June 01 – June 06 (2021) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

I sure miss certain cereals from my childhood. Like this one…Puffa Puffa Rice! Remember that one?

“Pennies From Heaven,” “Jump Jive An Wail,” and “That Old Black Magic” are some of my new favorite Louis Prima songs. Here’s a great video of Louis and his wife Keely Smith performing the latter on a show in 1959. They looked like they were having a ton of fun, and the words effortless and magical come to mind!

Tuesday the 1st – TO THE DOCTOR AND BACK! – After having my Mustang at the Burbank Auto Doctor for about a week, I got a call from them letting me know that my car was ready. The clicking in the ball joint of my front control arm had been fixed. So Michelle drove me over to the mechanic and dropped me off so I could get my car. She went about her day running errands in Burbank, while I got in my Mustang and drove over to a quick one-hour dubbing session at a studio in Sherman Oaks (which is only a few miles away). But as I drove there and back, I noticed that clicking had returned. I called Burbank Auto Doctor after my session and told them I was coming back in. Figuring I would have to leave the car again for another lengthy period, I called Michelle to have her meet me at the mechanic’s again. But when I got there they put the car up on the rack to have a look. As my Mustang was 10 feet in the air on the rack I saw the back-up lights come on! The mechanic sitting behind the wheel had put it in reverse! I hoped I wasn’t about to see my car plummet to the ground in reverse! But he only moved it a few inches and then put it back in park. Whew! Several of their expert mechanics gathered around while the mechanic behind the wheel kept turning the steering wheel to replicate the clicking sounds. Pretty soon, they stopped. They had pumped enough lithium grease into the ball joints to make it stop. Voila! I drove the Mustang back to my place and parked it in my auxiliary parking spot. I was still going to drive the Gran Torino around for a few more days. I’ll be losing my auxiliary parking spot as of July 1st because the guy who’s renting it to me is moving out of his house and leasing it to a renter. And the new renter will need both spots. Michelle has been helping me find potential new spots on an app she discovered. I walked back home, did some work around the house, prepared some paperwork for my Wednesday session, and Michelle and I went to Bob’s Big Boy for dinner. Then I went home to prep for the rest of the week.

Wednesday the 2nd – WONDERFUL WORDS TO HEAR! – Just before the Wu Flu crisis broke out, I had done some Voice Over sessions for a video game. But over the past year the follow-up sessions had to be postponed. Now they’re back in business doing pick-up sessions to complete the game. It was a real quick session and it was a lot of fun. One of the producers and the Voice Director were on the line directing remotely. When we ended the session I said my thanks and goodbyes, and the Voice Director said the nicest thing to me. She said she has always enjoyed my work, and that she had in fact become a Voice Director after having seen “Invader Zim” as a kid. WOW! That was the nicest thing to hear! I guess after all these years of doing this wacky work, some of it really HAS left a positive mark! That’s nice to know! I drove the Gran Torino over to CVS to print up some more ‘hang tags’ for my Christoween merchandise, the printer was printing the tags in a much more accurate way than it did the other day. The colors were printing correctly! Roxy was due for her Adequan shot again (twice a week for the first month, and then once a week after that) so I picked her up and took her to the vet for the injection. Then we drove over and got lunch at Paty’s on the patio. When I got home I started in attaching the hang tags to the merchandise with a needle and monofilament. They were looking good! My attorney asked that I photograph all of the merch with the tags on them to send to the trademark office, so I set up an improvised photo studio in my kitchen and started taking some shots. I can’t wait to get these up on the website for everyone to see! We’ve come up with some pretty nice things! I made some Buffalo Mac (macaroni and cheese with bits of buffalo chicken from Denny’s) and watched two more episodes of “The Lone Ranger.” Thursday’s a day off, and I’m going to enjoy it!

Thursday the 3rd – DELICIOUS DAY OFF! – It sure was nice to relax all day and not have to run all around doing stuff. A producer called to schedule a session in my home studio for Friday, which meant that I had to reschedule a lunch appointment I had with a friend for an hour later. I shot some more photos of the Christoween merchandise with their new tags, and sent the whole thing to my attorney for approval. I just worked around the house the rest of the day doing random things.

Friday the 4th – SUMPTUOUS SMOKEHOUSE! – Right at high noon I signed on to the session from my home studio and spoke with the clients who happened to be stationed in my hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota! They were shocked when I told them I used to live there, and I knew the town well. The session only took about a half hour and they got all that they needed. I cleaned up and headed over to The Smokehouse in Burbank to meet with my friend Troy for lunch. He and I used to work on “The Tonight Show” together, and when the show ended he started writing for the “Ellen” show. He uses me for comedy bits all the time, and two of the bits I recently voiced for him aired this past week! So I owed him a really nice lunch. It was a blast catching up with him. As I headed on into the weekend I drove back home, worked around the house all night, and later enjoyed a huge salad and two more episodes of “The Lone Ranger!”

Saturday the 5th – A PARKING NO-GO! – Early in the afternoon I got on my webcam and did an hour and a half interview with Amber the Fangirl on Zoom. She has a YouTube show where she interviews her favorite Voice Actors. It was a great deal of fun, and Mahna Mahna made a quick appearance as well. I had my first appointment to see a potential parking space for rent within a few miles from my house. But when I got there at the appointed time of 4:30, there wasn’t anybody to meet me. I texted Michelle to ask if I had gotten the appointment time wrong, because the owner of the space wasn’t there. He was about 10 minutes late to meet me, which didn’t impress me very much. Then after talking about the Gran Torino for a while, and letting some of the neighbors take pictures with it, I saw the available space. But the spaces he had been assigned were about 2 feet shorter than the average space, because they had him parking in front of the building’s electrical meters! For an average sized car it didn’t matter much, but for a vintage 1970’s car that’s 19 feet long, it was a no-go. My tail end would have been hanging out into the driveway, and if somebody was pulling in and wasn’t paying attention, they could have easily clocked my rear end! Plus, he couldn’t give me a definitive answer as to if he was even allowed to sublet his parking space per his rental agreement. So, it wasn’t going to work. I went home to pick up Roxy to get her the injection of Adequan at the vet’s office. I got back home to feed the pets and relax. I noticed that the Elmer’s glue I had put on the hang tags to attach the front of the tags to the back of the tags hadn’t really held. In fact, I could just put my finger in between the back and the facing of the tags and just easily pull them apart. Apparently Elmer’s doesn’t like the surface of the back of photo paper. So I sat down and cut out the rest of the tags from the photo paper, and glued them all together with Barge glue. But after having completed all of the tags, I noticed that the glue was discoloring some of the tags. What to do?! It was very aggravating trying to find a glue that would work. I could try spray glue next, but that’s very unpredictable with small items. Then I did a stupid thing. I stacked the cards together to put them away, but the Barge glue was making them sticky. Some of the hang tags got stuck together and they got completely ruined. Out of the 50 or so tags I had, only 25 made it. I was so pissed at myself! Stupid, rookie error. Later, I noticed that the discoloration on the tags subsided as the glue dried completely. So I’ll be able to use Barge glue for hang tags in the future, but I’ll have to use it more sparingly. Since it was the first Saturday of the month, I was going to make a Chef Boyardee pizza and enjoy “Laurel and Hardy Theater” before bed, instead of my usual viewing of episodes of “The Saint.” I watched some really great two-reel shorts – “They Go Boom,” “The Hoosegow,” “Night Owls,” and the hilarious “Blotto.” In the latter, Stan and Ollie think they’re drinking a bottle of booze (during prohibition times) but they’re actually drinking a non-potent concoction thrown together by Stan’s wife who had been secretly alerted to their scheming ways. When Stan and Ollie (who think they’re drunk and are laughing hysterically) realize that they’ve only been drinking harmless cold tea, and not booze (and thus realize they’re not actually drunk) the rapid come-to-sobriety moment is hilarious! Since we’re in the midst of June Gloom here in L.A., I got to watch a gorgeous ‘blue morning’ dawn over the city. It’s when the sun rises behind a thick layer of overcast, and casts a gorgeous blue hue over the city. Lovely!

Sunday the 6th – LOONY FOR LOUIE! – Roxy enjoyed the warm afternoon and laid in the courtyard enjoying the sun for about half an hour. I visited with a few neighbors and relaxed too. Then I went inside to do some work. When I was in Palm Springs recently listening to KWXY-AM, I heard them play a few choice hits by Louis Prima. Now I’ve always known him best from my favorite Disney movie “Jungle Book” as the voice of King Louie, the king of the swingers. But hearing some of his old hits on the radio was just like hearing King Louie sing “I Wanna Be Like You” in the Disney film. When I returned to L.A. I started delving into Louis Prima’s career and I was loving what I was finding. Some of the videos I found of his TV and film appearances made me smile from ear to ear, as Louis and his band (including his wife Keely Smith on vocals and his pal Sam Butera on sax) were quite entertaining! Louis was quite the showman! I’ve been humming his songs all week! Later, I decided to start making the “10% Rowlf” replica Muppet that I’ve been pondering for a while. I made a Rowlf replica a few years back, and it was the first puppet I had made in a long time. While he looked pretty sweet, his head is about 10% bigger than he needed to be. So I was always intent on scaling down the pattern a bit and doing another head. The body is perfect, but I need a much smaller head. But other projects always seemed to get in the way. I have all the foam and fabric I need to do it, it was just a matter of getting around to it. So as I sat at my kitchen table working away, listening to my iPod, I fabricated his new, 10% smaller mouth plate. This redux also allowed me to fix a few things I did wrong the first time with the mouth plate. A few years ago, when I did my original Rowlf, I attached the top and bottom mouth plate together too tightly. So once I covered the mouth with the black fabric, it made the mouth very snug and tough to operate. But this time I loosened up the “join” a little bit, which should accommodate the extra space needed when the fabric goes on to the mouth. I’ll let the glue totally dry for a bit, and then I’ll start fabricating the foam pieces for the understructure of his head. Once that’s done to satisfaction, I’ll take it to Alex in Wonderland to have it covered in the same fleece and fur I used on the original Rowlf, have the new head replaced on the body, and then have my hair guy Sergio trim the ears. Then I’ll put the plastic nose on the face, followed by the eye pieces I’ll make out of Magic Sculpt, and Voila! 10% Rowlf!

And how was YOUR week?!!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

When Michelle and I went to Bob’s Big Boy we got seated in the famous “Beatles Booth,” the booth where John, Paul, George and Ringo sat after their concert in L.A. in 1964!

Our first batch of Christoween shirts came in this week, thanks to help from my pal Joey Torino who set the whole thing up! They’re gorgeous!

Cut and glued hang tags, waiting to be attached to Christoween merch.

Everything is laid out and prepared for the creation of the 10% Rowlf mouth plate!

It’s not exactly the prettiest mouth plate I’ve ever made, but it’s functional and it fits like a glove! It’s really tough to make these when I’m by myself, tracing my right hand with my left hand, all while holding the finger loops into place before the glue is applied. But, it all worked!

I found this picture on ebay and grabbed it, because my original “Jungle Book” LP like this is in a frame. But this is the soundtrack album my dad bought me after we saw “Jungle Book” in the theatre when it was released in 1967.

When you opened up the album, there were great images of the Voice Actors with their animated counterparts! I couldn’t take my eyes off those pictures when I was a kid. It may very well have had something to do with what I decided to pursue as a career later in life. Hmmm…

This past week, my pal Scott Sebring edited together our “Bein’ Green” tribute video, which I did with the help of my pal Chris and my girlfriend Michelle. Here’s the entire video which I hope you’ll enjoy…

…and now here’s an outtake from the shoot when an overhead airplane was so loud I could no longer hear the music track and had to stop. This makes Michelle laugh every time!