July 24 – July 30 (2023) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Yeah, what he said.

“One Step Beyond” by Madness is the perfect song for the nutty week I’ve had. It sums up this past week’s chaos perfectly!

Monday the 24th – ANTI-GRAV IS GREAT! – I’m not sure which woke me up first; my cat Spooky, or the fact that my air conditioner was blowing cool (not cold) air again. If you remember from last week’s Wally’s Week, I had my A/C guy Pete come out to put some more refrigerant in my unit in hopes it would blow cold on a continual basis. It lasted about 3 days, but now the problem is back. I called Pete again and he thinks that the compressor may be overheating. He suggested that I shut it off and let it rest, and then try it again soon. He said he may need to bring over some sort of booster to use on the compressor until I can get a new air conditioner installed this fall. Ugh. I shut everything down and then walked over to Studiopolis to do a half hour’s work on “Bleach.” When I got back home I brought my trusty portable A/C unit up from the garage and hooked it up in the living room. I’ve had this unit for many, many years and it’s always been trusty. (The best money I’ve ever spent!) I turned on the A/C in the house again, and it was back to cool. I did some work around the house, and then sat down to type out Wally’s Week. Later I put the compression wrap around my lower back and did my nightly WOG (walk/jog). Wow! That thing really works! My back felt great! Right after my work-out I went inside and took my blood pressure. The readings were VERY good. I got myself an ice cold iced tea and took my anti-grav chair out behind my house, found the darkest spot I could find and relaxed, drank my tea, and stared up into the sky. I got lucky in that I found the darkest part of the sky (not easy in L.A.!) and I saw all sorts of shooting stars, airplanes, and a weird light that was visible for a short time. It appeared, traveled very fast, curved sharply and disappeared. It’s this kind of stuff that I used to see all the time during my stays in Palm Springs. After about an hour I came inside to make some food and hit the hay.

Tuesday the 25th – STICKER SHOCK! – After delays caused by a UTI, and then a lower back injury, I was finally headed to my dentist for my twice-a-year cleaning. As I’ve said before, God is my D.J. – because when I pulled my car into the garage of the building where my dentist has his office, the theme from “Starsky & Hutch” played. My dentist is a HUGE “Starsky & Hutch” fan! Wild! After my cleaning I stopped at Paty’s to have some lunch, and then headed home. My A/C was blowing warm again. But instead of calling my old pal Pete at Speedy Heating and Air and bothering him again, I decided to go for a second opinion. Recently my neighbor from two doors down had his A/C replaced, and since his printer was down, had me print the work order so he could sign it, scan it, and email it over to the company to get the work going. I kept the contact info for the company just in case I would need it someday. I couldn’t remember exactly when I had my A/C replaced last, so it could potentially be really old. I was guessing the year I had it replaced might have been 2007 or 2008, even though my assistant Sara swears it was much later. If I was correct, that would mean my present A/C unit was about 16 years old; which is about how long these units last. I spoke with another neighbor earlier, as I was headed out of the complex to go to my dentist’s, and he raved about this particular company. I explained to them what was happening, and they gave me the choice to have the technician come out on Friday (their earliest appointment) or I could pay an “after-hours” fee and have him come out tonight. I told them to send him as soon as they could and I’d pay whatever. A nice young gentleman named Eric came out around 5pm and I told him my story about how the A/C had been very intermittent over the past five days. He went up on the roof to check it out. He came down and explained that I could possibly have a refrigerant leak. That would explain why it was cold sometimes, and then it would turn warm. He went on to say that he saw the manufacturer sticker on my unit and that it was a unit from 1999. WHAT?! If I had indeed had this unit installed in 2007, that unit would have already been 8 years old! Both men who installed it for me back then are now deceased, so I couldn’t ask them. And it was inconceivable that they would have installed an older unit in my place. Erik explained that maybe they got the unit cheap, and that’s why the price was so reasonable back then. I refused to believe that they would do that to me. He went on to say that, since the unit was so old, it was using the old, outdated (and outlawed) refrigerant called Freon. Since Freon was no longer being made, adding more into my system would be very expensive. He said the term for Freon in the industry was “liquid gold.” He said if it was a leak, he could put in a sealant that would have a 70% chance of working, but it would be $1,000. Getting a new unit installed would take a few weeks, and this sealant procedure may or may not tide me over until then. I told him to send me the work order first thing in the morning and I would sign it to get them going on bringing in a new unit. The sealant idea wasn’t logical to me, because the chances it would work weren’t high enough for my liking. So I refused that option. He said between now and the time the new unit is installed, he could bring over another portable unit (like the one I brought up for my living room) and install it upstairs. It would at least keep things cool upstairs and downstairs for the next few weeks as a temporary fix. Today’s price for a new A/C? $10,000. I figured I’d just pay it and have it over with. Eric said he wanted to go back up on the roof to do a few more things. But he was up there for a very long time. He was hammering and pounding, and I heard footsteps. Then he called my phone to have me turn the unit off. He called back and had me turn the unit back on again. Then he came back to my front door and told me some shocking news. He examined my A/C unit more closely, and found out that the manufacturer sticker that said that my unit was a Train unit from 1999 was not mine. The sticker actually belonged on my next-door neighbor’s unit! He Googled the model on the sticker, and discovered that it didn’t look like mine at all! He got suspicious. So he looked around more closely at my A/C unit and found the REAL sticker on another panel! Mine was a Ruud unit that was manufactured in 2011, and had the new, more modern refrigerant! He said he believes that the other tech may have put in the wrong refrigerant, having gone off the information from the wrong sticker. Eric thought that the system may have been overcharged and could have possibly frozen the little piston inside that controls the flow of refrigerant. He let some of that out to give it all a chance to settle back into its regular operational routine. He said my unit was actually only 12 years old, and it should have another 3 good years left of care-free operation! I quietly said, “So, I don’t need a new system?” He said I didn’t, and what he did may have solved my problem! He said if it didn’t, that would mean that it had a bad TXV part (a little piston that controls the amount of refrigerant) and if that was the problem, it was a very easy (and inexpensive) fix. WOW WOW WOW! I would know more when the A/C unit had to work during the heat of the day on Wednesday. If all is good, then it was simply overcharged. If not, then it’s the TXV part. (NOTE: apologies to all A/C techs out there if this sounds funky, but I’m trying to recall all the info Eric told me to the best of my layman’s ability, and I may have some of the info wrong) But suffice to say, the A/C was fixed! Had this kid not done his homework and checked on the unit, I could have spent $10k to replace a perfectly good system! I gave him a VERY nice tip and told him he was a genius. Then I called my next-door neighbors to tell them they had a 24 year old A/C system. They happily said they’ve never had any problem with it and it’s been running fine. WILD! Then we started talking about HOW the sticker from their unit could have gotten on my unit by mistake. My neighbor reminded me that we had roofing work done on the units about a year and a half ago. She thought that the sticker may have come off while they were moving the A/C units around to do the roofing work, and the sticker came off accidentally. Not knowing which unit the sticker belonged to, the unknowing roofers may have just put it on my unit by mistake. That made very logical sense to me. Thank God I didn’t have to get a new system! It all worked out very well, and the true test would be on Wednesday during the heat of the day. Though I had intended to walk over to Michael’s Crafts to get a few things, by the time the tech left my house I had very little time before they closed. I hopped in the Gray Ghost and drove over. I picked up some magnetic sheets and headed back home. I had recently been given a cool illustration of Andy Kaufman on a sticker. Not wanting to put the sticker on my actual car, I instead put the sticker on the magnetic sheet, cut it out, and put the magnetic image on the cover to my gas cap. Now I’m able to spot my car in a parking lot from a long distance very easily! I was pretty exhausted from the day. I did a few auditions and relaxed for a bit. Later I decided to pump up the tires on my bicycle. I’d be taking the Gray Ghost into the Toyota dealer the next day for its first-ever maintenance service. My plan was to drive it to the dealer with my bike in the back, take my bike out of the back, drop the car off for the two or three hour service, and ride my bike over to Paty’s for lunch. But try as I might, the bike would NOT fit into the back of my Rav! It was just a few inches short on the sides. I tried putting it in at an angle, and still no dice! Rats! Oh well. I guess I’ll be walking to lunch! Speaking of walking, I went on my nightly WOG, and then came back for some nice, relaxing anti-grav time. It was a nice, cool night. I watched the night sky slowly get painted with long streaks of wispy clouds. I came inside to make a salad and do some work. Then I hit the hay.

Wednesday the 26th – WANT ANYTHING?! – Not wanting to walk in the heat to get lunch, I called my pal Sara to see if she’d pick me up at the Toyota dealer to go have lunch for a few hours. I drove to the dealer, dropped off the Gray Ghost, and Sara picked me up so we could have lunch at Lancer’s. But when she got down to the bottom of her hot beef sandwich, she realized that the cook had forgotten to put the bread in it! Great. A breadless hot beef sandwich! I walked across the street to Foam Mart to pick up some new glue and materials for my Count Von Count Muppet replica, and then we headed back to Toyota to get my Rav. Since this was my first ever scheduled maintenance for my new car I wasn’t familiar with how they operated. When I used to take my Mustang into the Ford dealer for service it always came out freshly washed. But apparently the Toyota folks don’t wash the car at the end of the service. I guess they’re OK with dirty Toyotas out running around in public. So I headed over to the car wash to get her cleaned up. When I dropped the Gray Ghost at the car wash, and checked in with the main gal, I asked her how long it would take. She said it would be about 45 minutes. I told her I was going to walk over to the 7-11 down the street and get some ice cream. Then I said jokingly, “Want anything?” Normally when I say this in jest the person just laughs it off and says, “No. Nothing, thanks.” Normally the person chuckles at the fact that a perfect stranger would ask them about their needs. It usually gets a laugh whenever I do it. But this time the girl called my bluff. She said, “Yes. Could I get a strawberry Slurpie? Or a Squirt?” Chuckling that she actually called my bluff on my standard comedic inquiry I said, “OK! Be right back!” It was a hot day and this poor gal had been working very hard checking cars in to be washed. But I loved the hot day, so I walked the four blocks to the store and got exactly what she asked for. Along with my ice cream. Luckily by the time I got back to the car wash the Slurpie was still cold, and I gave her a Squirt just in case the Slurpie thing didn’t stay cold. She was very appreciative. One of the people sitting in the chairs against the wall, who was waiting for his car to be finished, was smiling very broadly after witnessing my ersatz delivery service. I told him, “She was working hard, she deserved a cool drink.” It was nice to see that somebody else appreciated my gesture. As my dad always says, “Do one good deed for somebody every day, no matter how small.” So, I did my Lew Wingert Good Deed of the Day! When the car was finished I drove home to talk to my pal Sheriff John in Florida about how to get an old radio he bought on eBay to work properly. Just like the A/C mystery, I set about trying to solve this one as well. He bought an old radio from the 70’s, which was exactly like the one he listened to as a kid. He even bought vintage headphones to go with it. He wanted to recreate the full 70’s experience. But he was disappointed that he wasn’t getting the full stereo experience like he remembered. Come to find out, after careful examination of several photos, the radio itself wasn’t FM stereo…just plain ol’ FM. The clues that I should have picked up on right away were…1) the radio itself only had one external speaker; odd for a supposedly “stereo” radio. And 2) the headphone jack was a “mini” plug. Back in those days, headphone jacks would have been the larger “phono” jack, as stereo headphones with a mini plug wouldn’t come along until the 80s when the Sony Walkman was invented. I remember my mom going to bed every night listening to the radio with her little transistor radio and her single earplug speaker. The earphone was similar to the kind that old men would wear in their ears with their hearing aids. So not only was the vintage radio not stereo, but the vintage headphones wouldn’t give him sound in both speakers without the proper adapter. I used to listen to my cassette recorder that way all the time as a kid. But I needed a stereo-to-mono adapter. Together we found the perfect adapter on eBay that would put the mono signal in both of his earphones! Mystery solved! Later my pal Angi came over and we headed to the Smoke House to have dinner with my buddy Harry Buerkle; who voice directed me for six weeks last year on the dub of “Ersan Kuneri,” the Turkish sitcom. A year ago Harry had a lot going on so he was never able to attend the sessions in person, but voice directed remotely. It was great finally meeting him! After dinner I got back home to relax and record my nightly auditions. I did a lot of work around the house, and then made a salad and watched another episode of “The Incredible Hulk.” This episode featured not one, but TWO James Bond villains! Robert Davi played a jail guard, and Julius Harris played a fellow inmate. It was odd because I was just thinking the other night about how cool Julius Harris was in “Live and Let Die” as Tee Hee. I had been working with his 12” action figure while I was setting up my James Bond Base last week! Of all the weird coincidences! He was a very cool Bond villain. Then before I hit the hay I watched an episode of “Have Gun – Will Travel.” With each episode viewing I get more and more enamored with the talent of the show’s star Richard Boone. His acting is fantastic, and when he called out a gambler for a potential gunfight, Boone went into a very cool “ready-to-draw” crouch. It’s little character things like that which makes his portrayal of Paladin so endearing. VERY cool!

Thursday the 27th – HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME! – Since it was the first day off I’d had in a long time, I took full advantage. All the other days of the week had things scheduled, but today it was all mine to do with what I pleased! I enjoyed the hot weather and walked to the hardware store to buy some new bulbs for my refrigerator. Then I walked to the post office to mail a few things off. Even though it was later in the afternoon, it was still pretty hot. But I love it! I came back home and went inside to record a bunch of auditions. Even though there’s an actor’s strike on currently, there are still plenty of things to audition for that aren’t covered under the struck contract. Video games, commercials, promos, etc. – are all covered under a different contract that’s not currently in dispute. Later at night I spent some more time outside in my anti-grav chair looking at the sky. While it was nice and relaxing, I find it more relaxing after I’ve just come back from a brisk WOG (walk/jog). But still I got to see stars, planes, shooting stars and more. VERY relaxing!

Friday the 28th – FINISHING UP THE WEEK – AT LAST! – My intention was to walk to Voice Trax West for a brief session for American Airlines, but I realized that I also needed to get some grocery items while I was out. So I hopped in the Gray Ghost and headed to the studio. The session was fairly brief, and after I finished I picked up a prescription at CVS, had a nice lunch on the patio at Panera, and got a bunch of groceries at the market. I got home, unloaded all the grocery items, and then called up a producer so he could be on the line with me while I recorded a promo for him. George Pal was a great director, and before he did films like “War of the Worlds” he did a series of stop-motion shorts he called Puppetoons. I did the promos for the previous Blu-ray releases, and now volume 3 is coming out soon. Producer Arnie got on the line with me to record the voice tracks for the new promo as well. It was a lot of fun. I worked around the house, and later got busy around the house with plans to implement a few new lighting things in Planet Wallywood. I like to keep things constantly changing. It keeps things fresh. I took a brisk WOG, and then spent some anti-grav time again. This time I was out almost until the sun rose! I love summer! I made a huge salad and watched another episode of “The Incredible Hulk.” This episode featured Ray Walston as a guest star, and was called “My Favorite Magician.” There was all sorts of ‘meta’ going on with this episode. First, “Hulk” star Bill Bixby had worked with Ray Walston previously in a comedy called “My Favorite Martian.” In the early 70’s, Bixby starred as a do-gooder magician who used his power of illusion to help others in a show called “The Magician,” a show I truly loved! So this episode featured clever nods to both of Bixby’s previous TV shows. When Walston’s character tries to convince Bixby’s character to assist him with his magic act, Bixby cries out, “I don’t know anything about magic!” Which had to be a fun acknowledgement to the fact that, in real life, Bixby was a VERY accomplished magician.

Saturday the 29th – WOLFMAN AND DRACULA – A GREAT SATURDAY! – After chatting with my folks on the phone for a while, I lounged around and enjoyed the lazy summer day. Later I drove the Rav to Barone’s to pick up a pizza and some salad dressing. It was such a perfect night I was kinda wishing I had the Mustang out, so I could drive around with the top down and enjoy the evening! I got back home and decided to eat my pizza while watching the movie “Renfield” on Blu-ray. While the movie was entertaining, and had some very funny moments, I wasn’t blown away by it. The main problem I had was with its casting. The female lead simply wasn’t likeable enough for me to want to root for her success. A few of the other characters were miscast too, but I was probably most disappointed in Nicolas Cage as Dracula. He just sounded too much like Nicolas Cage. And while other characters were playing for laughs, occasionally Dracula would play it for laughs too. Bad mistake. Since the Dracula character in this film was never seen in his human “Langella” or “Lugosi” phase (he constantly looked evil and monstrous) it was odd that his character would try to be funny. I felt they should have kept Dracula consistent with his demonic look, and kept his persona dark and evil. I thought that Javier Bardem might have been a good choice. Plus, he would have had that great voice! But it was a fun “pizza-and-popcorn” movie. The overly gory comedy was very “Evil Dead” and funny. They did have some great effects in that film. And I did really enjoy the casting of Renfield’s support group, and the guy who played Renfield was stellar in the role! I got busy putting up a new LED planet lamp, but shortly after putting it up in the Tranquility Zone next to my LED moon lamp, I realized they needed to be swapped out. I moved the moon lamp to the left so that the Wolfman poster on my wall looked as if he was glancing up at the moon in fear. It’s a small little touch, but I definitely wanted it. Later I did some work around the house, and then made my traditional Saturday Night Super Saint Salad and watched an episode of “The Saint” before bed.

Sunday the 30th – HH GREGG: COMEDY LEGEND! – My pal Officer Mark brought his buddy Roger over so I could chat with his future son-in-law Austin about getting into Voice Over. But he isn’t anticipating moving to L.A. until December of 2024. I told him that things in the industry could change so much by then, that anything I told him tonight may no longer apply by the time he finally gets here. But we had a fun chat and a nice dinner on the patio at Paty’s. When we got back to Planet Wallywood Mark helped me shoot a shout-out video for some fans of an old series of TV commercials we did about 14 years ago for the now-defunct store called HH Gregg. For several years I provided the voice of a little animated mascot character in their TV commercials called H.H. – and it was a lot of fun. But now that so much time has passed, the H.H. character has attained legend status on YouTube, as people who love the nostalgia of those commercials have taken to re-editing the commercials, and even creating music tracks using the character’s lines. I love that this old character is inspiring people’s creativity 15 years later! Later I did some work around the house, took a WOG, and got some anti-grav time in. Unfortunately it was very cloudy out so I didn’t get to see much in the sky, but it was still very relaxing. I came inside and made a salad and watched a few episodes of “Have Gun – Will Travel.”

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

My friend Dr. Doom’s daughter Claudia is a huge puppet fan. When I was back in Sioux Falls for the Voices Against Cancer event recently she was talking about getting a Gonzo puppet. When I returned to L.A. I found one on Amazon and had it shipped to her. She and Gonzo look blissfully happy!