December 23 – December 29 (2024)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

One night while surfing social media, the algorithms detected that I liked Laurel & Hardy. So I got a spate of great photos that I had never seen before. Here’s Stan and Babe with their wives very late in their lives. Boy would I have loved to have met them!

As I mentioned in Wally’s Week, the special “John Denver & The Muppets; A Christmas Together” is rather weak, the soundtrack is terrific. In particular, I love this duet with John and Rowlf the Dog. And hopefully you DID have yourself a merry little Christmas!

Monday the 23rd – BILL & BRANDY! – It was a nice relaxing day, and for the first time this year I put on some Christmas music on the satellite while I worked. I chatted with the folks, and got a call from my pal Edi Lurie. While she and Elliot were in his hometown of New York City, they were at a little piano bar enjoying some spare time before a dinner engagement. Bill Murray walked in and sat down at the other end of the room. Edi went over to introduce herself and tell her about Elliot and “Brandy,” and that he was also in the bar. By the time Edi came out of the bathroom the piano player had his phone out and was learning the chords to “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)!” Soon Bill Murray was at the piano with Elliot singing the song together! Amazing! The story even made the local news. Read it here… nypost.com/2024/12/21/entertainment/bill-murray-crashes-piano-players-set-at-nyc-hotspot-bemelmans/ I’m so happy for Edi and Elliot, and it’s been a big year for Elliot and “Brandy.” He got to play the L.A. Forum this year for the first time in his life, when his pals at Yacht Rock Revue opened for REO Speedwagon and Train. And now the Bill Murray experience. Quite a year! After my nightly WOG (walk/jog) I typed out Wally’s Week and sat down to write up my Christmas Eve to-do list for this year’s “Creative Christmas.”

Tuesday the 24th – ALL IS CALM, ALL IS BRIGHT – or – SPIDER-CAT?! – If you’ve read the past few weeks of Wally’s Week you know that some of my acid reflux issues have returned. Luckily I was able to get in at the last minute at my internist’s office and speak with his Nurse Practitioner. Luckily the traffic on the way to the doctor’s office was really good, so I had time to slide into my box and pick up some packages. Two of the packages I recognized, but the larger third package I did not. The clerk at my mailbox place jokingly asked, “You’re over 21, right?” I laughed and said, “For many, many years. Why?” He said the third box contained wine. I told him that anybody who really knew me probably wouldn’t send such a thing, even as a gift. But I had to be at the doctor’s office so I grabbed the boxes hurriedly and headed out the door. Once I pulled into the doctor’s parking lot I got curious. Who was this box of wine from? I examined the box more carefully and opened it up. The card said “To Wally & Laurie.” Laurie? Who the hell is Laurie? Then I check the address label. It was to a different Wally, who also had a box at the same facility. I called my mailbox store and told them it was the wrong Wally, and they asked me to bring it back right away. I told them I’d head back right after my appointment with the Nurse Practitioner. When I got in I found that she was very informative about everything going on, and she said she would increase my dosage of my antacid medications to see how that would go. She told me to call the office after Christmas to get an endoscopy scheduled so the doctor could see exactly what’s going on. I headed back to my box to return the opened package of wine. Then I met my pal Chris Malmin for lunch at Paty’s. Another pair of Paty’s regulars came in and sat behind us with their gorgeous dogs and said they were victims of a robbery a few nights ago. I asked if it was on Thursday night and they said yes. I told them that my gal Angi and I were sitting on the patio and saw all the police helicopter activity. Luckily nothing was stolen, as my friends didn’t have any of the three things they were looking for; cash, jewelry and guns. But there obviously was some damage to their house caused by the break-in. The robbers hit three houses in the area, and though my friends were luckily not home at the time, one homeowner encountered the robbers face-to-face. They were Venezuelan gang members who had traipsed into the country thanks to a very porous border. They told her to get out of the house while they ransacked it. My friends said they just purchased a house in Hawaii and may leave California for good. It’s all out of control here, and our leadership in this state is absolutely worthless. As my dad used to say, quoting an old Midwest adage, “Useless as tits on a boar.” I went off to CVS to get my prescription, and then got some groceries. I stopped at FedEx Office and got my 2025 Sons of the Desert membership card laminated. Then I got a text from my box that another package had come in. But because of their holiday hours they would be closing in 20 minutes! Should I risk it? I decided I would. I sped back to my box and got in just as they were closing. Good thing, too. The box contained a set of ink I needed for my laser printer! When I finally got home it was about 3:30 in the afternoon on Christmas Eve day, and I put on “Christmas Across the Lands,” (my favorite Christmas radio show) which I stream from my buddy’s radio station in Sioux Falls. Then I went into the kitchen to feed Spook and noticed he was eating the rest of his food in his bowl. But I saw something move in his bowl. It was a spider! I grabbed the food bowl and rinsed it out immediately, washing the spider down the drain. Now I was worried that Spook may have gotten bitten, and that I might have to call the emergency pet facility for some antidote. I kept a close eye on Spook for the next few minutes. But because he’s old, he’s got some teeth that bother him when he eats…so he commonly makes some faces like there’s something wrong in his mouth. But this time I wasn’t sure if his faces were due to his elderly chompers, or if a spider bite was making his mouth feel strange. I kept a close eye on him to see if he suddenly developed any superpowers and started climbing the walls! But he didn’t, and soon after it all abated. Whew! I plugged the cable into my main audio receiver so I could get the Christmas radio show all throughout the house, and it all sounded great! I had the audio playing in my living room, the Chaney Room, and upstairs in the Puppet Room and the Tranquility Zone. But I think next year I’m going to buy a mini-plug splitter, so that the male plug can go into my headphone jack of my computer, and the two female jacks can serve my downstairs receiver, and a second set of “local” speakers that I can put near my computer for better coverage. Every Christmas eve I do something I call my “Creative Christmas” project. One year it was painting the ceiling of my kitchen with a glow-in-the-dark star pattern, and other years I’ve spent the night making puppets. This year I’ll be doing several things. I finally put away all of the set pieces and props from my Christoween stop-motion sizzle reel which had been populating my Chaney Room and parts of my kitchen. I also wanted to make a little Santa hat and vest for my “traveling” Kermit so I could take him to dinner with us at the Smoke House on Christmas night. I went downstairs and pulled out some white Sherpa fur for the trim, and some red microsuede for the hat and vest. I did some other work around the house to kill time until it was time for me to take my nightly WOG. I didn’t want to get started on the hat/vest project before my walk, because I might get too involved and lose track of time. I enjoyed a nice WOG and it was clear, calm and bright out. In fact, I had to hold myself back from yelling out a hearty “HO HO HO!” while walking around the neighborhood, just in case any kid might hear it and know that Santa was on the job. Sure, it might be annoying to the adults who are trying to sleep, but if ONE KID hears it, it could change their lives! However, I resisted the temptation. It was nice enough out that I even spent a little time in the anti-gravity chair enjoying the gorgeous sky. I thought I may have even spotted Santa’s sleigh traversing the sky at one point, but I couldn’t be sure. I came back in the garage and pulled down a box in my storage marked CHRISTMAS. I was on a mission to find my traditional Santa Mickey hat, which I like to wear every year to dinner. It’s a Santa hat with plastic Mickey Mouse ears on it. But as I rifled through the box I spotted something else useful. It was a tiny Santa hat, about the size of Kermit the Frog’s head! A while back I had bought the entire set of large Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer figures. The Santa figure was about 10 inches tall, and had cloth clothing. I decided to borrow his hat for Kermit, which meant that was one less thing I had to make! BINGO! I sat down at my kitchen table and listened to “Christmas Across the Lands” while I worked. I love the show, and I particularly love hearing the banter between the host Randy Sherwyn and Wally The Elf. I provided all the voice tracks for Wally back in February and March of 2024, and it’s finally nice to hear them all produced up and in the show. FUN STUFF! I draped pieces of paper over my Kermit puppet and drew on a vest pattern. I did the left panel for his front, and the left panel for his back. There would be four pieces total that I would sew together. Once I got the paper pattern finessed I cut two pieces for the front and two for the back and pieced them onto the puppet. They worked out so well that I decided I wouldn’t need to sew them, I could just pop some duct tape on the back of the pieces and join the pieces together that way. Then I put some protective paper under the vest so I could hot glue the white Sherpa fur trim on. I didn’t want any hot glue getting on the puppet, so I had to be careful. I pinned the paper on the puppet under the vest very gingerly. I cut out a piece of fur trim based on the patterns I had already created. It worked perfectly! Then I started thinking about a Kermit pinback button I had when I was a kid. I believe I bought it at the Hallmark store back in 1979 or 1980. It was just Kermit’s head with a Santa hat on it. But where could it be? I check my display cases in the Puppet Room, but no go. Then I remembered that I have a beige jacket in the Chaney Room that’s covered with all sorts of buttons and patches. Could it be on that? I went down and found the jacket and pulled it out. I found a cluster of Kermit buttons, but no Santa Kermit. I inspected the rest of the jacket and up near the top of the back…THERE IT WAS! Santa Kermit! I guess my old memory isn’t so bad after all! I removed the button from the jacket and placed it on his vest. Not only did it look perfect, it was totally vintage! I couldn’t wait to walk into the Smoke House with Santa Kermit! After I was satisfied with how everything looked, I snapped a photo and put everything away. Another part of my Christmas Eve ritual is to make a Chef Boyardee pizza-in-a-box and watch something Christmassy. With all of the acid reflux troubles I’ve been having recently I gave a second thought to eating a spicy pizza before bedtime, but what the hell – – it’s Christmas! My pal Scott Sebring found a restored copy of the 1979 Christmas special “John Denver & The Muppets; A Christmas Together.” I had always wondered why this special had never been offered up on VHS on DVD. It’s very strange. The soundtrack CD was terrific! In fact, the version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” performed by John Denver & Rowlf remains one of my favorites! I got all set up, made the pizza, and watched the show. Unfortunately, it’s not as good as I remember it. I think the main problem was that it wasn’t written by any of the Muppets’ regular writers. It was mostly a John Denver vehicle, and the Muppets were occasional guests. They went for a lot of the “cheap” laughs that were all too easy. For example, Miss Piggy trying to seduce John Denver, and Miss Piggy vying for a feature musical number on the show, etc. You have to remember that right around this time in history, Miss Piggy was the breakout star of The Muppets. Other numbers on the show were actually kind of dark. And their attempts to make John Denver a musical comedy star didn’t really work. As it ended I realized why this had never been officially released on DVD or VHS. Probably better that it remains that way. In the future I’ll only watch a terrific special called “A Muppet Family Christmas!”

Wednesday the 25th – HAPPY CHRISTMAS! – After enjoying a long nap with visions of Filet Mignon dancing in my head, I got out of bed and got cleaned up. Then I headed to Smoke House. When I pulled in there were a lot of fire trucks and an ambulance. Uh oh. I also had been thinking of a way to solve a problem that I may have going in to check in for the reservation. I had forgotten to add one friend to our list of 10 for the reservation, and now we have 11. I had tried to expand the reservation a few days ago, but the Smoke House told me I couldn’t because they were totally booked up. I had a $20 bill in my pocket ready to tip the maître-d’ if there was any trouble. But instead I decided I’d let Kermit Claus help me out. I pulled into the valet, pulled out my Charlie Brown Christmas tree (which is our traditional centerpiece on the table), and put Kermit on my right hand. I got out of the Gray Ghost and made my way through the people waiting for the valet to bring their cars up. Everyone laughed and said hi to Kermit. It was beautiful! Kermit shouted words of greeting and goodwill to everyone! When we waded through the crowd and made our way to the host stand I asked for the head host or hostess. I explained that I had made a counting error and we actually had 11, and not 10. But she didn’t get mad, because she was elated that Kermit Claus was there! She said, “It shouldn’t be a problem!” Then Kermit said, “You’d think after all those years working on ‘Sesame Street’ that I’d learn to count better!” She laughed, and I knew we’d be OK. It didn’t take long before we were seated at a table for 14 in the front room. We had a few extra chairs and plenty of room to stretch out. This was GREAT! Several people asked for pictures with Santa Kermit and he was happy to oblige. One was a cute little girl who must’ve been about 5 years old. Her mom wanted her to look at the camera, but she couldn’t take her eyes Kermit. One of the common reactions that kids have when they see a puppet with a moving mouth, is to put their finger out to see if the puppet will bite it. Kermit said, “Sorry, the only things I bite is my dinner. And flies.” What a great time! It was another fun night with good food and great friends! I came home to relax with a very full tummy. Later I took my nightly WOG, and then I dug out my collection of Day Planners, which dated back to 1987; the first year I arrived in Los Angeles. While it’s a Day Planner, and not a diary, I could still extricate enough historical information from them to compile a list of “Notable Events.” In fact, I’m going to do this with all 37 Day Planners in my collection. I’d like to create a basic history of my years here in L.A., and while I didn’t recognize some of the names and places that I had written down in the books, I got enough information from them to fill in some “holes” in the history. This will be a very fun project! Some info was difficult to decipher, as I had written certain things down very hastily at the time. I knew and understood what the cryptic notations meant at the time, but 37 years later I was sometimes totally baffled at the meaning. But it sure was fun reliving some of the memories from back in the day.

Thursday the 26th – DAY PLANNER PLEASANTNESS! – After sleeping most of the day, I got up to work on sifting through the Day Planners again. I really wish I would have been a little more descriptive in some of my entries back in the day, but at the time I didn’t think that I’d be using it as an ersatz historical document. But the memories and dates that I COULD decipher were fun to discover! Later I took my nightly WOG.

Friday the 27th – SCOPING SCHEDULED! – The first order of the day was to call my internist’s office and schedule my endoscopy. They wanted me to come in on February 7th, but I’ll be appearing at a convention in Puyallup, Washington on that day. Then they said they had a last-minute opening due to a cancellation on Tuesday December 31st! I told them that all of the people who could take me and pick me up were busy or out of town. So the next closest date wasn’t until February 24th – almost two months away! I took it anyway. I bought my airline tickets, reserved my hotel room and car for my dad’s 90th birthday celebration in late January. While I’m very much looking forward to celebrating this monumental occasion with my family, I am NOT looking forward to February weather in South Dakota! I headed out the door to do some errands, which included picking up some packages at my box. I also stopped into Paty’s for a salad on the patio. The day was cold and gloomy, and it’s the first time I broke out my new winter jacket! I came home to do some work, and dive into my 1990 Day Planner. I had gone through the 1987, 1988 and 1989 books, and I’m forging forward into the 90’s! Luckily I had all the dates written down for when I started my first job at Music + record store back in 1987, the date I first started at the Westwood One Radio Network in 1987, and the date I first started as a board operator at 94.7 The Wave in 1987. It was a VERY busy first year in L.A.! In fact, some of the schedule I was reading had me working almost 14 hours a day! I’d work at the radio network all day, then drive over to the radio station and work 6 hours there. Come home and go to bed, and then do the same thing the next day! Ahhhh youth! I did my nightly WOG and then came back inside to work on the computer. I sussed through the 1991 Day Planner to extricate all of the notable events from that year, then made a salad and watched some episodes of “Collector’s Call” that I had stored on my DVR.

Saturday the 28th – CANE CASE! – It was another full day of rest, relaxation and reset. Later my friends Mike & Alex from Alex In Wonderland brought over the backing board for my Stan Laurel cane display case. They had cut down a few of the holders so the cane would fit in there more easily. Then they backed the whole thing with black felt so nothing would get damaged. They also put small holes through the backboard so I could loop little pieces of fish line through the board and fasten down the cane securely in the case. After they left I put the cane in, stitched it down with monofilament, cleaned the Plexiglas on the case with a special glaze, and sealed up the case. Then I made the information sign that would be displayed with it. But by this time it had gotten so late, I didn’t want to attach it to my wall. I’m sure all the hammering and drilling sounds would disturb my neighbors. Despite the fact that it was really cold I took my nightly WOG. My next project was to put up some new rope lights that I had just gotten. When I first started my Tranquility Zone back in 2014 the only special effects lighting I could find were a few strips of LED lights, and the traditional incandescent rope lights. The rope lights had a lot of uses, but mostly they were used by theatre companies for backstage lighting. The lighting was used to line the backs of flats so the actors could see how to get to their places when backstage. But the lighting it offered was soft enough to not distract from the onstage lighting design. They came in three colors; white, red, and blue. I bought one 18’ coil of red, and two 18’ coils of blue. I trimmed my main bookcase with the red rope, and trimmed two smaller bookcases with the blues. But over time, some of the lights in the ropes would burn out and go dark. In rope lights of that nature, not just one or two lights would burn out, but you’d lose entire 3 foot sections of lights. So while a few burned out sections didn’t bother me, when it came down to over half of the rope being burned out, it was time to replace them. With the advent of LED lighting effects in the late 2010s, the incandescent lights became less desirable. But I still liked the soft glow that the old-fashioned rope lights offered. Luckily on eBay and Amazon I found some suitable replacements and ordered them. The thought was that I could just pop the old rope lights out of the little C-clamp holders that were screwed into the bookcases, but it got more complicated than that. The electrical cords that fed them power had been tied up with several other cords and they needed to be separated. Once that happened, I could throw away the old ropes, and incorporate the new ropes. It was a bit of a complicated procedure for the first set of red lights, but it wasn’t anything too difficult. Then I moved onto the first set of blue rope lights. This was slightly more complex as some of the clamps had gotten old and had cracked. I removed the broken ones and installed some new ones. But my battery-operated drill was starting to lose power. I drilled what I could, and screwed in some more clamps, and finally got everything back to normal. But when I turned on all the lights in the Tranquility Zone, one major set of LED lights were inoperative. Something had gone wrong! So I tore a few things apart to try and find the source of the problem. After much investigation I realized that the power cord had been yanked out of the transformer for the LED lights. I must’ve mistakenly yanked it as I was reorganizing the wiring for the new blue rope. I rejoined the cable to the transformer, and all was right with the world. But I was exhausted! I would do the third and final blue rope another night. All I wanted was some tomato soup, some turkey and cheese sliders, and an episode of “Boris Karloff’s Thriller” before bed! The experience was made all that more exciting because a thick fog had moved into the neighborhood and was coating everything as far as the eye could see. It was magical!

Sunday the 29th – MORE FRIEND FUN! – About a year ago I bought an original fez from the 1933 Laurel & Hardy film “Sons of the Desert” on eBay. The seller is a well-known Laurel & Hardy collector and he and I became fast friends! He was in town for a few weeks with his husband and brother-in-law, and he asked if they could come by for a tour of Planet Wallywood. It was funny because, since they were younger, they didn’t really know who Andy Kaufman or Mannix was. However, they enjoyed seeing all the Freddy Krueger stuff, as that was definitely their generation! After the tour we all met at Barone’s for dinner. We had a great time and closed down the restaurant! I came back home to relax, and then took my nightly WOG. I came back inside and wasn’t really feeling very energetic, so I just sat at the computer and perused Twitter for a few hours. I absolutely love the vintage videos and all the funny dog and cat videos! This Christmas-to-New-Year’s week always has me feeling lethargic and lazy.

And how was YOUR Christmas week?!?!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

A new artist on the scene sent me some fun fanart that I enjoyed getting. The drawings are by HolNation22, and they depict a few of my characters from my Christoween capers, and the other one is a rendition of what my character from the “Street Fighter” game would look like if he became Santa! Nicely done! I love receiving fanart!