July 14 – July 20 (2025) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

As I was going through all of the ephemera my folks recently gave me, I found my second published cartoon. The first one was when I was about 5, and it featured Mickey and Minnie Mouse walking hand-in-hand down a sidewalk, with Goofy peeking over a fence at them. But this cartoon was done a few years later and featured a robot of my own creation. (Anybody remember the weekly paper called Grit?)

I’m not sure why “Take This Love” by Sergio Mendes popped into my head this past week, but I’m glad it did. I had forgotten how wonderful the lead vocals are on this song. This guy can really tear it up. Needless to say I’ve been singing this continuously in the shower this past week. “I NEEEED a reason!” Great memory from 1986.

Monday the 14th – IT’S SUPER, MAN! – What a fantastic day! My gal Angi stopped over and we headed to the theatre to see “Superman” in 3-D. And boy was it amazing. Every frame was magical. My only complaint was that I thought the guy who played Lex Luthor was woefully miscast. The character ran on a flat plane with no peaks and valleys. Flatlined. He reminded me of the old David Lynch cartoon that used to appear in the local paper called “The Angriest Dog In The World.” The dog never altered his pose in the cartoon’s panels. Each week the dog just stood there, straining against his leash and growling. That’s what this Lex reminded me of. I would have loved to have seen more “smarm” and “phoniness” peppered in with the anger. His incessant anger throughout the movie became tiresome, but that’s the choice he made. Other than that, it was delightful. When we came out of the theatre I checked my phone and I had an urgent text from my pal Jamie Simone at Studiopolis. He was asking if I could come to the studio at 6:15 to do some pick-ups for a cartoon we worked on a few weeks back. So Angi dropped me off at the studio so I could do the pick-ups and I worked for about an hour. I got a sandwich at Subway on the way home and then headed home to relax. Later I did my nightly WOG (walk/jog) and recorded my auditions for the day. Then I sat down and typed out Wally’s Week.

Tuesday the 15th – TWO NEW BLU! – On the heels of a wonderful lunch on the patio at Paty’s with my pal Chris Malmin, I picked up some packages at my box. It included two new region-free Blu-ray players that I had ordered from a seller who specializes in these. These allow me to watch any DVD or Blu-ray from anywhere in the world, regardless of the regional classification. I realized last week that the region-free player I have in my living room has stopped working. I tested it before my pal Mark Fullerton came over to watch a Roger Moore documentary that’s only available in the U.K. It’s a good thing I tested it first, because after 10 years it just wouldn’t play any discs any longer. But I have two new units that are a different brand and I’m getting them installed next week. I hit my local CVS to pick up a prescription, got some groceries, and then headed home to do some work. I relaxed for a bit and then tackled a ton of auditions. I did my nightly WOG, recorded another audition, worked on my computer for a while, and then made a salad and watched one of the final episodes from “The Incredible Hulk” TV series. I only have two more episodes to go after this and then the series is complete. I will have watched all five seasons – which sometimes was a bit painful.

Wednesday the 16th – MOUTHWASH MYSTERY!? – About mid-afternoon my eyes sprang open and I realized that my new “Star Trek” tricorder prop had arrived at my box. Several years ago a company called The Wand Company had made a dead-on replica of a pistol phaser from the original “Star Trek” TV series. Owning one of these babies is a dream come true. It apparently doubles as a TV remote, but I’ve never used it for anything but a display prop. Then a few years after that, they released a dead-on replica of a communicator prop (my favorite prop from the old “Star Trek”series) which doubles as a Bluetooth device. Which means that, when paired to your phone, it can actually be used as a device to talk to people! The first day I used the communicator to talk to somebody, I actually got a tear in my eye! As a 13 year old kid watching reruns of “Star Trek” I never believed that would actually be possible! I went to my box and picked up the package. I couldn’t wait to get it home to start exploring it. My pal Sheriff John in Florida got one as well, so we’ll be chatting on the phone and comparing notes. I stopped at McDonald’s for some yummy lunch, but the taste was off for some reason. It didn’t have the usual McDonald’s “zing.” I’ve been noticing that with food lately – everything tastes different. I began thinking about what’s changed in my habits. I hadn’t been sick, so that couldn’t be it. Then I realized I had been using a “teeth whitening” mouthwash for about a week. After doing some research, I realized that the peroxide in the mouthwash had the potential for damaging your taste buds. I guess I won’t be using that again! Granted, it worked well and my teeth had brightened. But losing your sense of taste isn’t worth it. When I got home I had a ton of auditions to do, and then I relaxed for a bit. I worked on my computer later, editing some videos for the compilation hard drive I’m making for my daughter Lacey. It will contain all of the photos I have of her and her siblings in my photo archive, along with all of the pertinent videos I have. Some of the videos needed editing, as I wanted to cut out things that wouldn’t be relevant to her and the family specifically. I took my WOG and then called it a day.

Thursday the 17th – HOME LOAN LUNACY! – I’ve had my homeowner’s and car insurance with the same provider for decades. But last year they announced that they would no longer be providing insurance for automobiles. Instead, they referred me to a company that a) I’ve never heard of before, b) had horrible customer ratings, once I researched them, and c) wanted to charge me double what I had been paying for my 3 cars. I decided to move everything to AAA to bundle all of my coverage under one company. And even though AAA sent the “declaration of coverage” to my lender, I kept getting letters in the mail from my mortgage lender stating that their records showed I didn’t have coverage. I’ve always had trouble with this lender since they took over the loan a few years ago. First of all, they have a stupid name that I absolutely hate. It sounds more like a kiddie TV show than a mortgage lender. Secondly, I couldn’t understand why they weren’t getting these documents. I had called them last month (in the middle of all the craziness with my family situation) and emailed them the documents I thought they wanted. I kept getting letters saying that the lending company would have to buy insurance themselves, and then charge me for it. WHAT?! I called them back and talked to an attendant. She said what they needed was a “master condo policy.” First off, NOWHERE in the letter did it say that they needed a “master condo policy.” Had they stated that in the letter, I could have gotten that for them. Very strange, but that’s what you get when you send out computer-generated letters. I called the management company for our condo association and they emailed over the documents right away. Immediately I forwarded the document over to the lender’s email address. I figured the situation would be handled. But today I received ANOTHER computer-generated letter saying that they were going to buy insurance on my behalf to cover the mortgage, and then charge me a huge fee. So, once again, I called the numbskulls at the lender and asked (politely) what the hell they were smoking. I told them I had emailed them the “master condo policy” several weeks ago, but the letter I just received was dated a full week after I had emailed it in. The lady on the phone said (and I’m not joking here), “Oh, that email address is only monitored when you’re on the phone with us.” Good freaking grief! I can’t help it if they don’t monitor their email address! What kind of clown operation is this?! I told her to stay on the line as I would be RE-EMAILING the master condo policy that very minute. I told her it sure would have helped if they had been clearer about exactly what they needed in the first letter they sent me months ago! Luckily she confirmed she received it, and we were good to go. I asked for a confirmation number of some sort to prove that we spoke and she gave me the green light. “We don’t do that, unfortunately.” So if I get another annoying letter it’s basically her word against mine that we spoke? I wonder if I could get my loan transferred to a new company that’s not so inept. I’m EXTREMELY unhappy with them. This transfer of insurance policies to a new company shouldn’t have been this difficult. And it wouldn’t have been had they just stated what they needed from the outset. I turned my attentions to learning how my new tricorder worked. I looked through the manual but I’ve always been a visual learner. So Sheriff John sent over a few Youtube videos that explained it better visually than I could have ever comprehended through written text. Plus, I’m discovering with a lot of written manuals of late, that a lot of information is often left out. This leaves me wondering how the heck certain things work. And looking for further information on-line hardly ever bears any useful results either. For example, the tricorder comes with 3 little plastic divider inserts which are supposed to be snapped into the lower compartment of the device. When properly inserted, these dividers are made to support a medical scanner, similar to the one Dr. McCoy used in the show. Nowhere in the manual does it explain how the dividers snap in, nor does it explain in what order they are supposed to be placed. Oops. Sheriff John sent me a link to a manufacturer who makes the medical scanners, so in order to have the complete set I ordered one. The guy who runs that company remembered me! He said I bought a Barnabas Collins cane from him a few decades ago! WOW! I asked him how he could have possibly remembered that and he stated that he’s a huge ’66 Batman fan, and that he loved my “Adam West” song. So I’m sending him a copy on 45 rpm record to thank him for the nice memory. By evening time I was pretty well versed at how this tricorder worked. It’s utterly amazing! Since nothing else was going on today I had plenty of time to experiment. I got my name and date input into the device, and I looked around in the memory discs to see what I could find. The amount of material they’ve encoded into this thing is really amazing! Hours of fun, to be sure! Later I took my nightly WOG, and then edited some more videos for my daughter Lacey.

Friday the 18th – FRIDAY AT LAST! – After just a few measly hours of sleep, I woke up to let the maids in to clean Planet Wallywood. Then I met my pal Sara Raftery for lunch at Ernie’s Taco House. A few weeks ago she told me about a HUGE audition she had as a character performer for a new TV series. It was physically taxing, but she enjoyed it. Today she informed me that she got the job, and will be filming it in August. FANTASTIC! I was so happy for her! This could be a big one, and the start of many good things for her! After lunch I picked up some packages at my box, and then I went to Michaels crafts to pick up an 11” X 17” frame. While going through all of the ephemera that my folks gave me, I happened upon one of the original pin-up posters that promoted our 1980 Elvis Presley tribute concert called “Elvis Lives.” I didn’t already have one in my collection, and it was great seeing that my folks kept one. It had a really great vintage look, so I decided to frame it. I don’t really display my own stuff in Planet Wallywood, as I’ve always viewed that kind of thing as being a bit too arrogant. For the most part my displays are set up to celebrate the work of others that I’ve enjoyed all my life. But in my Tranquility Zone I do have a few mementos of my own life on display, as looking at them brings me joy as I’m winding down at the end of a day. I have my “Cabinet of Character,” which features toy representations of characters I’ve performed in my career. I also have a cool framed collage of stuff from my early days in radio. So this framed pin-up would be a welcome addition to the Tranquility Zone. Looking at it makes me smile. I picked up a few grocery items and then headed home to play with the tricorder some more. Talk about hours of joy! I relaxed for a little while, and then worked on the computer some more. I took my nightly WOG, and topped it off with some relaxing time outside in my anti-gravity chair. It was a gorgeous night, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a nice Monte Cristo cigar. I came back inside and did some more video editing.

Saturday the 19th – SCANS ‘N’ STEAKS! – Since there wasn’t much happening in the afternoon I decided to record all of the auditions I needed to record before a Monday delivery time. Then my pal Mark Fullerton arrived so we could drive over to the Smoke House restaurant to get some steaks. I hadn’t been there in a while so I was craving! As always it was satisfying and yummy, so I came home with a very full tummy. I relaxed for a bit and then texted my gal Angi to wish her a happy birthday. She’s currently working on the east coast, so since she’s 3 hours ahead of me I wanted to time it out perfectly. I took my WOG and spent some more time under an overcast sky in the anti-grav chair. It was quiet and lovely. I came back inside to edit some video, and I got set up to do a huge scanning project. When I brought home the box of photos from my folks’ in Sioux Falls, I needed to divide them up into categories. Anything that’s relevant to my daughter Lacey I put into one box, and anything from my own personal history went into another box. As I’m preparing to send Lacey a hard drive full of great family stuff, I wanted to make sure to get these photos scanned so I could include them too. Many of them are duplicates of what I already have, but on the off-chance there are some she doesn’t have, I wanted to be sure to get them on the drive. I discovered that my work area needed a good cleaning, so I did some cleaning and reorganizing. Then I started fiddling with my tricorder again. This thing is really, really cool! Then I made my usual Saturday night salad and watched another (painful) episode of “Boris Karloff’s Thriller.” While the first season of this show was pretty sweet, I’m finding it a bit of a struggle to get through the final episodes of the second season. It’s clear that they wanted to be “the poor man’s Twilight Zone,” but they didn’t do very well to achieve those ends. It would have been better for them to stick to their own ‘thriller’ formula and do more mysteries with slightly darker content. Oh well.

Sunday the 20th – FLASH DRIVE NOT CUTTING IT! – When I finally decided to get out of bed later in the day (it was another one of those delightful “comatose Sundays”) I started the process of scanning a bunch of photos for my daughter’s archives. I had purchased a flash drive that had enough room on it for all of the photos and videos I wanted to send her, but for some reason it wouldn’t take the larger video files – even though there was plenty of room left on the drive! It almost seemed like it had a limit on the size PER FILE. Well this just wasn’t going to do, as a few of these videos are about an hour in length, and were fairly sizable. So I ordered a regular old external hard drive, and discarded the thoughts of putting everything on a flash drive. The external drive would (hopefully) transfer and store everything I wanted to send her. Later I took my nightly WOG and hit the hay.

And how was YOUR week?!?!

PIX FROM THE WEEK