September 10 – September 16 (2012)

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

Cat of the Damned! Here’s a weird shot of my cat Spooky that’s downright…well…SPOOKY!

I had a dream I was wailing away on the piano singing this song. I haven’t played piano in years, and I USED to be able to play this song, but it’s been so long. But it was fun in the dream! “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey! Rock on!

Monday the 10th – MINNEAPOLIS MONDAY! – I had to be up extra early to do a session at Buzzy’s for The Mother Baby Center in Minneapolis, MN. It’s a new birthing center opening in February. They needed me for a last-minute session, but because I was already scheduled for “The Garfield Show” I had to do an hour for The Mother Baby Center at Buzzy’s BEFORE the Garfield session, then after the Garfield session I got back on the line with the folks in Minneapolis and finished the session up. it turned into a fairly long day. Luckily, we were on hiatus from “The Tonight Show” this week, so I could head right home and relax. But not before I stopped off at Wendy’s and got some lunch to go. I did have one or two errands to run on the way home though. First, I stopped by Vitamin Land and picked up a good supply of supplements, and I went next door to Kit Kraft to pick up a magnetic sheet. I had a cool thought while sleeping one night. I remembered that when I worked at 94.7 The Wave all those years ago, one of the employees there had also worked at the legendary rock radio station KMET (which was on the 94.7 frequency before it switched to The Wave). She had a ton of KMET swag left over, which she gifted to me since I was such a huge radio fan. I stashed the stuff in a box, and it’s been sitting in my garage for years. Possibly about 25 years! I thought it would be cool to get a vintage KMET bumper sticker from the 70’s, and put it on the back of my Torino. But since I didn’t want to physically stick it on my beautiful paint, I figured I’d stick it on a magnetic sheet and apply it that way. When I got home I found the box and dug out the stickers. Now remember that the frequency where KMET resided was 94.7. Wouldn’t you know it I counted 94 bumper stickers! Weird! I grabbed a nap for awhile, and then got up to do some work. I finished Wally’s Week from last week and sent it to my webmaster Scott. I did some auditions in my home studio and e-mailed them to my agents. I started sticking some KMET stickers to the magnetic sheets and it worked out very well. I can get about 10 stickers on one sheet. I trimmed them carefully with scissors and stuck some on my metal filing cabinet. I may give some away, and I may sell some to collectors. They’re awfully cool vinyl stickers. Sara got some take-out food for us at Denny’s and we watched another episode of “Hawaii Five-O” from the season 10 DVD set.

Tuesday the 11th – LOOOOOONG DAY! – I headed to Buzzy’s to do day 2 of the Garfield session. Corey Burton and Bob Bergen were our guest stars that day. Corey’s most famous for doing a dead-on Captain Hook from “Peter Pan,” and Bob is the voice of Porky Pig. Jason Marsden, who plays Nermal and other various characters, brought his friend Lesley to the session. Lesley is head of the stuntwoman’s union, and is also the daughter of the never-aging/always-gorgeous Lee Meriwether! I told Lesley I had been seeing her mom all over town. Specifically in her Catwoman costume from the 1966 Batman feature film. I’m not sure why, but somebody is taking 4 foot tall black & white images of Lee as Catwoman and pasting them all over town. It’s like graffiti, but beautiful graffiti! I told her I’d snap some shots the next time I saw one and text her the location of the picture. Can you imagine driving around town and seeing blow-ups of your mom all over town. I suppose if your mom looked like Lee Meriwether you’d come to expect it. After the Garfield session I went to It’s a Wrap in Beverly Hills, but it was pretty slim pickins’. I got a beautiful blue cape and a white hoodie. The cape was perfect, with a huge collar and it was only FIFTEEN BUCKS! Not sure what I’ll use it for, but it’ll be nice to have in the collection. I headed over to Regenix to have a follow-up visit. The hair is good! Bulbs and roots are big and strong. I was starving, because I hadn’t had anything to eat since before the Garfield session. Just a cherry turnover and a bag of Cheetos! I grabbed a bag of chips at a convenience store and ate them on the way home. I made it back home just in time to feed Spooky, walk Roxy and clean up for dinner at the Smokehouse with my old friends Mark and Julie Fisher. Sara joined us and we had a blast, good conversation with good friends. When I got home I did work all evening around the house, auditions, etc. I was beat. By the time I got to bed I realized that I had been up 20 hours straight!

Wednesday the 12th – ERRAND BOY! – I started the day by going to see my chiropractor and getting crunched, cracked and pulled. It felt great! Then I headed off to Gun World to find a compact .380 caliber semi-automatic handgun. This will be number 16 in my collection. It has a stainless steel slide with a polymer body. It’s made by Kahr. Then I dropped my camcorder off at the repair shop. Some chip had gone south in my camera and made everything look like a bad LSD trip. Not that I know what that actually looks like, but I can imagine it would look like the weird images I was seeing in my viewfinder. Then I stopped at the bank to make a deposit, then I headed home. Since “TTS” was on hiatus, I got to grab a rare, late-afternoon nap. In fact, I must’ve been still really tired from the previous day, because I slept soundly for four hours on the couch. Then I stayed up all night doing work and auditions, and then watched another episode of “Hawaii Five-O” from the season 10 DVD set. Only 3 episodes left!

Thursday the 13th – ANOTHER HOT ONE! – For the next three days, the temps were expected to be over 100. I stayed inside as much as I could. I’m SO over this heat, and I’m ready for Christmas to come! I woke up and cuddled Roxy for awhile, then got up to look at e-mails, made some important phone calls, did some writing and handled a few other miscellaneous things. A couple of guys I work with at NBC came over to see my collection of stuff, as did a gal named Mary Eileen. She works for a production company that’s producing a TV show about collectors. While the focus of the show isn’t quite my style of collector, I invited her over to see Planet Wallywood nonetheless. Then we all went to Jerry’s Famous Deli for dinner. I headed home to do some more work, then grab a nap. I got up for auditions and watched another “Hawaii Five-O” episode.

Friday the 14th – WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?! –I got up for a pick-up session for The Mother Baby Center. We recorded this time at Voice Trax West in Studio City, so it was more convenient for me. It was another hot, beastly day. Everyone seemed on edge. Afterwards I stopped at my local liquor store to buy a case of Cokes in the little glass bottles (LOVE ’em!) and then I got lunch at Taco Bell. I was home enjoying my Doritos tacos, and BAM! The power went out at 4:15pm! Luckily I had been running the AC all day, so it would stay cool in my house for quite awhile. Then entire complex was without power. Immediately many residents came outside and started soaking in the pool. I went inside and shut all my blinds, closed all my doors and tried to keep the coolness inside as long as possible. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to be out, but I wanted to be prepared. The rumor around the complex was that it wouldn’t be back on until 2 am! But the power came back on at 6:40! Thank God! I was supposed to do a phone interview with a guy named Evan for a podcast called “Behind the Voice” at 7pm, but since I didn’t have power, couldn’t get on my computer to get his phone number. Luckily, the power came on just in time. The interview went very well! I’ll let you know when it’s posted and you can check it out. My friend Brittney Powell came by to have dinner. It was a weird day. There were lots of fires in L.A., power outages everywhere, and then after dinner, as we were sitting on the patio of the restaurant, a fight broke out in the parking lot of the studio next door. I was with Roxy and Brittney, and I was waiting for the gunshots to break out. How I wished I had a conceal and carry permit so I could at least defend myself if necessary! I was silently making a contingency plan to grab Brittney and Roxy and throw them to the ground and cover them with my body in case trouble broke out. But it never happened. Glass was broken, punches were thrown and the police was called, but it didn’t progress beyond that, thankfully. What’s going on in the world? Why is everyone on edge? Is it the heat? The world is coming unglued I guess. I went home and got ready for the Comikaze convention on Saturday, so I hit the sack.

Saturday the 15th – BAD LUCK TO GOOD! – I was awakened at 4:15am when I heard my fan stop running. The power was out again. Luckily, it only stayed off for 20 minutes. I was thinking that it was related to the earlier power outage from Friday afternoon. Maybe they just threw something together to get the power back up, but then shut the power down in the middle of the night to not inconvenience people, and made the permanent fixes then. I did think it was odd that it went off almost exactly 12 hours apart! 4:15pm and 4:15am. The power came back on in about 20 minutes, so I went back to bed and got some more sleep. I got up and got ready for Comikaze. Sara came by, and we got picked up by my pals Mark and James. When we got to the L.A. Convention Center we saw lines around the block! And the convention had been open for two hours already! OH NO! Luckily we had bought our tickets on-line, but until we figured out who the people outside were, I was a little nervous. We parked the car and walked over to the convention center lobby. I was told to take my barcoded paperwork over to Will Call and get my wristbands. The line was long, but luckily not as long as it was outside in the 100+ degree heat. But we must be living right, because as soon as we hit the end of the line, a guy came up with a box full of wristbands and asked for our papers. We exchanged them for wristbands on the spot and we were IN! WOW! We went inside and started shopping. I found lots of great stuff. I saw my old pal Adam West at his table and had him sign my Batman lunchbox. My pal Fred was with him too. I went to see Burt Ward and had him sign my lunchbox too. He was telling me about his special brand of dog food that can help extend the lives of bigger dogs. After the pain of losing my collie Sassie at the age of 12, I was all ears. Anything I can do to extend Roxy’s life interests me greatly. So I got a pamphlet and I’m going to try it out. Richard Anderson from “The Six Million Dollar Man” was there, and I said hi. He told me he had a great time at my house during a recent movie night when we watched a three-part “6MDM” episode called “Kill Oscar.” I bought a few “6MDM” action figures, and we headed over to Hooters to grab lunch. It was only a 5 minute wait to get in! We ate and then headed back to the con. When we got back to the convention center floor Kevin Smith was interviewing Adam on stage. When Adam was introduced he walked out on stage to about 500 screaming fans. I flashed back to when I first met Adam back in 1980 at the World of Wheels show in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was more like 25 people politely applauding. What a change! I was glad to see that Adam has finally achieved SUPERSTAR status! It sure was different than in 1980! We bought some last-minute items and then Mark and James dropped me off at home so I could grab a nap before movie night. Movie night was great…”Office Space” and “The Silence of the Lambs” both on Blu Ray. Then I fed Roxy and walked her, and headed off to bed to watch another “Hawaii Five-O” episode.

Sunday the 16th – A DEATH IN THE FAMILY! – I slept late, but got up in time for evening church. I had considered going to a birthday party that afternoon, but something told me I needed to be at church instead. When I got there I found out that one of our regular church gang had passed away the night before. Roger was there every Sunday night at 5:30 without fail, as well as Wednesday nights for the meditational services. His brother came to church to let us know that Roger had died in his sleep late Saturday night. It was shocking and sad, but he’s in a much better place now. After church I took my pals Amanda, Sara and Edi to dinner at Paty’s in Toluca Lake. As a gentle end-of-summer breeze blew through, we dined on the patio. It was fun, funny and peaceful. Very nice! I got home and did some auditions, cleaned the place up and prepared for the new week. I also started researching photos of Michael Myers from “Halloween,” as he’s going to be the subject of my next mannequin project. I found a pretty great mask, and I already had the blue coveralls. So I figured why not!? He’s always been one of my favorite horror movie characters. I bought an appropriate mannequin on-line, did a ton of screenshots from the movie on DVD, and started planning the display. I got to bed very late, but since I had slept all day I wasn’t very tired. I decided to watch the final episode of “Hawaii Five-O” on the season 10 DVD set. Strangely enough, it dealt with the death of on of their regular characters…Chin Ho Kelly. Apparently Kam Fong, who played Chin, got tired of doing the show after 10 seasons and asked to be released. But strangely enough the name of the episode was…”A Death in the Family.” Odd coincidence.

And how was YOUR week??!!

PICS FROM THE WEEK

Adam on the bigscreen being interviewed by Kevin Smith. Adam said they’d be the perfect Dynamic Duo…Batman and Fatman.

James has ALL the fun!

Heading into the office. Just another day at the Empire. Sara poses with a Strormtrooper.

Wally meets Wall-E! Though by the look on his “face,” I’m not sure he knows quite what to make of me.

Adam makes me laugh. Again. Adam ALWAYS makes me laugh.

The “Sushi Girl”…uh…girls. And me. And Sara.

Comikaze 2012 Harley Quinn. If you’re this girl and you’ve Googled your photos and you’ve found your way to this website…contact me. I think I love you.