May 02 – May 09 (2022) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

This is my friend Edi’s dog Bunny, or “Buns” as we call her. She was having a GREAT time in Palm Springs!!

I’ve been a Dr. Demento fan since 1979, and it was great hearing “Transfusion” by Nervous Norvus this past week on KWXY-AM 1340 in Palm Springs! This is great!

Monday the 2nd – EXPENSIVE DOOR STOP/PAPERWEIGHT COURTEST OF THE APPLE CORPORATION! – My A/V guy Brandon came over to install my new region-free Blu Ray player in the Tranquility Zone. The one he removed wasn’t region-free, and I have a Zone B Laurel and Hardy film on Blu Ray that I want to see. But he was having trouble finding the codes to program the remote so he’s coming back. He’s also an expert with all sorts of technical things, so we set about trying to revive my iPad in an effort to try and get it to talk to my “classic” version of the iTunes program again. It just stopped talking to my iTunes program about a year ago. After an hour or so of investigative work, we determined that it’s now just a really expensive door stop or paperweight. I believe Apple’s policy of “planned obsolescence” should be illegal, since I paid for their project and I expect it to always be useful. But no go with this, unfortunately. It’s why I steer clear of most Apple products. Luckily my classic iPod still works with my classic iTunes program and I hope that will always be the case, as a lot of the newer MP3 players just don’t have the storage capacity that an iPod has. I drove to my mailbox to get my packages, and found that I had received my new Walkman MP3 player (speaking of MP3 players) but it only has about 8GB of storage, so I’m using this exclusively as the music source for my Gran Torino. It will only have 70’s tunes on it that I can shuffle and listen to while I drive. I also got the replacement puppets for my Cap’n Crunch puppet set I bought for myself as an early birthday gift. The Cap’n, Seadog and Brunehilde were slightly damaged in the original set I got, but it just so happened that a mint set of those three characters showed up on eBay. I snagged them, and now I have a near mint set from the 60’s! I went to the cleaners to drop off some stuff, drove to Best Buy to return the Bose speakers I bought a few weeks ago for my computer (they sounded too muddy to be useful to me), hit Wendy’s for dinner, Krispy Kreme for desert, and went to my auxiliary garage to swap cars and get my Gran Torino. But once I got to the garage I had noticed that somebody was drawing pictures and graffiti in the dust on some of the classic cars there. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my Mustang there since I didn’t have my car cover along to lock it up. I didn’t like the idea that people were putting their hands on the cars, so I’ll do the swap tomorrow. I got back home, rested a bit, and later I put the replacement Cap’n Crunch character puppets up in my cabinet. They look fantastic! I cleaned out a lot of stuff I’m no longer interested in to make room. The Batman figures I bought over the weekend at the Toyzilla signing also got put in one of the cabinets on display. I recorded my auditions, wrote Wally’s Week, and spent the rest of the night loading 70’s songs onto my Walkman for my Torino ride!

Tuesday the 3rd – TORINO TUESDAY! – When I got to my auxiliary garage in Burbank I pulled the Mustang in, pulled the Torino out, pulled the Mustang into the parking space, covered it and locked it, and drove over to Al & Ed’s Auto Sound. I needed to have a specific cable put into my Torino’s sound system to accommodate the new Walkman. Ruben, the owner, had bought the necessary kit a while back, which basically taps into my stereo system with a cable that will plug into the headphone jack of my new Sony Walkman. While they worked on the installation I walked over to Lancer’s and had lunch with my pal Sara. I walked back to Al & Ed’s, got the Torino, and sped over to Pro 8 in Burbank to pick up the home movie footage I had digitized. I can’t wait to see how it turned out! I mailed some stuff at the post office, and then headed home to do my nightly auditions. I fed the kids and handled some work around the house. I prepped for my upcoming birthday trip to Palm Springs. After a short nap I did some packing for my trip. I watched the Super 8 films and the digitization process Pro 8 did was beautiful! Perhaps I’ll edit together some of the clips and post them on the website. In particular, I think I’ll post the James Bond movie I made. The quality looks pretty amazing for film that old! I also had some Super 8 films digitized that had been bequeathed to me from certain relatives. It sure was great to see old family members; many of whom have been dead for decades! I had gotten my Super 8 movie put on VHS back in the 90’s, but that process was basically shooting a video of the movie being projected on the screen; like a bootleg movie! But this is a scan process that actually scans the film instead of projecting it! It’s amazing! I edited and separated the films and I’ll be posting them on a hidden page on my website so my relatives have a place to see them. I headed to bed for an early lunch meeting on Wednesday.

Wednesday the 4th – PALM SPRINGS; DAY 1! – My pal Grant and I have known each other for quite a while as we originally met through our mutual friend Chuck McCann many years ago. Grant is one of the A List performers at “Puppet Up” at the Henson Studios, so it was fun to sit down to lunch with him and chat and catch up. We talked about Dr. Demento, puppets and more great stuff! And we ate on the patio at Paty’s, which I always love! I went to the store to get some grocery items for my upcoming trip to Palm Springs, I picked up some meds for Roxy at the vet, I dropped off a boot for repair at a local shoe repair place, went to get some supplies at Rusty’s Discount Pets, picked up my rental SUV, and then went home to grab a quick nap for my night drive to the desert. I packed a few final things and my pal Brittney came over to begin house and pet sitting. We noticed some matted fur on Roxy’s hips by her hip bones, and I asked Brittney if she wouldn’t mind trying to clean that while I was gone. I hit McDonald’s on the way out of town and chatted with my folks and my pal Dan Roebuck on the drive. Traffic was slowed quite a bit because of a wide load caravan that was moving slowly with a Highway Patrol escort. It cut into my travel time, and my usual time of 1.5 hours was expanded to 2 hours. It took me from 9 to 11 to get there. But I got my food at Denny’s and headed to the hotel. Unfortunately I had a lot of work to do in my room to get settled. The ice machines on the 6th and 5th floors weren’t functioning, there was a considerable amount of spider webs (and spiders too!) on my balcony, and the safe in my room wasn’t functioning. It breaks my heart that my favorite hotel and getaway seems to be suffering from a lack of TLC by the management. The usual parking protocol was all screwed up because of a large door that was no longer working. Strange. The night was fairly peaceful, but some jackwad with a leaf blower started blowing junk around on the street below my balcony at 3am! WHAT?! Add to that the fact that on the tip top of “Mount Abe,” the mountain directly across from my balcony, somebody has put a bright light at the top of the mountain. That REALLY screws up the view! Little by little Palm Springs and the Hyatt and me are heading for a divorce!

Thursday the 5th – DID I MENTION THE BED?! – As is usual at the Palm Springs Hyatt I woke up with a back ache. The bed in my room isn’t great. But changing rooms wouldn’t matter, as they’re all in need of an upgrade. Like I said, no TLC. That hotel could benefit from an infusion of several million dollars’ worth of upgrades. I relaxed all day, got a few grocery items, gassed up the rental car, and headed over to see my “adopted grandma” Shirley in Palm Desert. We drove back into Palm Springs to have dinner with our friends Edi and Elliot Lurie at Eight 4 Nine. Edi even brought her dog Bunny along, who was a big hit in her little dress. It was a gorgeous night out, and the weather was warm and peaceful. I feel so much at peace out there! After dinner we hit the Thursday night street fair which is back after a long hiatus because of the virus thing. But it was great to see everything back to normal again! It wasn’t as packed wall-to-wall with vendors like the old days, but it was great to be back again! I drove Shirley back to her home, and then drove back to the Hyatt with my windows rolled down to enjoy that warm desert air. My favorite radio station there at 1340 on the AM dial is back on the air after a programming change. Sometimes the music they play is great, and other times not. Luckily, I hit it at a good time and it was great hearing some of those songs on AM radio again! I got back to the room, and got a quick nap. When I awoke I had a text from Brittney who showed me the problem areas on Roxy’s hips. They were in fact bed sores, from all of the lying around she does now. I’ll need to call the vet and take her in when I get back to have them looked at. It was a gorgeous night out, and I celebrated my birthday eve in the usual way on the balcony; with hot popcorn and ice cold Cokes!

Friday the 6th – BDAY! – As a birthday treat to myself I slept all day. I really needed it given the schedule I’ve had over the past two months! I drove over to get Shirley and take her to dinner at our favorite Italian place in Palm Desert called Papa Dan’s! I went back to my hotel and checked my e-mail and I got an amazing birthday video from my pal “Weird Al” Yankovic. Apparently there’s some company he’s involved with to do these really great video greetings with high production values. I think I know how the whole thing was accomplished, but I’m not sure. Even still, it must’ve been a HUGE amount of work for Al to record videos of all those names to be put in the videos! You can check it out here: Weird All Sings Happy Birthday to Wally. My friends Officer Mark and Miss Connie had arrived in Palm Springs and I met them over at the Tropicale. Our friend Liquor Mark was also there and we had a blast chatting. I walked back to the Hyatt to enjoy a special birthday cigar given to me by my pal, Voice Director Jonathan Klein. It was a nice Cuban he gifted me with several weeks ago, and I told him I’d save it for my Palm Springs getaway. My actual birth time is 11:32pm (Central time) but I lit it up at 11:32 Pacific time. While I enjoyed that excellent cigar I ordered a pizza at NYPD and then took it to my room to eat on the balcony. The night was FANTASTIC! Warm, quiet, and star-filled! Amazing! This truly is my happy place!

Saturday the 7th – BIRTHDAY BASGHETTI! – Mid-afternoon my pals Emily and Sabrina arrived at the hotel and got settled. Emily was watching a cute little doggie named Ella and she was a hoot! Because of her advanced age I decided not to bring Roxy along this trip. Neither she nor I would have had any fun given all of the concerns, so it was nice to have a canine presence in the room for a night. We walked over to Lulu’s to have lunch in downtown Palm Springs and it was quite warm (the girls said it was just plain HOT, but I disagreed). While Emily caught a nap I went down to the pool with Sabrina so she could swim. Then later after we all cleaned up, we drove to get Shirley in Palm Desert and then drive to the Spaghetti Factory to meet friends for dinner. My pal Scott Sebring had driven in, and Officer Mark and Miss Connie joined us as well. We got back to the hotel and I took Sabrina on the balcony and showed her how wonderful it is to meditate and relax to star-filled skies. She now completely understands the appeal!

Sunday the 8th – DOGGONE or HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! – When I awoke Emily and Ella had taken off already, as they had a busy day back in L.A. planned. Sabrina and I walked over to Las Casuelas in downtown Palm Springs to meet up with Officer Mark and Miss Connie for lunch. We were afraid it was going to be packed for Mother’s Day, but we had gotten there so early we got right in! And, as a bonus, we got the Elvis table; the table where Elvis used to sit whenever he visited the restaurant during his Palm Springs days. We walked down to get some Dole Whips and met up with some friends of Officer Mark’s. Then Sabrina and I went shopping and had some fun walking around downtown. When we got back to the hotel Sabrina wanted to swim some more, so we hit the pool. The previous day, I noticed a little girl who seemed smitten with Sabrina and would follow her from the pool to the Jacuzzi. But they never chatted at all. The little girl had returned to the pool with her family, and since the pool was less busy today, she got a chance to finally talk to Sabrina. They became fast friends, swimming, enjoying the Jacuzzi, and doing tricks in the pool. I could tell this little kid was a fan of Sabrina’s the day before and I was happy they finally got some hang time together. She seemed like a cool little kid. Later Sabrina and I headed back out to Palm Desert to get Shirley to take her to a Mother’s Day dinner at Sherman’s Deli. After dinner I took her to a store to pick her up some grocery supplies and then dropped her back at her place. Earlier in the day my phone went off with an alert about sandstorms and 0 visibility! While we stayed mostly to the city roads, we could see in the distance that the horizon looked all mucky from the blowing dust! Wild! I returned to my room to discover that the maids, while cleaning the room, threw away two boxes that I need to transport my snacks and microwave. I know they must’ve looked like garbage, being empty boxes, but I had to contact the manager to get them back! I would need them for the loadout on Monday! Luckily, they located them and returned them. I need to mark them in the future as NOT GARBAGE or NOT BASURA! Even though the evening turned out to be very pleasant, once the wind subsided, I have to admit that Roxy was still on my mind. She’ll be 14 this coming Tuesday and every moment I get with her is precious. Sabrina and I enjoyed the balcony and at one point she said, “I feel high!” I laughed and said, “Welcome to my world.” When a person her age can feel high and not have any drugs or alcohol involved, it’s a pretty remarkable thing. The visuals of the night time desert landscape, the weather, the nice music and environment I create for my balcony time DOES get me high every time! I love it, and I’m glad somebody else has embraced it as well!

Monday the 9th – HEY IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK HOME AGAIN! – It was up early, some quick packing, and we were on the road back to L.A. right on schedule. I drove to Sabrina’s house and dropped her off, and then hit McDonald’s for some drive-thru food, and sped off to my house. I got home and got the update on Roxy, checked all the e-mails that had backed up, and then took Roxy over to her appointment at the vet to see what I could do about her bed sores. The Dr. gave me some antibiotics and said to keep an eye on them. She also said I need to “pad up” Roxy’s living area quite a bit with blankets and soft, cushy things. I brought up my dog Sassie’s bed (which had been in the garage since Sassie died in 2011) so Roxy could have two beds to lie on. When I got home and got everything set up for Roxy, I got a little sad. It’s that time in every dog owner’s life where you have to face the reality of the situation. I’m really dreading it, but I hope we have a little more time together. Roxy still has great interest in life, seeing people, other dogs, etc. – but she’s getting frail. It just kills me. I felt a little better after a nap. I unpacked, did my nightly auditions, and typed out Wally’s Week. I heated up some goulash and watched another episode of “Ghost Story” before bed.

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK