January 03 – January 09 (2022)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Seeing this old bill of sale from one of my favorite bookstores really sent me into another world! I used to frequent Courtney’s when I was a kid, looking for any books on monsters, Star Trek or Laurel and Hardy. It’s the store where I bought my first copy of “The Films of Laurel and Hardy” and “The Making of Star Trek.” Good times! Great memories!

Sade’s “Smooth Operator” came on the radio the other day as bumper music, and it left me wanting to hear the whole song. So I’ve been humming it all week. But it took me a while to find the version with her spoken rap in the beginning, which I love! We played the edited version in my old radio days, but I totally dig this album version!

Monday the 3rd – NICE TO BE OUT AGAIN! – A week earlier I was NOT doing well. I had caught some sort of flu, or strep throat, or something and was recuperating at home with the most painful sore throat I had ever experienced. But it was good to be out and about running errands. I drove to Burger King for lunch, but found out that I wasn’t able to eat as much as I usually do. During the illness I think my stomach shrank from not eating very much. I went to Foam Mart to try and find 1” diameter foam cord for my Roosevelt Franklin puppet arms, but they didn’t have anything similar to what I needed. I ran a few more errands and then headed home. I finished up writing Wally’s Week, worked around the house a little bit, and later I watched the final two episodes of “The Lone Ranger” for season 2.

Tuesday the 4th – TACO TUESDAY?! – I was craving tacos, so after I did a little work around the house I went to my seamstress Shelley’s house to pick up some new bowling shirts she had made for me, grabbed dinner at Taco Bell, and then went home to lounge around Planet Wallywood. Though I’m feeling pretty good, I’m not pushing it and trying to do too much. I’m still giving myself permission to relax and rest as much as possible.

Wednesday the 5th – BAD, BAD NEWS DAY! – It was a double-whammy news day. Not only did I find out that a good friend of mine found out they may have a tumor on their adrenal gland, a friend of mine whom I’ve known over 20 years found their 23 year old son dead in his room. I had known this guy since he was a little kid and obviously the news was devastating. What do you say to that? The best thing is to just remain quiet and compassionate and let them do the talking. It boggled my mind! It turned into a very lousy day, so I just hung out around the house, scanned some checks for a few deposits, recorded some auditions and reflected. Though I still have a slight tickle in my throat which produced a cough, it’s more manageable now. It seems when I get a flu like this, that annoying cough/tickle always seems to linger.

Thursday the 6th – NORMALCY AGAIN! – When I awoke to go do errands I was feeling very much my old self again. But when I went to my local bank branch to make some deposits they were closed. I don’t know why my bank does this sometimes, but they’ll close certain branches for periods of time. It’s very, VERY annoying. I could understand it a few years ago when they had to shut down for major interior reconstruction to build up Plexiglas barriers, etc. – but there’s no reason for it now; unless they simply just don’t have the available people to staff that branch. I’ll have to go to a different branch on a different day. I had plenty of other stuff I had to do. I got my Mustang washed and it looked fantastic. I got some lunch at Carl’s Jr. and then got some groceries at a store I hardly ever shop at. It was my lucky day, because in their deli, I found some freshly made ‘macaroni and beef’ – which is very similar to the goulash my mom used to make. This store doesn’t always carry it, and when I call over there to see if they have it in, nobody ever answers the phone. But it just happened that they had some, so I bought all they had. I‘ll refrigerate what I don’t eat today and enjoy it over the next week or so. When I came home I decided I’d do some more work on my Roosevelt Franklin replica Muppet. I glued the fuchsia-colored fleece to his body form, cut and pinned the arm tubes to have my seamstress Alex stitch them up, and I pinned a quantity of the fleece on to the foam head to show Alex how I want the head cover made. I’ll be seeing Alex in a few weeks to get going on this, after she finishes up a few projects she’s currently working on, so I want to be as ready as possible with it. My next phase is to make the little wired discs that go into the inside of the hands of the puppet, so that the fingers will be able to bend. The little disc will have five wires coming out of it, and each of those wires will be fitted to the insides of the fingers of the hand covers. Once they’re positioned correctly, stuffing is added around them to fill out the fingers and hands. I cleaned up around the house in anticipation of my maids arriving on Friday, recorded some auditions to send into my agents, and made some hot dogs on the grill and watched a new documentary on Bluray called “Beyond Dark Shadows: The Jonathan Frid Story.” It’s all about the life of the actor who played Barnabas Collins on the old soap opera “Dark Shadows.” I, like many other kids of the time, were obsessed with this guy and that character. It was a great film!

Friday the 7th – BUH-BYE 2021! – Right around 1 I got up to meet with my maids who were coming to clean Planet Wallywood. Later, I got out a bunch of large envelopes and completely cleaned out my file of all 2021 business receipts, paycheck stubs, and corporate paperwork for Planet Wallywood. I have to put them all in categorized envelopes, label them accordingly, and then store them in my downstairs storage in case I need to produce them for tax issues in the future. My files are now completely empty and ready to take all 2022 receipts and paystubs! I never put these things in storage too soon, because within the first few months of the new year I’m always needing to find some checkbook entry, paystub or receipt to finalize all of my bookkeeping to close out 2021. So I’ll keep them at the foot of my desk for now, and stash them away for good sometime in February when everything for 2021 is put to bed. So goes the life of a company owner. It‘s just all part of owning a corporation. I phoned Denny’s to see if they had replenished their supply of chicken items, and LUCKY ME – they had! They had the boneless Buffalo wings and fried chicken bits for my salad. They have had problems getting the supplies in of late, but tonight was my lucky night! I phoned in my order and headed over to pick it up. After doing some work around the house, I decided to pick something to watch. It was Friday night, and I didn’t want to start watching a new series, since I had seen the final episode of “the Lone Ranger’s” second season the other night. It would be right to start a new series, and then have to interrupt the flow right away for Laurel and Hardy Theatre on Saturday night. So I looked around for a “one-off” to watch, but nothing grabbed my mood. That is, until I looked in my 3D movie collection and saw “The Peanuts Movie” from 2015. I remember seeing the 2D version of it with friends, but always being curious about how the 3D version would look. Based on the character’s modeling, I thought it would look very much like a moving/animated version of the old View Masters! I wasn’t wrong! This movie looked spectacular! And it very MUCH looked like an animated View Master reel. I love this movie, and it was gorgeous in 3D! See it if you can!

Saturday the 8th – A LAUREL AND HARDY SEQUEL?! – In the late afternoon I walked over to see my stylist Andie for a touch up on my color. Then I came home to feed the pets, and then drove out to Thousand Oaks to join my friends Officer Mark, Miss Connie and James for dinner. It was fun, but this annoying tickle/cough didn’t allow me to talk with them quite as much as I had hoped. I’m really looking forward to having this gone. I came back home to relax, took a short nap, and then got up later to do some things around the house that needed to be done. Normally, the first Saturday of every month I suspend my Saturday night viewing of “The Saint” with my Saturday Night Super Saint Salad, and I enjoy some Laurel & Hardy films in what I call “Laurel & Hardy Theatre;” an homage to the TV presentation of L&H films I used to watch on TV as a kid. Last Saturday night was the first Saturday of the month, but since I had just gotten over the flu, the last thing I wanted to do was laugh hysterically while I was fighting a cough. So I made the executive decision to postpone it for a week. This month I got to see the only two Laurel and Hardy shorts (two-reel films) that were designed to be serialized. Meaning, the film “Tit For Tat” was a direct follow-up to the film “Them Thar Hills.” I watched both of them together and they are hysterically funny (good thing I didn’t watch them last week – cough cough). Then I watched a film they did called “The Live Ghost” which is another great one. I’m wondering if they hadn’t shown these films on TV when I was 13 if I would have ever been exposed to the genius of Stan and Ollie. Thank God KABY-TV in Aberdeen, South Dakota ran them late-night Saturday nights for years, until a new show called “Saturday Night; Live” came on the NBC network.

Sunday the 9th – OLD FRIENDS! – Based on the some of the awful news I received over the past week about some of my friends, I decided to start reaching out to some old acquaintances to see what they are up to. My old pal Jasmine stopped over to catch up for a while and chat. It was good catching up with her. I hadn’t seen her in quite a while, and she had lived in Texas for several years before recently moving back to L.A. – so the timing was perfect. I recorded some auditions to send to my agents, and did some work around the house. I needed to take those deposits into my bank on Monday, so I would need to do a search to find an open branch near me. I never knew it would be so hard to give somebody my money! But they’re making it very challenging for me. Part of me just wants to take all my money out in cash and go find a REAL bank who can stay open. It’s all wacky!

And how was YOUR week??!!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK