During the week, while all the crap was falling down around me, I tried to keep my spirits up by humming the most fun song I could think of…“Baby Elephant Walk” by Lawrence Welk. I’m just wondering what the plumber was thinking when he heard me humming and whistling this nutty song!

I hear tell that Mercury is in retrograde, or some such thing. Well, that would explain this week…

Monday the 20th – OFF TO A GOOD START! – I got up around noon for a session that was going to be done at my house, but I got an e-mail at the last minute saying that the copy wasn’t approved for final recording, so I got up early for nothing I guess. Rats. Oh well, I got ready and headed over to NBC for the taping of “The Tonight Show.” One of my favorite bands was on…OK GO! They’re amazing and so friggin’ creative. Their video for “End Love” is one of my favorites. Today they played a song called “White Knuckles” which is a pretty good tune. But the thing I like most about them is that they LOOK like a band! Not like most of the “frat boy” bands who are popular today…who simply wear their favorite brands and think that makes them look special. These guys are coordinated, much like the Beatles were in the early days, with outfits that match, but yet have different colors. They’re fun to watch. But when I got ready to leave I saw the band in the hall talking to Jay and showing him their new video on their laptop. I overheard Tim the bassist say something about “working with the dogs,” and I perked up. DOGS? In their new video! I rushed home and punched up You Tube. SURE ENOUGH! The new video is amazing. Keep in mind they never cut in this video. It’s all one shot. All 3+ minutes of the video was shot in one sitting. I’d love to know how many takes it took them to do this, but this is freakin’ amazing!

The dogs are beautiful and the band’s at their choreographical best. My favorite parts are at 1:05, 2:20, 2:30, 2:37 and 3:15. These guys are quite a team! That night my pal Brittney came over for a visit.

Tuesday the 21st – COOL TUESDAY! – Today Jay drove a really cool Dusenberg to the lot. I went up to look inside and his driver’s side window was slightly cracked, no doubt so the heat wouldn’t build up inside and bust a window. When I put my face up to the window to look inside, I got a whiff of the antique interior and it really took me back! I learned to drive on my grandpa’s Model A Ford, and it had a particular smell when you would sit inside. It just smelled like an old car, but something I remember fondly since it reminds me of driving around with grandpa Joe in Mitchell, South Dakota. They say the olfactory senses in your nose are more closely related to memory in your brain than your other senses. I would believe it, because that aroma put me in a time warp. It was WILD! I went over to It’s a Wrap to do some shopping, and then got some groceries.

Wednesday the 22nd – WACKY WEDNESDAY! – First thing in the morning I got up and was checking my e-mail. After a few minutes ZAP! My computer froze. Not sure why, but it would start on a page and then just freeze and jitter. Rats! This sucked. So I shut it down and went to Play in Santa Monica to do a session for some Zaxby’s radio spots. The drive to Santa Monica took me longer than the session did! The gals in charge really knew what they wanted in the read and they knew how to get it from me. It was slick and we were done in a half hour! Then I headed to my doctor’s in Santa Monica to have a few things checked. It’s always great to see the legendary Dr. Patt. I called my pal Scott Sebring to see if he could come diagnose my computer problem. I had lunch with my friend Dan Roebuck, a guy you’ve seen in TV and movies hundreds of times. I gave him a copy of my book “Lon Chaney For Dummies” which I had published through My Publisher.com. It’s a book of photos of Chaney in some of his famous make-ups from the silent film era. Since young folks have no idea who or what Chaney was, this book is good for introducing them to his work through photographs. I pulled about 70 photos from my Chaney collection of over 1300 images. I had Chuck McCann give one to Hugh Hefner the previous Saturday a the Playboy Mansion (Chuck and Hef have been friends for decades) and today I got a great “THANK YOU” letter from Mr. Hefner personally thanking me for the book. I got back home and let Scott in to start working on my computer then headed to “TTS” for the taping. Audio mixer Patrick Smith, whom I work closely with all the time, said it sounded like a graphics card problem. I said I didn’t know enough about it to make that determination. After the taping we went out for dinner with Scott, his wife Vickie, my pal Sara and Chuck McCann. We still didn’t determine the cause of my computer issues, but this was just the beginning of a nutty week full of technological meltdowns! UGH!

Thursday the 23rd – CAN WE START AGAIN PLEASE?! – This day was CRAZY! Oh it started off well enough…sleeping in, going to “TTS” and coming home. As I was getting ready for dinner at The Smokehouse with my old pal Mark and his new wife Julie, I put a load of laundry in the washer. As I was leaving for dinner at 6:20 it was just going into the rinse cycle. I took off for dinner and had a wonderful time with newlyweds Mark and Julie (I helped Mark put together a song for their wedding reception) and my friends Sara and Edi. When I got home around 10 I noticed a lot of water in the driveway. I figured one of the sprinklers in the complex broke, but I was horrified to see the water coming from underneath my garage door! OH NO! Did my water heater break? WHAT HAPPENED? So I opened the garage door and water flooded out. My entire garage floor was full of standing water. I have a lot of junk in my garage, mostly in cardboard boxes, and they were all soaked on the bottom. I saw that behind my washer water was spraying out. I called my contractor Terry and asked where the water shutoff valve was. He told me and I got the water turned off. Then I got inside and called an emergency plumber. They said he would be over in an hour. I got curious as to where the water was coming from. It looked like a pipe in the wall had burst on first inspection, but I turned the water on again and saw that it was originating from a broken washer hose. Whew! Not as bad as I had originally though. I’ll just turn off the water to the washer and I’ll have water in the rest of the house. So I tried to turn the spigot which fed water to the washer off, but it twisted off in my hand! CRAP! So I shut off the main valve again. The plumber showed up and I showed him the problem. He said the old rubber hoses that I had on my washer were outdated and they now use a rubber and steel reinforced hose. He also said he’d have to replace the “bib”, the spigots where the water fed the washer. We’re now talking a job of about $700. My home warranty company hadn’t called me back, so I figured I’d better pay it, considering I needed to have the water on in my house that night. The plumber noticed that in my crawlspace under the house, the metal duct leading from my dryer vent had come off. All the dryer air was blowing under my house, and wasn’t being properly directed out the front vent. So to save a few bucks, I crawled into the crawlspace with some duct tape and set about repairing the duct. Just then the plumber turned the water back on, AND I WAS GETTING PUMMELED WITH STREAMS OF WATER! I was getting soaked! I was yelling to him to turn it off! He finally did and what must have looked like a drowned rat crawled out of the crawlspace. What the heck happened? He inspected it and found that the pressure of the water broke a bad weld on one of my copper pipes and came undone. So, he had to weld together another 45 degree angle joint for the copper pipe. Now we were looking at a bill of over a grand! YEEESH! Computer problems, and now this? This was getting old fast! Luckily I survived and took a long, hot shower that night.

Friday the 24th – TECHNO HELL PART 2! – I had a crazy day, and I was expecting the tech from Make It Work to come by the house to diagnose my computer problem. Since my computer was freezing, I couldn’t record any auditions for my agents. No auditions, means no jobs. So something had to be done fast! I had to go to Voice Trax West in the morning to do a few more spots for HH Gregg (Christmas spots, if you can believe it!) and then I headed home. I had my friend Sara come by to wait for the tech, since “TTS” called me and needed me in early for a VO session. Just as I was coming home from doing the quickie session Sara called and let me know that the tech was there. I got home and met with him and explained the problem. Sara said my alarm had been beeping all day. GREAT. MORE tech problems! What now? We had an early taping time for “TTS” so I had to turn right around and get back to NBC, but set Ivan from Make It Work about his business of getting my computer back up again. Sara texted me while I was at “TTS” and told me that he had found the problem. He suspected that my computer got hot and fried the graphics card. Wasn’t that what Patrick Smith at “TTS” said all along? GENIUS! Anyway I called my pal Scott Sebring and he drove in to meet me to get the proper card. Problem was, I couldn’t leave the house when I returned from “TTS” because Sassie’s groomer was coming at 6pm. (IS IT THE WEEKEND YET?!! ARGH!) I couldn’t even have dinner with my friend Steve Kamer (the voice of “Inside Edition”) and Rich Fields (voice of “The Price is Right”) after “TTS.” Steve was in town from New York and I got them tickets to see the taping. But I had to rush home to deal with my computer madness. I did get a quick nap on the couch as Sassie was getting groomed out back, and Scott and Vickie was off getting a new graphics card. That was WONDERFUL! Scott returned and popped in the new card, and it was good to go! My pal Brittney Powell came over again to hang out for awhile. I called the alarm company to see why my alarm kept beeping. Apparently the back up battery was dying, and I needed a new one. So I disconnected the battery, and shut off the system for the night so it wouldn’t keep beeping and keeping me awake. I SO hate technology sometimes! I forgot to mention, that when I drove home the left channel of my car stereo cut out. WHAT is THAT now?!!

Saturday the 25th – BREATHE DEEP! – It was nice to be able to sleep in and decompress after the nutty week I just had. Sara came by to get some money and went on some errands…getting a new video cable for my computer monitor, and getting a new battery for my alarm. It was blazing hot, as another L.A. heatwave blew in. It was going to be smoldering hot for another four days. I am SO over summer! My desk piled up with crap was starting to tick me off. So I told Sara to go on her way and I was going to stay home and clean my desk. By golly I got it totally cleaned, and I can actually find stuff now! She came back with a new battery, we hooked it up and it was golden. Scott came over that night for movie night and put on the new cable. So now my washer, computer and alarm were all fixed. Hopefully the short in my car stereo will fix itself. I spent the evening with good friends watching the final two episodes of “The Prisoner” and the movie ‘The Player” on Blu Ray. We also watched an old episode of “Hee Haw” which really brought back some memories. We all pretty much had the same memory of our parents making us sit there on a Saturday night watching “Hee Haw” with them. Though I thought it was entertaining at the time, I really liked all the sexy gals they had on the show. And you know what, after watching the DVD the other night, nothing has changed in that department. All the “Hee Haw” gals were just as sexy as I remembered them! What a fun night!

Sunday the 26th – REST AT LAST! – I slept really late, as always on a Sunday, and got up in time for evening church. It was a great message, brought to us by Reverend Dan from Carmel. He played a mean lead guitar and also gave a wonderful message! I met Sara afterwards at Panera for some food, then went home to take a dip in the jacuzzi. But I was having a craving for some fro-yo at Chill, so I called Chuck McCann and met him over there. I rode my bike over. It was 10 at night and it still had to be 80 degrees out. WHEW! I’m ready for Christmas any time! Later that night I did some auditions, ordered a few new books from My Publisher.com and prepared for another week, which would hopefully be fairly uneventful.

And how was YOUR week??!!