RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK
Though my cat Spooky likes to sleep in odd places, he’d never be able to fit into a slipper at his age! But this little guy seems right at home!
Now that I’m in to the “Lost in Space” Blu Ray set, I can NOT get the ultra cool theme song out of my head! And it’s composed by a guy named “Johnny Williams!” Who later became JOHN Williams…famous for “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” and so many other great soundtracks!
Monday the 1st – REUNION OF SORTS! – My bedroom hotline rang around noon and roused me from sleep. It was one of my agents telling me about a last-minute audition waiting for me in my inbox. So I sprang from bed and fired up the recording equipment. I laid down the auditions, e-mailed them in, and then got cleaned up to start the day. My first stop was my mailbox so I could pick up some packages. Then I hit McDonald’s for lunch, and drove over to Regenix in the Cedars-Sinai building. The associate that I usually see was off, so I was attended to by the OWNER of the company! WOW! Bill’s a great guy and he said my scalp looked picture perfect. I picked up some more supplies and then headed over to my next stop. I had an audition for a TV spot for the Cheesecake Factory, and the address was literally four blocks from Regenix. Perfect! These days in the Voice-Over industry you don’t go out in the field much anymore for auditions. So this was a special treat. I ran into other VO guys like Roger Rose and Bob Joles who were also auditioning. What fun! Back in the “old days” of VO (before home recording became all the rage) you’d see these guys at auditions almost every day at various casting companies. So this was quite a treat. On the way home I stopped by a lighting place and picked up some more blue rope light for my “Tranqulitiy Zone” (that’s what I’m calling my bedroom after my working on my intense redesign project). This set of rope lights will encircle another one of my bookcases, and will match perfectly the blue rope lights I installed on the companion case across the room. I stopped at International Silks and Woolens to see if they had any “space” fabric so I could make curtains for the bookcases. I already purchased some amazing fabric on eBay for the curtains, but I wanted to see if there was anything else out there that was comparable. I didn’t find anything close. So I’ll just wait for the stuff that I ordered to arrive. I took the drive back over the hill to home, and once I arrived I fed and walked Roxy, and then started in on writing Wally’s Week. It was a busy day! I grabbed a nap, and then met my pal Brittney Powell for dinner at Jerry’s Famous Deli. I came home and did some auditions, and then worked a few hours putting up more glow stars on the wall of my “Tranquility Zone.” The starfield I was making was virtually all done by hand. I wasn’t using any precut glow stars, but instead I was cutting them all out with various sized hole punches. Sometimes I would hand cut little starbursts or shooting star patterns. The trouble I’ve encountered with prefabricated glow stars is that they don’t stay lit for long. I found several sheets of high quality glow vinyl on eBay several years ago, and this stuff stays lit for hours and hours! I had made the mistake of putting up some glow stars from prefab set, but they looked awful set against the glow stars I had cut out of the vinyl. They all looked great as soon as you turned the lights off, but after about 15 minutes the prefab glow stars all faded out. So I had the tedious job of removing all of the bad glow stars, and replacing them with my newly cut, vinyl glow stars. Between the awesome glow starfield on my wall, the various lighting effects I had installed (rope lights, lava lamps, and other effects) it was looking like a complete relaxation zone. Add to that the blackout curtain that I put over my bedroom window, and you could be in there in the middle of the day and have no idea what time it was! It’s very soothing and meditative in there. And as soon as I get to my seamstress’ studio and have her stitch the starfield curtains for the bookcases, it’ll be complete! As I get older, high quality relaxation and meditative time is more important to me than ever. I finished up for the night, got ready for bed, and watched an episode of “Thunderbirds” on Blu Ray and had the ham and swiss sandwich that I brought home from Jerry’s Famous Deli earlier in the evening.
Tuesday the 2nd – FRAMED! – After I got up around 2 I checked e-mails, paid a few bills, and then got some signed photos ready to send out to those who e-mail me asking for autographed pics. I headed to the post office to mail everything, stopped by my mailbox to pick up my packages, and then met my assistant Sara for dinner at Coral Café. When we finished I headed over to Michael’s Art Supply to look for a frame for a picture I loved. A few years back, my friend Edi’s mom sent me an old magazine from December of 1944. On the cover it had a gorgeous Rockwell-esque painting of a collie looking quizzically at a little white kitten that was springing forth from a basket. The dog in the painting looks so much like my late collie Sassie, that it brings a tear to my eye. Coupled with the fact that she’s there with a little white kitten (much like my cat Spooky) I just had to frame the picture and display it in Planet Wallywood. But its odd size left me in a quandary. I didn’t want to custom-frame it, but I couldn’t find any off-the-shelf frames that matched the size. The sales guy at Michael’s showed me a cool frame and kept the picture sealed between two panes of glass. PERFECT! It looked like it was floating in mid-air! I got the frame and sped off for home. I couldn’t wait to frame it up. I gently cut the cover off the magazine with an Exacto knife, which wasn’t easy considering that the paper was SEVENTY-TWO years old! At the top the paper kind of crumbled, but it added to the rustic look of the piece. I got it mounted meticulously; measuring each side of the glass to make sure it was centered correctly, and then I popped on the frame. Beautiful! I grabbed a nap until 12:30am and then got up to do auditions. I walked and fed Roxy, did a little work around the house, and then made a Chef Boy Ar Dee pizza-in-a-box (YUM!) and watched “Thunderbirds.”
Wednesday the 3rd – I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT! – When you’re a Taurus like me, you’re addicted to activity and being busy. So when these “slow” times hit, you go out of your mind. In the Voice-Over industry this is a very slow time right now. Very few auditions are coming in, and even less sessions. Even the major players in the industry have had to figure out a routine for how to handle slow times, so I’m not alone. You just have to accept that it’s part of the business, and roll with it. And you have to keep mindful that, while it’s slow now, it won’t be in the future. And will most likely be so busy in the coming weeks that you will have trouble finding a way to fit everything in the day! I got up at 2, did a little work around the house, and had gallantly planned on running some errands. But I said, “To heck with it,” and just stayed in working around the house. I did a few auditions in the afternoon and e-mailed them in to my agents. Then I got Sara and my “adopted Grandma” Shirley together and we went to the Smokehouse for dinner. It was delicious! I got home and slept off my food coma, and then did some more auditions. When I finished those, I got busy on working on my personal log recordings. Since 2010 I’ve been making personal voice recordings on little digital recorders to pass down to future generations. Just in case they want to know more about their nutty ancestor. Once I download the recordings into my computer, I then put them in my audio editing program to cut out certain things and fix the levels. Then I label them certain way for posterity and download them to an external hard drive, which hopefully will survive the generations. Did I mention how much I hate these slow work periods???
Thursday the 4th – NICE RACK! – I awoke around 2 from a really cool “Adam West” dream. In fact, I woke up laughing! I checked my e-mails, and then started my errands. I stopped by my mailbox to get packages, got some food at McDonald’s (twice in one week at McDonald’s is really rare for me!), and then went over to Staples to go rack hunting. I have about 100 movie poster “one-sheets” from the 70’s and 80’s. Back in those days they used to fold them into fours so they could ship them to the theaters. Nowadays they send them rolled in a protective tube. I have two movie poster frames on my video cabinet, and I like to swap out the posters from time to time; even displaying posters for movies I’ll be showing at upcoming movie nights in Planet Wallywood! But the stack of movie posters on my closet shelf was starting to get to me. They were disorganized, and when I wanted to find a particular poster I had to take them all out and sort through them all. Plus, the other things on my shelf would fall over and it would be a real mess. So I got the idea to get a big metal divider rack that could hold the movie posters and keep them separated into groups. I had already gone through the entire collection and labeled them with little post-its, so I could tell at a glance what the title of the movie was without having the remove the poster from the stack. The racks worked great, and now everything on that closet shelf is completely organized! I stopped over to Bed, Bath and Beyond to return an iPod dock I had bought. Since it was a newer model it wouldn’t talk to my older iPod, and I’ll be darned if I’m going to buy a new iPod just so it’ll talk to a $40 dock. The dock I had been using had a few buttons missing, and the LED numbers on the clock had started to burn out. It worked great as a dock, but not as a clock. Luckily I was able to find the same “older” model dock, but BRAND NEW and never opened, on eBay. That way everything would be new, but it would still talk to my older iPod. (Remember the days when you’d buy a record or a cassette tape and every player you bought would play them? Not anymore!) While at B,B & B I bought some plastic containers for my kitchen. I was sick of looking at these big plastic tubs of pet food on my kitchen counter. I had one whole kitchen cupboard dedicated to phone books. PHONE BOOKS! Remember them? I took out all the phone books, threw out the ones that were no longer relevant in the recycling bin, and put the containers in the cupboard in their place. Now I could put Roxy’s food and Spook’s food in the containers and stash them away in the cupboard. Now I have lots of available counter space. I labeled each container with the name of the pet they were for, and it looked awesome. I was very proud of myself! I walked my neighbor’s greyhound Abby, and then came back inside to do my auditions. There was one particular audition that was very tough. It was a singing audition for a background singer for a cartoon. And the range was very high and theatrical. It took me a few tries, but I got I t nailed and sent it in. What fun! I napped for a bit, and then continued working on putting up more glow stars. The grouping of these stars was pretty cool. I made little galaxies and created a few planets. One of the packages I picked up earlier in the day was the starfield fabric. I opened the package and put the fabric up on the bookshelf to see how it would look. It looked amazing. It looked even better when I turned on the lighting effects in my room. Now I have to finalize the design of the curtains and get them to my seamstress to get them sewed up. Now that I’m done with “Thunderbirds” I’m starting in on the Blu Ray set of “Lost In Space.” I made pizza rolls and watched the very first episode. It’s amazing! I’m going to love this series!
Friday the 5th – TACO BELLE! – Once again, I got up at 2 and while walking Roxy I ran into my neighbor comedian Jon Reep. He was back in town for a few days, so I had him come inside and record some lines for “Wacky Wally’s Vintage Toys.” I’ll explain more about his role as we get closer to the release of the first episode! Stay tuned! I dashed off to get curtain rods for the new curtains I was making for my bedroom redesign project, and then I stopped by Taco Bell for some lunch before heading home. I had the top down, as it was a really nice day, and as I was waiting in the drive thru lane I noticed a strikingly beautiful girl sitting at the tables outside of the restaurant. I couldn’t take my eyes off her! As I pulled up in the lane she got up with her friends and started to leave. She stood in front of my car in the drive thru lane, and looked at my license plates and started laughing. (The custom plates on my Mustang are funny) I wanted to engage her in conversation, but I wasn’t sure if one of the people she was with might have been her boyfriend. I didn’t want a confrontation if that was the case. But she laughed at the plates and said, “Yeah baby!” I’m hoping I run into her again at Taco Bell, and hopefully next time she’ll be surrounded by a few less friends so I can find out more about her. Brittney came over to help me do some work around the house. I was bemoaning the fact that it was a very slow week, with no sessions and very minimal auditions. I really do despise these slow periods. As I made prepared to watch the second episode of “Lost In Space” on Blu Ray, I was reminded about the time I spoke with Billy Mumy on the phone when I was a kid. I had this memory spark in my brain recently, but I wasn’t sure that it actually happened. In fact, I had to call my folks to confirm with them if the memory was real or not. My dad didn’t have any recall of it, but my mom confirmed that it had indeed happened. As I remember it, when I was about 6 years old, I saw that Billy Mumy was manning the phones at some sort of telethon. It might have been the Muscular Dystrophy telethon. They said if you called to make a pledge you could talk to Billy. Knowing that I was a “Lost in Space” fan my folks dialed up. I barely remember what I talked to him about, but I do remember talking with him and making a pledge. If that’s the case, which my mom says it was, that would have been my very first “celebrity encounter” in my life. Too funny! If only I could jump into a time machine and observe some of those great moments in life! I went to Denny’s to get some food, got a few groceries, and headed home to watch “Lost In Space.”
Saturday the 6th – SULTRY SATURDAY! – Early afternoon, when I rolled out of bed, I checked with my seamstress to see if she was going to be working in her shop. I wanted to get the starfield curtains finished, but she decided to stay home and relax. I’ll catch up with her later in the week and get these taken care of. So I went back to bed and slept until 4:30. It was a nice, balmy day…close to 80 degrees out. It was a nice, lazy day. Later when we had movie night, I walked over to get my friend Shirley so she could come join us for the evening. We ordered pizza and watched the 1988 classic “The Bear” on Blu Ray. I remember seeing the movie about 4 or 5 times when it came out in theaters. I knew that Shirley would love it. Since she’s 88, I know that not all the movies we show at movie night would be appropriate, but “The Bear” is one I knew she’s enjoy. After movie night was over I worked around the house, rehearsed the song I’d be singing at church the following night, made my usual Saturday night masterpiece salad, and headed to my “Tranquility Zone” to watch the old BBC show “The Avengers.”
Sunday the 7th – GET TOGETHER! – Once again, I got up around 2 to prepare for the day. I did a phone interview at 3:15 with a guy named Jeremy for his podcast. Then I got cleaned up, warmed up, and headed to evening church with Roxy. We rehearsed the song I’d be singing called “Get Together” by the Youngbloods. The service went well and it was fairly well attended, despite the fact that it was Stupid Bowl Sunday. I took Shirley and Sara to dinner at Lancers in Burbank. I came home and napped for a bit, and then got up to do auditions. When I finished with those I did a lot of bookkeeping work; reconciling bank statements, going through my receipts, etc. It was very time consuming. I fed and walked Roxy and we hit the hay to watch another episode of “Lost In Space.”
And how was YOUR week??!!
PIX FROM THE WEEK
Here’s the cover of the “American Home” magazine that I bought. What a gorgeous cover!
This is another great sunrise photo taken out my bedroom window. Amazing!
I’m sure my pets would get a lot more rest of I wasn’t flashing my camera in their faces all the time. But they’re just so cute!
Enjoying a fun evening at the Smokehouse with good friends!
This is one tired kitty!
