January 23 – January 28 (2023)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

This made me laugh!

I saw a recent social media post about a big tough guy who was given a puppy as a present. It was explained in the post that the doggie he had for a long time had just passed away. When he was given the puppy he broke down sobbing and hugged the puppy closely. It was a beautiful thing. I responded to the post simply with lyrics from a song I love called “A Thing Called Love” by Elvis Presley. “Six foot six, he stood on the ground. Weighed two hundred and thirty five pounds, but I saw this giant of a man brought down by a thing called love.” My comment got a lot of likes, and it was explained that the song was by Johnny Cash. That may be, but I’m most familiar with the Elvis version…while you can hear right here.

Monday the 23rd – BEST BIRTHDAY CARD EVER! – About mid-afternoon I got up to walk Roxy, but afterwards I was still a bit tired so I headed back to bed for a few hours. When I got up I got a notification that a package had arrived at my box, so I headed over to get it. And just in the nick of time too, as they were closing soon after I got there! But this was a VERY special present I got from a friend that I’d be sending to my dad for his upcoming 88th birthday! A good buddy of mine had several original “Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” cue cards in his collection. These were cards that were used by Johnny during his monologues during the last few months of his tenure on the show. My buddy agreed to send me two of them; one for my dad’s birthday, and one for my collection! My dad was a HUGE Johnny Carson fan for decades, so this will be a special treat. I can’t wait for him to receive it! I spoke with my “adopted grandma” Shirley and she said she’d be getting out of the hospital on Tuesday. Pretty sweet considering they hospitalized her on Saturday for a heart attack. Also pretty sweet considering she’s 95 years old! Amazing! She said throughout the entire ordeal she never had any pain, just breathing trouble. I got back home to do some work, shower, meditate, grab a nap, and then I got up for my nightly auditions and to write Wally’s Week. I packaged up the Johnny Carson cue card for my dad and wrote out a one-page explanation of its historical relevance that he can keep with it

Tuesday the 24th – A PUPPET AND AN ELF! – When I mailed off my dad’s birthday “card” I found out that it will arrive on his exact birthday; next Monday! Perfect! I stopped at the store to get some groceries, grabbed a sandwich at Togo’s, and headed home to do my 2 mile walk. I picked up some more meds for my dog Roxy, and then went back home to relax and do some work. A while back I attempted to make a Mahna Mahna replica Muppet, but after some of the sewing work was done on his head I realized that he wasn’t going to be a good replica. I made the dimensions of the head wrong, and the fabric I chose wasn’t a good color. But since he turned out so nice I decided to develop him into an original puppet; my first in a long time! I’m calling him Nate Atez (long A and long E). I dug out some foam rubber and started constructing his main body. Then I did my nightly Voice Over auditions, grabbed a nap, and got up later to do some more work on Nate’s body. My pal who hosts/writes/produces the 12 hour Christmas radio show that I love to listen to each year, called “Christmas Across the Lands, informed me that he’s already starting in on the Christmas show for 2023! For the past few years I’ve been doing little voice bits as a character named Wally the Elf; one of Santa’s elves who specializes in Christmas trivia. He requested that Wally the Elf return to the show, so I’ll be recording the 12 little bits (played once hourly) within the next few weeks as he starts to record and assemble the show. I recorded the first two tonight! I made a barbecue and watched the two final episodes of “The Lone Ranger” from the fourth season DVD boxed set. Another great season! Now it’s on to “The Incredible Hulk” season 2

Wednesday the 25th – FIXIN’ DA FROG! – At 2021’s Season’s Screamings convention I met a young cosplayer and craftsperson named Maggie who did some amazing work on her puppets. I stayed in contact with her in hopes that she might work for me someday helping to construct one of my puppet projects. I hadn’t been happy with the arms I did on my Robin the Frog replica Muppet for quite some time, so I did a redesign on them and had Maggie come over today to do the finishing work. While she worked away I recorded a few more Wally the Elf bits for “Christmas Across the Lands.” I did some work around the house and Maggie finished up. The new arms on Robin looked fantastic! Then I took her and her friend Evan out to dinner at Paty’s so we could discuss more projects. I came back home, did some work, recorded my nightly auditions, grabbed a short nap, and started work on making the arm rods for my Nate Atez puppet. I sawed a few small wood dowels to size, cut the wire to length, sanded everything, and prepped the wires to be primed and painted tomorrow

Thursday the 26th – 40 YEAR FRIEND! – When I was a Music Director at KELO-AM radio in Sioux Falls back in the early 80’s, one of my regular contacts was a guy named Jon Konjoyan. He was a record rep for A&M Records (arguably the greatest record label of all time) and he would send me all the music from his label that I needed to add to our playlist. When I came out to L.A. to visit in 1986 Jon and I had lunch. When I was promoting my short film “Livin’ On a Prayer” back in the mid 2000’s Jon was our promotion guy. Now he works at the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper, and he was responsible for placing two really neat articles over the holidays about my Christoween project! I drove to Montrose to have lunch with him at a nice, quaint little eatery. It also gave me the chance to get the new Rav4 (The Gray Ghost) out on the open road! Afterwards, I drove over to Alex In Wonderland’s shop to drop off all the stuff I had been working on for my Nate Atez (long A long E) puppet. She had some great ideas for him too! The nice thing about working on an original puppet, as opposed to a replica, is the sky’s the limit. There’s no WRONG way to do it! I got back home and primed and painted the wire rods for the Nate puppet, and then I hopped on my bicycle for a nice long ride. When I got back I installed the freshly painted wire into the wood handles for Nate’s arm rods, and then glued suede leather on to the handles for grip. I met my pal Angie at Chin Chin for some dinner, but I found that they changed the recipe to my favorite dish. The beef dish I normally get was much too spicy! I got back home and checked in on the animals and then napped. When I got up later I paid some bills and prepped for the weekend

Friday the 27th – HURRICANE HULK HURTS HORRIBLY! – It was an absolutely gorgeous day so I walked to the post office to mail off some letters, went to CVS to get a few supplies, hit the hardware store to get some upholstery tacks for my puppet rods, and then I went home to do some goofing around in the garage. I did some digging and organizing; stuff that really needed to get done! I felt a real sense of accomplishment. But it didn’t stop there! I was energized! One of the drawers in my kitchen that’s filled with junk (we ALL have them, right?) was getting to be too much. It’s the drawer I go to when I need a tool or implement to do a job. In addition to hammers, wrenches, pliers, etc. – there’s also a lot of little tin cases filled with screws, nuts, bolts, etc. But the drawer was so heavy and packed full of stuff it was getting to the point where I could hardly open it! I looked around the kitchen at all of the places where I store things to see if something could be cleared out to separate the tools from the miscellaneous junk. BINGO! In the lower cupboard down by my sink I had two shelves PACKED full of glass jars. These were jars from various sauces and food items that I’ve saved up over the years. The original intent was to have good mixing jars in case I wanted to mix chemicals or store glue in for puppet building. But I really only use the small jars (similar to the ones chip dip comes in) so the bigger jars never really got used. I pulled all of them out, organized them by size, and threw a bunch of them into recycling. I saved a handful of them just in case I needed them someday, but there’s no way I would ever need the quantity that I had saved up over the years. So this freed up one of the shelves in my cupboard. I measured the space I had available on the shelf and went down into the garage to see if I had a box that would fit inside. I wanted to create an ersatz drawer in which I could keep all of my tools and implements. This would free up space in my overly crowded drawer! When I got to the garage I didn’t have to look far. One of the plastic bins that I bought at Staples recently was perfect in almost every dimension I needed! Height and depth were spot on, and the width was just a few inches shorter than the shelf space. PERFECT! I consolidated all of my tools into this bin, and stashed it in the lower cupboard! Perfect! Plus, my effects guy Jim Ojala is going to take the three boxes of glass jars for use at his effects studio. I sat down with some armature wire and some Magic Sculpt and created the skeleton puppet hands for Nate. I’ll let the Magic Sculpt cure overnight, and then I’ll do the reverse side later. I meditated in the Puppet Room and then napped. When I awakened the Magic Sculpt had cured enough for me to work on the reverse side. I finished the underside of the hands with more Magic Sculpt, and inserted the section of the wire on the rod that will eventually connect into the palm of the hand. This is to make an impression in the compound, so when it hardens the wire will slide right into the groove and can be epoxyed into place. I made a salad and started in on “The Incredible Hulk” season two. I really hope I make it through the rest of this series. This episode was a 2 hour season premiere, and it was very tough to watch. Besides the awful John Wayne impressions, and some wholly inappropriate and racist imitations of Asians, it was just difficult to sit through. I love Mariette Hartley as an actress, but in this episode she has a seizure and is driven to the hospital by David Banner (the Hulk..when he’s not the Hulk). She jumps out of the car on the way to the hospital, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s right in the middle of a Hawaiian hurricane! Earlier in the episode David Banner (in both his human and Hulk form) smashed a bunch of glass windows and walls in the house where he’s staying. But that’s never mentioned when the hurricane hits. Wouldn’t you NEED those walls in place to protect you from the elements? Nope. Never mentioned. So at the end, Mariette Hartley’s character is running around in the hurricane, confused and having a seizure, and continually screaming “David! David! David!” If she wanted David so much, she shouldn’t have jumped out of the car! So it seemed like this hurricane scene went on for 20 minutes! David turns into the Hulk and is running through a hurricane to try and find Mariette Hartley. All the while the wind and rain is whipping about and she’s yelling “David! David! David!” As I said, it was almost literally unwatchable! Not sure if I’m going to be able to make it through the rest of this series or not

Saturday the 28th – WET WEEKEND ON THE WAY! – Since it was gloomy and chilly I decided not to do my walk today. Instead, I went to my box to pick up my packages, and then enjoyed a salad on the patio at Paty’s under the heater. It was nice and relaxing. I got home to do some more work, and make the foam puppet hands to go around the skeleton hands I made last night. I installed the arm rods into the skeleton hands, cut little hand shapes out of ½” thick foam rubber, and covered the skeleton hands on both sides with the foam hands. After the glue set, I did a “pinching” technique on the edges of the foam to make fingers. It’s a technique I recently learned from my puppet pal Steve Troop. On the edges of the two foam layers, you put glue all around it. When the glue gets nice and tacky you pinch the layers together to form fingers. It’s really cool and looks great! It saves you from having to stuff the fingers with batting later on. I emailed my friend Alex in Wonderland to let her know the hands were ready to be covered! I made my traditional Saturday Night Super Saint Salad and watched an episode of “The Saint.” It was a good one about the Lock Ness Monster!

Sunday the 29th – SHIRLEY ON THE MOVE! – When I got up in the afternoon I had received an email from Alex In Wonderland asking if I could drop the puppet stuff by around 6:30 that evening. I headed out in the Gray Ghost, stopped at KFC to get some dinner, and then dropped all the Nate puppet stuff at Alex’s. She’s hoping to get everything done on him this week! I came home to relax just in time for it to start sprinkling. I napped for a bit, and when I got up later I recorded some more Wally the Elf bits to send into Randy with “Christmas Across the Lands.” I realize it’s very early, but why procrastinate? I talked to my “adopted grandma” Shirley and found out that, though she HAD been released from the hospital on Tuesday, they took her right back in again the next day for the same problem. She had stayed there the remainder of the week and would be leaving on Monday, most likely. But because of this new development in her life, her daughter and son-in-law are moving her out of the community she’s currently in, and moving them in with her so they can constantly monitor her. I think that’s a GREAT idea!

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK