May 22 – May 29 (2023) – Wally On The Web

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Back in the day when toys were toys!

As I was driving around this past week, this gem from Queen came up on my device. “It’s Late” was never a hit, but I remember it was released on a 45 when I was a young radio DJ. But though it didn’t chart very high, I remember always being taken by the incredible drum work on this song. I turned it up VERY loud in my car!

Monday the 22nd – MARATHON SESSION: DAY 1! – It was promising to be a very long day. The first stop was to the hardware store to buy some coupling nuts for the mechanism in the wrist pieces of the Super Grover replica Muppet that I was working on. The arm rods will be removable, and will be able to screw in and out of a molded piece in the wrist that I’ll create later. Then I headed to Wienerschnitzel for lunch. I can’t believe that I spent $23 bucks for food at Wienerschnitzel, but that’s the new world we’re living in, I guess. It still seems steep for that kind of food though. Then I went to Studiopolis to do a 3 hour session for an upcoming video game. My character in this game will have over 1100 lines, so it’s going to take about 5 sessions to complete them all. I did one last week, today will be the second session, and the third session will be tomorrow. Then we’ll take a break for a couple of weeks, and finish up in mid-June. When we finished I went back home and checked messages and emails, fed my cat Spooky, and grabbed a nap. I got up later and did my nightly auditions, typed out Wally’s Week, and sculpted Grover’s internal wrist pieces using the coupling nuts I had bought earlier in the day. I sculpted them out of a two-part compound called Magic Sculpt. I’ll let them cure overnight and get nice and hard, and then finish up the other side to complete the pieces. I got my home studio set up for a one-hour session early the next day.

Tuesday the 23rd – MARATHON SESSION: DAY 2! – Though I didn’t need to get up until a while later, I woke up earlier in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I kept thinking about the logo on my Super Grover replica Muppet, how I was going to mount it on the puppet, how I was going to do his hands, etc. So I decided to get out of bed and do some work finishing up the wrist pieces. Overnight they had hardened quite nicely, so I mixed up some more Magic Sculpt and finished the other side of the pieces. I had planned on mounting the logo to the puppet by using hidden magnets, which would be mounted in the inside of the puppet. But last week’s experimentation with the magnets didn’t go very well. They were more attracted to each other than they were the metal pieces on the back of the logo. So I’m ditching the magnet idea altogether. I decided to create small leather “holsters” on the back of the logo where I could pin the logo to his chest with safety pins. I’ll go over to my friend Alex in Wonderland’s shop later to ask her opinion. I sat down in my home studio and did an hour-long session for the upcoming “Street Fighter 6” game, and some bonus materials that they’ll be including when the game is released later this summer. Normally we do our home sessions through something called Source Connect, but the past two sessions I’ve done with Source Connect have been problematic. It’s nothing to do on my end, but the studios that are receiving my feed have to be wired a certain way, and if they’re not, we get incompatibility issues. So we went with plan B and they directed me via Zoom, and I recorded all my stuff locally and I’ll send it to them later. After the home session I sped off to McDonald’s to get some lunch, and then hit Studiopolis for Day 2 of the video game session. This would be a four hour session, and by the time I left my voice was sounding pretty rough. There were lots of battle cries and screams in the session. I’m glad I’ll have a nice break before the next two sessions to finish up my lines. After the session I went to Alex In Wonderland to pick up the cape she made for Super Grover. It turned out great! I also saw the prototype of the helmet and it will be wonderful! I got home to check messages and emails, and then my pal Sara stopped by to do a little work. Then I grabbed a nap and got up later to do a bunch of auditions. I worked on Grover some more, and tried the leather holsters on the back of the logo. Though I planned on ditching the “four magnet plan” to secure his chest logo, I’ll mount two leather safety pin holsters on the back of the logo, and one metal piece. While the pins will go through the fur on the chest with no problem, his foam rubber tummy piece will be more problematic. There I’ll probably use one single magnet. Both sides of the wrist pieces I had made out of Magic Sculpt had cured now and they turned out great! I made foam rubber thumbs to put over the armature wire thumb pieces that I had seated into the Magic Sculpt pieces. And I glued the back of Grover’s tummy piece into the fur to hold it into place. I took my late-night WOG (walk/jog) through my complex at 3:30 in the morning, and then came back inside to have some food and hit the hay. BUSY DAY!

Wednesday the 24th – CLOSING IN ON IT! – My seamstress Maggie came over at noon and we had a long day ahead of us. With Monsterpalooza quickly approaching, we had a lot of work left to do to complete Super Grover for the convention. The arms she sewed for him were good, but not “noodly” enough. So I had her fold them over by half and stitch them together. NOW they were thin and noodly enough! They looked great! Once we were happy with the arms she attached them to the body. Then she attached the head to the body, and I patterned pieces for his hands. She cut the pieces out of the fur and stitched them together. But when they were completed I realized that I had patterned the fingers too short! So I redid the pattern, lengthened the fingers, and even though we were rapidly running out of the custom-dyed fur, we just barely had enough to cut out four more hand pieces (each hand is two pieces of fur sewn together). She finished stitching those together and they looked totally right! I stuffed the fingers to replicate the famous “floppy finger” look that Grover had in the 70’s, and Maggie inserted the Magic Sculpt wrist pieces for the arm rods. I patterned his feet and Maggie cut them out of the remaining fur we had. There was just enough left and we’re down to scraps at this point! Whew! While she worked I made my hotel reservation for my trip to the Voices Against Cancer event in my hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota in July. I also went outside by the pool to grab a rare bit of sunshine, as the sun had finally come out from behind the clouds for a mere 45 minutes! The sun felt good on my face, and with several days of cloudy, gloomy weather, it was good to see the sun again…albeit for less than an hour. I sent Maggie home with some homework; to stitch up the legs, stitch the feet, stitch the finished feet to the legs, and stuff them all with Poly-Fil. We’ll get together again on Monday Memorial Day to finish everything up. Before she left I ordered a pizza for us for dinner. When Maggie took off I grabbed a nap, and then got up later to do an audition. While Grover’s hand pieces looked amazing, there was a fair amount of trimming, shaping and defining to do in order to get them to look right. So I started snipping away, and eventually the shape of his fingers came to light. I tried pinning the logo onto Grover with safety pins and leather holsters, but it didn’t work very well. So…back to the magnet idea. But instead of using four metal pieces on the back of the logo, I only glued three…two for the chest, and one for the tummy piece. Then I glued the quarter-sized magnets to the inside of the puppet’s chest by using small, round leather pockets. The magnets would be surrounded by the leather pieces and glued to the inside of the fur, so they couldn’t move around. The third magnet will live between the fur and the foam tummy piece. The first piece glued in nicely! I let it set for a while. Then I glued in the second piece, but I didn’t get the leather piece centered on it well enough. So I tore it off and reglued it. As I was surrounding the third magnet with glue on the tummy piece, the magnet snapped away and attached itself to the metal brush I was using to apply the glue. Stupid me! I should have used a WOODEN brush to do this. It made a real mess and it took me a while to remove the magnet from the metal brush. I finally got everything separated and tried it again. The second time was successful, and all three magnets were successfully seated into the puppet’s torso. I decided to call it a night, so I heated up some leftover pizza from earlier, and watched a few episodes of “Have Gun – Will Travel” before bed. I’ve been battling fairly horrible allergies and a stuffy nose over the past few days. The pollen count in L.A. (with all of the rain we’ve had) has been through the roof, so I think I need better allergy medicine!

Thursday the 25th – SNIPPING, SHAPING & STOOLING! – Just to be sure my stuffy nose wasn’t the result of another sinus infection, I called my doctor for a telemedicine visit. He called in a prescription for me at CVS, and I walked over to the store and picked it up. I picked up a few grocery items as well, stopped by the hardware store to get a wood dowel to make a puppet stand for the Donnie Druthers Christoween puppet Maggie had made me for my birthday, and with an armful of groceries and supplies, I walked back home. I ate a light dinner, and then started snipping Grover’s fingers again to define and shape them. I stopped for a quick nap, and got up later to record all my nightly auditions. Then I got out the saw and the drill and put together a new puppet stand for my Donnie Druthers puppet. I found a little foam piece from some packing materials that would make for a perfect stool for him to sit on. The wood dowel I bought earlier was cut to size and I attached it to the base. It looked perfect! I put him on display in a corner of one of my rooms along with a big hardcover version of my first Christoween story. I think I’ll call the area “Christoween Corner!” I finished the night by doing more snipping of Grover’s fingers. He only has 8 fingers, but shaping each one takes a TON of time to get it perfect!

Friday the 26th – I’D LIKE A LITTLE MORE “SPRING” IN MY SPRING, PLEASE! – To get a jump on their three-day weekend, the maids were scheduled to come a little earlier than they usually do. So I got up early to meet them, and while I waited for them to arrive I did some more snipping of Grover’s fingers. I had hoped to be done with them before the maids arrived, because snipping fur is a bit messy. I wanted to make sure any residual flying fur would be vacuumed up nicely by the ladies. When the maids finished I walked to the post office to mail off some bills. It was a gloomy, chilly day. Is this spring or what? Hard to believe we’re almost into June and we’re still bundling up. I feel summer will get her very late this year, if it really comes at all. I was notified via email that I could get a hotel room for next weekend’s Monsterpalooza in Pasadena, so I got on the horn and made it happen. EXCELLENT! This meant I wouldn’t have to wrestle around finding parking every day, and I could just relax and take it easy. WELL worth the price! My friend Emily came over later and we went to Miceli’s to grab some dinner. I got back home and napped for a bit, and then got up later to submit some Voice Over auditions, work around the house, and do some work on the computer. I was excited because Saturday would be the first totally FREE day I would have in a long time. I had absolutely NOTHING scheduled! I took my WOG (walk/jog) through the complex in the middle of the night, and just for fun I decided to take my blood pressure the minute I got back in the house. I was elated! The reading was EXCELLENT! Better than it’s been in a very long time! The modification of my diet, the exercise and the medication were all working in tandem beautifully! I made a huge salad and watched a few episodes of “The Lone Ranger” to launch my three-day weekend!

Saturday the 27th – LIKE A MIME! – Since I needed some grocery items, I decided to walk to the store on a very windy day. I felt like a mime doing a “walking against the wind” routine! It was NOT fun nor was it enjoyable! It’s even tougher walking against the wind with your arms full of heavy groceries! But I made it. As a test, I screwed in Grover’s arm rods into the little wrist pieces and they worked perfectly! I turned on the black light in the Tranquility Zone and relaxed for a while. When I got up later I drove to my mailbox to get an item that had been left in one of the lockers for me. I knew that I’d be seeing my old pal Daniel Roebuck on Sunday afternoon, and I realized late in the day that I had just received the new action figure of The Count from Rob Zombie’s “The Munsters” at my box. Since Dan played The Count in the movie (also known as Grandpa Munster) I wanted to have him sign it. But by the time I realized that the figure was waiting for me at my box, it was just a few minutes before my mailbox place was closing. So I called them and they agreed to put it in a locker for me, and gave me a code to unlock it. Pretty slick! Otherwise I would have had to wait until Tuesday to pick it up, and I would have to wait until I saw Dan again to get it signed. I punched the code to gain access to the store, punched in a different access code to gain access to the locker, got my package and headed home. When I got back I put a Tony Clifton decal on the side back window of the Gray Ghost. Because the windows are all darkened, and the decal is black, it’s difficult to see. But it’s subtle. I had them print it backwards so I could apply it to the INSIDE of the window. That way when I got to the car wash it won’t get damaged. Then I went inside and made my traditional Saturday Night Super Saint Salad and watched an amazing episode of “The Saint” called “To Kill a Saint.” Amazing!

Sunday the 28th – PUPPET PLAY! – My pal Dan Roebuck, his wife Tammy and her daughter Julia came by to take a tour of Planet Wallywood. Dan said that Julia had been talking about making a puppet, and asked if they could come by to discuss puppet building. I said I’d be glad to! We chatted all about puppets for two hours, I gave Julia a chance to work with a few puppets, and Dan was kind enough to sign my Count figure. After they took off I headed to Paty’s to get some lunch. I had fully intended to get my usual salad, but once I got there I realized that it was chicken noodle soup day! Since it was chilly and gloomy out, I fell back on my usual “rainy day comfort meal” of a grilled cheese sandwich and fries, a side of ham, and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. It was pleasant sitting there on the patio on a gloomy day enjoying a comforting meal. It’s a good thing too. I started to think about my late dog Roxy and my late “adopted grandma” Shirley and I became quite blue. It was tough and really sucked a lot of the excitement of the amazing day I had enjoyed so far. So when I got home I climbed in bed and took a nap. I got up later and did some work, placed the nose on Grover where I felt it should go, and drove to Denny’s to get some food. When I got back home I took a WOG, and had another GREAT blood pressure reading afterwards; much better than even the previous night’s! I enjoyed eating my Denny’s food and watching a few episodes of “The Lone Ranger,” followed by a few episodes of “Have Gun – Will Travel!” I LOVE that show, and the lead actor Richard Boone is amazing to watch!

Monday the 29th – MEMORIAL DAY! – Since it was a holiday it was a great day to get some things finished up. First, Maggie came back over to finish up Super Grover. She attached his legs and feet to his body, attached the nose to his head, and put the cape ties on his cape. He was looking good! After she left I got cleaned up and headed into the Cinelounge in Hollywood to see Dan Roebuck’s new film “Lucky Louie,” a film he wrote, directed and produced with his daughter Grace. He also acted in it as well. It was fully enjoyable and I’m so proud of him for making another film a reality! I came back home and grabbed a short nap, and then started scrutinizing Grover. I realized that the wrist ties on his cape were stitched to the OUTSIDE hem of his cape, when they should have been sewed to the INSIDE of the hem of his cape. I didn’t catch it earlier, so I cut them off and restitched them myself. Then I noticed that the chunky yarn tie that goes around his neck was starting to unravel, making it look much too thick for the scale of the puppet. I’m not sure how to freeze yarn into the thickness you need, but this may require the help of Alex in Wonderland! I also noticed that his nose was slightly too low on his face. One thing I’ve learned over all the years of puppet building; 1/32nd of an inch can sometimes make a HUGE difference. It just needed to be raised a few millimeters to look right. Again, I’ll ask Alex in Wonderland if she can just put a few stitches in at the top to give him a little nose lift. His helmet should be almost done, so I’m hoping I can go into Alex’s shop tomorrow and get these little minor details rectified.

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK