November 04 – November 10 (2024)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Sesame Street turns 55 this year! This is an amazing sketch of all the great Sesame Street Muppets, but sadly I don’t know the artist to whom the credit should go.

After it came up in conversation with my pal Tyler this past week, I’ve been humming Tim Moore’s “Second Avenue” quite a bit. While not a huge hit in 1974, we played it quite frequently on the old AM radio station I used to work at as a kid. This really is quite a beautiful song.

Monday the 4th – “I GOT BETTER!” – After about five days of battling an annoying head cold I was feeling much better. I got up around noon to do some work around the house, and then headed over to my box to pick up some packages. One of the items I received was my new Bluetooth CD player! It plays CDs but will broadcast them to a Bluetooth speaker, or better yet, my car stereo system! Some days I just want to drive around and listen to a full CD in its entirety. And since most new cars don’t come with CD players anymore, this is the next best thing. I hit Paty’s to have a salad on the patio, mailed some stuff off at the post office, and then hit the cleaners to drop off a comforter. I hit the grocery store to get some items, but I was shocked to see the paper towel shelf TOTALLY EMPTY! What was going on?! I got back home and put everything away and then relaxed for a bit. Later I went outside to do my nightly WOG (walk/jog) and it certainly felt good to be back at it, after taking several nights off because of my cold. It was chilly and clear out, but the Orion star cluster was in full view. However, it had shifted in the sky somewhat, so it’s really no longer ideally viewable from the front of my house. Luckily, in its shift, it’s now viewable from behind my house, so I’ll be doing my future post-WOG decompression times in my anti-gravity chair behind my house so I will be in full view of the beautiful sky. I didn’t spend much time outside because it was so chilly, so I came back inside and wrote Wally’s Week. I reconciled and balanced my corporate bank statement, which took a while. I really hate math!

Tuesday the 5th – PACKIN’ PUPPETS! – To start the day I scanned some checks to make my monthly deposit, and then I drove over to my pal Isaiah Ferguson’s house to pick up the sets, props and puppets from the Christoween stop-motion shoot he had just completed. I still need to shoot the opening and the closing of the sizzle reel (which will be live action) but my pal Officer Mark is temporarily down with a health issue and not available to help out with the shoot quite yet. But when he’s back at it we’ll shoot the needed segments, edit them into the piece, have the audio designed and we’ll be ready to launch in early December. I’m SO excited for you to see it! I stopped at the bank on the way home to deposit my checks, and then went home to do some work and unload the puppets and set pieces. I relaxed for a bit and then did my nightly auditions. There was a fun script that came in with a great character, but they casting people just wanted us to submit our character demos. I didn’t really have anything on my reel that represented what they were looking for, so I took some time to write up a custom 1 minute piece to send them. I wrote a monologue using the character voice and talking about the things the character would discuss, given the description in the instructions. It was pretty fun! I did some work around the house, took my nightly WOG, and spent some quick time outside in the anti-grav chair.

Wednesday the 6th – IKEA! GET DISNEY ON THE PHONE! BORK! BORK! BORK! – For lunch I met with my pal Chris Malmin at Ikea in Burbank. I needed to pick up a few items for the house, so we decided to meet for lunch in the Ikea cafeteria which has really great food. They have Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy and peas. YUMMY! But when I go to the cafeteria I always wish I could see a Swedish Chef Muppet behind the service line singing away. Why doesn’t Ikea license the character from Disney? It would be a great tie-in! Then I started thinking that maybe actual Swedish people may think that character is a bit of an insulting stereotype. So…maybe not. But still…it would be hilarious! Chris and I chatted about his recent out-of-town excursion as we shopped. I picked up some handy-dandy bathroom shelving units, as well as a few extra things I had been needing. Ikea sure is handy! Then I drove over to my auxiliary garage to get the Gran Torino out for a few days. The cutoff switch I had installed several months ago worked fantastically. The engine fired right up, but it took a few starts to get the gas in the line. Since it had been a long time since I had it out, it needed to be pumped quite a few times. But once the ol’ gal fired up it was good to go! I put the Gray Ghost to bed for a bit in its place, and headed out in the “striped tomato.” I stopped by the cleaners to pick up my comforter, and dropped off the Torino’s car cover – which was FILTHY! It’s not cheap to have it cleaned, but it’s WELL worth it! Incidentally, the Bluetooth CD player I bought works GREAT! When I’m in the Tornio I only play 70’s music through an MP3 Walkman, but in the Gray Ghost the CD player was a terrific addition to my commute. I got home to do some work and talked to my gal Angi for a bit. Come to find out she had the evening free so I told her to drive over so we could go to dinner at Ernie’s Taco House! I didn’t get to see her last week because I was sick, so it was great being with her again. Later I did my WOG, but didn’t spend anytime outside in the anti-grav chair because it was just too darn cold! (I hate winter!) But the sky was clear and the stars were gorgeous!

Thursday the 7th – PLEASANT PROCRASTINATION! – Even though I had planned to do a few things, I made an executive decision at the last minute to stay inside and relax, and handle them all on Friday. Boy did it feel good to lounge around the house all day. I did a few auditions, did some light work around Planet Wallywood, and later took my nightly WOG. Once again, the frigid weather prevented me from enjoying some post-WOG decompression time outside in the anti-grav chair.

Friday the 8th – “ARE YOU FAMOUS?!” – It was quite a fantastic day in a lot of ways. I drove the Torino over to my local carpet and blinds place so I could order a new area rug for the Tranquility Zone. The carpet in my bedroom is the same carpet that came with the house when I bought it in 2000. God only knows how old it was before then. Over the years it’s started to wear down quite badly, with a few spots in the carpet worn through to the mesh underneath. It would be an enormous undertaking to move everything out of my room (actually quite IMPOSSIBLE!) to replace the carpet. So I’m planning on calling my carpet cleaners to have them clean the carpets in my house on one day. Before they get there I will have broken down my bed (the mattress, box spring and frame) and stashed them elsewhere in the house. That will give them full access to the carpet in my bedroom to get it nice and clean with no obstructions. I’ll spend that night in the Puppet Room while the carpet dries out. Then the next day I’ll have the guys deliver my new area rug. They’ll put it into place, and then I’ll rebuild my bed on the new rug. It’s going to take some coordination to make all this happen, but if it all goes to plan it should be pretty sweet. Jack, the manager of the store, loves cars – so I wanted to make sure to show him the Torino while I had it out. But I was running low on gas so I hit the area Shell station to put a few gallons in. But the pump was out of paper, so in order to get the receipt I had to go inside the store. The kid behind the counter was about in his mid-20’s. He asked what year the car was, and I told him she was 50 years old this year. Then he said, “Are you famous?” It’s always funny when somebody asks that question, because if I really WAS famous, they wouldn’t have to ask. But I laughingly said, “Only to a very small group of people.” He said, “Do you do music?” And I told him I was a Voice Actor. Then he asked which projects I had been in. I gave him an abridged version of my resume, but when I asked him if he played the Batman “Arkham” games he lit up. He said he played all of them. Then I gave him a sample of the Riddler and he went nuts. “NO WAY!” But what was even funnier was the other customer in the store also stopped shopping and turned and said, “I don’t believe it! You were my childhood!” It was talking to them both. Funny. I headed over to CVS to pick up a prescription and a few items, and then I headed to my box to pick up a new printing of my Christoween book “Donnie Druthers’ Christoween Capers; Frankie-fied!” Since I added a new verse for the new stop-motion video, I decided I needed to reprint the book with the new verse in it. I opted for the giant 12” X 12” book, and it looked amazing. Shutterfly does amazing work. I stopped by Michael’s to pick up my finished Jeff Lynne’s ELO concert collage, and it turned out beautifully! It’s a wonderful commemoration of a wonderful experience! I headed home to drop everything off and change clothes. Then I drove to the Smoke House to have dinner with my pal Joe Garner. We hadn’t done our steak night in a long time, so it was good to catch up on all that had happened in the summer. I got back home a warm, full tummy and relaxed. Later I did my WOG. It had gotten so chilly it was the first night I bundled up in my “winter WOG” gear. Lots of layering!

Saturday the 9th – SUPER STAN DAY! – It ended up a day filled with fun Stan Laurel-related events! First, I went to my box to pick up the new “Laurel & Hardy: Year Two” Blu ray that had just been released. I look forward to delving into these at the first of the year! They’re remastered versions of Stan & Ollie’s silent shorts from 1928. Then when I got home my buddy Tyler St. Mark came over with an incredible gift. A prop cane that once belonged to Stan Laurel! Here’s the backstory as I’ve heard it…When Stan and his pal Charlie Chaplin came to America around 1907 to investigate working in the U.S., they kicked around for a while. Charlie decided to stay, but Stan went back to England. In the meantime, Charlie became an enormous international superstar in the film industry, so Stan decided to come back to the US and try again. While he worked to support himself until his film career burgeoned, he would appear in vaudeville and burlesque shows as a comic. One of the things he did in his act was a spot-on impression of Charlie Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” character; an archetype which was sweeping the world in popularity thank to Chaplin’s films. Some reports say that Stan was actually Chaplin’s understudy when they worked together in a performing troupe. As part of his “Tramp” costume he had a few canes that he would use as props. My pal Tyler became good friends with Stan’s daughter Lois late in her life. Lois had gifted Tyler with many of her father’s belongings, including some bowler hats, clothes, jewelry, ephemera, and other things – including the two remaining canes he used to use in his “Tramp” act. Tyler had gifted one of those canes to another friend of his years earlier, but after seeing the Planet Wallywood collection earlier in the year, he decided that I should be the recipient of the other remaining cane. I originally met Tyler in January when I purchased one of his original “Sons of the Desert” fezzes that he had listed on eBay. While the fez I bought didn’t belong to either Stan or Ollie, it was worn by one of the main characters in the film. Since then we’ve been pals, and we have a ton of things in common. In fact, Tyler said he used to listen to me all the time when I was on 94.7 KTWV The Wave in the 90s! Tyler and I hopped in the Torino and drove over to Barone’s for a delicious meal. We started chatting about music and we got onto “one hit wonders.” He mentioned that he had a friend in the 70’s named Tim Moore. I said, “Second Avenue Tim Moore?” He was shocked that I knew of Tim’s hit! I told him that we played the song all the time on 1420 KABR-AM in Aberdeen. Of all the weird coincidences! When we got back to my house later I attempted find some specific pictures I wanted him to see. But after perusing my photo files, I started to realize that they weren’t on my hard drive. Apparently during the hard drive meltdown from a few months ago, there were many files that didn’t transfer over to my back-up drive. So after Tyler left, I set about repopulating my current hard drive with all of the missing files. Luckily I had luckily done a manual back-up in April. Whew! Talk about lucky! I took some time out to do my nightly WOG, and then spent the rest of the night finalizing all of the back-up work. This meant that I had to do side-by-side comparisons of all the files in my main hard drive with those in my April back-up. It took a while, but it was well worth it. And now I’m confident that all has been restored. I made a salad and started in on a new Saturday night viewing habit – “Boris Karloff’s Thriller!” While during the week I’ll continue with my regular viewing schedule (currently “The Incredible Hulk”), on Saturdays I’ll watch an episode of “Thriller.” I’m sure I’ll enjoy this show much more than “Honey West,” which I’ve just recently completed.

Sunday the 10th – THE SUNDAY SLEEPIES! – It sure felt good to chill out and relax all day. After all, isn’t that what Sundays are really for?! Later at night I took the Torino back to my auxiliary parking and got my Gray Ghost back out. I needed to do a little traveling on Monday to a session in Santa Monica, so I needed my Rav back for that. I got some food at McDonald’s, headed home to do some work, did my nightly WOG, and plotted out the activities for a new week.

And how was YOUR week?!?!

PIX FROM THE WEEK