RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK
It’s about time to post another wonderful doggie pic, I think!
Once the principal photography for the ME-TV shoot for “Collector’s Call” had mostly wrapped up, the crew just needed to shoot some B roll for coverage. That meant that there would be no more live microphones. So the remaining crew urged me to crank some tunes. I played one of my iPods and lots of fun, random songs came up. But when Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” came on, we all started dancing and singing!
Monday the 4th – IT BEGINS! – Since the shoot for the ME-TV “Collector’s Call” episode is this Thursday, I had a ton to do. First, I needed to take some navy blue faux suede to my seamstress Shelley so she could make a curtain that would hang over my entry way. Since we would be shooting mostly in the living room, I wanted to make it look presentational. And most of all, I wanted to hide the front door and the shoe rack! I dropped off the fabric and rough pattern, and then headed to Carl’s Jr. for some quick food before a VERY quick session. I hit Rocket Sound at 12:30 and was literally done by 12:40! Quick and easy! I got home by 1 and met up with my puppet seamstress Maggie and we worked for 7.5 hours on finishing work on my new Count Von Count Muppet replica. If you remember, I had made one a few months ago, but I wasn’t happy with how the head I made turned out. So I hired pro puppet builder Steve Troop to fabricate the foam head. Today Maggie and I would cut and stitch the fleece covering for the head. While she worked I did a few auditions. Once she got the head covering done, she stitched on the ears while I worked on fabricating the eyebrows. The Count’s eyebrows float on wires, which are anchored inside the large nose piece, so it was a very delicate process. We glued the covering to the head in just a few places to anchor it, and then Maggie stitched on his ears. While she did that, I worked on anchoring the monocle to the nose. When I finished, Maggie added a few stitches to make sure it wouldn’t flop around. We put some Saran wrap and some painter’s tape on the top of his head to pattern out his hair. Then Maggie cut the hair pattern out of black fur and stitched it on. While she did that, I cut out the pieces for his goatee. She cut out the goatee, stitched it on, and we were ready for my buddy Sergio to come style the hair. In the early evening Sergio stopped over to do the hair. Since it was his second time doing The Count’s hair, it didn’t take him very long. I still need to attach the nose, and attach the head to the body. Maggie is coming back on Wednesday to hopefully finish everything up. It would be great to have The Count ready and displayed in the background for the Thursday shoot for ME-TV. I also have to attach the eye pieces, make his fangs and his tongue. There’s a LOT going on with this character! My buddy Mike McGee made a copy of a George Reeves life cast that he had in his collection, and brought it over. I’m giving it to my pal Dr. Cowen at tomorrow night’s Sons of the Desert meeting for a Christmas gift. George is to the Doc, what Adam West is to me. Later I did my nightly WOG (walk/jog) and spent a little time outside in the anti-grav chair relaxing and meditating. As the weather starts to get cooler at night, I suspect that these little outdoor times are becoming limited. I wrote Wally’s Week, worked in my living room for the upcoming shoot. I’m trying to work ahead as much as possible!
Tuesday the 5th – SESSION, STUDIOPOLIS, SUBWAY, AND SONS! – Since it was a gorgeous day I walked over to Studiopolis for a quick session for a new video game. I can’t say which one, but it’ll be an amazing one! I grabbed a tuna sub at Subway on my way home, and then went home to do some more work on the house in preparation for Thursday’s shoot. Later my buddy Rob Richards came by so we could go to dinner at Ernie’s Taco House, and then drive to the Mayflower Club for the Sons of the Desert meeting. The SOTD is a Laurel and Hardy appreciation society started in part by my old pal Chuck McCann. I’ve been a member for years and I really enjoy it. Rob is also a fan, and Rob and I have been enjoying “The Boys” for about 50 years. As one of the top theater organists in the world, Rob even plays to L&H silent films from time to time. When I gave Dr. Cowen the George Reeves life cast, was flabbergasted! He’ll enjoy it immensely, I feel. Then I got to see my old pal Bridget Marquardt (formerly of “The Girls Next Door”) because her boyfriend is one of the grandsons of Hal Roach; the guy who started it all for Laurel & Hardy! Hal was a genius who created The Little Rascals, and teamed two actors named Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together to make the most famous comedy team of all time. A lot of Hal’s family was there to celebrate his legacy, and they even brought along his lifetime achievement Oscar awarded to him in 1977! Amazing! They were letting people hold it for photos. And YES, those babies have some heft to them! As I mentioned, I’ve been a SOTD member for many years, but for the first time ever I was asked by one of the head honchos to do an onstage toast! It’s a HUGE honor! After we lock arms and sing the SOTD theme, several members take the stage to toast the principal players; Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Hal Roach, James Finlayson, Mae Busch, Charlie Hall, and T. Marvin Hatley, who wrote the famous music. They asked me to toast “Babe” Hardy and I immediately said yes! What an honor! It was an amazing night, and truly one of the best SOTD meetings I’ve ever attended. I also got to spend some time talking to Randy Skretvedt, who’s a Laurel & Hardy genius with an encyclopedic knowledge of “The Boys!” I got home and recorded a ton of auditions, and continued to prep for Thursday’s shoot. I moved all of the Muppet replicas downstairs into the living room and put them on top of my action figure cabinet. Then I hit the hay! Whew!
Wednesday the 6th – WARDROBE CHOICES! – First thing in the morning I had to be on-line to do a commercial session for Progressive in my home studio. I was booked from 11am to 1pm, but my maids said they’d be coming around noon. I was hoping either the session would finish early, or my maids would be late. Luckily the session ended around noon, and the maids arrived about 15 minutes after. PERFECT TIMING! Normally my maids come on Friday, but since the house would be full of people on Thursday for the ME-TV shoot I wanted to make sure it was clean. Several of the crew, including host Lisa Whelchel, are allergic to cats. So I wanted the environment to be as clean as possible. I hadn’t been letting Spook into the Puppet Room for the past few weeks, knowing that Lisa would be using that as a private changing room. Maggie stopped over for a few hours to finish up what we needed to do on The Count Muppet replica, but I honestly don’t think I’ll have time to finish his mouth, tongue and fangs in time for Thursday’s shoot. Oh well, we tried. I’m simply running out of time. As you probably know, every time you embark on a project like this, there are all sorts of “unexpected surprises” that arise that take extra time. Like a table I brought up from the garage for a display, and the base was covered in rust. So it took me a while to scour off the rust with steel wool. (It looks GREAT now!) There were all sorts of little things like that which ate up time. I breezed around the house storing and stashing stuff in closets and cubbies to make things look more orderly. I picked out some clothes I wanted to wear, which consisted of a red t-shirt, a nice, sleek denim jacket, and black jeans. I really needed my nightly WOG and to spend some time in the anti-grav chair just decompressing. It was simply beautiful out! But I needed to head to bed as I had a VERY busy day ahead of me.
Thursday the 7th – COLLECTOR’S CALL-OSSAL! – At 7:30am I sprang awake. I had been waiting for this day for a long time, and today was the day! My buddy and assistant-for-the-day Chris Malmin came over at 7:45 to begin his duties. Since the city of L.A. has been doing a lot of work on the main sewer line that runs through town, the presence of their heavy equipment on the street by my house has put a severe limit on street parking. With a dozen crew cars coming I had to come up with an alternate parking plan. I sent the producer a note telling them to text Chris when they got parked and he would find them and shuttle them to Planet Wallywood. Additionally, my buddy Jamie Simone at Studiopolis said I could use 5 of his spaces, and though the studio is a little further away than street parking, Chris could shuttle them over to my house very easily. The plan ended up working perfectly. Promptly at 8pm he got a text from Rob the producer that he needed a ride. For the first hour Chris was busy shuttling people from their parking spaces to Planet Wallywood. As the equipment trucks arrived they loaded in through my garage. Once I was satisfied that everyone was taken care of, I headed upstairs to shower. My hair gal Andie came at 8:30 and did my hair. Then I got into make-up and we were all ready to shoot by 9:30. The only snafu in the whole day was the wi-fi in my house. The crew was having trouble logging on, and it was telling them they had the wrong password. I’ve had the same password since I moved into the house 23 years ago, so I’m not sure what was going wrong. I tried rebooting the router and modem, but they said they would try something else. But I got busy with the shoot and they didn’t want me to bother with it any longer. I can’t tell you much about the content of the show, because that’s being withheld as a surprise when the episode airs. But I can give you very general information about the shoot itself. We started shooting around 10 and it was host Lisa Whelchel, collectible expert Rob Klein, and myself. We shot in my living room for about 3.5 solid hours, and we broke for lunch at 1:30. After lunch the crew set up in the showcase area to shoot a one-on-one interview with Lisa. They shot Rob’s one-on-one interview in the Chaney Room, and then it was time for my interview in the Puppet Room. Then a secondary crew moved through the house shooting all sorts of B roll (that’s extra footage they’ll need for cutaways during the show). It was a fantastic day with Muppets, puppets, collectibles, great stories, the ghost of Elvis, and I had no idea Lisa was a puppeteer! I can’t say much more about it without spoiling the show, but come April (when their new season starts) you’ll see what I mean. At one point in the taping I was telling a story and even got quite emotional, so I’m not sure if that will be kept in the show or not. We wrapped around 6 and some of the crew, Chris, and I headed to Barone’s to grab dinner. Then I got home to catch up on a few things and head to bed. I was beat!
Friday the 8th – THE AFTERGLOW! – By 10am I was due at the Disney TV recording studio in Glendale to record a quick gig as the voice of Flik. It’s a fun project that I’ll tell you more about when it’s released. The drive over didn’t take me as long as I had expected, so I had time to get some breakfast at Del Taco before the gig. It was a slick one-hour session, and then I headed out. On the way to the studio I noticed a Goodwill just down the street. I had been carrying around two large vinyl bean bag chairs in my car for days, mostly to get them out of the way for the shoot. My car seemed as good a place as any to stash them temporarily. But I decided to donate them and get them out of my house. One thing that cleaning up for the shoot did for me, was to point out how unnecessary a lot of the clutter I had in my house was. So while I had everything torn down, I took the opportunity to divest myself of a few items. The bean bag chairs used to be used when I was doing movie nights at the house, but since they were still in good condition I decided they would be better served in some kid’s room somewhere. I also donated a spinning eyeglass display that I no longer needed. I stopped by my box to get my packages, and saw that I got a great gift box from Amazon. I had posted on social media about a wonderful item I had bought recently, and they liked the post so much they sent me a few gifts. One was an LED rope light, and the other was a light and star projector called Galaxy Walker. One light emits streaks of colored light (similar to how the Northern Lights looks) and the laser emits a star pattern. It’s fabulous! When Rob Klein was at my house on Thursday he noticed a teenage boy mannequin in my garage and asked about it. I told him it used to have my Robin the Boy Wonder costume on it, but I switched mannequins and I no longer needed this one. He said he’d like to have it for one of his Michael J. Fox costumes, so he came by to pick it up. I’m going to slowly put the house back together this weekend and do it slowly and methodically in case I can make improvements along the way. About mid-afternoon I crashed in my bed for several hours. I was exhausted! Later I cleaned and organized the closets in the Chaney Room, and it was a long overdue task! But things look fantastic now! I put some of the figures that had been displaced during the shoot back in their proper places. After a good cleaning, The Chaney Room was done. Now onto the rest of the house! I took the Muppet replicas back upstairs to my room, but before I put them back in their Plexiglas cases I realized that the cases were in dire need of a good cleaning. I cleaned them all meticulously and replaced all the Muppets in their assigned spots. And then the major job…putting my desk back together. In order to create more room in the showcase area for the crew, I broke down my desk. Putting it back together isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world, but I can do it. I was getting hungry, so I headed to Denny’s to get some food to go. I’ll repopulate my desk tomorrow, as well as get the kitchen back together. I watched an episode of “Boris Karloff’s Thriller” and ate my delicious Denny’s food.
Saturday the 9th – SATURDAYS WITH SLEESTAK! – It sure felt good to sleep most of the day! Later my friends Joe and Zandra Pendleton came by and we headed to Paty’s for dinner. We were joined by Mike and Alex McGee (Alex in Wonderland), and Mike brought me a replica Sleestak mask. Sleestaks were the large lizard creatures in the Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning show “The Land of the Lost.” This is a direct copy from one of the original molds. On Sunday I’ll be the guest on “Sundays With Sid,” Sid Krofft’s weekly Instagram show. I wanted to have it to surprise him when I got on camera. We got back to Planet Wallywood and Joe put two new sticks of RAM in my computer to get it up to the max of 32gb. But the computer didn’t like it for some reason. We realized later that putting sticks of RAM together from different manufacturers isn’t a good idea. They weren’t compatible so it wouldn’t boot up. So I got on eBay and ordered two more sticks which are the same brand as the one I already have in there. I guess you learn something new every day. Since I bought the two new RAM sticks on Amazon I’ll return them for a refund. Sigh. Why would anything need to be easy, right? Later I cleaned up and organized for the “Sundays With Sid” show. I took my nightly WOG, and spent some quality time outside in the anti-grav chair. It was quiet, calm, clear and pleasant. But it was getting chilly. I wrapped myself in a blanket and it was quite wonderful! I went back inside and did some final prep, and then made my traditional Saturday Night Super Saint salad and watched the first part of a two-part “Saint” episode.
Sunday the 10th – “SUNDAYS WITH SID”! – While I was originally scheduled to be a guest on Sid Krofft’s weekly Instagram show several weeks ago, his brother passed away the day before. So we obviously rescheduled. Today was the day I would pop in on his show. My assistant Emily came over and chatted with Sid’s assistant Kelly about how to connect our accounts for the show. They figured it all out and we were golden! Sid was amazed at the Sleestak! Emily followed me all around Planet Wallywood while I gave a virtual tour. The hour went by very quickly! After the show Emily and I went to Little Toni’s for some dinner, and then I came back home to relax. Later I repopulated my desk, but while I had the opportunity, I cleaned off a lot of the clutter that normally populated my work area. It looked a LOT better! I finished reordering my area from the Collector’s Call shoot; the living room was back to normal, the showcase area is back to normal, and my desk is back to normal (but cleaner!). I took my WOG and then came inside, cleaned up, and ate some leftover Little Toni’s spaghetti while watching another episode of “Boris Karloff’s Thriller.” What an utterly amazing week!
And how was YOUR week?!
PIX FROM THE WEEK
Here are a few shots of some of the enhancements I made to Planet Wallywood for the ME-TV shoot.
I always love walking through the doors of Disney TV animation!
Getting to hold Hal Roach’s lifetime achievement Oscar was amazing!
These are the amazing gifts the kind folks at amazon sent me in response to a post I made about how happy I was with my spinning, levitating planet lamp.
