RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Oh sure. I get threatened with a lawsuit by the Muppets back in 1982 for making a little bicycle safety video for a high school TV project with the home-made Muppets I made, but this somehow goes unnoticed. Bizarre. Still though, it’s kinda funny (even though I suspect it may be AI-generated).

I’m not sure why the 1989 song “Sacrifice” from Elton John popped into my mind, but it was fun to rediscover it recently. What a gorgeous song!

 

Monday the 5th – CRASH DAY: PART 2! – Since I got so much enjoyment out of my crash day on Sunday, I decided to do it all over again and just relax all day. I did do a little work around the house later, though. I took my nightly WOG (walk/jog) and then spent some time afterwards relaxing in the anti-grav chair outside. I came back inside and did some prep work for Tuesday’s session at Igloo in Burbank. This would be the final session for the foreign dubbing project I’ve been doing for Netflix. And while I’ve had a lot of fun doing it, it will be nice to get back to my regular life schedule. I typed out Wally’s Week and then hit the hay.

Tuesday the 6th – THAT’S A WRAP! – When I woke up I was craving a burger, so I headed over to Bob’s Big Boy on my way to Igloo studios for my afternoon session. I didn’t need a booth, so I just sat at the counter to eat. But soon a family of four came and sat down right beside me, and the dad was a fairly “large” man. So I literally had to sit on half of my chair and turn my back to him in order to eat my meal. It was tough to find room to eat. But the meal, as always, was great! Then I headed over to Igloo to put in the final four hours on the session for the foreign dubbing project I’ve been working on for six weeks. When Netflix releases the show and I’m able to talk about it I’ll give you more information. But suffice to say, it was very fun and funny! Now I have to get into my list of things I need to do that I didn’t have time to do while I was locked into the daily recording sessions! I stopped at my box on the way home to pick up a package, and then went home to relax! Later I did an audition, took my nightly WOG, spent some time in the anti-grav chair outside marveling at the night sky, and then I came inside to do some more work around the house.

Wednesday the 7th – PERIPHERAL BLINDNESS?! – It sure did feel good to sleep late and not have to be awake for anything. I did some work on-line, recorded a last-minute audition, did some bookkeeping for my corporation, and then met my assistant Emily for lunch at Paty’s. I stopped by my box to pick up a package, dropped off some stuff at the cleaners, and then hit Baskin-Robbins for some ice cream. One of the things I needed to do, now that the Netflix gig is over, is call my optometrist to inquire further about these “progressive” lenses they gave me. I don’t really like them, as the sides of the lenses go blurry. Apparently the prescription doesn’t carry all the way to the sides of the lenses and it causes something they call “peripheral blindness.” Well, I use my peripheral vision a lot and these have been bugging me. My doctor’s office is going to see if I can trade them in for good old fashioned distance glasses, and I’ll just use a different pair of specs for reading close-up things. Sigh. It sucks getting old. Since I missed out on going to South Dakota in July during the whole “Flightmare” scenario, I’m going to reconfigure my plans when I go to Minneapolis to see Jeff Lynne’s ELO in late September. Instead of just flying into Minneapolis, as was the original plan, I’d like to fly into Sioux Falls several days before the concert to see my friends and family, and then drive over to St. Paul with Sioux Falls friends for the concert. The day after the concert I’ll fly back to LA out of the Minneapolis airport. I think that’s the best way to handle it. Later at night I did my nightly auditions, scanned some checks for a deposit, took my nightly WOG, and spent some subsequent relaxation time in the anti-grav chair outside. It was noticeably cooler out than it had been the past week. It was a bit breezy, even, with clouds moving in. I came back inside to do some work, I made a salad, and watched an episode of “The Incredible Hulk” before bed.

Thursday the 8th – GIMME THAT SUMMER SUN! – My first stop was the bank so I could make some deposits. Then I went next door to talk to my friend Jack at his carpet and blinds business about getting a specific area rug made for my Tranquility Zone. Jack wasn’t in, so I left word with his partner. Getting a rug made is one of the things on my “Post Netflix” list that I need to get taken care of soon. I went over to Panera and ordered lunch, and sat on the patio to eat. I chose the place that was in the most direct sunlight I could find. It felt so good! And nobody else was out there so I had the entire patio to myself! It was a gorgeous, summer day – the kind of day I’ll miss in a few months from now. I hit CVS for some supplies and then headed home to do some work around the house. I did my nightly auditions, and then took my WOG later. After some cooldown time in the anti-grav chair I came back inside to work on the computer.

Friday the 9th – DIGGING FOR GOLD! – Since it was time to take the Gray Ghost into Toyota for its standard service, I arranged to have lunch with my pals Edi and Elliot Lurie at Ernie’s Tacos while I waited for the service to be completed. Ernie’s is close enough to the Toyota dealership to walk, so I enjoyed a nice little stroll on a beautiful summer day (with a quick stop at the local cigar shop for good measure). When our lunch was through I walked back and got my car, and then headed home. But I didn’t pull the Ghost into my garage right away. I decided to get busy on a project I’d been thinking about for a while. So even though it was really warm outside, I started working in the garage to rearrange some boxes in my storage. First, I dug out several bins of old tax documents, which I loaded into the back of the Ghost to take to the shredder. Then I dug out some boxes to find a few items I’ve been looking for. The boxes were heavy and it was hot, but I continued on. Having all of those old tax documents out of the way created more room to rearrange some of my storage bins. Before I threw all the tax docs into the back of my car I called my accountant to make doubly sure that anything past 5 years is OK for disposal. They assured me it was, so everything prior to 2019 went bye-bye. I dug through several boxes I titled Misc. Memories and found some great items! Unfortunately, I still haven’t found the specific items I was looking for, as I believe they’re in other boxes that I forgot to label correctly. But the things I DID find were great! A long time ago, before GPS, if you wanted to make a long road trip you went to your local AAA office and they would create something for you called a “Trip Tik.” These were spiral-bound, rectangular documents that were an assemblage of little area maps that illustrated (usually with a highlighter) which roads you should take on your trip. Once you completed the journey on one page, you flipped it to the next page, spread the map open, and it gave you a clear view of where you should drive next. I had one made up for my drive from South Dakota to L.A. back in January of 1987, and I found it! I also found all of my Day Planners from 1987 through 2006! I looked at the first week of the 1987 book, and it detailed the stops and activities that occurred during my drive to my new home in California! Amazing! I can’t wait to dig into all of them and read about all of the activities and meetings I had over the past many years! I know where to find the rest of them (I never throw anything away!) so I may assemble the entire collection of volumes and put them in a very special place. I found the original spare key to my 1979 Ford Fairmont station wagon, which I drove to L.A. back in 1987, and I found a lot of my old business cards, driver licenses, and IDs that I’ve had from various jobs. These will go nicely in the photo albums I’ve been working on. But the big surprise was finding a little blue diary that my parents gave me for Christmas in 1974. Starting in January of 1975 I began journaling about each day’s activities, but after about a month I got tired of it and quit. But a few pages later in the diary it looks like I picked back up with journaling in 1981. While the first several pages recounted my life as a 13 year old in Aberdeen, South Dakota, this next section recounted my life as a 19 year old living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. However, many of these pages were rather painful to read. I was going through some real shit at the time. In addition to a specific problem with my health, I was also having to endure a constant revolving door of flakey people who just weren’t as excited about my ideas as I was at the time. Funny thing about memories – as your brain seems to kind of “sift out” a lot of the bad, and only retain the good. Luckily I had forgotten about a lot of the negative stuff that had happened in my life during a certain period, and only had good thoughts about a lot of my life. But reading these pages I could tell that I was a bit unhappy and in pain at that time. It got so bad that I almost didn’t want to continue reading, but I made it through the several months’ worth of historical documentation. Then, oddly enough, when I quit journaling in 1981, it seems that I picked back up 17 years later in 1998. By then I was living in L.A. and my Voice Acting career was just starting to heat up. This will be a fun read! There are several blank pages in the diary which I may fill in now to bring it all to a close, in order to give the reader my 2024 perspective. If I do that, it will round out 50 years of journaling – albeit in a very “spotty” sense. With periodic touches in various phases of my life, I feel this will be a fun thing to pass down to future generations…if they care to read it. Nowadays I still journal; between writing Wally’s Week and recording my thoughts and activities on a small digital recorder. I would advise you to do the same, no matter how mundane you think your life might be. Reflecting on it years later is pretty fun. I look forward to digging through more of my stored boxes to find some more “gold” I wasn’t expecting. But suffice to say, these items that I pulled out of my boxes will now go in an esteemed place of honor in my collection. Even though the job was hot and dusty, I persevered for several hours. And encountering evidence of a past rat infestation in a few of my boxes caused me to run to get some rubber gloves and clean everything up. The boxes were discarded and new boxes were populated with the materials. After several hours of hot, laborious (but fun!) work, I went inside to have a cold drink and a hot shower. When it starts to cool down it’s my goal to do a complete garage overhaul, and acquire some storage space off-site to store a lot of the things that I don’t have an immediate need for. It’s the kind of stuff that I don’t need right now, but I don’t want to throw away for good. My gal Angi came over later and we went to Denny’s to get something to eat. I was explaining to her that some recent battles with acid reflux (my regular medicine seems to have stopped working) had caused several problems with my voice. This has happened before when my body gets used to the medicine I’m taking, and I have to move on to a different medicine. My pal Joemel has been a server at Denny’s for as long as I can remember, and he happened to be working that night. As he was waiting on us he started randomly chatting about problems he was having with acid reflux! What are the chances?! He had no idea that very subject had been the topic of our recent conversation. Since there are no accidents in life, I sought his advice about what he does about it. In addition to the usual mitigation factors, he also said that he drinks some hot water before bed, and that will help neutralize the acid. I had never done that before. I’ve elevated the head of my bed, I try to sleep on my left side, I drink a little water with baking soda in it, etc. etc. – but I had never tried hot water. I’m gonna give it a try. I’m going to call my doctor next week to see what his advice is. The rest of the night I was pretty tired as that work in the garage had worn me out! Lots of hot, heavy lifting. I took a night off from my usual WOG to continue resting up, and I did some work around the house. But the garage is already looking much better!

Saturday the 10th – LOSING 85 POUNDS! – After stopping by my stylist Andie’s for a touch up on my color, I headed over to Staples to fill their shredding bins with all of my old tax documents. Honestly, I’m not sure why I didn’t throw this stuff away a long time ago. I brought the heavy box of stuff in to have it weighed – 85 pounds of junk! WOW! It took me about an hour; standing there putting little stacks of paper into the narrow slot into the locked shredding bin. But I got it all done and the resulting feeling was amazing. I rewarded myself by going next door to a restaurant in a train car called Carny’s. I had a hot dog with chili and sauerkraut and fries. (Stomach acid anyone?) But since it would be hours until I laid down again, I figured it was safe. When I got home I did a cursory look-through of some of my Day Planners and my blue diary. Later I took my nightly WOG, and then spent some time in the anti-grav chair enjoying an absolutely gorgeous summer night. Since it was good “cigar” weather, I lit up a nice cigar and truly relaxed. The stars were bright and relatively plentiful, for Los Angeles. There was a very bright planet in the eastern sky accompanied by two twin stars. Stunning! I came back inside to do some more work around the house, and I sat down to read some entries in my blue diary. Some of it was very tough to read, but some of it was delightful – as I recounted some fun memories that I had forgotten about! Including the first time I ever tried marijuana. It wasn’t what I was expecting, which is why I only did it a few more times after that, and then was done with it for good.

Sunday the 11th – SHOOTING STARS AND OWLS – WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE? – The afternoon was relatively quiet, so I did several of the auditions I had lined up in my in-box. I relaxed a bit, and then later I recorded some more. That evening I took my WOG, and I was excited to get outside in the anti-grav chair as I heard the Perseids meteor shower was back again and would be most visible close to the early morning hours. I got settled in my chair with an iced tea and just waited. The sky was nice and clear. Sure enough, right around 3:30am, the show began with a few small shooting stars. But then I saw a gorgeous DOUBLE shooting star! Like the one I saw last week, its trail remained visible in the sky after the meteor had burned out. Beautiful! There were a few other small ones after that, but nothing that came close to the brilliant double shooting star. I went back inside to wrap up the day, do some prep for the upcoming week, and hit the hay.

And how was YOUR week?!!

 

PIX FROM THE WEEK

While searching through my box of Misc. Memories, I found this old clipping from 1968. In first grade I won a blue ribbon for a humorous piece I read in Declam. What’s Declam? The internet defines it as… Declamation (from the Latin: declamatio) is an artistic form of public speaking. It is a dramatic oration designed to express through articulation, emphasis and gesture the full sense of the text being conveyed. So basically, even at that young age I had been bitten by the “bug,” and as they say, the rest is history.