October 02 – October 08 (2023)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

I know this is a colorized picture of Laurel & Hardy, but it’s beautifully done! I wish they would have made just ONE color film before they retired.

I know it’s an oldie, but it’s a goodie. And I’ve been singing it for a couple days now. Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” Love it!

Monday the 2nd – SPOOK ESCAPE! – It was a day of fud and food. First I stopped at the vet and got Spook some more cat fud, and then I went to get some groceries to get some food for myself. But it turned out to be one of those Mondays you wish you would have just stayed in bed. As I was putting the groceries away I left the door to the garage open. As I was about ready to close everything up I noticed a white cat outside in the driveway. Before I could complete the thought that the cat looked just like my cat Spooky, I realized IT WAS SPOOKY! He had gotten out! I grabbed him and brought him back inside with a stern voice of consternation. I put primer on the eye pieces for my new Count Von Count replica Muppet, and later I added the first coat of white paint. Later I did my nightly auditions, typed out Wally’s Week, and sat on the Instagram direct messenger with my puppet seamstress Maggie to answer her questions as she created the fleece covering for the Count’s foam head. We’ve still got a loooong way to go on this puppet. And Son of Monsterpalooza is less than two weeks away! I took my nightly WOG (walk/jog) and relaxed afterward in my anti-gravity chair outside under the stars.

Tuesday the 3rd – CUPPED! – Since I had slept so much on Sunday and Monday, I woke up earlier than I had to. But I did a little work on the computer, recorded an audition, and then drove to a lighting place to see if they could convert my Dark Crystal lamp to wall electricity (this thing eats battery power like crazy!), and to see if they could help replace the motor on my vintage 70’s animated waterfall lamp. While they couldn’t do anything about the vintage animated lamp, they said they’d look at the Dark Crystal lamp and come up with a way to convert it to wall power. I grabbed some lunch at the world-famous In-n-Out, and then gassed up the Gray Ghost. I went to my physical therapy and they did something called “cupping” on me. It’s to increase blood flow to the affected area of pain, but it also leaves huge, round bruise-like shapes on your body. There’s no pain involved, as with a regular bruise, but it’s more akin to getting a hickey. But it looks terrible. Figuring it would go away by morning, I was surprised to hear that it could take up to two weeks for these to disappear! TWO WEEK!?? No more cupping for me! I got home and put a second coat of paint on The Count’s eyepieces, but the Insignia White paint that I like to use on puppet eyes was turning out to be too gray for my liking. I oversprayed them with some white and we’ll see how they turn out. Spook ate his dinner and then I let him drink from the faucet. But a little later it all came back up. He was having trouble keeping food down. He’s not sick, but he just drinks too much water and then jumps down off the counter when he’s done. I started limiting his water intake after he eats, and I’ve been manually lowering him from the counter to the floor. I think all the food and water in his tummy gets jostled when he jumps down off the counter, and now that he’s older he may be more sensitive to all that motion and movement. But if you’ve ever been a cat owner you know full well that there’s nothing worse than a puking cat! I did some work around the house (including cleaning the carpet in several spots Spook visited) and then went on my WOG.

Wednesday the 4th – BLAST FROM THE PAST! – Once again I awoke much earlier than necessary, so I started designing the eyelids for the eyepieces for my Count Von Count replica Muppet. I cut some fabric and glued it onto the eyepieces, but it wasn’t turning out very well. I had a session that I had to speed off to in an hour, so I was rushed. I hate being rushed, and I never should have started this project knowing that. I like when I can take my time leisurely and spend some real mental energy on the task at hand. Oh well, I can always redo them later. I was going to walk to Voice Trax West for my session, but the weather had gotten hot again. So I drove over for a brief session, and then picked up an order I placed at Harry’s Camera. As I begin to think about how I’m going to redo all of my L.A. photo albums, I started realizing that I have more negatives than prints from the first year I arrived here. I’m not sure why that is, but it could be because I wanted to keep the number of photos down to a minimum because, at the time, I couldn’t afford to buy a lot of photo albums. Or, perhaps I gave some photos away to people, or sent them to relatives. The first five sets of negatives I shot when I arrived in L.A. back in 1987 had been scanned to a CD, and prints had been made of each of the shots. It was costly, but well worth it! When I opened up the pack of photos I had seen pictures I hadn’t seen in close to 40 years! There were pictures of my old roommate Stan, the interior of the first apartment I had, friends and co-workers from the Westwood One Radio Network, and me swimming in the outdoor pool in February! This was TOTALLY worth it, as I love having these prints in my possession again. I’m going to start doing some preparation to begin working on these photo albums in December as I head into the holidays. I can’t wait! Now I’ve got to check into the other sets of negatives in the sequence to see about getting those scanned and printed! When I got home I tore apart the eye pieces I had made for The Count, as they were inferior. Luckily the glue hadn’t fully cured yet. I sanded the resin eye pieces back down to their original surface, taking off layers of primer and paint. My seamstress Maggie came over to make his ear coverings and nose covering. I had made the ears and nose out of foam rubber and a substance called L200. Then Maggie and I drove to Alex in Wonderland to get some advice on the head covering Maggie made, as well as a way to trim down the foam head to be more accurate to the original. She showed Maggie how to move a seam around on the head cover so it would be hidden by his hair, and she told me about a way to reduce the size and shape of the foam head. BRILLIANT! I needed some white paint to repaint the eye pieces, so we stopped at Hobby Lobby. But they have a really crappy selection of paints now, for some reason. So we went over to Michael’s and for the perfect white paint that was a combination primer and paint formula. We hit Subway to get some dinner, and then got back to Planet Wallywood to begin our work. First we removed the temporary head covering that Maggie made and I started carving away slivers of foam to achieve the head shape I wanted. Once we did that, Maggie altered her test pattern and re-pinned it on the foam head. I also drew the outline of where the hair would eventually be placed, so she could determine where to put the hidden seam. Once we were happy with it, she cut the pattern out of the fleece that we were going to use for the final product. Because Antron fleece is so rare, we didn’t want to waste what we had on a test pattern, so we used some “junk” fleece to finesse the pattern. While she worked away, I helped my old pal Jim Hullihan with a technical issue he was having with some voice tracks he received from another Voice Artist for his uplifting film he was editing together. He was cobbling together voice bits I’ve recorded for him over the past 20 years when I was narrating his multi-media assembly program for schools. I think I pinpointed the problem he was having, and without getting too technical, it boiled down to the other actor not recording them at the proper sampling rate. So I had to convert all of them, and do some pitch correction so they would sound normal. I didn’t mind helping Jim out. He’s a good guy, and I had nothing to do while Maggie worked away anyhow. Maggie finished up and since it was getting late, and we had a very long day, I told Maggie to take the rest of the work home with her to work on over the next few days. When we reconvene next week we should be just about finished with Count Von Count! Later I took my WOG and was enjoying the fact that the weather had warmed up considerably. I spent some wonderful, relaxing time in the anti-grav chair, and then I came back inside to do some work on the computer.

Thursday the 5th – TWO TIRED! – Well, again, I got up much too early for my own good. So I did some work around the house and noticed that it was over 90 degrees out. It was our last bastion of summer, and I was going to enjoy every minute! I drove to Plastic Depot to pick up the custom-made suspension sled for my Super Grover display. Then I picked up the packages at my box, and had a delightful lunch on the patio at Paty’s, enjoying the summery day! I stopped at Baskin-Robbins to get some ice cream, and then headed to my physical therapy. When I got back home I was pretty beat, as it’s been a very busy week. My friend Angi had rented an electric car and drove it to my neighborhood so we could have dinner. But it needed to be charged badly. She found an available charging station close to my house, so she plugged in her glorified golf cart, and I picked her up in my trusty, gas-powered Gray Ghost. We had a very nice dinner at Ernie’s Taco House, but we were both pretty tired as we had both endured intense weeks. I had a session scheduled the next day, and she had a very early court date the next morning. So we called it an early night. Even after the four hours or so we were together, her golf cart…um…rental car STILL wasn’t fully charged. Ugh. Later I took my nightly WOG (I haven’t missed a night in over a month!) and spent some relaxing time in the anti-grav chair. It was a gorgeous, clear, warm night. I came inside to do a little work and then hit the hay.

Friday the 6th – PRIVATE “EYE” WORK! – It sure felt good to get some good sleep! I got up feeling much better! I drove to Voice Trax West for another video game session, but since I was early I walked across the street to Art’s Deli and had a bowl of soup for lunch. The session was only an hour and 10 minutes and was a ton of fun. I hit CVS to get some supplies and a prescription, and then got home to do some work. Later I met my old pal Joe Garner for dinner at the Smoke House; always a fun time! He enjoyed seeing the prints I just had made from the old days at Westwood One Radio Network. That’s where I met Joe for the first time! I got home and relaxed after a sumptuous meal! Later I started working on the eyes for The Count. Instead of painting the entire eye pieces, like I did before, I decided just to paint the areas of the eyes that would show. The paint and the glue don’t get along anyway, so this would make my life easier. I put masking tape over the entire eyepieces, drew where the eyelids would go, cut out where the white parts of the eye would be with an Exacto knife, and then gave them a few coats of paint. Then I punched the pupils out of velvet, applied them to the eye pieces at the right measurements, and then cut the eyelid pieces out of fleece and applied them. I’ll let them sit overnight and finish them up the next day. I made a salad and watched another episode of “The Incredible Hulk” before bed.

Saturday the 7th – SLEEPY SATURDAY! – Since I had worked all Friday night and early into the day on Saturday, I didn’t arise until later Saturday evening. I cut strips of black velvet and created the “eyeliner” pieces for the Count eyepieces. I meticulously glued them on and let them set. Later I took my nightly WOG and relaxed in the anti-grav chair with a cigar. But the cigar seemed old and dry and wouldn’t stay lit. Disappointing. But the night was warm and gorgeous. It’s probably the last warm night we’ll have for quite a while. Since it was the first Saturday of the month, I got prepped for my traditional “Laurel & Hardy Theatre.” I made a Chef Boyardee pizza-in-a-box, got out a banana Twinkie, made some popcorn, and iced up my vintage Stan Laurel mug with lots of Diet Pepsi. From the newly released Blu-ray set of restored Laurel & Hardy silent films I watched “Slipping Wives” (whose premise was later retooled in the L&H sound film “The Fixer Uppers”), “Love ‘Em & Weep” (whose premise was later retooled in the L&H sound film “Chickens Come Home”), and “Why Girls Love Sailors.” Then I watched them all again, but this time with the brilliant commentary provided by Randy Skretvedt; Laurel & Hardy author and aficionado! He’s a virtual encyclopedia of information!

Sunday the 8th – SLEEPY SUNDAY! – Later I recorded some auditions, worked around the house, and figured out how I was going to mount the monocle to the Count’s face. We need to get him finished up this week, as Son of Monsterpalooza is this Friday and I want to debut him there! I also spent some time thinking about how to create his goatee beard. I took my nightly WOG, spent some time in the anti-grav chair, and made a salad. I watched the final episode from the third season of “The Incredible Hulk.” I’m not a huge fan of this show, but I still have two more seasons to get through. Not sure I’m going to make it.

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK