RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK
I’m not sure if this was actually painted by an artist, or if it’s just ai, but this Adam West-sh Batman picture is pretty sweet!
For some reason this song always pops into my head when I’m building a puppet. I hum “Bend Me, Shape Me” by The American Breed for reasons I just can’t quite figure out!
Monday the 20th – “SPIDER-LAMP! SPIDER-LAMP…” – As if Mondays aren’t bad enough, I had an appointment for a dental check and cleaning early in the afternoon. Shortly after I woke up to get ready to go, I got a call from my dentist’s assistant who asked me to come in 45 minutes later than my appointment time. The Dr. had to attend to an emergency, so it gave me a chance to head to the hardware store to pick up some screws, and then hit Wienerschnitzel for lunch. Because of all of the madness I endured late last year over one tooth, my regular dental check-up had to be delayed. So this was really the first official dental cleaning and check-up I’ve had in a year. It sure is nice to have all that horrible tooth stuff behind me. This May I’ll get my implant, and in November (or thereabouts) I’ll get the actual crown. Anyone who says these dental implants procedures are fast is lying to you. I stopped over to Foam Mart to check up on the barrier walls they’ve been building for my upcoming Jim Henson exhibit at this May’s Monsterpalooza convention. They’re looking great, though they’re not quite finished yet. I went over to Hobby Lobby to pick up a few supplies, and when I’m there I always like to peruse the sci-fi and super-hero aisles. Occasionally they have some pretty good stuff. I found a Spider-Man lamp that was really cool. It was essentially just his head that lights up. But that was good enough for me. SOLD! I’m not sure where I’ll put him, though – perhaps the living room, or the Tranquility Zone. Since I’ve stopped eating sugar about a month ago, I’ve become obsessed with the sugar-free, Stevia-sweetened candy from Russell Stover. Unfortunately, the bags of the assorted caramels are hard to find. I can really only find them at local CVS stores. Knowing that I was going to pass a few CVS locations on the way home, I stopped into each of them to check. The first location had nothing. But the next location had the motherlode! FOUR bags of assorted caramels! To make things even sweeter, I ran into my old pal (and fellow Voice Actor) Rodger Bumpass who was also in the store! It was fun catching up, as I hadn’t seen him since we both appeared last year at a convention in Houston. Oddly enough, I just happened to be talking to my pal Dr. Doom in Sioux Falls, who’s my partner in the Voices Against Cancer children’s cancer charity there. I introduced Doc to Rodger on the phone, and we’d LOVE to get him to a 605 Pop Culture Con some year! After my call with Doc, I called my gal Angi and chatted with her for a long time. She’s been out of the continental United States for the entire month of April handling some family business, but she’s anxious to get back home. I’m anxious to have her back as well! When I got home I tried the new screws I bought at the hardware store, but I realized they were just a little too thick. These are the small screws that I’m using to attach the eye pieces to my new Herry Monster puppet. So, it’s back to the hardware store to get a set of slightly smaller screws. Later I drove to Alex In Wonderland’s shop and picked up the finished body for Herry Monster. It looks great! She also gave me the head she had been working on for a Guy Smiley puppet I’ve been meaning to make for over a year. I need to do some work on it, and then get it back to her for covering with the fleece fabric. I recently bought a wonderful replica of Rizzo the Rat from a builder in Florida, but I wasn’t happy with the arm rods. First off, they were MUCH too thick for a puppet that small. I jokingly referred to them as “telephone poles.” Also, the arm rods hadn’t been painted matte black, and the untreated metallic finish wasn’t very pleasing to the eye. So I’m having Alex remove the existing “telephone poles,” and she’s replacing them with thinner rods that she’ll also paint black. I’ll finish them up with handles when I get them back from her. Since Alex In Wonderland’s shop is near one of my favorite Italian restaurants, I figured I’d call in a pizza-to-go. But unfortunately Barone’s isn’t open on Mondays. Rats! So I made a frozen pizza when I got home, recorded an audition, and rested up a bit. I put the Spider-Man lamp in the Tranquility Zone and it looks right at home! I did my nightly WOG (walk/jog) and then came back inside to write Wally’s Week. Whew! Busy day!
Tuesday the 21st – HANDY DON! – Though he’s been very busy of late, restoring a house – it was good to finally get my contractor Handy Don over to Planet Wallywood to do some minor fix-its. My kitchen sink had a drip drip drip leak that was wasting a TON of water. He tried for several hours to replace the offending part, but the way these faucets are made these days seem to be very disposable in nature. It’s almost like the manufacturers PURPOSELY make them difficult to fix, so you have to throw them away and buy a new one. Handy and I went over to the local hardware store and picked up a brand new faucet array. He installed it and VOILA! – it was perfect! The sprayer even works better now! Handy also fixed a broken plastic nut that was underneath one of my bathroom sinks. He looked at the flickering ceiling lamp I have in my bedroom closet, and it looks like it’ll need to be replaced. It’s a fixture with three lamp heads on goosenecks, and one of the lamps occasionally flickers. I know it’s not the bulb because I’ve replaced them several times. There’s obviously a loose wire in there somewhere. Remembering back to when I first installed it, I realized that the fixture was most likely over 25 years old. So, it’s fulfilled its service dutifully, but it needs to be replaced. After searching for similar fixtures on eBay, I found the exact same one – but BRAND NEW! It was made by Ikea back in the day. Knowing how much I loved the former fixture, I bought this one right away, hoping that I’ll get another 25 years of use out of this one! After Handy Don left I did some work around the house, and relaxed. Later I attempted to attach the Herry Monster eye pieces with the new screws I purchased at the hardware store when Handy Don and I made a visit earlier in the day. But after a few attempts, I realize that I had blown it big time. Normally, when I make eye pieces or a nose for a puppet, I sculpt them out of something called Magic Sculpt. It’s a two-part sculpting compound that’s amazing. Once it cures, you can cut it, carve it, sand it – anything! When I make eye pieces I normally have a mold to make them in. Once I put the compound into the mold, I wait until it’s slightly hardened, and then I put a few bolts in the back of the pieces. Once the Magic Sculpt has fully cured, I pull the pieces out of the mold and insert them into the puppet. I poke holes in the puppet’s head that corresponds with the bolt placement of the eye pieces. However, since my pal Jim Ojala made these eye pieces from resin, there were no bolts. I had fully intended to screw them in from INSIDE the puppet’s head. Theoretically it seemed logical. But in practice it was impossible. I got the first screw seated on the left eye piece, but finding the second hole through the ¾” thickness of the foam rubber, plus all the fur, was impossible. I’m going to take the pieces back to Jim and ask that he epoxy some bolts into the eye pieces for me. Lesson learned. I took my nightly WOG and then came back inside to work around the house. I made a salad and watched the final episode from the first season of “The Virginian.” What a GREAT show this has been!
Wednesday the 22nd – THE NUTS AND BOLTS…AND BOLTS OF IT ALL! – The guys at the hardware store aren’t used to seeing me this often. I picked up a new set of bolts, nuts and washers so Jim could epoxy them to the back of the Herry Monster eye pieces. I also have to have Jim cut little channels into some plastic pieces that I’m going to use for Kermit the Frog’s “Frogenstein” costume for the Monsterpalooza exhibit. The channels will allow me to seat some armature wire into the plastic pieces and make a 45 degree bend in the wire so it will fit around Kermit’s neck. That way everything will be flush. I dropped all the stuff over to Jim’s studio. And just in time too, because he’s leaving late next week to work on a film for a while. I got back home and did some work and relaxed a bit. I did my nightly auditions, and then my regular WOG. After working around the house a little bit, I made a salad and started in on the second season of “High Chaparral” – the next TV show on DVD I’ll be watching from here on out.
Thursday the 23rd – REST, SWEET REST! – There was nothing pressing on the calendar for the day, so I took the opportunity of relaxing all day. Later I did my WOG and recorded my auditions, and got a few things done around the house.
Friday the 24th – TROOP’S TRIUMPH! – My maids were supposed to arrive around 11am (which I dutifully got up early for) but they actually didn’t arrive until just after 2. UGH! But I got some work done while I was waiting for them to arrive. The rest of the afternoon I finished up some work, and in the evening I met my pal Steve Troop; a puppet-builder/puppeteer genius who I tasked with an almost impossible feat. In 2008 a company called Master Replicas released ‘photo replica’ puppets of three Muppet characters; Kermit the Frog, Animal, and The Great Gonzo. While the first two were gorgeous replicas, the Gonzo figure posed some fabrication problems. The main problem was that Gonzo’s beak is hand-carved out of foam rubber. And a very SPECIFIC type of foam rubber. To make matters worse, this foam rubber breaks down over the years, and they have to replace the beaks on the Gonzo puppets on a fairly regular basis. So how does a company replicate this character with these unique issues for public consumption? Master Replicas decided to mold the beak out of a more durable material so it would last over the years. But how would they replicate the porous, organic look of his beak that the foam rubber provided. To give the beak a similar look, they covered it with a mesh “sock,” which didn’t impress fans very much. The rest of the photo puppet was amazing looking, but that beak has always bothered me. For the Monsterpalooza exhibit, I asked Steve if he could REMOVE the factory beak, and replace it with a hand-carved beak that looked more accurate to the real Muppet. We even lucked into finding some of the old-style of foam rubber at Foam Mart recently – as if by divine providence! Steve got to work with the foam and did several incarnations of the sculpt. Then he did paint tests. When he brought the finished product to our dinner meeting at Bob’s Big Boy, I almost fainted. My breath was taken away. It. Was. GORGEOUS! He really nailed it. I never for a second thought he wouldn’t be able to do it, but it turned out even better than I had hoped. He also refocused the pupils on the eye pieces, which improved the look as well. As soon as the Muppet collector world gets wind of Steve’s amazing feat, he’ll be flooded with orders from people wanting the conversion done on THEIR Gonzo figures! Good thing we have plenty of that foam rubber left! Our next project is to have Steve create a “travel Gonzo” that I can take on the road with me to conventions. I have a wonderful Gonzo replica that was made by a builder a while back, but since he’s no longer building puppets, this puppet isn’t ever leaving my house again. But based on what I saw Steve achieve with this project, I’m confident that he’ll create something wonderful! After dinner I came back home to relax. I did my nightly WOG, and then I decided to sit down at the computer and write an overview of the notable events I’ve extricated from my year 2000 Day Planner. That year was an amazing time! I was working on the second season of “Family Guy, “ I had just been cast in “Invader Zim,” there were a lot of fun Tony Clifton events I did, that was the year I bought my house, and that was the year I became the voice of the Pax TV network. FUN!
Saturday the 25th – PLATFORMS FOR PUPPETS! – After visiting my stylist Andie for a touch-up on my color, I picked up a few packages at my box. Later my friends Joe and Zandra Pendleton drove down from their home up north to deliver the puppet platforms that Joe had been making for the Monsterpalooza exhibit. He had painted them black and they looked amazing. Now it’s up to me to get busy and start arranging and sizing everything up for the display. We went over to Ernie’s Taco House for dinner, and it was great to see that it was so busy. I also really enjoyed the live music they have there on Saturday nights. When I heard the musician do two TV themes in a row (“Three’s Company” and “Partridge Family”) I immediately ran over with a 20 dollar bill and put it in his jar. I DO love those TV themes! It had been raining earlier in the day, and the forecast said we were going to get a lot of rain overnight as well. I thought my nightly WOG would be rained out, but by the time I got around to going outside, there was no rain in sight! BONUS! So I enjoyed another late-night WOG. I came back inside to do more work on my 2000 Day Planner. It’s exciting to look back on the events of that year, particularly the first notation I made about finding a good realtor. I was starting to get interested in buying a house, which led me to finding Planet Wallywood! I got right up to the point where it was moving day into my new place, and I decided to stop for the night. I made a Saturday Night Super Salad and watched the first episode of “Night Gallery.” This show in Blu ray looks AMAZING!!!
Sunday the 26th – SLEEP, SARA, SLOPPIES! – The only thing that could interrupt my normal “comatose Sunday,” is food. In particular sloppy joes. I don’t really cook very well, so I occasionally hire my friend Sara Raftery (who has a background in culinary education) to come make up a batch of sloppy joe meat that I can keep in the fridge. We went shopping for supplies, and she came back and whipped up two pounds of delicious sloppy joe fixins! YUM! I rested some more, and then did a ton of auditions later. I did my WOG and made a pot pie to eat while I watched the second episode of “High Chaparral” from the second season DVD set. The chemistry on this show is incredible!
And how was YOUR week!!??
PIX FROM THE WEEK
Steve Troop did an amazing job retooling this Master Replicas Gonzo!
That’s GOOD EATIN’!
Here’s the head form for the Guy Smiley puppet I’m working on. Alex In Wonderland did a great job of capturing America’s Favorite Gameshow Host!
Steve Troop asked me if my Guy Smiley replica was going to have moving eyebrows like the original. I didn’t know his eyebrows ever moved. But apparently in 1972, when the fabricators made a new Guy Smiley puppet for “Sesame Street,” they added an eyebrow mechanism. Being the purist that I am, I’ve decided not to add the mechanism, as the Guy Smiley I grew up with didn’t have moveable eyebrows. Though it’s a really great feature of the puppet.
