RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK

It’s been a long time, but I’m going to post the last photo I have from this set. In case you’re a fan of the old show “Dark Shadows,” you’ll love this candid, family photo from the personal collection of series star Jonathan Frid. I was gifted several personal photos from his collection by a Frid family member shortly after Jonathan passed away. They gave their permission to share them with other “Dark Shadows” fans. Here’s Jonathan at a family gathering right around the time the show was in production. Beside Jonathan is his brother Ken, their mother Flora, and their eldest brother Doug.  I figured you’d enjoy it if you’re a fan.

On 1340 AM oldies in Palm Springs this past weekend, I heard a gem I had forgotten about. I had a 45 record of the remake by Donny and Marie, but this is the original “Deep Purple” by April Stevens and Nino Tempo! It’s catchy!!

 

Monday the 28th – “WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT!” – After a fun few days of driving around the Gran Torino, it was time to put it away for a while because the weather was going to get very warm. I got my Mustang back out, and drove to my box to get my mail. After speaking with my “adopted grandma” Shirley about our upcoming trip to Palm Springs (so I could move her out to her new living area) I realized that I was going to need to rent a bigger SUV than what I originally thought. So I called Enterprise and upgraded my reservation. I spent a few hours at an editing house called Paul’s Video so I could sit with him and consult on the construction of my latest Actor Reel. I had been toying with expanding into the on-camera world for about a year, but of course the whole virus thing put that on hold for a while. Now that productions are starting up again in L.A., I needed to get moving on getting it finished to show it around to agents and managers. We got a cut we really liked, and the next move is to show it around to get comments and ideas about any changes that need to be made before showing it to the world. I stopped at the grocery store to get some supplies, and then headed home. In my group of packages I received some cool things from my pal Sheriff John in Florida. I got a collection of “Planet of the Apes” bubblegum cards from the 70’s, several baseball cards, and a vintage “Star Trek” lunchbox. He had a friend pass away recently who was a collector, and anything from his collection that he thought I might like was sent my way. I had a lot of those cards as a kid, and it was great seeing them again and adding them to my collection! I had fun adding the lunchbox to my “Star Trek” area in my Chaney Room, and I enjoyed putting the cards in the slots of protective sheets specifically made for bubble gum cards, and putting them in binders for storage.

Tuesday the 29th – TABLET TERROR! – The first order of the day was to do a bunch of last-minute auditions. Then I spent a while writing Wally’s Week. I went to a different grocery store to get some of the supplies I couldn’t find at the store I went to yesterday. I dropped by my seamstress’ house to pick up my new bowling shirt; a shirt made of groovy Halloween material I call “Blue Death.” I stopped by Taco Bell to get some lunch at the drive-thru, and then came home to do some more auditions. I got on-line with my computer guy Brian to try and figure out how to set up my new tablet for music and photo storage. When I’m in Palm Springs, I have a specific playlist that I like to play when I’m on the balcony every night relaxing and watching the sky. I used to be totally happy with my iTunes iPod and iPad, and the iTunes interface that allowed me to sit on my desktop computer and create playlists. I used to consider the iTunes interface as a waiter at a restaurant. I told it what I wanted on my plate, iTunes took my order to the proverbial kitchen, and made sure that everything that came back on my plate was exactly what I ordered for that playlist. Easy squeezy. But iTunes kept updating their interface so aggravatingly often that it became cluttered and unusable for my purposes. For years I was totally happy with an older version of the program, but for some reason my iPad recently stopped talking to my computer. So no new updates were possible. My iPad is virtually frozen in time; no new songs/photos can be added, and no songs/photos can be removed. So now it’s a piece of unusable junk. I’m guessing that the wi-fi must’ve been still engaged on the iPad, and it picked up an unwanted iTunes update that I didn’t want; one that wasn’t consistent with the version I use on my computer. I have an older tablet that I used for photo storage, but I never liked how its music interface worked, so I always stuck with the iPad. I bought a newer version of that tablet on Amazon, but was becoming increasingly unhappy the more I worked with it. As Brian walked me through it, the more I realized how this was not the “droid I was looking for.” The design of the unit was illogical and not responsive. I didn’t like many things about its functionality (or lack thereof), and creating playlists by hand was going to take forever! Instead of designing it to just involve a few quick moves, it was a cluttered mish-mosh of complicated procedures; just to add a song to a playlist. I talked to Brian about finding some sort of “iTunes-ish” interface that was available for the tablet, but we weren’t able to find any good, simple options. We found one, but instead of just directing the tablet to add a specific music folder, it wanted to transfer over my entire drive! Bizarre! Honestly, who designs this stuff?! Brian said he was going to do more homework to try and find a solution that would do exactly what I wanted it to do, but I’m not holding out much hope. I had bought a really nice Blue Tooth sound bar to go with this new tablet, but it looks like that might have been wasted money as well. So instead of putting ALL my music on the tablet, and having to take the enormous amount of time to delegate specific songs by hand into specific playlists, I decided to ONLY put my Palm Springs tunes on it and hit shuffle. But the shuffle feature doesn’t stay consistent in my preferences, so I have to remember to hit shuffle every time I turn on the device. Otherwise it defaults to playing the songs in alphabetical order. If I hit the shuffle button in my iTunes it stayed that way until I turned it off. So I’m not sure how this experiment will go, but I’m bringing my old trustworthy unit just in case; the old iPad and an iPad dock which has always worked magnificently. (If you forget the fact that I can’t update my iPad any longer with any new songs) I’d like to get my money back for this tablet, but unfortunately I’ve had it for too long, and the return window has lapsed. So I guess I’m stuck – unless I want to sell it on eBay. I packed some of my stuff for my upcoming Palm Springs trip, did some organizing of the photo files on my computer, and made some sloppy joes.

Wednesday the 30th – TOO HOT TO TROT! – Roxy was in desperate need of a bath before our trip to Palm Springs, so I dropped her at the groomer’s just before I was due to be at Voice Trax West for a 3 hour session. It was for that super-secret account I’ve been engaged in for the past four years. It used to be at Bang Zoom studios for many years, but when the whole virus thing hit the producers needed to make a change to a different studio for logistical reasons. I was happy when they went with my suggestion of Voice Trax West. I grabbed some food at Chin Chin and then went to get Roxy. Normally I would walk to Voice Trax West and get in a nice, brisk walk – but L.A. was in the middle of another triple-digit heatwave. I got home and did some work around the house, and got on my computer to do more work organizing my photo folders. I recorded some auditions and did some more packing for Palm Springs.

Thursday the 1st – DESERT PREP! – My maids came to clean Planet Wallywood, and when they left I called Enterprise to get a ride to their facility to pick up my SUV for my trip to Palm Springs. Usually I’d just walk over there and drive the SUV back to my house to pack it up, but with triple digit temps I’d be a melted puddle of goo by the time I got to the Enterprise office. They picked me up, I got the SUV, got home and got it packed up. I needed to do a call-back audition from my home studio late in the afternoon, and when that was over I put the finishing touches on packing. My house sitter Ems came over to take over the reins of Planet Wallywood, and spend the weekend watching my cat Spooky. Then I made my way over to the soon-to-be former residence of my “adopted grandma” Shirley. She had been a virtual prisoner at this assisted-living facility for the past 6 months. Being 93 she’s in a very high risk category for the whole virus thing, so they were afraid to let them out to do anything, or let anyone in to visit. And Shirley has always been VERY social! It really hit her hard; more so than some of the other residents there who were totally happy not going anywhere for six months. So there she sat in her little 14’ X 14’ room all by herself for six months. For several months I had been trying to facilitate a move to the desert for her so she could be closer to her daughter and have more freedom. A few emergency visits to the hospital recently served as the impetus to make that idea a reality sooner rather than later. The plan was that I was going to pick Shirley up at 6:30, drive her to her daughter and son-in-law’s house in Rancho Mirage (close to Palm Springs) drop her off for a short stay at her daughter’s, and then next week they’d move her into a great new facility that offers a better room, shorter distance to her relatives, and best of all…MORE FREEDOM! Shirley said her goodbyes to the staff at the residence, and then climbed into the SUV. It had been six months since I had seen her without a mask on! I told her, “Stay low, Shirley! I’m breakin’ you out of here! We’re makin’ a run for the border…of Riverside County!” But before we hit the road we stopped at McDonald’s for some food. I have never seen anyone so enthralled in McDonald’s food before. But Shirley dove into it like it was gourmet food! She was amazed that the cheeseburger had real cheese on it (she was convinced that the food she was served at her former residence didn’t contain real cheese) and she went NUTS for the fries! I guess after six months in prison I’d be jonesing for it too! We hit the freeway and headed east – directly into the path of a gorgeous, rising full moon – which was ORANGE! Even with some traffic snafus we still reached her daughter’s in Rancho Mirage in 2 hours! Nice! When I left her at their house to head to my room at the Hyatt in Palm Springs, I got my first REAL Shirley hug in half a year! I had missed those! I got to the hotel at 10, checked in, and unpacked. With all of the virus protocols in place it was not my usual trip to my favorite Palm Springs hotel. No cups or coffee packets in the room. No working ice machines. And you had to wear a mask everywhere you went in the hotel. It was quite different. But once I got a pizza at NYPD and got settled in my room, it was back to my usual routine. I spent all night on the balcony eating popcorn and Rice Krispy treats and drinking ice cold Cokes in little glass bottles with Roxy by my side. Once the full moon made its way around to my area, it was great watching it set behind the mountain outside my room. Oddly enough, as the moon was coming into view, my tablet randomly played Andreas Vollenweider’s “Moon Dance!” I tried to get video of the moon setting behind the mountain, but I didn’t have it framed correctly and my camera lost focus halfway through. I’ll try it again tomorrow night.

Friday the 2nd – FAVORITE DESERT HANGS! – Right around 2 I briefly woke up to take Roxy out for a bathroom break, and took the opportunity to call Shirley’s daughter to make dinner plans. I ate a few slices of cold pizza and then slept some more until early evening. I love catching up on my rest when I’m in Palm Springs. I drove over to Palm Desert to meet Shirley and her family at the Spaghetti Factory, one of my favorite places to go when I’m out there visiting. We had a wonderful time and a great conversation. On the drive back to the hotel I noticed that the weather had cooled just a bit, but was still warm and dry – and VERY pleasant! So I turned off my car’s AC and rolled down all the windows. There’s an AM station I love to listen to out there on 1340 AM called WXYZ. They play oldies, standards and instrumentals. Great stuff! I got back to the room and walked Roxy down Palm Canyon Boulevard to Lappert’s Ice Cream so I could get one of my favorites – a pineapple Dole Whip! But they had a new feature there – PUP CUPS! They were little pre-packaged cups of frozen yogurt for dogs! They came in two flavors; peanut butter and apple carrot. I figured I’d give one a try for Roxy. She dove into it like it was nectar from the gods! By this time my pals Officer Mark and Miss Connie had arrived in Palm Springs, so they joined us at Lappert’s. We walked down the boulevard and enjoyed the evening. Roxy always attracts a ton of attention, as does my “smiling mask” that I always wear. It’s a custom-made mask that an artist made for me that features the lower half of my face from a recent headshot. I’m smiling a big smile and you have to look twice from far away because it looks pretty real. But it also has a creepy element to it as well, so it’s a great conversation piece. We started talking to a delivery gal who was waiting for a food order from NYPD pizza. We got around to the topic of Voice Over and Officer Mark played her a snippet of me as the Riddler on the Waze app. Her eyes got wide and she said, “That’s YOU!?” Come to find out, she had been using the Riddler direction on her Waze app for weeks. So much so, that she was actually QUOTING some of the lines I recorded back to me! Unbelievable! I got back to my room and got set up for another night of relaxation on the balcony. Mars was hanging close to the moon; just a little ways above it, so it was really something to see! I great full moon with a little tiny red traveling partner! Determined to get a better video of the moonset, I had to wait until 6:45 AM to get it! But by then daylight had started to break, so it cast a gorgeous orange light on a section of the mountains behind which the moon would be setting! And all of this behind a gorgeous blue sky! But the oddest thing happened! I have a camera mount that has a clamp on it at the base. Then there’s a long black gooseneck leading up to the camera mount. I attached the camera to it and clamped it on to the railing on my balcony. My camera is metallic red. If I’m too close to the camera mount I can cause vibration which makes for a very wobbly video. So I started the video when the moon got close to the mountainous horizon, and backed away several feet. As I stood in just inside my hotel room watching the video on my camera, and watching the moon set behind the mountain, a humming bird flew right up to my camera and buzzed around. First off, I’m six stories up. I never knew humming birds could fly that high! Secondly, the hummingbird must’ve though that my metallic red camera, on a long black gooseneck was a flower. Come to think of it, from a distance, it might look like a red flower of some sort on a long stem. As the hummingbird hovered over my camera looking for breakfast, I looked in the camera’s view screen to see if the hummingbird was getting in my moonset shot. Though he isn’t visible, you can definitely hear him approach the camera, chirp a couple of chirps (as if to say “what is this crap?”) and then hear the vibration of his wings as he buzzes off. Totally random and totally amazing! One more great experience from my travels to the desert.

Saturday the 3rd – MARS, CIGARS & STARS! – Following the same routine from the previous day, I woke up briefly at 2 to walk Roxy, called Shirley’s daughter to make dinner plans, and then hit the hay again to sleep until evening. Officer Mark and Miss Connie met Roxy and I on the boulevard so we could walk over to Sherman’s Deli to meet Shirley and her family. We had another wonderful time, and Shirley is looking better with each passing day. She’s so happy, and so elated to be out of ‘prison.’ I’m sure she’s going to have a much better life at her new residence. I know she hated leaving her friends and her church in L.A., but I told her that life at the church would be very different for many years to come, and the services would most likely never be the same services that we knew and loved. I’m SO glad she decided to make this move. I know in my heart it’s for the best. After dinner we said goodbye to the Shirley Show, and took a walk down Palm Canyon Blvd. – mostly to get another Dole Whip and Pup Cup! A good section of the boulevard has been shut down to traffic, and the street has been utilized for outdoor dining by many of the restaurants. It’s a little like the old street fairs, when people wandered around the streets looking for bargains. But instead of vendors people just wander around at a safe social distance and look around. Roxy, as always, was a big hit. And my mask got several looks, double-takes and comments. I got back to my room, enjoyed a cigar under the stars, and the weather had begun to cool off a bit. It was another nice evening on the balcony watching the skies.

Sunday the 4th – SHIRLEY, SLEEP & STEAK! – We all met at LG’s for Steak in downtown Palm Springs. I don’t think Shirley has enjoyed a good steak at any time during 2020! This was a real treat for her. Her daughter had styled her hair, she had lots of color back in her face, and she seemed truly happy. Monday Shirley would go visit her new residence, and next Wednesday or Thursday she’ll move in for good. After dinner I walked back to the hotel and got Roxy and we walked around downtown for a bit. It was stunningly gorgeous out! I’d be checking out on Monday, so I grabbed a short nap, spent a brief time on the balcony, and then started packing up for my Monday exit. As usual, I never sleep very well the night before a departure.

Monday the 5th – IT’S ALL OVER SO FAST! – My pals Officer Mark and Miss Connie met me for lunch at Las Casuelas, then I did a little shopping, and when I had all my gifts purchased I went back to my room to get loaded up and check out. Roxy and I hit the road around 1 with hopes of getting back home around 3. Everything went beautifully. I paid Ems, returned the SUV, walked home, unpacked my bags, did some work around the house, checked e-mails and settled back in to Planet Wallywood. Because I hadn’t slept well the night before I was pretty tired, so I grabbed a nap in the evening. Later I did my auditions, went through tons of paperwork that had piled up, prepped my notes for this week’s Wally’s Week, continued unpacking, and fed the kids. While Roxy and I were on our late night stroll through the neighborhood, I spied something that looked like a little black purse sitting in the alley. I thought somebody might have dropped their purse, or worse yet, the purse had been stolen and abandoned after all of the valuables had been removed from it. (I’ve seen that happen before) I wear a head lamp when we walk so when Roxy does her business I can ascertain its location so I can get every last bit to dispose of it. But when I turned my head light on “the purse” I saw it move. Then I saw the white stripes on its tail. A SKUNK! EEK! Luckily Roxy didn’t see it and was more interested in checking “pee mails” on a nearby bush. I immediately called her over to my side and we walked away very quickly. Later I made hot dogs on the grill and watched an episode of “The Time Tunnel” on Blu Ray before bed.

And how was YOUR week??!!

PIX FROM THE WEEK

I was heading out grocery shopping, so I put on my Beetlejuice t-shirt! I was hoping I didn’t run into any sandworms. “Sandworms. Ya hate ’em right? I hate ’em myself!”

Here we come. Walkin’ down the street. We get the funniest looks from…everyone we meet.

Dinner with the newly free Shirley!

And a surprise supply of sugar-free candy for her new home!

A nice after-dinner shot…

…and then we mask up to make our way out into the populace.

The Shirley Show!

Dole Whip…check! Pup Cup…check!

My usual room at the Hyatt is all the way at the top, and all the way at the end! It looks like other guests have darkened their balconies as well to get in some star gazing!

I honestly hope I never lose this reaction to getting a Dole Whip!

The delivery gal I mentioned who knew all of the Waze Riddler lines! Astounding!

No more prison food for Shirley!

Paying homage to one of Sherman Deli’s most famous, former customers.

Roxy enjoys her Pup Cup of peanut butter-flavored frozen yogurt!

She also enjoys all of the attention, back rubs and butt scratches!

It’s all I could do to drag her away from all the adoration!

I heart PS!

Meanwhile, back on my balcony…

The moon and its little buddy…Mars.

This is the morning moonset I shot that was ALMOST interrupted by a wayward hummingbird looking for breakfast! He thought my camera and mount was a flower! at 17 seconds in you can hear a snapping sound; that’s his chirping. Then at 19 seconds in you can hear the beating of his wings as he realizes his mistake and flies off. Remarkable! Then at 23 seconds in you can hear me say, “Weird!”

Here’s the partial moonset I shot, just before my camera moved out of focus. Darn!

Roxy was having a lot of fun ruling the streets of Palm Springs! As I look at this video, it’s really hard to believe that she’s 12 years old! She still has a lot of spunk and youth!