June 19 – June 25 (2023) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

That’s it! I’m a Caninetrovert! I knew it!

During one of my walks this past week I started humming this song. It’s from a Native American artist I discovered in Palm Springs called Waykey. He and his brother Wayra released several really great CDs of Native American wind instruments fused with electronic music. This is a great song called “Love Mountain.” I used to love listening to this music during my relaxing nights in Palm Springs!

Monday the 19th – IT’S ALL ABOUT ME….TV! – Today I was set to do a Zoom call with the producers of “Collector’s Call” on Me-TV to see if they wanted to feature my collection (or portions thereof) on their show. Since I don’t have a laptop or a cell phone that can get on the internet, I hired my assistant Sara to come over and do the filming for me on her laptop. I took the producers all through Planet Wallywood and showed them various points of interest and told them stories about the items. By the time we finished we had shot for a full hour! At the end the producers were utterly stunned! I told them if I could fit into their production plans at all to please let me know, otherwise it’s been a pleasure showing them around. So, we’ll see where it goes from here. After the shoot I took Sara to Paty’s to get a late lunch and talk about the meeting. Her feeling was that they were most interested in my Muppet items; the stories, the collectibles, and my replica puppets. We’ll see. I got back home and did some work and grabbed a short nap. I got up later to write Wally’s Week and do some work around the house. I made a salad and watched a few episodes of “The Lone Ranger” and “Have Gun – Will Travel.” Before bed I checked my emails and since it was just before noon on Tuesday, I had a few last-minute auditions that had come in from my agent. I recorded them, sent them in, and hit the hay! What a day!

Tuesday the 20th – CABINET CLEANING: DAY 1! – Since I got to bed so late, I slept most of the day. I got up later in the day and walked to the grocery store and enjoyed the amazing weather. I’m glad L.A. has gotten out of its “haze phase” and is now getting some sunshine! I worked around the house, took a quick nap, and then got up later to do some auditions. About once a year I do a thorough cleaning of my main action figure display cabinet in my living room. But with Roxy taking up residence in my living room space since last May, I didn’t get to do my usual Christmas-week cleaning ritual. I finally decided I was going to dive in and do it. I have about 50 1:6 scale (12 inch) figures in a case that are proudly displayed. I happened to find this case during one of my walks many years ago. It belonged to a nail salon and they were throwing it out. It’s about 7 feet tall and about 5 feet wide. The top is flat which allows me to display all sorts of things on top of it. The top half has a mirror on the back wall, and there are all sorts of little “stair step” platforms that used to hold different brands and colors of nail polish. Since the original “stair steps” were only about 3 inches wide (to hold bottles of nail polish) I had the stair steps redone so they’re about 5” wide. That way they could hold action figures. My pal Joe Pendleton did the carpentry work and repainted it completely black. The lower half of the cabinet has a great storage space for various sculptures and statues. On each stair step I installed “T nuts.” These nuts sink into the base, and into the nuts you can screw in various lengths of threaded rod; like that on the end of a screw. These rods allowed me to attach the figures to them so they would never fall over. My policy was, if the figure had tights on, I would put a black aluminum rod cover over the threaded rod, and fabricate a small clasp out of armature wire that goes around their waist and is hidden on the inside of their costume. If the figure had pants, then I would just thread the rod up one pant leg and that would give it enough stability to keep it from falling over. It all works out really great, and makes for a great display piece. Add to that Superman and Iron Man figures which look like they’re flying overhead, thanks to some cleverly attached monofilament. On the side of the case I have Indiana Jones climbing a rope holding the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol. It’s a great figure with a really great likeness of Harrison Ford! But over time these figures (and the base upon which they stand) gets very VERY dusty. And since it hadn’t been cleaned in a while, I had a lot of work ahead of me. With Roxy residing in the living room the last 9 months of her life, I didn’t have the room to tear the cabinet apart and start doing a meticulous cleaning. Some of the cleaning chemicals may have made her sick, so I kept delaying it. But now it’s time to get to work. I removed every figure that was standing on the stair steps and laid them on the couch. The dust on the stair steps was VERY thick! I cleaned all the rows of the stair steps several times to make sure they were as clean as they could possibly be. It was quite a bit of work! Then I started with the back row and cleaned off each action figure with a moist paper towel, and in some cases, pieces of packing tape to grab up all of the dust that had settled in the crevices of their costume. I have a nice collection of all the Captain Action figures that came out in the late 90s from Playing Mantis. I decided to make the entire back row all Captain Action figures. I removed a few Freddy Krueger figures and put them up with the rest of the Freddy Krueger collectibles in my second floor display case. I went downstairs into my storage and located a few of the Captain Action villains I hadn’t previously had on display. One was Kabai Singh, the main villain who fights against The Phantom, and the other was Ming the Merciless, who’s the main adversary of Flash Gordon. The entire back row looked great. But I was spent and needed to get to bed. I made a salad and got to bed in time to watch “Have Gun – Will Travel” on the Heroes & Icons channel. One episode had the famous character Royal Dano in it (who was best known for his many portrayals of Lincoln), and the other episode had a very young Andrew Prine in it. Mr. Prine just passed away several months ago. But the odd thing about this episode was that Prine’s character was set to hang for the murder of a character called…Tom Petty! Truth! It was wild!

Wednesday the 21st – CABINET CLEANING: DAY 2! – Even though it was the first day of summer it sure didn’t feel like it. The weather in L.A. has still been very cool and cloudy for the most part. But I walked to the post office and over to CVS to pick up some lidocaine back patches. I was starting to get a pain in my lower back, which I believe was from moving all of the stuff around in my house for the Me-TV shoot, and from the long periods of standing while cleaning my cabinet. I walked back home and did some work around the house. I grabbed a nap, and then got up to do my nightly auditions. I drove to Denny’s to get some food-to-go, and then came home to pick up where I left off with my cabinet cleaning. But my back was starting to irritate me considerably, so I made sure to take regular breaks. I was on a roll! I continued to clean the cabinet all throughout the night. The figures that had been in the display that would be best displayed elsewhere (where they were more thematically consistent) were removed. I took a custom-made Adam West and 1966 Batman figure out of the display and took them upstairs to live in the ’66 Batman case. I took the Tony Clifton figure out (which I had made several years ago from a Mod Hair Ken doll) and hung it near the Tony Clifton display in my kitchen. Though it was a lot of work, it paid off. It now looks great and very much at home. I removed three Elvis figures (Elvis ’56, Elvis ’68, and Elvis ’72) and put them upstairs in the Puppet Room with a few other Elvis items. I took out the Michael Jackson Thriller figure and put it in the monster cabinet. Speaking of the monster cabinet, I took out the figures of Michael Myers from “Halloween 1” and “Halloween 2” and put them next to the other monster characters on the display case. I also added Ashley from “The Evil Dead” as well. So while the top row was all Captain Action 90s figures, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th rows will all be monster/horror characters that aren’t thematically represented elsewhere in the house. The front row will all be hero characters. I have four 12 inch Mego hero characters (Superman, Batman, Robin and Spider-Man) that I cleaned up and replaced on their rods. But I can tell that the rubber band on the inside of the Spider-Man character has broken, and the only thing holding his body together is the one-piece costume. I need to find a Mego expert who can restring the body for me. A few years ago I bought a slick pair of custom-made Starsky & Hutch figures (really sweet!) but I had them displayed too low in my main display case and nobody ever really saw them. So now they’re standing right next to the Mego figures. Then I have John Steed and Mrs. Peel from the British “Avengers” series, and next to them is one of the Roger Moore “Live and Let Die” figures that were released a few years ago. That leaves two spaces left, which I’m saving for the release of the long-awaited Laurel and Hardy figures which are due out at the end of the summer. I pre-ordered them back in 2020, but with everything going on in China, fulfilling those orders hasn’t been possible up until now. Everything looked great, organized and best of all…CLEAN! But I was exhausted and my back was hurting something fierce. I ate my Denny’s and watched a few episodes of “Have Gun – Will Travel.”

Thursday the 22nd – BACK FLACK! – Since my back was aching badly, I decided to let it rest. So I slept most of the day and stayed inside. All of the physical stuff I’ve been doing has added up to some sort of pulled muscle or something in my lower left back. YOWCH! I did my nightly auditions and did some LIGHT work around the house. I cleaned up a little bit for the maids.

Friday the 23rd – ICE, ICE, BABY! – Luckily I have a ton of those iceless cold packs in my freezer. I put them on my back and relaxed while I waited for the maids. I just took it easy the rest of the day. It sucks because the weather has been great, but I can’t go outside and walk around! Just my luck! The weather’s finally nice but I’m stuck inside with an injury! I’m anxious to get out on my walks again! I made a salad and watched a few “Lone Ranger” episodes. Then I watched some Popeye cartoons on Me-TV! Watching cartoons on a Saturday morning sure brought back some good memories!

Saturday the 24th – VENTURING OUT…CAREFULLY! – My pal Edi met me for a late lunch at Paty’s, and my back was feeling better. The alternating ice and heat was working. I got my packages at my box and headed home. I was going to get some groceries but my back was acting up so I just headed home to relax. More ice and heat. I took some pain medication and slept the rest of the day and into the evening. Later I made my usual Saturday Night Super Saint Salad and rested some more.

Sunday the 25th – PIZZA IS GOOD MEDICINE! – Halfway through the day I woke up long enough to give Spook some food, and then I went back to bed. When I got up later I was craving a Little Toni’s pizza. I phoned in my order, showered up and drove over. My back is better, but still not perfect. I got back home and enjoyed my pizza and put some more heat and ice on my back. As I get older, it takes longer for these sorts of injuries to heal, it seems. Guh-reaaaat.

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK