August 12 – August 18 (2024)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Since I don’t have access to a lot of my recent photos yet, this gem popped up from one of my old folders and it made me laugh. This is how I want my headstone to read after I go.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

As I was driving around this summer gem came up on my device. Loverboy’s “Hot Girls In Love” really speaks of summer to me!

Monday the 12th – SENSATIONAL SUMMER! – It was a perfect day for a lunch meeting on the patio at Paty’s! After I finished I picked up a package at my box, hit the cleaners to pick up some dry cleaning, got a few groceries, and then headed home. It was a very hot day, but nice. I much prefer this kind of weather to the cold. I am NOT a cold weather guy (says the former South Dakotan!). I did some prep for a session on Tuesday by going over the script and rehearsing my lines. I found out from my sister that one of my old friends and ex-teachers passed away in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Dale Reed Hart was one of my drama teachers in my senior year of high school at Washington High. He and I were also acting partners in a few plays. He was Salieri and I was Mozart in a local production of “Amadeus.” He was Captain Hook and I was Smee in a local production of “Peter Pan.” He was a soft-spoken, gentle guy, with enormous talent. I remember him pulling me into his office at Washington High school in my senior year and saying something like this (even though I’m paraphrasing)…”I don’t often tell students this, because I don’t want them to get false hopes. There will be a lot of people who will try to extinguish your fire. Don’t let them. I think you should stick with your dreams and pursue them.” It’s the kind of talk one never, ever forgets from an advisor that you respect. Several years later, after I had moved to L.A. and had a moderate amount of success, I saw Mr. Hart during a visit to Sioux Falls. I told him how much his wonderful advice on that day had meant to me. But he didn’t remember it. He said, “That doesn’t sound like anything I would say.” I laughed and said, “That’s pretty much exactly what you said back then!” Though he didn’t remember it, it was one of those things I will never forget for the rest of my life. It was a piece of advice that helped motivate the young me to not give up. He was a good, good man. Later I typed out Wally’s Week, took my nightly blood-pressure-reducing WOG (walk/jog) and spent some time outside in the anti-gravity chair enjoying the night. Though it was tough to relax. I was feeling a bit restless.

Tuesday the 13th – FUN SESSION…AND A DOGGIE!!! – As I was very much in a restless phase, I got up way earlier than I needed to. I spent some time working on-line, and then hit Carl’s Jr. for some chicken strips before my session. I got to Shane Salk Studios in North Hollywood right on time and started my session. We finished up in just a few hours, and had a blast! Afterwards I was rewarded with some doggie time, as I got to meet Shane’s dog A.J. – who loved getting pets and even leaped up to get a hug! I loved it! What a great dog! I hit the local GNC to get some supplements, and then went home to recalibrate. Later I recorded my nightly auditions, took my nightly WOG, and spent some quality time outside in the middle of the night staring at the beautiful summer sky in my anti-grav chair.

Wednesday the 14th – UH-OH….! – Since it was pretty much a day off for me, I decided to invite my assistant and frequent house sitter to lunch at Paty’s. Then I came back to do some work around the house, and delve back into my “looking for gold” project in the garage. After several, hot hours digging around in my storage, I still hadn’t found the items I have been looking for! Wherever could they be?! The fact that all of the items I’m looking for seem to be missing, tells me that at one point I put them all in the same place. Now if I could just remember where that was! I came back inside, showered and laid around relaxing for a bit. I did my nightly auditions, and then spent some time reading my old diary – a piece of gold I had managed to unearth during the last “scrounging around” session I did in my garage. It’s a diary I got in October of 1974, but I waited until the first day of 1975 to start it – January 1, 1975 to be exact! I was 13 years old, and I kept up with daily entries in the diary for about a month and a half. And then I lost interest, apparently. Then there’s a blank section, and then I picked back up with it in February of 1981. I was then 19 going on 20. Several sections from that time were very hard to read, as I was going through a lot of stuff. It was clear that I wasn’t very happy living in South Dakota and I was itching for something better. Five years later I would move to L.A.! I kept up with it until July 21st of 1981, and then I picked back up with it on July 22nd of 1998! I was then 37 years old and had lived in L.A. for about 11 years. It was the first big year of my Voice Over pursuit, and I loved reading about all the stuff that was going on in my life at the time in great detail. It was a VERY big year for me. I kept up with the diary during that year until December 31st, 1998. Great stuff. It sure brought back a lot of memories – and filled in a lot of gaps I had in my personal history. Later I took my nightly WOG, spent some time in the anti-grav chair, and enjoyed the peaceful night. But little did I know the horror that I was about to endure! I came back inside to make some soup and listen to a podcast and dial around on Twitter. Before I did that I thought it would be nice to send another little audio clip to my folks. But when I tried to open the folder there was no response. I clicked again. No response. Again. Again. Again. Finally the folder opened up seven times but all I got was a message that said “WORKING.” Something was stuck. So thinking something was clogging up my system, I did a restart. But when my computer came back on, my desktop was totally empty, save for three icons! I got an error message that my main internal drive was unavailable or had been removed. What?! I wasn’t sure what that even meant! So I restarted again. Same thing. Looks like my main data drive in my computer has failed. Great. Just what I needed. However, I was still able to get on-line. I have an incremental back-up system installed that sends all of my updates to an external hard drive on a regular basis, so that should solve all my problems, right? It’s a 15tb drive that my computer guy Brian helped me set up a few years back. However, since it was now 5 in the morning, I certainly wasn’t going to call any of my computer contacts at that hour. So I finished my soup, decided not to stress, and hit the hay. I’d deal with it later.

Thursday the 15th- Cursed Day Thursday! – When I got up the first order of the day was to call my pal Joe in Lompoc, CA. He’s been a computer specialist for over 30 years and has always had good advice when I have issues. A few months ago I had a drive on my computer that had filled up, and I didn’t understand why. After buying two brand new 18tb drives, I found out that it was simply because I hadn’t cleared the drives of all my downloads. Once I did that, I was back in business – and I never really needed the two drives I bought. However, I decided to keep them for future needs. Once I explained the issue to Joe he said he and his wife Zandra would be right down. Even though Joe wasn’t the guy who originally set my system up (my buddy Brian did that, and he now lives in Denver) he would come take a look. It would take them a few hours to get here from Lompoc, so I had the rest of the day to investigate further. However, I had to be at Rocket Sound at noon to do a half hour session for a video game. I got to Rocket Sound for my session and some of the guys there seemed to think I’d be able to find a good data retrieval person who could come to my house and try and salvage the data on my defunct drive. That’s one option. But I still have my regular incremental back-up to rely on, right? After lunch I drove to Jersey Mike’s to get a sandwich. I pulled in and there was no line. But I hesitated just a few minutes too much, and by the time I got in a whole team of road construction workers had come in. So much for that. So I hit the Taco Bell drive-thru and headed home to see what I could discover by poking around on my back-up drives. But then I remembered that I needed to get Ant Traps because (as is usual in the summer) my kitchen was invested with the little black bastards. I hit the hardware store, got some traps, and headed home to put one out in the area where the infestation was happening. I got on the phone with Brian in Denver and we chatted about a few things. I’m not very computer literate, and I’m finding myself having to learn about it more and more as these technological snafus happen. If I had my druthers, I’d much prefer to just pay an expert to handle everything and just learn enough of the basics to get me through life. But when a major crisis like this happens, I tend to just want to throw money at somebody and say, “Let me know when you’ve fixed it.” Brian thinks I should get a whole new system, similar to a server system. Based on all the work I do with audio, and recording sessions that I do at home, it’s probably a good idea to invest the money in something like that. I’ve never been a fan of “the cloud,” as it makes absolutely NO logical sense to me to send all my personal data to God knows where to be looked at by God knows who. Once Joe arrived I put him on the phone with Brian in Denver. They found two back-up drives. One was a 5tb drive that held a lot of the older stuff I had in my possession when Brian set the system up back in 2018. But there seemed to be some stuff there from as recent as last Tuesday. The problem is…that’s not the drive we assigned the incremental back-ups to. A few months ago, when I bought those two 18tb drives, I immediately connected one to my computer and did a manual back-up of all my pertinent documents, audio files, music, videos, photos, etc. I kept it connected to my computer until just recently, when I realized that its presence was superfluous and unneeded at this time. I put it away in a safe location in my house. Now that the internal drive has apparently failed, I needed a drive to contain all of the salvageable materials we could find on my back-up drives. Enter the second 18tb drive which I had lying around, still in the original packaging! It hadn’t been touched since I bought it! I was considering taking it back for a refund, as it seemed unnecessary at the time, but there are no accidents in life, I believe. Joe hooked up that new drive and we started scouting for usable stuff. Since the most recent backed-up material seemed to be on the little 5tb drive, and not the 15tb drive that we originally assigned to the incremental back-up job, Joe said we should start dumping stuff over from that little drive. Even though there was a small amount of recent stuff on it, the majority of the stuff on it was from 2018. We started the transfer, which my computer said would take about 22 hours, and we all went to get dinner at Little Toni’s. However the wait time was about 35 minutes, so we opted for Paty’s instead. It was a gorgeous night out and I needed some food and to relax with good friends. We got back to the house and the transfer was still in progress, so Joe and Zandra headed back home. Later I took my WOG and saw a little creature ducking behind a hedge. Thinking it was one of the local raccoons I tread carefully. But after shining my light down behind the hedge, I realized it was a cute little tuxedo cat! I told him to be careful of the coyotes! It was dangerous for him to be out! I came back inside after my WOG and got an iced tea, and headed outside for some decompression time in the anti-grav chair. When I walked back into my garage I noticed that my garage light was on. Odd, since it only comes on when the sensor is triggered. Who was in my garage at that late hour? Just then, out dashed a furry, tortoiseshell cat – the same one that my assistant Emily and I had seen roaming around the complex a few days earlier. Did this cat not have a home? He was gorgeous and friendly, and with all the coyotes out and about, I couldn’t understand why his owner would let him out at night. But apparently he was investigating my garage. I offered him a little bit of food, but after considering it for a while, he dashed off. Had he really been a stray cat, he wouldn’t have passed up the snack. So I’m sure he’s well fed and well-kept by somebody. In light of the new feline friendships I made that night, I decided to call the two cats Tuxedo and Tortoise. I got back at my computer desk and the transfer was continuing. It would be a long time until the first batch of stuff was transferred. So I sat down with a snack and read some more of my diary. On one of the blank pages, I wrote a small entry about it being the 47th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, as it was now August 16th. Once I finish reading the entire diary I’ll fill the blank pages with a 2024 update, and then stash it away for safekeeping. Someday somebody may be interested in reading about their wacky ancestor who moved to L.A. for a showbiz life.

Friday the 16th – CONFOUNDING COMPUTER CONFUSION! – After the transfer completed I noticed that all of the stuff was from 2018 and 2022. Where is all the recent stuff?! The way the back-up drives were configured were very confusing; folders within folders within folders within folders. My next job was to tap into the 15tb drive to see if anything recent was in there, but I wasn’t having much luck finding anything. I’ve gotta get Brian on the line, or maybe I’ll pay him to come here and work on it. This system must be restored, and then streamlined to be less confusing. I started making some calls about possible data retrieval procedures, but it has to happen at my house. I’m not going to drop a drive off at a place without my supervision. There is a lot of personal, financial, IP, and studio-protected NDA-type stuff on there – and if any of that got out I’d be cooked! It’s not worth the chance. My maids came over and cleaned up Planet Wallywood while I waited for Brian to call me back. Joe got on the line with me again and tried to help but it’s all so convoluted that even he was confused by the set-up. The bright spot of the day was when my gal Angi came over to go to dinner. But I was so frustrated by everything and by the fact that I wasn’t getting any answers that I was a bit out of my mind with anxiety. She helped calm me down and we went to eat. Luckily, when we got to Little Toni’s for dinner (only a 10 minute wait for a table!) I had started to settle down a bit. I hate it when I don’t understand the logic of something. It drives me nuts. And this situation didn’t seem very logical to me. Why was something we had set up a long time ago not bearing the results I wanted. It was always my intention that, if anything like this happened, I would just get a new drive installed and hit RESTORE and all the stuff would reappear. Something wasn’t making sense to me and it was driving me nuts. I like to understand everything, but I wasn’t able to wrap my head around it. And reaching Brian was proving to be difficult. When I got back home I caught a nap (I needed it!). I got up for my nightly WOG, but first I hit the computer to check up on the news. At the bottom of my desktop there’s a news service that posts little headlines in an attempt to get me to click on their newsfeed. Having just awakened, the headline I saw shocked me. It read, “Maxxie Solters dies…” I couldn’t believe my eyes. MY Maxxie Solters?! I have a friend named Maxxie Solters, but I couldn’t believe it was the same one. She was so fit and active. I clicked on the link and there was her picture. Oh no! She died of undisclosed causes at the age of 37. It was fairly common to see her and her mom, her boyfriend, and her dog Pookie riding bikes around the neighborhood. What the hell happened? I couldn’t believe what I was reading, but apparently on Thursday she passed away at a hospital in Burbank. Unbelievable! As if I needed anything like this to make my week even worse! I went out on my WOG to exercise and think. Then I spent some quiet time under a cloudy sky in the anti-grav chair. So many questions.

Saturday the 17th – MUST ENGAGE BRAIN BEFORE DOING GOOD DEEDS! – The second batch of stuff from the tiny 5tb drive was transferring to my new 18tb drive. I chatted briefly with Brian but he said it’s best to let the transfer fully complete before we go poking around the system. So we agreed to talk later. Luckily (THANK GOD!) my pal Edi texted me out of the blue and asked if I was free for lunch. YES! Get me out of this house and into some sunshine! But on my way out of the complex to meet Edi I saw an elderly couple (in their 80s, I believe) trying to load a gorgeous, abandoned curio cabinet into their car. Angi and I had seen this abandoned cabinet on the sidewalk the night before, and we commented how nice it was. In fact, if I had room, I would have snagged it myself. Seeing that they were having some difficulty with it I pulled up beside them and asked if they needed help. They said that would be great. I hopped out of the car eager to help and do a good deed. My first mistake was not pulling my car over to a parking spot and out of the way. I figured it would be a quick job and I’d be on my way. The elderly gentleman named Frank was dragging the cabinet on the sidewalk. But it looked like something that I could pick up and carry myself. I didn’t think I’d have any trouble lifting the whole thing myself and carrying it three feet to their car. My second mistake! I hugged the cabinet and told Frank’s wife Blossom to make way. I picked it up and started to move with it. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. But the pressure I was putting on the cabinet doors with my chest caused the glass doors of the cabinet to shatter! All of the shattered glass (luckily!) fell INTO the cabinet, and not onto the sidewalk. I felt like a total dunce! I apologized profusely for ruining the door. Frank said the cabinet already had some damaged glass on the side, so he would need to have a glass guy fix it anyway. But still I felt like a total dumbwad. As I was trying to pull little pieces of glass out of my hand, and trying to pull the pieces of broken glass out of the cabinet I heard “HONK! HONK!” Somebody was behind my car trying to get out. But I still had some glass on my body I didn’t want to drag around. “HONK! HONK!” Granted I was in the wrong for leaving my car in the way, but when I came around I told the guy in the car to just relax. Had the guy really been a gentleman he would have asked if he could be of assistance. But he was in a big hurry to get out. We had words with each other, and given the crazy week I had just experienced I got a bit heated. I hardly ever get mad, but this was my boiling point. I hopped in my car (hoping no tiny glass pieces would fall onto my seat) and drove it out of the way so he could leave. I circled around and came back and parked it in a parking spot. By the time I got back Frank had moved the cabinet closer to his car, but there was no way he and his wife Blossom were going to get it in by themselves! I helped him load it in and all was good. Frank was going to just drive away with the hatch of his car hanging open. I told him as bumpy and as unmaintained as the streets were around here, he’d better tie that baby down. He said it would be OK, but I insisted on getting some road to tie the hatch down onto the cabinet. They followed me to my garage and I pulled out some rope. I called Edi quickly and apologized for being late, but I’d explain when I got there. We got it all tied down, and even padded with a piece of Styrofoam. I bid them good luck and got back in the Gray Ghost. I couldn’t believe my stupidity. I was so anxious to do a good deed for these people, that I hadn’t properly engaged my brain first. Later, Angi equated that to my “golden retriever” vibe. A dog sees a friend and happily dashes out to see them without thinking. And soon realizes that he’s in the middle of a busy street with cars bearing down on him. Yup, that pretty much sums it up. It’s great to do good deeds, but I’ve got to learn to engage my brain first, utilize my God-given critical thinking skills, and assess the situation before jumping in. Once I got to Paty’s I explained everything to Edi and told her about the adventure. Lunch was fun. Just as we were about to leave her husband Elliot’s hit song “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” came on the overhead music system. Not willing to walk out on Elliot’s song, we waited for it to finish. Just as we were leaving we saw our new best friend Morgan Fairchild coming in to dine. I said, “Hi Morgan!” She said, “Hi Wally!” Funny. We chatted with her for a bit and then we took off. On my way home I stopped at Baskin-Robbins and had some ice cream. Hell…I deserved it! I got home and decided to go out into the main courtyard of my complex. I saw a neighbor I hadn’t seen in a while and chatted with her for a while. A cute little dog named Victory came by and I gave her some of those delicious “under-the-collar” scratches. She didn’t want to leave! I came back inside to relax and decompress. In one week I’d be in Palm Desert to see the opening show of the Jeff Lynne’s ELO tour and I couldn’t wait! Later I took my nightly WOG and spent some time under another cloudy sky in the anti-grav chair. Though it wasn’t a typical “cigar” night, once again, I decided that I deserved it! After enjoying a nice cigar I came back inside to go through one of the Misc. Memories bins I pulled out recently. I went through every single piece in there and determined which pieces I would continue to save, and which pieces needed to go. I’m going to do this with the other two bins as well eventually. But there was LOTS of great stuff in there – many great memories! It was fun and relaxing. Later I made a salad and watched an episode of “Honey West.” The ant problem in my kitchen was mostly over, as it looked like the ants had taken the poison bait and left with it. Hopefully that’s over for another summer.

Sunday the 18th – WHAT WENT WRONG?! – Later in the day I was able to have a long conversation with my computer Brian in Denver. He attempted to gain access to my computer to have a look, but both of the “computer sharing” interfaces he tried wanted to charge us a bunch of money. I remember them being free back in the day. I guess not any longer. But as near as we can tell, after poking around in the 15tb drive that was supposed to be backing up all of my stuff on a regular basis, it failed back in September of 2022. For some unknown reason, it looks like the back-up program arbitrarily decided to move all the back-ups from the 15tb drive (which had plenty of room on it) to the smaller 5tb drive. Why? We don’t know. The good news is, it was backing stuff up. The bad news is, it was all going to the wrong drive. This drive was much too small to take all of the material – so that’s why it’s mostly all older stuff (with a few exceptions). I’ll have to spend the next few weeks reconstructing my folders and materials the best way I can. Luckily, I still have the first 18tb drive that I bought a few months ago, upon which I did the manual back-up. Though it will be slightly outdated, it won’t be as outdated as the material from 2018 and 2022 that are on my other drives. I need to engage my critical thinking skills and start making a list of where I can access as much of my current data as possible. I fear that a lot of my recent auditions and audio files from recent Voice Over sessions are lost for good. That is, unless we can retrieve some of that date from the broken internal drive. Since Brian couldn’t access my computer, he’s going to need to fly out from Denver this week to make an in-person assessment of my options. At the same time, I believe we’re going to build the new “server” system in Planet Wallywood that will prevent incidents like this from happening again. But it still blows my mind that we set up my back-up system to do a specific thing, and route my stuff to a specific drive, and it just arbitrarily decided to do something else entirely. Why did that happen? Was there a power surge or outage? We may never know. It’s strange that it decided to do something entirely different all on its own. I just need to relax and not stress about all the work we have ahead of us. I’m trying to stay positive, but based on the horrible air travel situation from July, my friend Maxxie dying, and now this computer snafu – I’m fearing that the end of 2024 could turn into a total $#!+show!

And how was YOUR week?!?!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

One of my former drama teachers, and stage pal Dale Reed Hart passed away last week at the age of 88. Here are some photos of he and I working on “Amadeus” at the Sioux Falls Community Playhouse back in the early 80s.