Wally’s Week

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

As I was working in my garage this past week, doing reorganizing and purging, this song came on my digital device and had me dancing all around. The Struts “Put Your Money On Me” is a really fun tune!

Humming here

Monday the 6th – GOLD! – Roger from Blok4 came over so we could discuss plans for my talking, life-size Darth Vader figure. Roger will be doing a lot of the electronics work to get the voice chip installed on the underside of the new Vader base that my friend Joe is working on. We discussed being able to pull out the battery compartment easily when the batteries needed changing, and he came up with a pretty slick plan. He took the voice chip (which we removed from its previous place in the living room wall) and the switches, and went to his shop to begin work. I met my pal Sara Raftery for lunch at Paty’s, which was nice as I hadn’t seen her in a while. I picked up a few packages at my box, and then headed over to Pro Health to pick up a CD of my recent CT scan. I would need it to show the oral surgeon on Tuesday when I go to my appointment. I’ve had this obstructed salivary gland for a few months now and it’s annoying. I drove back to my complex, but this week we’re unable to park in our garages. The driveways leading up to our garages will be under construction all week, so we need to park outside in the available guest parking spots. It’s a bit of a hassle, but the new driveways will be slick and nice! Sara came over to pick up a few grocery items I didn’t need, and then I began working on reconciling my bank statements. I worked on a few other things, did my daily auditions, and then rested for a bit. I typed out Wally’s Week for last week, and then put on my workout clothes and went outside to enjoy my nightly WOG (walk/jog) through the complex. The driveway was completely dug up. It looked weird, but it was necessary to completely remove the old, bumpy driveway asphalt so new paving could be laid. Since I was going to have a week without a car in my garage, I took the opportunity to do some organizing, reorganizing, and repositioning of some of the storage bins I have in there. It was starting to become a bit of a chaotic mess, so I was anxious to spend this week fixing everything up. A long time ago, my water heater sprang a leak. The water covered my garage floor, and when I pulled into my garage I was shocked to see what had happened. The bad thing was, all of the storage boxes that contained keepsakes were those cardboard banker’s boxes…and many of them got soaked beyond being salvageable. Worse yet, some of the items INSIDE those boxes had also gotten damaged. So I quickly removed everything of value and stashed them elsewhere until I could get a bunch of plastic bins to replace the old cardboard ones. Then I set about cleaning up the watery floor. Once I had the water heater replaced I put all of the keepsake stuff away in a new plastic bin hastily. In all of my storage bins I have the contents carefully cataloged and inventoried in a master binder that I keep in the garage. So if I’m looking for a specific item I can either look it up in the book, or search for the item in a master document on my computer. Then I know exactly which box to pull. But in my haste, I had neglected to carefully inventory all of the keepsake items that I pulled from the soaking wet cardboard boxes, before I put them in the new plastic bins. So there had been stuff I was looking to find for quite some time, but could never locate. None of my search terms I was using came up in my master document, but I KNEW they were there somewhere. When I got all the bins pulled and laid out individually on my garage floor…BINGO! There they were! In box 46! All of those pieces of nostalgic gold I had been looking for all these years! I found my old Cub Scout and Webelo uniform, badges and handbook. I found the original set of scrubs I wore when I was in the delivery room watching the birth of my first daughter. I found the three Wingert comics I illustrated when I was 14. I found my “James Bond Diary” that I had written when I was 14 and in the process of trying to make a James Bond Super 8mm film. I found the spiral notebook in which I had written details about our family’s first trip to California in the summer of 1976! And I found even more great stuff…but there was SO MUCH! I can’t wait to dig through it further and meticulously catalog and inventory every single item that’s in there. I should have done this initially when I migrated everything over to the new plastic bins, but for some reason I never did. But I sure am enjoying reading and scanning a lot of these old documents from when I was an early teen!

Tuesday the 7th – LADIES & GENTLEMEN…SAPPY SPIT! – As I made my way into Glendale to meet with an oral surgeon my dentist had referred me to, I was kind of wishing I had a GPS device. Their office said their address was 238 on this specific street. But I drove along and carefully looked at the address numbers posted on the buildings and I didn’t see any 238. I turned around and tried again. No dice. Finally I pulled over and called the office. The girl described for me their building and cross-street. Once I found the building I couldn’t believe I had missed it. It was so obvious. But as I sat there in the waiting room I glanced up at their front door and realized what happened. The numbers on their door said 242, not 238. I asked the girl at the front desk why they gave me the wrong address. She said they’re in the process of getting the address changed to 238, but their old address was 242. She should have told me that on the phone when I set the appointment up. Sending me to a non-existent address with deceptive numbers on the front door wasn’t something I could find from the street. Bizarre. Despite their lousy directions, the doctor was quite delightful. He said that, particularly in the summer months, people get dehydrated quite easily. When that happens, a person’s saliva can get “sappy.” I told him that Sappy Spit was the name of my new punk band. He laughed and drew out the route that saliva has to take to get into the mouth, and there are a few “bends” along the way. He said it’s likely that, since my initial incident happened in August while enjoying a cigar, my sappy spit got clogged in one of those bends. He said that surgery wasn’t an advisable option – but instead I should suck on sugar-free lemon candy, stay hydrated, use warm compresses just before going to bed, and eat a lot of pickles. “Pickle away,” he said. I told him Pickle Way was the name of my Smooth Jazz band. He laughed again. He advised against caffeinated drinks, as those dehydrate a person quite badly. He also said that a good way to not catch a cold on a flight is to drink several glasses of water just before you get onboard. But I explained how uncomfortable that would be, especially if they hit turbulence and make you stay in your seat. Not being able to access the bathroom after several glasses of water seemed like a living hell. Then I told him that I was the jerk that came on the overhead speaker reminding you to stay in your seat, and keep your seatbelts fastened. The doctor thought it was quite cool that I was the voice on American Airlines. The doc was a good guy, and he just advised me to do those things he mentioned, and the obstructed gland would clear up on its own. It was a fun time, and the doctor said I made him laugh several times. It’s important to keep your doctor happy! I drove over to Staples to pick up a small, hard-sided travel case that would be capable of storing a puppet for travel. As I was walking through the store I heard an announcement on the overhead speaker – “Packing and printing services has a call waiting. Packing and printing services has a call waiting.” I thought the voice sounded familiar. Then I heard it again. Sure enough, it was me! Then I remembered that my local Staples uses the text-to-speech program that I recorded many years ago on their phone system when you call them. It would only stand to reason that the same t-t-s program would do their store announcements as well. Cool! I picked up a few groceries (including pickles!) and then headed to Jersey Mike’s to get a sandwich to go. I mailed off a few bills and then headed home to relax and eat. The second day of the driveway project was coming along great! I recorded a few auditions, and then relaxed for a while. Later I went back out into the garage to do a few more hours of work. I found all of my Day Planners for every year I’ve been out here in L.A., except the year 2014. I have no idea where that one is. Odd. I like going through the Day Planners and extricating all of the pertinent info and notable events from the year. It’s like a diary of sorts. I moved a lot of stuff around in the garage in my continuing quest to reorganize. I opened my underground storage area in my crawlspace, and I realized what a huge job it was going to be. First of all, when the underground storage area was first constructed by my late contractor Terry, he and I were both younger. So getting on my knees and crawling around in a tight space like that probably wasn’t a good idea now. So I decided to just go through the boxes that were easily accessible and call it a day. I ended up throwing out a lot of old reel to reel tapes. Most of them I kept, because they were old radio airchecks and Voice Over demo tapes from the early days. But some of the ones that I wouldn’t need again got tossed out. Firstly, nobody really has a reel to reel machine to play them on any longer. Secondly a lot of them were just taking up unnecessary space. I got dressed and did my nightly WOG, and then came back inside to do more work with my bank statements. I took great delight in reading and scanning my old James Bond Diary that I had written in 1975. It really took me back, and it was fun reading about a few specific incidents that I had forgotten about. One entry included details about the day over Christmas break in 1975 when my dog was hit by a car and eventually died. Sad.

Wednesday the 8th – PURGE PURGE PURGE! – After picking up a package at my box, I met my friend Emily Reaves for lunch at Paty’s. She wanted to pick my brain on ways to pick up some extra work here and there. But unfortunately the current state of the entertainment industry isn’t very conducive to that, sadly. During lunch I was notified that a few more packages had come into my box, so I picked those up and headed home. I did a little work inside and fed Spook. Once the driveway construction outside my house had settled down for the day, I recorded my daily auditions and sent them in to my agents. After relaxing for a bit, I did my nightly WOG, and spent a few more hours in my garage purging stuff in my storage. I ended the day satisfied that I got a lot of good work done!

Thursday the 9th – OUCH! – As I pulled myself out of bed I was really feeling the effects of bending, lifting and moving over the past few days. I was pretty sore, but I still had more work to do. My assistant Emily Danyel came over to do some work, and then we drove to Paty’s for lunch on the patio to get some sun. I got a few more packages at my box, and then I headed over to Anawalt lumber to pick up a few pieces of plywood that needed to be cut to very specific dimensions. As I began stacking these plastic bins in my storage, I realized that the lids to some of them had become very brittle. Most of them had pieces snapped off, which didn’t provide a very good seal. Also, with broken lids, it’s impossible to get them to stack correctly. So I had about 6 pieces of plywood cut that could be used as covers. The plywood lids would also provide a more stable stacking mechanism as I started to put everything back in order. But when I got back to my house I realized that I couldn’t get close to my garage to haul them in. So I parked as close as I could, and hauled them in by hand. I parked my car in guest parking, and then headed into the garage to begin work. I got most everything stashed away and it looks pretty darn orderly! I’ve been keeping copious notes in my master binder as to what exactly is contained in each numbered box. I also drew out a map of where each box was located in the stacks of bins. When all the bins are stacked together, seeing the number on the bin in question is sometimes impossible. So this diagram should help in future quests. When I get back from my upcoming trip to South Dakota I’ll sort through box 46 and re-inventory and re-catalog everything that’s contained within. My seamstress Maggie and her fiancé Jeff came over to pick up some materials. While searching through my fabric boxes, I found an unfinished test puppet head that my pal Steve Troop made when we were working on The Count. I also found a finished test body when my seamstress Shelley and I were working on making Rowlf. I decided to pull them both out, give them to Maggie, and have her combine them into a cool puppet. I wasn’t very specific about what it should look like; I just wanted her to use her imagination. I’ll take it with me to South Dakota and give it to the grandkids to add to their ever-growing puppet collection. I did a little work on the computer, relaxed, and then did some more organizing in the garage. I took my nightly WOG and came back inside to call it a day.

Friday the 10th –SON OF MONSTERPALOOZA! – The maids came over to clean Planet Wallywood, and then I hit the road and headed to Son of Monsterpalooza in Burbank. I got in a bit early, so I could do some shopping before the crowds hit. As I’ve been attending a lot of conventions the past few years, my favorite thing to do is to check out the local artists to look over their wares. Buying stuff from manufacturers that are widely commercially available isn’t really my thing anymore, but I love seeing what the smaller, independent artists come up with. I’ve bought stuff from a guy who made cool 3D printed stuff. I’ve bought wall hangings of popular characters that an artist cuts out of plywood, and paints. So I was amazed when I saw an artist at Son of Monsterpalooza that had a framed Creature From The Black Lagoon piece. It wasn’t drawn or painted, but rather cut from several layers of neon-colored paper! She makes the original design digitally, but then prints each layer on paper and has them cut out. So each color you see on the piece is actually a different layer of colored paper. It’s amazing! It also gives it a 3D look, since the stacks of colored paper give it dimension. But the best part of all is, it’s neon – so it will be black light reactive! I saw some good friends and chatted with them for a while, and shopped around for souvenirs for the grandkids. One of my buddies told me that a new Renji figure from Funko Pops will be out in May of 2026. And that means I’ll have plenty of new things to sign once those come out. The two Renji pops that have already been released came out many years ago, and they’ve been sold out for a long time. So that means they cost over a hundred bucks, in most cases. But when these new ones come out they’ll be easily accessible to everyone! I had fun walking around and looking everything over, but I was still a bit sore from lifting boxes and bins all week. After a few hours I came back home to relax. The driveways are finished, but we still can’t park in our garages yet – as the asphalt still has to cure for another 12 hours or so. But we’ll get access to them again on Saturday for sure! Later I took my nightly WOG, and for the first time in almost a week, I spent some time behind my house in my anti-gravity chair. The smooth, new driveway is really nice. The old uneven and rut-filled pavement is long gone, and now it’s smooth as glass! I went back inside to do some video editing and other various work. It’s a 3 day weekend (of sorts) so I’m going to enjoy doing nothing for a few days.

Saturday the 11th – MONSTER MEH! – As I got ready to attend day 2 of Son of Monsterpalooza, the very real prospect of not finding suitable parking flooded my brain. It’s always tough to find parking around the venue, but if it was going to be too difficult I’d just call it and come back home. I hit KFC on the way to get some lunch, and sure enough, once I hit the Marriott in Burbank – parking was impossible to find. I made about 3 full circles around the area, including looking for a space at the nearby Burbank airport, but after about 45 minutes of looking, I decided to head back home. I really didn’t have anything specific to do there, except see a few friends who I knew were going to be there. But clearly I was not meant to be there. And I sure didn’t want to park a half mile away and walk it, given my sore back from my week of activity. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to even stay very long, as I had a hair appointment later that afternoon. So I cut my losses and headed back home. I saw my stylist Andie later in the afternoon, and then got some dinner at Jack in the Box and headed home to start the weekend. It was nice being able to pull into my garage, and the driveway was so smooth that it felt like I was gliding! After relaxing for a bit, I started reading through some of the journals I had unearthed in my garage excavation. The 1976 California vacation journal was wild! At the time I was writing it, I had no idea that I would literally be LIVING there a short 11 years later! I did my nightly WOG and spent some time in the anti-gravity chair enjoying the night. It was quite cool outside, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. (At least those damn mosquitoes were gone!) I came back inside and did a few things around the house. I installed my new black-light Creature From The Black Lagoon art piece in one of my shelving units in the Tranquility Zone, and it looks amazing! I made my traditional Saturday night Super Salad and watched another episode of “Boris Karloff’s Thriller.”

Sunday the 12th – HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN! – As my weekly “comatose” day is usually Sunday, I took full advantage of it. I laid around, relaxed, and did nothing. Later I did my WOG and spent some time in the anti-grav chair. There were sparse, bright white low clouds lazily soaring across the dark night sky. This was just the start, as the cloud cover was going to get a lot denser over the coming days. We are expecting a few inches of rain early this week. It’s the Columbus Day 3 day weekend, so I’ll probably do pretty much the same on Monday. I sat down and completed my garage storage diagram and finished up the updated pages for the binder. I made some lasagna and watched the first two episodes of “Tiger and Bunny” from the second season. Watching this show is one of the reasons I got Netflix, as I’ve been dying to see how what we recorded a few years ago turned out. The first two episodes did not disappoint! I really loved being a part of this show!

And how was YOUR week?!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

My 20 year old cat Spooky likes me to cradle him like a baby while I’m sitting at the computer. He doesn’t like when I look away from him, when I glance at the computer screen, and he’ll take his front paws and touch my face. He’s getting quite spoiled in his old age!

The full moon on the rise was quite stunning this week!

Son of Monsterpalooza was a hoot, and I ran into the usual characters. I also saw some awesome make-up demonstrations!

Here’s the fantastic “black light” Creature From The Black Lagoon piece by Bronson’s Shop Of Horror!

Here’s the cover and the first page of my “James Bond Diary” that I made back in 1975. Back then I thought it was cool. Then after a period of time it became cringe. But now it’s pretty cool again to look back on those days 50 years ago!

Spook loves to be rocked to Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene: Part IV.”

In order to get Spooky to eat all his food, I have to put some Greenie treats in them – kind of like his version of Lucky Charms!