March 08 – March 14 (2021) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

I stumbled across this photo of Jim Henson during the production of “The Muppet Show.” I LOVE this!

After having watched the Bee Gees documentary last Saturday, my mind has been buzzing with Bee Gees songs ever since. But this one in particular stands out. I’ve always loved this song, but listening to its construction and production again makes me realize what a true gem “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)” is.

Monday the 8th – NO SUCH THING AS COINCIDENCES: PART 1! – It was a gorgeous Monday so Michelle and I drove off to meet my ol’ pal Daniel Roebuck and his wife Tammy at Paty’s for lunch. Dan would be leaving in a few days for Hungary to work on a film, so it would be the last I’d see of him for several months. We talked about all sorts of stuff and then along came my ol’ pal Christopher Ameuroso, who spotted my Gran Torino in the parking lot. All five of us talked for another 45 minutes. Chris just happened to be in the area! It was a truly amazing time spent with good friends. Then Michelle and I drove off to Goodwill, as the backseat and trunk of my Torino was full of mannequins, and a box of clothes; all of which I wanted to donate to Goodwill. We unloaded all the stuff and Michelle wanted to shop for stuff, since she was only able to bring a limited amount of clothes to L.A. when she took the flight here on her move westward. But something wasn’t feeling right. I looked at my phone to see the time, because I knew I shouldn’t be there. Sure enough, I had a phone message from my pal Luke Ski; the animator who created the ‘animatic’ to our first Christoween story! I was having so much fun that I totally spaced out on a meeting we had at 4 to go over plans for a book based on the ‘animatic.’ RATS! He said he was outside my door, but I was still 20 minutes away. As it was now 4:20, I hastily called him and begged him to stay put until I got there. But he had already gone back home. I HATE when I do stupid stuff like that. I apologized profusely and we agreed to meet at 6 the next night. The rest of the evening I was a bit bummed out, as I feel brainfarts like that are unprofessional and they irritate me. I got back home and did some work around the house, recorded my auditions, and settled my annual taxes. Then I cut out the mouth plates for my new Rowlf the Dog head. I feel that the one I made back in 2018 is about 10% too big, so I’m going to remake it at the proper size and transplant the new head on to the body I made. I measured the mouth of the current Rowlf I have. It’s 9 inches, which is much too big. So I made two mouth plate sets – one 8 inches wide, and the other 7 inches wide. I ran them both by Michelle and we agreed that the 7 inch set looked too small. I’m thinking that the 8 inch set will give me the size reduction I need to make it look a little more within the size ratio I’m looking for. I went downstairs to the storage in my garage and dug out all of the fur and foam rubber I’ll need for the project. I couldn’t find my original Rowlf patterns initially, but after doing some more digging around I found them in a different box. I’ll take the patterns I used back in 2018 and reduce them on the computer 10%, print them and use those for the build. I did some more auditions, scanned some checks for a bank deposit, and typed out Wally’s Week.

Tuesday the 9th – A SHATTERING, ARTISTIC EXPERIENCE! – With another gorgeous day at hand I decided to walk to the bank and get some exercise. I stopped at Panera for lunch on the patio, got a few grocery items at the store, and walked over to Kit Kraft to get some half-dome doll eyes for a Christoween ornament I’d be sculpting. I walked back home and prepped for my evening meeting with Luke. He arrived and I brought a chair out from the kitchen for him to sit in while we worked at the computer plotting out the illustration-to-text layout for our book. But as he laughed, he leaned far back on the chair, and the back of the chair SNAPPED OFF! This sent him reeling back and fell into one of the glass doors of the display case he was sitting in front of!!! THANK GOD the dislocated back of the chair is the thing that smashed into the glass door, and not Luke himself! That could have been much worse! As it was, the bottom of the left door was shattered, and my chair was broken in two. And I think Luke’s pride was a bit hurt, but I was glad he wasn’t cut at all. I kept asking him if he was hurt, and he assured me that a scratch on his arm was one he received from his cat a few days ago. I was thankful it wasn’t worse! So I put a foam barrier on the edge of the broken glass door, vacuumed up all the broken glass, and got him a sturdier chair. Still feeling a bit unnerved by the event, we placed our dinner order with Smokehouse. I felt a nice steak might make up for missing our previous night’s meeting. We kept working until our dinner arrived, we ate, and then finished up the book scheme. This is going to be wonderful. Luke is pulling selected images that he created for the “Frankie-fied!” Christoween ‘animatic’ and will output them in high definition so I can color them. Then we’ll lay the book out at Shutterfly and have a few for sale very soon! Later I did some work around the house, shrank the pattern for the wedges that connect together to make Rowlf’s head. I shrunk them to 90% of the original, printed it, cut it out and VOILA! That’s my new pattern! I’ll start working on the new head soon, as I have all the materials I need to make it happen. I even located the original spoons I used to mold his eye shapes! Later I made some spaghetti and watched another episode of “The Invaders.” It rained all night.

Wednesday the 10th – WET WEDNESDAY! – Since it rained all day I was feeling a bit lazy. Once I got up I did a little graphics work, fed the kids, and laid down for a nap. Something about the rain makes me feel real cozy and sleepy. I got up later to do a bunch of auditions, some more graphics work, and I made a Tombstone pizza and watched another “Invaders” episode. This one featured Suzanne Pleshette! Fantastic!

Thursday the 11th – INVADERS ENDS! – The day was spent doing a bunch of random things around the house, and recording some auditions. Later in the night I headed out in the Gran Torino to get some groceries, and I stopped by Denny’s to get some food to go. I got home and prepped to eat my dinner while watching the series finale of “The Invaders.” But the final episode was weird. It seemed like the producers of the DVD set could only find a copy of the episode from a source like a VHS videotape. It sounded a bit warbly, and the video quality wasn’t very good. It actually added to the creepiness of the episode, but the story of the final episode didn’t have a definitive ending. It almost seemed like they were expecting to get a third season pick-up. So there wasn’t any resolution to the story, sadly. But overall, the series was a real winner and I enjoyed it fully!

Friday the 12th – NO SUCH THING AS COINCIDENCES: PART 2! – Things are NEVER wrong on the internet, right? WRONG! I did a search for glass companies in my area, and found that one of the numbers was actually the number to a carpet cleaning service! That was truly bizarre! A few of the other companies had strange voicemail messages that were confusing. One stated their business hours, and urged me to call back when they were open. But I WAS calling during business hours, so they should be open and available. It was truly an odd experience. I called a pharmacy and paid for some medication that they’re sending to me, and then Michelle came over so we could go to dinner. We went to Miceli’s for a nice Italian meal, and as the evening was winding down we started chatting with our server. In casual conversation she mentioned some elderly friends she just spent some time with, and the man just turned 95. She said he was a comedian who had done appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” I asked him name and she said it was Jackie Curtiss. Michelle’s mouth dropped open. “Jackie Curtiss?” she said. Our server said it probably wasn’t the same Jackie Curtiss she was thinking of. But then Michelle said, “Jackie Curtiss and Bill Tracy?” It was our server’s turn to drop her mouth open. She wondered how Michelle would know of that old comedy duo being so young (Michelle is 22, but 22 going on 40!). Michelle is a big fan of vinyl records, and years ago she picked up an album at a thrift store that was signed. The fact that it was a comedy album recorded at the Playboy Club, and the fact that it had been autographed piqued her interest. So she bought it. The album she bought was “Jackie Curtiss and Bill Tracy Caught Live at the Playboy Club!” So our server grabbed her phone and put Michelle on the phone with Jackie! They talked for about a half hour! It was amazing!

Saturday the 13th – PLANET WALLYWOOD MOVIE NIGHT AGAIN…KIND OF! – I spent the afternoon cleaning up Planet Wallywood because my pals Mark and James would be dropping by later to watch a documentary about the Bee Gees called “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” Mark brought it over on his firestick so we could watch it on HBO Max. Remember when I had my A/V guy hook up the little gizmo to pipe streaming video into my system? Well, it worked GREAT! The documentary was fantastic and I highly recommend it. Michelle had heard lots of Bee Gees music, but was never really familiar with the Gibb brothers. When my guests left, it was time to spring the clocks forward an hour. Every time we have to go through this idiocy I always grumble and wonder out loud why we’re even still doing this insanity. There’s NO good reason! It’s bizarre and needs to end!

Sunday the 14th – TIME CHANGE LUNACY! – We can put a rover on Mars, but we are still setting our clocks back and forth an hour to save daylight? Good grief is that stupid. The time changes always get me, and today was no exception. My body clock was off. So I found myself waking up early on Sunday morning, and just lying there with my eyes open, staring at the ceiling. So I decided to go get some late lunch at Paty’s. Well, late breakfast, actually. Monday is the day our state FINALLY gets around to allowing indoor dining again, so this would be one last time I would be forced into patio dining. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE patio dining. On a NICE day. But it was chilly and windy. But the food was terrific. I got back home and napped. Later I got up to do some auditions, I ate my leftover lasagna from Miceli’s, and prepped for the new week. I also decided to make a color palette for me to use when Luke’s drawings start coming in. This will allow me to have a good reference for colors when I start coloring them so all the colors will be consistent.

And how was YOUR week?!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

Everytime Officer Mark comes over to visit Planet Wallywood, he always gets some great shots of some of the displays. LOVE these!

I’ve been remiss in posting our weekly Christoween Stalking(tm) videos on Wally’s Week, so if you don’t follow me at Twitter or Instagram you may not have seen these yet. But the following videos which highlight our Christoween Stalkings(tm) will get you all caught up to date. Enjoy!