November 28 – December 04 (2022)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Here’s my old pal, and fellow Voice Actor Fred Tatasciore at the Halloween Hotness party at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum back in late October! It was great seeing him!

Though I had never really been aware of this song before, the Beatles “Get Back” documentary made me fall in love with the quirky ditty “I Dig a Pony.”

Monday the 28th – BILLY & THE BEATLES! – After catching a nasty case of bronchitis after the recent Anime Pasadena convention, I was finally starting to mend! I was sleeping just a little bit better, but I still had a long way to go. I kept on watching the lengthy, 3-part Beatles documentary “Get Back,” and watching the part where John Lennon told Billy Preston he was in the band was amazing. Billy really gave them the energy they needed. The look on his face when Lennon told him that was that of a little kid. It was great! I believe if the Beatles had continued to go forward Billy might have been a nice, permanent addition to the band. It was also fun to see Linda Eastman’s daughter Heather visit the studio, as the Beatles all turned to mush with a kid in the room. It was really precious. Especially funny was the look on Heather’s face when Yoko Oh-No started in with her annoying caterwauling. It’s the way we ALL felt, Heather! I got a Domino’s pizza delivered, napped a bit, and then did some editing on the Christoween Aspiring Voice Actor clips I received. I got in a lot of good stuff! Later I wrote Wally’s Week.

Tuesday the 29th – A FEW AUDITIONS! – Now that all of the rattling in my lungs is starting to subside (I caught this thing about a week ago) I’m sleeping better and better. In fact, I slept all day. I made some spaghetti and watched more of “Get Back” at night. I may actually venture out on Wednesday. I have some serious sessions coming up soon that I need to be in tip top shape for! I even tried doing a few auditions. The voice was a bit better, but there’s still so much junk in my lungs. Luckily, the auditions I did required a deeper, huskier voice. I scanned some checks for a bank deposit and hit the hay.

Wednesday the 30th – YES, WE HAVE NO ENCHIRITOS! – After stopping at the bank to drop off a deposit, I drove to my mailbox to get my packages, hit KFC for some lunch, and then went to Alex in Wonderland to drop off a few things for my seamstress. We’re getting right down to the end of making my new Mahna Mahna replica Muppet, but because her company has been so overwhelmed with new business (that’s a GOOD thing!) it keeps getting delayed. I’m so happy they’re busy again! I got home, did a little work, and then napped a bit. My voice is still not completely back yet, but I was hungry. Knowing that this was the final day Taco Bell would be offering up Enchiritos for a while I headed over. I was there at 11:50pm, but no luck. They said they were out of the containers they serve the Enchiritos in. Oh well, at least I had a lot of them while I had the chance! I just ordered a few tacos, headed home to eat, and do some work around the house.

Thursday the 1st – ALL HAIL THE INHALOR! – It sure did feel good to sleep, and get some good, deep sleep for once. I had called my ENT to see if he could prescribe me some sort of inhaler to cut down on the production of gunk in my lungs, and he called to let me know it was at the pharmacy. Not sure how much good it will do, but at this point I’ll try anything. I edited together all of the Aspiring Voice Actor submissions I got for my Christoween stories, and I was elated that I got so many good, quality submissions! I have a session for a video game scheduled on Friday, so I’m hoping for the best. I know it will at least be a brief one. I made a Tombstone pizza, and watched the first hour of Part 3 of the Beatles “Get Back” documentary. I stopped just before they filmed the famous rooftop concert.

Friday the 2nd – SESSION NERVES!? – From 3 to 3:45 I had a session for a video game scheduled. They needed to pick up some lines for a character I had done previously. I wasn’t sure what the character was, or if I would even sound like him with my limited vocal capacity. On the way to the studio I picked up some packages at my box and got a new Halloween 2 Michael Myers figure. Unfortunately the sculpt of the face of the prototype they pictured months ago looked a lot better than what they eventually settled on. The prototype they showed when I pre-ordered the figure looked a lot more like he did in the movie. I also got a figure of my buddy Dan Roebuck’s “The Count” character from the new “Munsters” movie. I stopped by McDonald’s to pick up some quick lunch to go, and then hit Rocket Sound in North Hollywood to do the session. Luckily, it was only two lines! They thought they’d have more, but it didn’t work out that way. Fate was watching out for me! And the character voice I had to match was easily done, so it was a short, and very sweet session! I went to CVS to pick up a prescription, and I tried to buy a few grocery items at the store next door, but the lines at the checkout were waaaaay too long. When I got home I was just getting settled when I got a text from my pal Dan Roebuck asking if I wanted to meet for dinner. He was heading out of town soon for the holidays and I wouldn’t get to see him again until January. I took my Count figure with me and had him sign it! He’s so elated to have figures made of his character, and I can totally feel for him. Both he and I are collectors of this kind of thing, and getting action figures made of our characters are HUGE badges of honor for guys like us. We met for dinner at Lancer’s in Burbank, and by the time we finished it had started raining. On the way home I stopped by the Christmas House to have a look at this year’s show. It was good to see it again, but I was tired and I wanted to head home to get some rest. Later I did some accounting work and reconciled my receipts for the month.

Saturday the 3rd – CAR-COPHANY! – Before the end of the year I’m determined to get a new car. My Mustang will be 20 years old next year and it’s time to give it a little rest. I’ll park it at the same auxiliary parking structure where I currently park my Gran Torino. My mechanics suggested either a Toyota or Honda. I had been to both local dealers recently, but was still making up my mind. My pal Officer Mark stopped over and we hit both places to see if I could hone in on exactly what it is I want to get. I think a real basic Rav4 model will suit me just fine, as I simply need a solid, reliable Point-A-to-Point-B car. I looked over the Honda HRV and CRV models and wasn’t actually that impressed with the interior design. So I’m going to head to the Toyota dealer next week and make the deal for the purchase. When we were done Mark and I hit Denny’s for some lunch. It had been a while since I had seen Mark so it was nice to catch up. When I got home I slept a bit, and later I spent a good hour cleaning up Roxy’s area in the living room. I vacuumed, swept, Swiffered, and washed her bedding. She doesn’t have the mobility to climb stairs anymore, so the living room is where she spends most of her time. But it does get dirty fast! I organized all of the stuff for the new updates on the Christoween webpage, and then I opened up my new monster figures that Officer Mark picked up for me at a local Target about a month ago. The Mummy was the monochrome version and looked pretty cool. The Frankenstein was in color, and the Wolfman was monochrome. I was elated to see that the human head, hands and feet of Larry Talbot came in the box, so I opted to display that version, as I have no Larry Talbot figures – which feature Lon Chaney Jr. in his pivotal role. But when I attached his human feet, I noticed that they packed in TWO RIGHT FEET! Weird! Oh well, it will get displayed that way! I finished up the Beatles “Get Back” documentary and while it was exhausting making it through the entire 8 hour ordeal, the completionist in me is glad I saw it all. I put new sheets on the bed and cleaned up my room. Once you come out of the haze of being sick for a week, it’s good to get everything cleaned up nicely. Since it was the first Saturday of the month, it was time to do another “Laurel and Hardy Theatre” with my Chef Boyardee pizza, popcorn, banana Twinkie, and giant Laurel and Hardy mug filled with Diet Pepsi. I’m into their last 9 feature films, and the one I watched was “Great Guns.” Once they started making films for other studios (this one was for 20th Century Fox) I had heard that the quality had gone down from their previous films considerably. I was worried that, since I was still coughing from time to time, that all the hilarity might send me into a coughing fit. But sadly, there wasn’t anything funny enough in this film to endanger a coughing spell. Very sad. The problem was the writing. I just don’t think the “new” generation of writers in that era knew how to write for the boys. I’m fearing the worst for the remaining 8 films I need to watch. But, like I said, the completionist in my needs to see everything.

Sunday the 4th – SUNDAY SURPRISE! – It sure felt good to sleep all morning, get up for a bit to walk Roxy, go back to bed, get up for a bit to feed and walk Roxy, and then sleep again. My voice had almost completely returned so I did a bunch of auditions to send to my agent. I got a text from my friend Amanda late in the evening. Apparently she had been sleeping a lot too, and was restless and not tired at all. So she drove over so we could make some food and watch a movie. I love nice surprises like that!

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK