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Monday the 4th \u2013 \u201cI GOT BETTER!\u201d \u2013<\/span> After about five days of battling an annoying head cold I was feeling much better. I got up around noon to do some work around the house, and then headed over to my box to pick up some packages. One of the items I received was my new Bluetooth CD player! It plays CDs but will broadcast them to a Bluetooth speaker, or better yet, my car stereo system! Some days I just want to drive around and listen to a full CD in its entirety. And since most new cars don\u2019t come with CD players anymore, this is the next best thing. I hit Paty\u2019s to have a salad on the patio, mailed some stuff off at the post office, and then hit the cleaners to drop off a comforter. I hit the grocery store to get some items, but I was shocked to see the paper towel shelf TOTALLY EMPTY! What was going on?! I got back home and put everything away and then relaxed for a bit. Later I went outside to do my nightly WOG (walk\/jog) and it certainly felt good to be back at it, after taking several nights off because of my cold. It was chilly and clear out, but the Orion star cluster was in full view. However, it had shifted in the sky somewhat, so it\u2019s really no longer ideally viewable from the front of my house. Luckily, in its shift, it\u2019s now viewable from behind my house, so I\u2019ll be doing my future post-WOG decompression times in my anti-gravity chair behind my house so I will be in full view of the beautiful sky. I didn\u2019t spend much time outside because it was so chilly, so I came back inside and wrote Wally\u2019s Week. I reconciled and balanced my corporate bank statement, which took a while. I really hate math!<\/p>\nTuesday the 5th \u2013 PACKIN\u2019 PUPPETS! \u2013<\/span> To start the day I scanned some checks to make my monthly deposit, and then I drove over to my pal Isaiah Ferguson\u2019s house to pick up the sets, props and puppets from the Christoween stop-motion shoot he had just completed. I still need to shoot the opening and the closing of the sizzle reel (which will be live action) but my pal Officer Mark is temporarily down with a health issue and not available to help out with the shoot quite yet. But when he\u2019s back at it we\u2019ll shoot the needed segments, edit them into the piece, have the audio designed and we\u2019ll be ready to launch in early December. I\u2019m SO excited for you to see it! I stopped at the bank on the way home to deposit my checks, and then went home to do some work and unload the puppets and set pieces. I relaxed for a bit and then did my nightly auditions. There was a fun script that came in with a great character, but they casting people just wanted us to submit our character demos. I didn\u2019t really have anything on my reel that represented what they were looking for, so I took some time to write up a custom 1 minute piece to send them. I wrote a monologue using the character voice and talking about the things the character would discuss, given the description in the instructions. It was pretty fun! I did some work around the house, took my nightly WOG, and spent some quick time outside in the anti-grav chair.<\/p>\nWednesday the 6th \u2013 IKEA! GET DISNEY ON THE PHONE! BORK! BORK! BORK! \u2013<\/span> For lunch I met with my pal Chris Malmin at Ikea in Burbank. I needed to pick up a few items for the house, so we decided to meet for lunch in the Ikea cafeteria which has really great food. They have Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy and peas. YUMMY! But when I go to the cafeteria I always wish I could see a Swedish Chef Muppet behind the service line singing away. Why doesn\u2019t Ikea license the character from Disney? It would be a great tie-in! Then I started thinking that maybe actual Swedish people may think that character is a bit of an insulting stereotype. So\u2026maybe not. But still\u2026it would be hilarious! Chris and I chatted about his recent out-of-town excursion as we shopped. I picked up some handy-dandy bathroom shelving units, as well as a few extra things I had been needing. Ikea sure is handy! Then I drove over to my auxiliary garage to get the Gran Torino out for a few days. The cutoff switch I had installed several months ago worked fantastically. The engine fired right up, but it took a few starts to get the gas in the line. Since it had been a long time since I had it out, it needed to be pumped quite a few times. But once the ol\u2019 gal fired up it was good to go! I put the Gray Ghost to bed for a bit in its place, and headed out in the \u201cstriped tomato.\u201d I stopped by the cleaners to pick up my comforter, and dropped off the Torino\u2019s car cover \u2013 which was FILTHY! It\u2019s not cheap to have it cleaned, but it\u2019s WELL worth it! Incidentally, the Bluetooth CD player I bought works GREAT! When I\u2019m in the Tornio I only play 70\u2019s music through an MP3 Walkman, but in the Gray Ghost the CD player was a terrific addition to my commute. I got home to do some work and talked to my gal Angi for a bit. Come to find out she had the evening free so I told her to drive over so we could go to dinner at Ernie\u2019s Taco House! I didn\u2019t get to see her last week because I was sick, so it was great being with her again. Later I did my WOG, but didn\u2019t spend anytime outside in the anti-grav chair because it was just too darn cold! (I hate winter!) But the sky was clear and the stars were gorgeous!<\/p>\nThursday the 7th \u2013 PLEASANT PROCRASTINATION! –<\/span> Even though I had planned to do a few things, I made an executive decision at the last minute to stay inside and relax, and handle them all on Friday. Boy did it feel good to lounge around the house all day. I did a few auditions, did some light work around Planet Wallywood, and later took my nightly WOG. Once again, the frigid weather prevented me from enjoying some post-WOG decompression time outside in the anti-grav chair.<\/p>\nFriday the 8th \u2013 \u201cARE YOU FAMOUS?!\u201d \u2013<\/span> It was quite a fantastic day in a lot of ways. I drove the Torino over to my local carpet and blinds place so I could order a new area rug for the Tranquility Zone. The carpet in my bedroom is the same carpet that came with the house when I bought it in 2000. God only knows how old it was before then. Over the years it\u2019s started to wear down quite badly, with a few spots in the carpet worn through to the mesh underneath. It would be an enormous undertaking to move everything out of my room (actually quite IMPOSSIBLE!) to replace the carpet. So I\u2019m planning on calling my carpet cleaners to have them clean the carpets in my house on one day. Before they get there I will have broken down my bed (the mattress, box spring and frame) and stashed them elsewhere in the house. That will give them full access to the carpet in my bedroom to get it nice and clean with no obstructions. I\u2019ll spend that night in the Puppet Room while the carpet dries out. Then the next day I\u2019ll have the guys deliver my new area rug. They\u2019ll put it into place, and then I\u2019ll rebuild my bed on the new rug. It\u2019s going to take some coordination to make all this happen, but if it all goes to plan it should be pretty sweet. Jack, the manager of the store, loves cars \u2013 so I wanted to make sure to show him the Torino while I had it out. But I was running low on gas so I hit the area Shell station to put a few gallons in. But the pump was out of paper, so in order to get the receipt I had to go inside the store. The kid behind the counter was about in his mid-20\u2019s. He asked what year the car was, and I told him she was 50 years old this year. Then he said, \u201cAre you famous?\u201d It\u2019s always funny when somebody asks that question, because if I really WAS famous, they wouldn\u2019t have to ask. But I laughingly said, \u201cOnly to a very small group of people.\u201d He said, \u201cDo you do music?\u201d And I told him I was a Voice Actor. Then he asked which projects I had been in. I gave him an abridged version of my resume, but when I asked him if he played the Batman \u201cArkham\u201d games he lit up. He said he played all of them. Then I gave him a sample of the Riddler and he went nuts. \u201cNO WAY!\u201d But what was even funnier was the other customer in the store also stopped shopping and turned and said, \u201cI don\u2019t believe it! You were my childhood!\u201d It was talking to them both. Funny. I headed over to CVS to pick up a prescription and a few items, and then I headed to my box to pick up a new printing of my Christoween book \u201cDonnie Druthers\u2019 Christoween Capers; Frankie-fied!\u201d Since I added a new verse for the new stop-motion video, I decided I needed to reprint the book with the new verse in it. I opted for the giant 12\u201d X 12\u201d book, and it looked amazing. Shutterfly does amazing work. I stopped by Michael\u2019s to pick up my finished Jeff Lynne\u2019s ELO concert collage, and it turned out beautifully! It\u2019s a wonderful commemoration of a wonderful experience! I headed home to drop everything off and change clothes. Then I drove to the Smoke House to have dinner with my pal Joe Garner. We hadn\u2019t done our steak night in a long time, so it was good to catch up on all that had happened in the summer. I got back home a warm, full tummy and relaxed. Later I did my WOG. It had gotten so chilly it was the first night I bundled up in my \u201cwinter WOG\u201d gear. Lots of layering!<\/p>\nSaturday the 9th \u2013 SUPER STAN DAY! \u2013<\/span> It ended up a day filled with fun Stan Laurel-related events! First, I went to my box to pick up the new \u201cLaurel & Hardy: Year Two\u201d Blu ray that had just been released. I look forward to delving into these at the first of the year! They\u2019re remastered versions of Stan & Ollie\u2019s silent shorts from 1928. Then when I got home my buddy Tyler St. Mark came over with an incredible gift. A prop cane that once belonged to Stan Laurel! Here\u2019s the backstory as I\u2019ve heard it\u2026When Stan and his pal Charlie Chaplin came to America around 1907 to investigate working in the U.S., they kicked around for a while. Charlie decided to stay, but Stan went back to England. In the meantime, Charlie became an enormous international superstar in the film industry, so Stan decided to come back to the US and try again. While he worked to support himself until his film career burgeoned, he would appear in vaudeville and burlesque shows as a comic. One of the things he did in his act was a spot-on impression of Charlie Chaplin\u2019s \u201cLittle Tramp\u201d character; an archetype which was sweeping the world in popularity thank to Chaplin\u2019s films. Some reports say that Stan was actually Chaplin\u2019s understudy when they worked together in a performing troupe. As part of his \u201cTramp\u201d costume he had a few canes that he would use as props. My pal Tyler became good friends with Stan\u2019s daughter Lois late in her life. Lois had gifted Tyler with many of her father\u2019s belongings, including some bowler hats, clothes, jewelry, ephemera, and other things \u2013 including the two remaining canes he used to use in his \u201cTramp\u201d act. Tyler had gifted one of those canes to another friend of his years earlier, but after seeing the Planet Wallywood collection earlier in the year, he decided that I should be the recipient of the other remaining cane. I originally met Tyler in January when I purchased one of his original \u201cSons of the Desert\u201d fezzes that he had listed on eBay. While the fez I bought didn\u2019t belong to either Stan or Ollie, it was worn by one of the main characters in the film. Since then we\u2019ve been pals, and we have a ton of things in common. In fact, Tyler said he used to listen to me all the time when I was on 94.7 KTWV The Wave in the 90s! Tyler and I hopped in the Torino and drove over to Barone\u2019s for a delicious meal. We started chatting about music and we got onto \u201cone hit wonders.\u201d He mentioned that he had a friend in the 70\u2019s named Tim Moore. I said, \u201cSecond Avenue Tim Moore?\u201d He was shocked that I knew of Tim\u2019s hit! I told him that we played the song all the time on 1420 KABR-AM in Aberdeen. Of all the weird coincidences! When we got back to my house later I attempted find some specific pictures I wanted him to see. But after perusing my photo files, I started to realize that they weren\u2019t on my hard drive. Apparently during the hard drive meltdown from a few months ago, there were many files that didn\u2019t transfer over to my back-up drive. So after Tyler left, I set about repopulating my current hard drive with all of the missing files. Luckily I had luckily done a manual back-up in April. Whew! Talk about lucky! I took some time out to do my nightly WOG, and then spent the rest of the night finalizing all of the back-up work. This meant that I had to do side-by-side comparisons of all the files in my main hard drive with those in my April back-up. It took a while, but it was well worth it. And now I\u2019m confident that all has been restored. I made a salad and started in on a new Saturday night viewing habit \u2013 \u201cBoris Karloff\u2019s Thriller!\u201d While during the week I\u2019ll continue with my regular viewing schedule (currently \u201cThe Incredible Hulk\u201d), on Saturdays I\u2019ll watch an episode of \u201cThriller.\u201d I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll enjoy this show much more than \u201cHoney West,\u201d which I\u2019ve just recently completed.<\/p>\nSunday the 10th \u2013 THE SUNDAY SLEEPIES! \u2013 It sure felt good to chill out and relax all day. After all, isn\u2019t that what Sundays are really for?! Later at night I took the Torino back to my auxiliary parking and got my Gray Ghost back out. I needed to do a little traveling on Monday to a session in Santa Monica, so I needed my Rav back for that. I got some food at McDonald\u2019s, headed home to do some work, did my nightly WOG, and plotted out the activities for a new week.<\/p>\n
And how was YOUR week?!?!<\/p>\n
PIX FROM THE WEEK<\/p>\n
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