{"id":16504,"date":"2024-10-07T07:09:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T14:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/?p=16504"},"modified":"2024-10-15T07:18:24","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T14:18:24","slug":"october-07-october-13-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/october-07-october-13-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"October 07 – October 13 (2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK<\/h3>\n

I’m SO excited about seeing the final two shows in the Jeff Lynne’s ELO Over and Out Tour! Here is an overview of where our seats are!<\/p>\n

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A few weeks ago in Wally’s Week, I described an instrumental “space music” song that was playing on my iPod as our airplane descended into the Sioux Falls area through beautiful puffy clouds. It was stunning, and the song added a perfect underscore to this moving experience. I had the name of the song correct on my player, but it was credited to a different group. After doing a search (thanks Shazam!) I found out that the song is indeed called “Elsewhere,”<\/span> but was performed by the amazing Vengelis. I downloaded the full version from Amazon and I want you to enjoy it as well. Though you may not have puffy clouds to look at as you descend into a town on an airplane, so just use your imagination.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Elsewhere.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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Monday the 7th \u2013 PUTTIN\u2019 ON THE MILES! \u2013<\/span> My buddy Kyle at Plastic Depot let me know that a special Plexiglas piece I had him make for a cabinet in Planet Wallywood was ready for pick-up. After grabbing that, since I was in the area, I figured I\u2019d hit Wendy\u2019s for lunch. I hadn\u2019t been to Wendy\u2019s in a long time so it\u2019ll be a treat. As an added bonus, Krispy Kreme is right next door. YUM! I went to the local Michaels crafts and picked up some purple paint for all the trim pieces on my miniature Christoween set for the stop-motion video I\u2019m creating with my pal Isaiah Ferguson. Then I went over to the bank to make some deposits, and I hit the blinds and carpet store next to the bank to pick out some carpet for an area rug I\u2019m having made for the Tranquility Zone. They need to come do some work on the blinds I have in the TZ, so they said when they come to do that they\u2019ll bring along the sample piece of carpet I picked out so I could see how it\u2019ll look in the room. I headed home and put everything away and relaxed. Later I typed out Wally\u2019s Week and took my nightly WOG (walk\/jog). I followed it up, as usual, with some decompression time outside in my anti-gravity chair with an iced tea. But unlike usual, when I sit behind my house and gaze at the western sky, I noticed that there was a large, gorgeous cluster of stars in the eastern sky \u2013 in front of my house. So I set up shop out there and thoroughly enjoyed the view of the Orion constellation and many other, gorgeous stars in a super clear sky! In addition to seeing a fantastic shooting star, I also observed a V formation of high-flying geese. Not sure why they were flying in the middle of the night, but they must\u2019ve had their reasons. I came back inside to do some work, record a few auditions for my agent, and call it a day.<\/p>\n

Tuesday the 8th \u2013 AUCTION ACTION! \u2013<\/span> Through the Jeff Lynne\u2019s ELO Instagram account I learned about an on-line auction to raise money for UCLA\u2019s cancer ward. They would be auctioning off 4 front row tickets to their final concert on October 26th. I already have two tickets for that show in the 19th row, but I figured if I won that auction I could use those and sell the ones I already had. But this auction site was weird \u2013 not at all like the eBay procedures I\u2019m used to. During the final few seconds of the auction\u2019s countdown I was prepared to put in a winning bid. But then all of a sudden 10 minutes was added to the clock and a note popped up that said EXTENDED BIDDING. Well this sucked! So I waited until the final few seconds of the extended bidding process so I could monitor the price. But while I did that I started reading the \u201cfine print\u201d on the auction\u2019s website. I realized that the winning bidder would also be liable for taxes and fees, and a 15-20% buyer\u2019s premium. This could easily add another $500 to the final price. The extended bidding period was just about up, but when another 10 minutes of extended bidding was added to that, I bowed out \u2013 thinking that the whole thing was a bit of a scam. Other than that I had a fairly lazy day. Later I did some work on my miniature Christoween set. I painted all the trim pieces that would go on the walls, and made the background night sky piece that you\u2019ll see through the big picture window in Donnie\u2019s living room. It has a large full moon that will be backlit for effect. It should look pretty sweet when it\u2019s finished! After working all night on the set pieces I took my nightly WOG. Once again I set up my anti-grav chair to look out (and up) at the eastern sky. On really clear nights I think that will be my go-to from now on, as the stars are gorgeous! When I came back inside I did some more work on the Christoween set, recorded my daily auditions, and then made a salad. I headed to bed to enjoy my dinner and catch up on the \u201cCollector\u2019s Call\u201d episodes I was behind on.<\/p>\n

Wedneday the 9th \u2013 MARATHON! \u2013<\/span> After enjoying another lazy day, I spent virtually all night working on decoration pieces that will adorn the set of the Christoween stop-motion video. I took some time out to do a few auditions, take my nightly WOG and enjoy some time outside in the anti-grav chair, but then I came back inside and got back to it. I got a ton of stuff done, but I didn\u2019t end up getting to bed until NOON on Thursday! I love working all night on creative stuff!<\/p>\n

Thursday the 10th \u2013 SAD BREAKAGE OF THE BOYS! \u2013<\/span> After mailing off some stuff I picked up a package at my box. It was a gift from my friends the Frids in Canada. Don Frid is the nephew of the great Jonathan Frid (who played Barnabas Collins on \u201cDark Shadows\u201d) and he and I became friends at a \u201cDark Shadows\u201d convention in New York many years ago. He recently emailed me to tell me that his wife had made some Laurel & Hardy statues at her ceramics class, and since they were moving and downsizing, he wanted to know if I would like them. I gave him an enthusiastic YES in response. They arrived, but when I opened the box it was tragic. Though they were fairly well packaged with lots of bubble wrap and foam pieces, the figures were broken beyond repair. It\u2019s especially sad because I was looking forward to having them in my collection. I like things with great backstories, and these figures would have been fantastic to have. Laurel & Hardy figures created by the niece of Barnabas Collins! Rats. I went to Paty\u2019s to get some lunch on the patio, and then I headed over to Alex In Wonderland\u2019s new studio to pick up my \u201ctravel\u201d Cookie Monster puppet. The way I had placed the eyes in the puppet were a little off, and Alex was able to take out a small piece of fur and align the eyes a little better. She had also painted up some extra pupils for my first Cookie Monster puppet. I liked the paint job she did on the ones for my \u201ctravel\u201d Cookie, so I asked her for extras. I got some groceries on the way home, and then headed inside the houses to relax for a while. After a couple of intense nights working on Christoween stuff I decided to take a night off. I\u2019m amazed at how well my cat Spooky is doing \u2013 he\u2019s eating and drinking very well. It\u2019s been about a week since his appointment at the vet, where they determined that he should be getting subcutaneous fluids every day. I\u2019m still not sure I want to do that, so I\u2019m still considering. But he sure is eating well, thanks to my house sitter Emily who figured out a good addition to his prescription food! After recording my nightly auditions I hit the hay!<\/p>\n

Friday the 11th \u2013 SON OF MONSTERPALOOZA: DAY 1! \u2013<\/span> My maids arrived to clean Planet Wallywood, and as soon as they left I was off to the Burbank Marriott to enjoy the first day of Son Of Monsterpalooza. This is the smaller show they do every October (the big one is in Pasadena in June). But it\u2019s still fun to see the vendors and artists, and reconnect with old friends. My pal Chris Malmin had never been to Monsterpalooza so we met for dinner at the Daily Grill (right next door) and then headed over to the convention. I actually ended up making some pretty good contacts for my Christoween story series. I spoke with a publisher of \u201cgenre\u201d books who seemed intrigued by the concept. I also spoke with a guy who has a company based in Arizona who produces items that are consistent with the Christoween theme. Fingers crossed! I bought a few issues of the new \u201cFamous Monsters\u201d magazine, and I bought a Harry the Hunter head from an artist. Harry was the shrunken head guy at the end of the first \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d movie. The sculpt and the paint job was fantastic, and it\u2019s definitely something I wanted for my Beetlejuice display in the Chaney Room! There was a company selling big shopping bags that were marked with the words \u201cBIG BAG OF SPOOKY SHIT!\u201d I bought one because I had a fun idea. I figured I\u2019d put black duct tape over the last word so it would say \u201cBIG BAG OF SPOOKY.\u201d I told them I had a 19 year old cat in late stage 2 of kidney insufficiency and his vet was advising for daily fluids. The owners of the company said they have a cat who\u2019s also 19 and he\u2019s in stage 3 of the same thing. They had all kinds of great advice about where to get the fluids, how to administer them, and what to expect. Fantastic! There are no accidents in life! I came back home and immediately went into the Christoween box I have stashed in storage in the garage. I dug out a few promo items that I would give to the people I spoke with at the convention when I return on Saturday. I also planned on taking \u201ctravel\u201d Cookie Monster to the show as well. I also got a great video and a few pictures of Spook sitting in the Big Bag of Spooky.<\/p>\n

Saturday the 12th \u2013 SON OF MONSTERPALOOZA: DAY 2! \u2013<\/span> At the last minute I decided not to take \u201ctravel\u201d Cookie. Being a live-hands puppet he\u2019s a little hard to maneuver in tight spaces, and from all indications today\u2019s crowd at SOM was going to be considerable. Since it\u2019s in a smaller venue than the June show, it\u2019s sometimes difficult to navigate through the crowd on your own, let alone carrying a large puppet. So I opted to leave him home. I did, however, have my Big Bag of Spooky along – stuffed with Christoween promo items. I picked up my pal Sara Raftery at 11 and we got to the show around 11:30. But the parking was already full in two lots! Since the venue is across the street from the Burbank airport, we headed over to one of their lots and found a space at the last minute! I was shocked at how many vendors are now selling monster-themed Christmas ornaments! It\u2019s a theme that\u2019s only going to get bigger as the years go on, which is why I\u2019m glad I have my Christoween story series ready to go! I think the new stop-motion video demo we\u2019re making will really help the cause! The Christoween vibe is catching on! After being at the show for a few hours Sara and I were getting hungry. So we drove over to Ernie\u2019s Taco House for lunch. I came back home to relax, and later I took my nightly WOG. Once again the skies were very clear so I spent some good time gazing at the star-filled eastern sky in my anti-grav chair during my cool-down phase. When I got back inside I replaced the pupils on my first Cookie Monster with the new ones that Alex In Wonderland just made. They look much better \u2013 and best of all \u2013 they SPIN much better! I also sat down with a bag of little rubber bats and painted them white with red \u201ccandy cane\u201d stripes. These will go on the Christoween tree on the miniature set. In one of the Christoween stories it mentions \u201ccandy cane bats on a Christoween tree.\u201d So as a nod to that, I wanted to make them a physical reality in the video. It wasn\u2019t easy because, first off, the bats are rubber. They\u2019re also fairly small. The white base coat went on well, but painting the red candy cane stripes was difficult. Sometimes it took several passes to get it to look like how I wanted it. I also did a repair on the flipper of my \u201ctravel\u201d Kermit the Frog puppet. I did some paint tests to try and get the color and texture I want on the walls of the Christoween set. Then I recorded some auditions to send to my agent, made a salad and watched a few episodes of \u201cHoney West.\u201d As I\u2019ve mentioned before, this show is really pretty awful. It just never quite clicked, even though it had a nice potential formula. I only have two episodes left to watch, which I\u2019ll watch next Saturday night, and then I\u2019m done with the set. The show only went for one season, understandably. The Saturday after that I\u2019ll be spending the weekend away for the final two Jeff Lynne\u2019s ELO shows at the LA Forum. And then the weekend after that will be \u201cLaurel & Hardy Theatre\u201d again. I\u2019m still not exactly sure what I\u2019m going to use for my usual Saturday night viewing routine after that, but I\u2019ll figure it out. In addition to making sure Spook drinks a lot of water, and eats his prescription food, the vet also told me to add a \u00bc teaspoon of powdered laxative to his food to keep things “moving” better. Well, I\u2019m happy to report that his advice paid off tonight. And BOY did it pay off! WOW! Spook MUST be feeling MUCH better after THIS!<\/p>\n

Sunday the 13th \u2013 ALMOST READY TO SHOOT! \u2013<\/span> After snoozing all day I got up on time to join some friends at the Smoke House for dinner. What a great time with Officer Mark and Miss Connie, and Edi and Elliot Lurie! Great food and fun! I got home with a full tummy and relaxed for a while. Later I took my nightly WOG and spent some time in the anti-grav chair. Because it was totally overcast, I moved my decompression operation to the back of my house again. It was very quiet and relaxing. I was in the mood to do some more work on the Christoween miniature set, so I made the wall of Donnie\u2019s bedroom \u2013 complete with child-like drawings of some of his favorite monsters. I made a salad and watched that evening\u2019s season finale of \u201cCollector\u2019s Call\u201d on ME-TV. The subject was about a collector of vintage latex Halloween masks, and it was GREAT!<\/p>\n

And how was YOUR week?!?!<\/p>\n

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PIX FROM THE WEEK<\/p>\n

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Here’s a look at how the miniature Christoween set is coming along!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Here’s the gorgeous Harry the Hunter piece I bought from Little Shop of Gore FX.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Yup, another monster-themed ornament dealer! Christoween is coming!<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Smoke House gang!<\/p><\/div>\n

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If Laurel & Hardy had met Frankenstein! What a great film THAT would have been!<\/p><\/div>\n

https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/big-bag-of-Spooky.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

The Big Bag Of Spooky worked out just as I had hoped! He LOVED it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK I’m SO excited about seeing the final two shows in the Jeff Lynne’s ELO Over and Out Tour! Here is an overview of where our seats are! A few weeks ago in Wally’s Week, I described an instrumental “space music” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wallysweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16520,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16504\/revisions\/16520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}