot open at 11am and my body was ready to go home; back to L.A. It had been a great visit to my beloved Palm Springs, but I was ready to get back home and get back to business. I packed up my last-minute items, walked Roxy one last time, checked out of the Hyatt by noon, and hit the road at 12:30. It was very overcast; hot and humid. They were expecting a few days of rain and thunderstorms, so I was getting out just at the right time. On my way out of town I like to listen to 1270AM KVGH for as long as I can receive the signal well. As luck would have it, just as I was making my way down the road, the 1972 million selling hit “Brandy” came on the air! It always makes me laugh, especially considering I had just enjoyed dinner and some time spent at the Palm Springs street fair with the singer and writer of that song; Elliot Lurie. It happened right on cue, just like it was in a movie. Of all the oldies out there, isn’t it strange that particular song just “happened” to play right at that time? I always get a chuckle out of “coincidences” like that. It was a great drive home at top speeds, and I made it back by 2:15. I unpacked my bags, and my assistant Sara came over to clean up, since she had been housesitting all week. My friend Edi came over later in the day to pack up her stuff and hit the road for her home in Palm Desert. She and Sara had been holding down the fort while I was away. Once Sara and Edi left, I got settled back into life in Planet Wallywood and relaxed. I grabbed a short nap, and then got up later for a few auditions, and I wrote up Wally’s Week. I ate some cereal and hit the hay.

Tuesday the 20th – BACK TO BIZ! – When I got up at noon I sped off to my seamstress Karyn Hutchinson’s studio. She notified me last week that she had completed another one of my Tony Clifton bowling shirts, but I didn’t have time to get it before I left for Palm Springs. This one was being done for my buddy Jeremy Johnson, who was Tony Clifton’s assistant and A/V guy for several years. The back of the shirts are emblazoned with a huge embroidered Tony Clifton logo applique. I picked up the logo last week at Mr. Stitch, and now I needed Karyn to sew the applique on before I took possession of the shirt. Then I needed to take the completed shirt BACK to Mr. Stitch to have Jeremy’s name stitched over the front pocket. This shirt makes only the fifth in the entire WORLD of its kind! They’re very cool, but the problem is they’re very expensive to make since they’re all made custom. I have two, I gave one to the real Tony Clifton, Karyn’s brother has one (it’s his lucky poker shirt!) and soon Jeremy will have the fifth one. While I was there I dropped off my newly acquired Starsky & Hutch “Torino” jacket to have a patch sewn on. My first one had been stolen from my Gran Torino when it was ripped off back in January from BS Industries in Sun Valley. I headed up the 5 freeway and went to Plastic Depot in Burbank to have another special piece fabricated for the “Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” poster in my garage. I need a little clear “offset clip” made to keep my poster flush to the interior of my garage door. Kyle is always really good at doing that sort of thing. Then I drove over to HMS Props to talk to my pal Mike Moore. When I got my Animal replica Muppet I noticed that the little tab inside the head that works the eyebrow mechanism is a little too short for my index finger to manipulate. So Mike, a preeminent expert in Muppet repair issues, had to cut the back of Animal’s head open carefully so he could access the finger tab. It was like surgery! Once he could actually see the tab, he had me put my hand in Animal’s head so he could see just how much he would need to extend the tab. He’ll have me return once he’s done the work so he can tailor the extended tab to my finger’s contours. Then he’ll stitch Animal’s head back up and he’ll be as good as new! I drove home and fed Roxy and Spooky, and then relaxed. Though it was nothing like Palm Springs, it was fairly overcast and humid in L.A. I got a little nap before my hair appointment at Floyd’s. While I was in Palm Springs, I decided I needed to take a few inches off my hair. The bathroom in my room at the Hyatt has a full complement of mirrors that show you from all angles. I was noticing how the ends of my hair in the back weren’t looking very good, and it needed a good clean-up back there. So while my stylist Andie worked away on me with a cut and color, my “adopted grandma” Shirley walked over to keep me company. I liked the new, slightly shorter length. It would grow back before you knew it, but it was already looking healthier. I walked Shirley back home and then headed back to Planet Wallywood for a nap. I got up later and did my auditions and did some work around the house. I went to bed in a timely manner so I could be up for an early session on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday the 21st – GET SPOOK AND SQUIRREL! – The first event of the day was a session at Voice Trax West for an east coast power company. The character in the spot was a dramatic “soap opera” character. It was a lot of fun. Then I was patched in with another Voice-Over actor from Canada to do a partner read. The session took about an hour, and when we finished I took the finished Tony Clifton bowling shirt to Mr. Stitch to get Jeremy’s name embroidered on the shirt. But Jeremy didn’t want his own name; he wanted “Andy.” Funny. After I dropped the shirt off at Mr. Stitch I headed over to Taco Bell to get some lunch. I talked to my parents, and they’re very excited for their trip out here in early October. I stopped off at CVS to pick up a prescription, then got some groceries, stopped by my veterinarian’s office to pick up some cat fud (since the famous Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon came out, I always spell it that way), stopped by Rusty’s to get Roxy a new bag of food, got my mail at my mailbox, and then headed back home to unpack my groceries and do some work. Whew! The folks at American Airlines asked if I could record a few pages of stuff for their in-flight programming. I was able to record it in my home studio and e-mail it over to them. Easy squeezy! Then I did a little work on my computer. My pal Natalie Duran came over and we went to dinner at Jerry’s Famous Deli. Natalie’s one of the famous “American Ninja Warrior” contestants, so it’s always fun to watch what she eats. She’s so darn healthy! And she’s so fit she could literally toss me overhead like Droopy dog did with Mr. Bull in the old MGM cartoon! I got back home and grabbed a nap on the couch, and then I got up for my nightly auditions. I fed and walked Roxy, and then made some hot dogs on the grill before I hit the hay to watch “Barnaby Jones.” Just as I was getting to bed around 8am, I came back into my room and saw my cat Spook staring at something outside my third floor bedroom window. What the heck was he looking at? I moved around to the window and there was a cute, bushy-tailed squirrel staring at Spook through the glass. He saw me and moved EVEN CLOSER! He wasn’t swayed by the little cat noises Spook was making, as he was trying to persuade me with his cuteness to bring him out some peanuts for his breakfast. Guess what…IT WORKED! It was really funny watching them look at each other through the window. The squirrel was well aware that Spook was safely contained behind double-paned glass. I honestly believe the squirrel was taunting him! I love going to bed after a good laugh!

Thursday the 22nd – INSURANCE INSANITY! – Late in the afternoon, after I woke up, I called the California Department of Insurance to see what my rights were in regards to my Gran Torino being stolen from my pal Bodie’s shop back in January. His insurance company wasn’t covering the repair costs, and it’s going on 10 months now. I really want my car back! The agent on the line told me how the pecking order of insurance works. My insurance company sent me a big check for the damage back in May, but I’ve been holding on to it. I figured that Bodie’s insurance company would pay for the damage and get the car fixed (since the liability was theirs’), and I could send this money back to my insurance company. That way my rates wouldn’t go up. But the merry-go-round way the agent said the industry works left my head spinning. Picture this: My car gets stolen from a body shop. The car is found a few days later, stripped and damaged. I report the damage to my insurance company. My insurance company sends me a check to get the car repaired. I give that money to the body shop for the repairs. Then the body shop’s insurance pays for the damage, and the body shop has just made money on the theft of my car. But the CDI agent told me that’s insurance fraud. So what happens instead is that my insurance company will now go after the body shop’s insurance agency to get reimbursement for what they paid me. Brother! What a strange circle. But once I understood that concept (as nutty as it is) I called Bodie’s shop and told them I was bringing a check over to get the Torino finished. Now they’ll be able to put a guy on the car full-time and have it turned back around for me in a few weeks. Bodie actually had no idea that’s how it worked either, which is why we’ve been at an impasse for so long. But now it’s all settled. I first stopped at my mailbox and picked up some neat artwork from an old TV show called “Midnight Macabre.” It was a local show on KELO-TV that I used to watch on Friday nights at midnight. They ran a package of syndicated horror movies like “Little Shop of Horrors” and “The House on Haunted Hill.” The show opened with a creepy, sharp-toothed skull talking to the viewer through a wavery filter. The skull’s voice sounded a lot like the KELO-TV weatherman Dave Dedrick, but it was still creepy. It had a lot of reverb on it, and the show opening was a lot scarier than the majority of movies they ran. I had seen the cardboard talking skull pull tab puppet in the archives of graphics when I used to work at the station back in 1984. But I had always wondered what happened to it. I called my old pal Larry Hofer, who is now the new graphics head at KELO. He said what I described sounded very familiar, and in fact he located it for me in his office! He sent it to me to be framed and placed in a place of honor in Planet Wallywood! I pulled it out of the packaging and all those memories came flooding back! This thing used to scare the crap out of me as a kid, but now I love having it in the collection because of its simplistic, gorgeous design, and what it meant to me as a young horror fan. Then I went over to Guns Direct to sign about seven petitions to overturn some recent legislation California’s Governor and Legislature passed. The deadline for signatures was this coming Saturday, so I wanted to hurry and get over there to do it before it was too late. Then I drove to BS Industries to give Bodie’s office guy a check for the full insurance settlement. Hopefully this means I’ll have my Torino back in time to enjoy the nice fall weather that’s coming. I stopped by Jersey Mike’s for a sandwich, and headed home to enjoy it. Then I grabbed a short nap. When I got up I did my auditions and did a little work on the computer. I settled in to watch another “Barnaby Jones” episode and finish my Jersey Mike’s sandwich.

Friday the 23rd – FREAKY FRIDAY! – I’m convinced that technology hates me. I got up at noon and did some work reconciling my bank accounts, statements and receipts. I found a HUGE discrepancy that I initially thought was fraud. It took me a while to get a person from my bank on the phone to see what was going on. I tried wading through the sea of phone prompts to get to a live person, and at first it didn’t work. I had to call back and try again. Finally I got somebody on the line. They looked at the discrepancy and, without saying too much about it, discovered that it was basically the fault of their system which misread another check’s account number, and debited it to mine. Whew! But it still took about an hour and a half to get a final answer, as I had to speak with about four different people. Then the maids showed up to clean Planet Wallywood. I wanted to take the “Midnight Macabre” artwork to Michaels Crafts to be framed. But when I called to talk to the framer, once again I had to wade through a sea of phone prompts. Once I got a live person, I got disconnected during the transfer process. I called back, and then waited on hold for about 5 minutes. I finally found out that somebody would be in the framing department until 9. But it was a very frustrating process. And all day my cell phone has been having trouble sending out texts and photos. To top it all off, my computer was acting strangely. My computer guy Brian Crisp now lives in Denver, but he said he would fly in this weekend and install a new machine. I told him to hang tight and let me figure out what was going on before he bought a plane ticket. I let the computer rest for a bit while I drove to Michaels. Lucky me, I got a newbie framer who didn’t really understand what I wanted to do with the “Midnight Macabre” artwork. (I’m now referring to the talking skull as “Mac”…which is short for macabre.) I went back home to let my friend Edi in, who had just driven in from Palm Desert. She dropped off her little dog Bunny (whom I’d be dogsitting all weekend) and then we went off to Jerry’s Famous Deli to have dinner with her husband Elliot and my friend Ninja Natalie. It was a very fun dinner, and it relieved some of the stress from earlier in the day. I was so glad it was Friday! On the way home I did some grocery shopping, and then went home to nap. I turned on the computer again, but it was acting very sluggishly and wasn’t even responding to commands. I decided to nap and see how it was later in the evening. When I got up later I had to restart it a few times, which it didn’t seem to like very much. It was only handling one task at a time. I turned my back to it and worked on some other stuff for a few hours. But when I came back to it a few hours later, the computer was operating completely normally! What?! It was a very strange day and I was glad it was over. I made some delicious Summer Sausage Spaghetti and watched “Barnaby Jones” before bed. I ended up hitting the hay around 8am Saturday morning.

Saturday the 24th – CHRIS, CLIFTON & CRAZY COMPUTERS! – My computer guy Brian had an appointment to “remote” in at 1pm and look at my computer’s log. Sure enough there were a ton of operational errors and problems. I told him I could keep the hamster in the wheel going one more week, but during that time I wanted him to put together a brand new machine…bigger and better than ever…and fly in next weekend for the install. At 2, I went over to my church to help my buddy Chris Malmin do a drum demo video he wanted to make. He didn’t have a location to do it, so I got our church’s social hall as a venue, and it worked out very well. My “adopted grandma” even came over to observe for a while. After they got up and running, Shirley and I drove to Taco Bell to get some tacos. As we were pulling back into the parking lot, our friend Christy was there setting up the parking lot for an event. Come to find out, at 5:30 there was a church potluck barbecue planned; with all sorts of food – hot dogs, burgers, chips, pizza, etc. MORE FOOD! The video shoot wrapped up at 5 so Chris, Shirley and I walked to the little market across to street to get some food for the barbecue. While I was there I also got a few bottles of wine for my friend Emily’s birthday party later that night. Chris, Shirley and I sat around and had some food and chatted. But I was running late for the party. I sped home and fed the pets, hit the shower, and headed down the freeway to the party. I drove to Encino, heading west on the 101 freeway. At the time of day I was driving, it took me directly into the freshly set sun. The direct sunlight was no longer a problem, and it was gorgeous! A beautiful orange sky directly ahead of me, and I had the top down to enjoy the weather. What a night! I got to Emily’s 40th birthday party in good time. Edi and Elliot were there, as was my old pal (and fellow Voice-Over Actor) Billy West. I decided to wear my Tony Clifton bowling shirt. It was quite the topic of conversation. I didn’t wear the one with WALLY over the pocket. I wore the one with TONY over the pocket. It was known that everyone at the party would be paying for their own food, and nobody had a problem with it. We were there to celebrate Emily’s birthday. Since I had eaten so much food during the course of the day, all I had was an iced tea and some mozzarella sticks. So when the tab arrived, everybody’s food was all on the same check. Everybody just threw in cash for their part of the check. Edi and Elliot were sitting across the table from me, so I went into my Tony Clifton voice and said, “What the hell is this?! I don’t need to pay for my meal. Don’t you know who I am? I don’t pay. YOU pay! I’m gonna sue you!” Edi and Elliot were in hysterical laughter, as were a few people around me who knew exactly what I was doing. But the lady next to me, whom I did not know before that night, slipped me 20 bucks. I smiled and asked what that was for. She said, “Well, it’s for you since you have a problem.” I said, “I do?” She wouldn’t say any more, but I was really confused. Then it hit me. She didn’t know I was doing a Tony Clifton impression. She thought I was really complaining about paying for my iced tea and mozzarella sticks! I tried to explain gently that I was just doing a character to make my friends laugh, but she wouldn’t take the 20 bucks back. She wouldn’t even accept my 20 bucks in exchange. So, realizing that I wasn’t going to win, I just gave the money to the server and shut my mouth. And now Edi and Elliot are laughing even HARDER. The evening ended with a long chat with Billy West (I love that guy!) and once again I popped the top in the Mustang and headed home. What a gorgeous night! I gave Roxy and Spook some treats and then I grabbed a short nap. I got up around 4 and the computer was still working fine. Odd. I fed and walked Roxy and then made my traditional Saturday Super Salad, and then settled in to watch another episode of the BBC show from the 70’s “The New Avengers.”

Sunday the 25th – SUNDAY TURNAROUND! – Edi and her daughter Ems came over later in the afternoon to pick up Bunny the dog so they could drive back to Palm Desert. Then I headed off to evening church, but without Roxy. It was still much too hot. After church I came home to goof around and take a dip in the Jacuzzi. I grabbed a nap, and then got up to do some auditions. Thankfully my computer was still fully complying. I made some lasagna and watched “Barnaby Jones” before I went to bed for the night. But just before I turned in for good at 10am, I checked my e-mail. I found out via e-mail that eBay had refunded my money for a 3-D TV I bought, but never received. I was dreading the fight that was no doubt ahead on the transaction. But all I did was contact eBay about the issue, and they refunded my money easy squeezy! Neat! The guy I bought the TV from had 0 feedback, so he must’ve been a flake. Or maybe it was a scam. All I know is that I got all my money back. Thanks eBay!!

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

WHO WILL YOU VOTE FOR?! The monster cereals get into the election vibe with new cereal box art! YUMMY! Since they’ve returned to supermarket shelves that must mean Halloween is right around the corner!

My seamstress’ dog Jack waits for me to throw the ball for him.

Here’s Jeremy’s Tony Clifton bowling shirt…with the name Andy on it.

Cute puppies at a dog adoption in Palm Springs…just because.

Here Karyn stitches on the Tony Clifton applique.

Mike Moore, propmaker extraordinaire, works on my Animal replica Muppet by performing surgery on his head. Careful there, Mike!

It’s a trifecta of tranquility! I’m watching Navajo musical artist Waykey play music in his booth on a warm evening in Palm Springs under a full moon…with my faithful dog Roxy by my side!