RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK
When I saw this picture on-line of some sort of Baby Yoda digital storage device, the old line from “Caddyshack” came to mind, brilliantly delivered by Bill Murray’s character.
While dining at Paty’s this past week, they had an 80’s music channel playing overhead. I had forgotten what a great song “Everything She Wants” by Wham was. Brilliant!
Monday the 2nd – LAZY WEEK BEGINS! – It was a beautiful day, and most likely one of the last warm days we’ll have for a while. I spent the day lounging around and writing Wally’s Week. Later I did my nightly auditions, made a pot pie and watched an episode of “The Time Tunnel.”
Tuesday the 3rd – PATY’S, PACKAGES, AND (SHUDDER) POLITICKS! – After spending most of the day on the phone, I headed to my box to pick up my packages. Then I met my pal Sara at Paty’s for a late lunch on their patio. I got home and opened my packages, and then I stayed up all night watching the political results of an historic election. Normally I’m averse to politicks (I spell it that way on purpose, as I equate all politicians with the despicable blood sucking insect), but in the interest of history I wanted to keep an eye on how it all unfolded. I did manage to get some intermittent sleep between monitoring results, and I also recorded all my auditions for the night.
Wednesday the 4th – TRAILER TALK! – Since we launched our Christoween.net website last week, promoting our 13 story series called “Donnie Druthers’ Christoween Capers,” I decided that we needed to cut a 1 minute trailer to promote the animatic for our first story in the series called “Frankie-fied!” I spoke with my pal and webmaster Scott Sebring, who knows a lot about things like this, as to how we could best do this. The stories are all in “Seussian” rhyme scheme, so cutting a trailer and preserving the rhyme scheme would be tough. We looked up the trailer for the 1966 Grinch cartoon to see what they did (considering that was all in rhyme) and they didn’t use any regard for the rhyme scheme. They just cut in the most relevant scenes. Then Scott suggested we look at the trailer for “The Nightmare Before Christmas” which Scott remembered being entirely narrated. With the exception of a few drops from the film itself, it was almost entirely narrated in Voice Over. That was the way we’d proceed. I sat down and cut together a timeline of imagery from the animatic and sent it to Scott to replicate. He has a better quality editing system than I do, and he has a better capability to make it look more professional. Once I got a rough-cut I liked, I wrote the script and sent everything along to Scott. I recorded the voice track and sent that off to the mixer. Scott returned the final cut with the soundtrack added, and I sent it off to my mixer Evan at Voice Trax West to put it all together and add sound effects. I recorded my nightly auditions, fed and walked Roxy, and then made some hot dogs on the grill and watched “The Time Tunnel.”
Thursday the 5th – SAID IN GRINCH VOICE: “NOISE, NOISE, NOISE!” – Admittedly I have strange sleep hours. But first thing in the morning, after I had just gone to bed, there was a rumbling buzz shaking my walls. I know my neighbors had been remodeling their patio for the past 6 weeks, but this sounded like they were deconstructing something. Were they starting over? Come to find out, the neighbors NEXT to them are now having their patio redone. Great. It was overcast outside, but fairly warm. Unable to sleep I worked around the house, got a mix of the trailer from Evan at Voice Trax West, and it was perfect. The animator of the animatic and I are working on a few upcoming posts that reveal a lot of the ‘easter eggs’ we put in the animatic, just in case you might have missed them. I recorded my nightly auditions, packaged up some artwork that was sent to me to sign, and I opened up and installed my new laser printer. I made a Tombstone pizza and watched the third to the last episode of “The Time Tunnel.” While the first two-thirds of the season dealt with historic figures and times, I think the viewers at the time were getting fatigued with all of the history lessons, forcing the “TT” writers to go a more ‘sci-fi’ route. But it may be too little too late. Also, the first two-thirds of the season had a 99% male cast. With the exception of the lovely Lee Meriwether, there were hardly any attractive women in the show, something that I feel helped to make “Star Trek” the ultimate hit it became. Again, toward the end of the season the producers got wise to this and started adding more females to the cast. Again, maybe too little too late since the show only went for one season. But don’t get me wrong…this show is TERRIFIC!
Friday the 6th – POUNDING, PACKAGES, AND PATY’S! – The buzzing and rumbling sounds of my neighbor’s patio resurfacing had now turned into a lot of pounding. So I got up to hit my mailbox and grab my packages. I also mailed off some Renji artwork that a fan had sent me to sign. It was a beautiful piece and I wanted to make sure it was securely packaged so it wouldn’t get damaged. Hungry, I went over to Paty’s to get a salad on the patio, but it was cold and breezy. Fall was here. The skies were overcast and the sun was setting earlier now anyway, so it was time to bundle up and head home for some warmth. My pal Brittney Powell came over later to help me with some work, and then I spent a while working on my big 3,000 piece Nickelodeon puzzle. One tiny section of the puzzle features my character Tallest Red from “Invader Zim,” and I’m only interested in building that part of the puzzle to display in my “Case of Character;” a display case in my room that features toys and images of characters I’ve voiced. But building only one section of a puzzle seems like it might be more difficult than building the entire puzzle, because I’m looking for only a small fraction of pieces that are relevant. However, I did manage to find a few, so I grabbed them and assembled them. I’m estimating I only need about another 10 pieces or so to make the picture of Tallest Red complete. I’ve never had a character I did show up in a puzzle, so this is kinda neat! The weather had turned decidedly colder out, so I made a Chef Boyardee pizza-in-a-box, cozied up in bed and watched one of the final episodes of “The Time Tunnel.”
Saturday the 7th – THE HEAT IS ON! – Following a brief rain, Los Angeles weather was windy and freezing! I turned my house’s heater on for the first time this fall. I decided I no longer needed my “ace-in-the-hole” portable air conditioning unit in my living room. I have it there in case something goes wrong with my air conditioning. I can hook this portable unit up and the pets can stay cool. But I seriously doubt I’ll have any more use for it this year. I hauled it downstairs to the garage, along with my former office chair which I’ll be donating to my church, once I can locate the arms that go with it in my storage. I relaxed around the house, recorded an audition, and decided that I would shoot a short 2 minute video of the Planet Wallywood Theatre for Twitter. Many people have asked about specifics of my collection, and unfortunately they’ll never get to come visit it in person. So considering the time limit of videos posted on Twitter, I decided to shoot a Twitter-sized video and post it. That way if anybody sees anything they’re interested in knowing more about they can Tweet me questions about it. I edited it, put the music on it, and posted it. I have six other display areas in Planet Wallywood that I’ll be featuring in videos of their own; the Showcase area, the Eatery, the Chaney Room, the Aisle of Art, the Puppet Room, and the Tranquility Zone. I’ll be shooting and posting those videos over the coming weeks. Later I made my Saturday Night Super Saint Salad and watched the third episode in the first season of “The Saint” starring Roger Moore. I have seen every one of these episodes before, but it’s been so long that now it’s almost like watching them for the first time! I love love LOVE this show!
Sunday the 8th – TAVERNS AKA SLOPPY JOES AKA LOOSE MEAT SANDWICHES AKA A TASTE OF HOME! – This cooler weather has made me much lazier than usual. After having slept all day (which is usually my tradition on a Sunday) my pal Sara came over and we went shopping for the ingredients needed to make Midwestern-style sloppy joes. I had gotten a recipe from my brother-in-law’s mom, so we decided to give it a try! The recipe was enough to feed a family of 10, so I had Sara reduce the needed ingredients to feed two. The meat was ready, we put it in the Wonder Bread buns, I added my usual mustard and pickles and…WOW! The taste of home! Magnificent! I had THREE! Sara’s quite adept in the culinary arts, but I had to keep reminding her not to ‘overthink’ these. She wanted to add certain things, but I told her we needed to stay mindful of how a Midwestern lady might make them for a church social. So we kept the ingredients very humble. DELICOUS! A wonderful way to end the week!
And how was YOUR week??!!
PIX FROM THE WEEK
Here’s how far I’ve gotten on the Nickelodeon puzzle, trying to find the pieces that contain my Tallest Red character from “Invader Zim.” 8 down, only 2,992 more to browse through!
And this is what the whole thing would look like put together, if I wanted to assemble the entire thing.
While joking around with a friend on Instagram Instant Message, I came up with the name “Meth-head Seth,” after a discussion about how zombies have become real. I decided to start drawing up little cartoons and posting them.
These amazing Starsky & Hutch 12″ figures will soon be mine. They were amazing to begin with, but after the builder applied a few of my costuming notes, they look stellar! I’ll be getting them soon!
The taste of the Midwest! Tasty taverns indeed!
As I was about to close up my garage, I saw something that looked like a good star sitting in the driveway. It was a leaf in the shape of an almost-perfect star. I kept it as a keepsake because I thought it was so beautiful. Have a gold star day!
My dog Roxy looked so beautiful lying on her bean bag, I just had to snap a shot!
I pulled a few more clips from our 1980 Elvis tribute called “Elvis Lives.”
Yup, we threw out a LOT of scarves!
Given the 2 minute and 20 second time limit on videos posted on Twitter, I decided to do mini tours of Planet Wallywood, each video focusing on a different display room in my house. I’ll do longer, more in-depth video tours on the website soon, but this will give you a taste.
In the early 80’s some friends and I put together a project for our Radio/TV class called “Summer Safety Tips for Kids” about bicycle safety. I used the Muppet replicas I had at the time. Here are a few more clips from that class project.
Here’s the trailer we finished this week to promote the first of our Christoween capers! Be sure to see the entire first episode in animatic form on christoween.net – it’s totally FREE!
