Les Kaluza

            On Tuesday morning I ran through singing and playing the first three verses of “Our Pretty Gestapo”, which is my translation of “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through the last two long verses. 

            I ran through singing and playing in French “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg. I started going through it in English but realized that a direct translation of the third line doesn’t make sense within the context of the other lines and so I’ll have to come up with something else. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleaned the newest warm mist humidifier. Hopefully I won’t have to use the new one again and I’ll only have to clean the old one once more. It was done fairly quickly and I had time to finish editing and to publish the video of Batgirl’s third appearance on the 60s Batman TV series. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch according to my scale. I guess it’s possible. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.05 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:53. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I finished editing all of the clips I’d gathered from the 1913 film Lime Kilm Club Field Day and put them in a logical order. Tomorrow I’ll insert the kissing and cakewalk scenes into the main video. 

            I compared the video of my song practice acoustic performance of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 25 to that of September 22. Although September 25 looks better, I hit the E flat chord better on September 22. I compared September 26 to September 22 and I played the E flat better on September 22. I compared September 27 to September 22 and found that September 27 looks better but my guitar was out of tune. I compared September 28 to September 22 and on September 22 I still play the E flat better, plus the video looks better. There are four more acoustic takes to compare.

            I had a tomato, avocado, cucumber, and scallion salad with lime juice for dressing and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching episodes 27 and 28 of The Adventures of Batman. 

            In the first story, Batman and Robin are escorting an armoured truck to a security building where 4 million Turkish coins will await shipment back to Turkey. But inside of the building the secretary turns out to be Charlotte Russe, Simon the Pieman’s accomplice. Meanwhile Mother Goose’s Pastry Park for Kiddies is preparing for its opening day. Barbara Gordon has been sent by the mayor to check the authenticy of the exhibits. Mother Goose gives her a tour but when she enters the kitchen she recognizes members of Simon’s gang. When she points that out, Mother Goose reveals herself to be Simon the Pieman and orders Barbara tied up so he has leverage over her father, Commissioner Gordon. She is bound to a chair in a pantry full of pies with one guard. She kicks down on the handle of a pie board sending the pie into her guard’s face. Then she frees herself and somehow has her costume nearby to change to Batgirl. She pursues Simon’s pie wagon on her Batgirl Cycle, but Simon shoots whipped cream from the exhaust pipe that clogs her wheels, and causes her to crash. Simon captures her while Gordon informs Batman that Barbara is missing. Simon steals the Turkish coins and gets away. Batgirl is locked up in the tower of the castle at Mother Goose’s park. Batman and Robin come to the park to investigate Barbara’s disappearance. They also recognize Simon’s men and when the crooks attack the heroes make short work of them. But Mother Goose changes back to Simon, slips inside the castle and raises the drawbridge. They hear Batgirl calling for help from the tower and use a Medieval catapult to toss a rope with a hook up to her. Simon’s men attack and Simon sprays Batman and Robin with some kind of confectionary goo that covers and subdues them. They are taken into the castle while Batgirl is dangling above a shark infested moat. Robin is placed standing on top of a wheel with his wrists bound and his arms stretched toward the ceiling. His legs are free but sticks of dynamite are tied to each of his ankles. All around the wheel are lit candles and the wheel starts turning, causing Robin to have to continuously jump to avoid setting off an explosion. Meanwhile Batman is in the bell tower under the bell. The floor begins sliding away and below is a giant cooking pot of porridge so Batman has to grab hold of the bell clapper to keep from falling. Then one of Simon’s men begins pulling on the rope to ring the bell. Batgirl jumps and somehow clears the moat. She starts running but Simon uses a slingshot to fire an explosive apple turnover at her and she is knocked out. She is locked inside a large pumpkin shell and carried to the well at the top of Jack and Jill hill. Meanwhile Robin is getting tired from jumping. Batman lets go of the bell clapper and grabs the rope to slide down. He saves Robin and they go to save Batgirl. Simon’s men are about to push the pumpkin down the well but Batman and Robin throw baterangs that take out the men but when they fall the pumpkin begins rolling down the hill toward the moat. Batman and Robin catch it in a net. The pie shaped roof of the pattycake house turns out to be a flying saucer and it takes off. Batman and Robin return to the Batcave to consult the Bat computer about Simon’s next move while Batgirl follows the flying pie. Simon knows she’s following before it lands in the water near the piezoelectric power house. They enter the power house, which is their base of operations. Batgirl climbs the wall with Bat cups. Simon’s men try to grab her on the roof but she blows dust from her compact into their eyes. Then she puts a Bat symbol onto the search light and makes her own Bat signal. Batman and Robin see it and head there in the Bat copter. Batgirl is captured yet again. Batman and Robin see the pie saucer on the water moving out to sea and think Batgirl is aboard so they lower themselves inside. But it’s a trap and the pie locks and submerges, then moves underwater toward a reef. This plant is a piezoelectric plant where tremendous pressure on crystal is used to generate electricity. Batgirl is tied to a table and is going to take the place of the crystal. Batman radios Alfred who arrives directly above in the Bat boat. Batman and Robin escape through the torpedo tubes and swim to the surface to board the boat. Batgirl is about to be crushed but then Batman pulls the plug. Simon and his men escape and start sliding along a power line now that Batman has cut the power. But Batgirl plugs it back in and they are shocked and fall to the water near a speedboat. They try to escape with the boat but beneath them the pie has reached the reef and explodes, knocking Simon and his gang out with a seismic wave. 

            In the second story Batman and Robin are on a float in the annual Christmas parade. But Santa Clause in the float behind them turns out to be Mr. Freeze. There is no explanation as to how a Santa Clause costume can be a substitute for his life saving cold suit. Later at city hall, Gordon is about to light the giant Christmas tree, at the top of which is a priceless diamond star. That’s just silly. No one would put a diamond star on top of a public Christmas tree. But before the tree is lit, Freeze freezes the tree as well as Batman and Robin. Then he uses a whip to snag the star and escapes with it. Batman and Robin thaw out and pursue Santa’s sled in the Batmobile but Freeze freezes their vehicle. Somehow there is an unused dog team and sled nearby and Batman and Robin take it after freeze. Batman is cracking a whip as if he would need a whip to motivate trained dogs to run. Freeze throws candy hot dogs behind him and the dogs stop to eat them. I don’t think they would stop to eat candy. Anyway Freeze gets away. In front of Stacy’s Department Store there are several Santas, and Batman and Robin can’t tell which is Freeze until they see a little boy approach one of them and gets a chill. Freeze freezes the heroes again. Freeze steals the golden Christmas tree from the store window. Later in his hideout and back in his cold suit, Mr. Freeze hears on the news about a gold and silver bell that will ring in the yule on Christmas day from a gingerbread house in Gotham Park. Freeze takes the bait and hooks the house with his helicopter to carry it away, not realizing that Batman and Robin are inside. But then Freeze sees them and starts shooting his cold gun, which causes the copter to overload with ice until it crashes. Freeze with his cold gun chases Batman and Robin to the zoo. The heroes go down a slide and Freeze follows but Batman lifts up the slide and Freeze goes flying into the polar bear compound. The bear swipes Freeze and knocks him out. 

            Some of the animation for these episodes was done by Les Kaluza, who worked as an animator in Poland in the 1950s. He did animation for Paramount in New York on shows such as Popeye the Sailor and Casper the Friendly Ghost. In LA he worked for Hanna Barbera on The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Johnny Quest, Space Ghost and The Impossibles. He was the animation director at Hanna Barbera in the 80s and 90s. At Filmation he worked on Tarzan, Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Tom and Jerry, Star Trek, Fat Albert, Droopy, The Archies, The Lone Ranger, and Sabrina and the Groovy Ghoolies. He worked on the films Return to Oz, Flash Gordon, Treasure Island, and Oliver. He also produced his own animated short films such as Bookie Woogie Cat, Potpourri and The Owl and the Pussycat.

April 2, 1995: I spent the day playing with my daughter outside

Thirty years ago today 

            On Sunday I probably spent the day with my daughter, and since the weather was getting warmer we likely played outside, either in the playground near her mother’s place in Scarborough or near my place in the Beaches.

Norm McCabe

            On Monday morning I finished revising my translation of “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing it and on Wednesday I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg. On Tuesday I’ll run through singing and playing it in French and English and then I’ll upload it to Christian’s Translations to prepare it for publication. 

            I played my Gibson electric guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll do a two session stretch of playing my Kramer electric. 

            I weighed 86.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I worked a little more in editing a video of the third appearance of Batgirl on the live action Batman TV series. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since March 21. 

            I took a siesta at the usual time of 14:30 but woke up twenty minutes later than usual. I took a bike ride but only went as far as Bathurst and Bloor. I stopped at Freshco on the way home to buy a jug of high acid vinegar and also picked up three packs of grape tomatoes. 

            Just after I got home I was about to hang my bike up when I saw my upstairs neighbour Shawn. He bought a copy of my book and I signed it but I spelled his name “Sean” and crossed it out, then when I wrote it again I didn’t put the “w” in, so I added it later and it was a pretty messy book signing. He told me that the landlord tried to charge him extra for his brother living in his place but that’s illegal. It turns out that when Raja changed the front door lock it wasn’t for the reasons he stated in the notice he’d slipped under everybody’s doors. No one had lost their key. It was just Raja being a dick about Shawn and his brother. Shawn is still studying to be a social worker but he’s at the apprenticeship phase now and working at a drop-in centre. He still has to turn in assignments but that will be finished soon. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:36. 

            I took another crack at converting the one clip of Lime Kilm Club Field Day that wouldn’t open in Movie Maker. I had converted it to WMV but it froze in Movie Maker. I tried reconverting it to WMV with both Total Video Converter and WinX video converter but that didn’t work. Finally I used WinX to convert it to AVI and that worked. I imported it to Movie Maker, then in the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I worked on organizing all my clips of Lime Kilm Club Field Day in some sort of logical order. 

            I had the usual tomato, cucumber, scallion and avocado salad with lime juice dressing and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching episodes 25 and 26 of The Adventures of Batman. 

            In the first story it’s Valentines Day and Catwoman sends Batman a cat with a valentine on its collar and a note offering a truce for the day. Robin likes the cat and names her Valentina. It rides with them in the Batmobile but the heroes don’t realize that Valentina is being tracked so that Catwoman can commit crimes when Batman and Robin are far away. Catwoman robs a mail truck but by the time Batman and Robin get there she is already performing another theft at the airport. They see her on the cloverleaf but she is able to evade their every attempt to catch her. Batman concludes that she is tracking them through Valentina. Suddenly Valentina sees a mouse and jumps out of the Catmobile. Robin follows her when she goes into a hollow log where it is dark and he sees she is glowing. He brings her back to Batman and they take her to police headquarters. There Batman determines that Valentina’s fur is covered with a chemical that gives off radio waves. They leave the cat with Commissioner Gordon to go to Spiffany’s to catch Catwoman. Gordon decides to go there too and asks his daughter Barbara to watch after Valentina. But Barbara wants to help catch Catwoman so she changes to Batgirl and takes Valentina with her on her Batgirl Cycle, not realizing she is tipping Catwoman off by doing so. When Batgirl gets there, Valentina leaves her to go into the Batmobile. Catwoman escapes and Batgirl follows her but Catwoman releases “cat claws”, which are claw shaped sharp objects she scatters on the road behind her that cause Batgirl to crash. Later the Batmobile starts to follow Catwoman and she releases more cat claws, which blow out all of the Batmobile’s tires. But Batman activates the Batmobile’s hover jets and they continue their pursuit. She puts a fence across the road but Batman activates the Bat Cutter to slice through. She tries to ram the Batmobile with her Catmobile but Batman increases the jets and rises above her. She climbs to the top of a building and Batman and Robin use their batapaults to shoot themselves to catch her but only manage to grab tentatively hold of the ledge while Catwoman whips their hands to try to cause them to loosen their grips and fall. Valentina sees Catwoman attacking her friends and climbs the building to attack Catwoman. It’s chasing her on the roof when Batgirl arrives and throws a bola that ties Catwoman’s legs. Batman and Robin take out the rest of Catwoman’s tomcats. 

            In the second story, Catwoman creates a fake Bat Signal and somehow knows where the exit tunnel of the Batcave is to trap the Batmobile in a net when it comes through. If she knew where the exit is wouldn’t she know how to get to the Batcave? She and her tomcats roll the Batmobile with Batman and Robin into the back of a van. But the Batmobile has a laser that breaks through the net and then they just reverse hard through the doors of the van. The Batmobile takes a shortcut and cuts the van off on the road. They take out her Tomcats but she stuns the heroes with her catnap gas bubbles and then steals the Batmobile. Later Batman deduces that Gotham Film Studios is Catwoman’s hideout. They take the Bat Copter after her. They climb to an upper window and come inside on the catwalk but Catwoman pushes a button that causes the catwalk to flip them down into a cage. She suspends Batman by his wrists from the ceiling while she traps Robin inside of a giant pinball in an enormous pinball machine. The red, coil-shaped bumper at the bottom will explode on contact, so he has to use body English to avoid it. Meanwhile a giant toy propellor with sharp blades is launched and so Batman must swing to avoid it. When he does, it cuts the rope he’s hanging by and he lands on the other end of a seesaw that Catwoman is absent mindedly standing on, causing her to fly and have to be caught by her tomcats. Batman frees Robin and they fight the tomcats with the usual giant objects being used as weapons. At one point Batman references Superman for the first time in this series, when he puts one of the tomcats on the propellor and launches it while saying “As Superman would say, up up and away!” Batman picks up a basketball and tells Robin he used to be a star player. He throws the ball up onto the pinball machine and sets off the explosive bumper. After that we just see Catwoman and her tomcats captured. 

            Some of the animation for these episodes was done by Norm McCabe, who in the 1930s became an animator for Leon Schlesinger, whose company produced Warner Brothers cartoons. He animated and co-directed several black and white Looney Tunes. His first was Goin to Heaven on a Mule. His last cartoon before he joined WWII was Tokio Jokio, which, like a lot of cartoons he did during the war would be considered racist today such as The Ducktators, and Confusions of a Nutzy Spy. After the war he illustrated Bozo the Clown books and records. In the early 60s he animated the cartoon parts of the Pink Panther movies as well the Pink Panther cartoons. In the late 60s he moved to Filmation where he animated shows like The Adventures of Batman. He worked on Fritz the Cat in 1972. He worked on several shows for different studios, such as Bobby’s World, Muppet Babies, The Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In the 80s he trained young animators at Warner Brothers.

April 1, 1995: I posed all day for the Alumni of OCA

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday I posed all day for the Alumni drawing session at the Ontario College of Art.

Robert Bentley

            On Sunday morning I continued to rework my translation of the fifth verse of “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian. I was trying to figure out what “gidouille” means and found that it’s another made up word by Alfred Jarry from his absurdist play Roi Ubu. Apparently it’s a spiralling symbol on the enormous stomach of King Ubu to represent his enormous appetite. There are two lines left to revise. 

            I worked out the chords for about half of the final joint scat in “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Gibson electric guitar during song practice and it stayed in tune up until just before the last two songs. 

            I weighed 86.45 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I filled a lot of holes on the east and north walls of the bathroom. I also filled the gaps between the walls and the underside of the top shelves and top of the lower shelf, and where all the shelf brackets meet the shelves and the walls. I filled an enormous hole under the upper shelf on the north wall. Even if I never sand and paint it looks better now than before. I still have the area under the lower shelf to do, plus the inside of the bathroom door, the door frame, and a little bit of the southern wall. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before lunch. I had the usual tomatoes with avocadoes and lemon juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but it was misting heavy enough that if I’d gone all the way downtown I would have gotten wet. So I only went as far as Ossington and Bloor. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos at 17:30, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since March 19. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I imported all of the clips I’d gathered from “Lime Kiln Club Field Day” the first movie with an all black cast. I put them all at the end of the timeline and edited out the credits and the people talking about the movie. The one clip that Total Video Converter wouldn’t convert and that Cloud Covert did convert, just froze and so I deleted it. I have about 3.5 minutes of the movie now and I’ll try to edit it some more tomorrow. 

            I compared the videos of my acoustic song practice performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on September 6 and 9. On September 6 I look friendlier and I played the E flat chord a little better. I compared September 22 to September 6 and although on September 6 I play the E flat a little better, on September 22 I looked and played better in general. 

            I had a tomato, avocado, cucumber, and scallion salad with lemon juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching episodes 23 and 24 of The Adventures of Batman. 

            In the first story, in the back room at Mother Appel’s Pies and Pastries, Simon the Pieman (who talks like WC Fields) is hosting a meeting with Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, and Mr. Freeze. Simon flips a switch and they all fall through a trap door into an oubliette. His crime wave has five stages: Lady fingers, marble cake, graham crackers, pound cake and Napoleon. At the Gotham World’s Fair, in the House of Jewels the Wayne Diamonds are on display by beautiful models. During the show a giant pie with candles is delivered. A model named Cookie suggests to the designer that the candles be lit. This produces a blinding light so Batman and the cops are helpless, then Simon pops out of the pie and they steal the diamonds. When Barbara Gordon hears of the crime she changes to Batgirl and heads out on her Batgirl Cycle. She guesses that a Mother Appel truck might hold the crooks and follows it until she gets a pie in the face that causes her bike to crash. Then the Batmobile follows them to a carnival midway where Simon’s men are taken out with various game instruments like balls and mallets. The cook crooks get away but the diamonds are saved. Later Batman learns that Pieman has pulled off three more robberies at the fairgrounds. He’s stolen marble busts from the Greek Pavilion, cracked the safe at the Graham Trust Exhibit, and robbed 20,000 Pounds from the British Museum exhibit. The Bat Computer determines that Pieman might next go after the toll house receipts at the entrance gate or the painting of Napoleon at the French Pavilion. Batman and Robin split up to stake out both possibilities. At the museum, Robin sees Mother Appel plotting to take the painting but she sees him and reveals herself to be Simon the Pieman. This is the first cross dressing Batman villain and he’s never appeared in a Batman comic. She knocks Robin out with gas from her rolling pin. Robin is placed under the grindstone of a windmill. When the wind comes up he will be crushed. The wind begins and the stone starts to turn. Appel is now Simon again and he doesn’t allow any of his cronies to follow an order until he says “Simon says”. Meanwhile Batman is caught in a traffic jam. Robin manages to reach him with his utility belt radio. Batman calls for Alfred who arrives above in the Bat Copter. Batman climbs up and then Alfred climbs down to wait in traffic. Since there is a fair going on there must be lots of people in that traffic jam with cameras. If they saw the Batmobile they would want to photograph it and then would get pictures of Alfred in the Batmobile. Some of those pictures would have to get published and someone who knows Bruce Wayne and his butler would logically put two and two together and figure out Batman’s secret. Batman arrives to save Robin in the nick of time. They head upstairs to nap Simon but it turns out that the windmill blades are actually the propeller of a craft that takes off. The Bat Copter follows but the crooks dump flour out as a screen and they escape. back at Simon’s hideout he discovers that his men have captured Batgirl. She is put in the chocolate tank and chocolate syrup begins to pour in. Far at the top of the tank is a small air vent. Batgirl releases luminous powder that rises up through the vent and is noticed by Batman and Robin as they fly over. They land on the roof to investigate and Batman goes inside what seems to be a deserted dessert factory. He falls into a giant vat of batter. Robin enters and falls into a vat of butter. Simon turns on the heat to melt the butter and powers the mixer to blend the batter. Simon and Cookie dance the Cakewalk. Batman jams the mixer mechanism with a thrown Bat Hook, then he swings out. He frees Robin who tells him they have Batgirl in the chocolate tank but how would he know that? On emptying Batgirl’s prison, Batman sprays the chocolate through a hose at Simon and Cookie. The final fight begins. Robin frees Bat Girl and she joins in. The heroes throw a lot of pies into crooks’ faces. Batman sends them all down into the same oubliette where his main villains are being held. 

            In the second story, at the annual dinner of the Gotham Antique Society, the entertainment is provided by Chapeau Fedora and his crew. He pulls several rabbits from his hat and they begin to steal the priceless silverware. Batman and Robin are called and arrive just as Chapeau, who is really the Mad Hatter, escapes in his Hatmobile (This version of the Hatter talks something like Mr. Magoo). Seeing the Batmobile behind him the Hatter releases a lot of his trained rabbits to successfully block the road and so the Hatter escapes. Later Batman figures correctly that Hatter is modeling his crimes after the tea party in Alice in Wonderland. Hatter’s next caper is to steal a rare tea pot. In the Gotham Gallery a rare Chinese tea pot is on display. Above on a balcony, Hatter pushes Humpty Dumpty over and it lands to break and emit tear gas. The gas mask wearing crooks steal the pot. Batman and Robin arrive just as Hatter is leaving. The Hatter shoots goo from his hat that sticks the heroes’ feet to the floor. They use their Bat torches to free themselves. They pursue the Hatmobile but this time their way is blocked by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Batman and Robin capture them and then take dirt samples from their shoes. Back at the Bat Cave the computer determines that there is only one locale with the same soil content. They head there in the Bat Copter and find a cave, which they investigate but fall down a trap door onto a revolving floor with walls studded with sword blades. Hatter speeds up the floor and the centrifugal force will pull them to the wall to be cut by the swords. Batman throws a Batarang with a rope that wraps around one of the swords with the other end at the hub of the turntable. It stops the wheel from turning. Batman and Robin escape and then easily capture Hatter and his gang. I felt very sleepy after dinner and decided to go to bed for a while. I think I slept for about an hour. 

            Some of the animation for these two Batman episodes was done by Robert Bentley, who started in 1929 as an assistant animator at the Van Beuren Animation Studio in New York. Later he worked for Les Elton on Simon the Monk. Then he became a full fledged animator of Porky Pig for Warner Brothers. He then worked on Gulliver’s Travels for Fleisher Studios. In the early 1940s he animated Andy Panda and Woody Woodpecker for Walter Lantz. In the 50s he worked at Hanna Barbera. In the 60s and 70s he worked for Filmation on Star Trek and Spiderman.

March 31, 1995: I posed for a drawing group where I didn't feel welcome

Thirty years ago today 

            On Friday I posed at the Ontario College of Art. In the evening I worked for Paul and Sarah’s drawing session. I was late and it was a weird night. I didn’t feel welcome or comfortable.

Bob Carr

            On Saturday morning I finished revising my translation of the fourth verse of “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian. There’s just one verse left and so I should have it done on Sunday. 

            I worked out the chords for Cassel’s tap dance music and his scat in “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg. All that’s left is the simple final scat by Distel and Cassel together and I should have that done tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar for the last of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my electric guitars. 

            I weighed 86.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my April phone plan. From there I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of green grapes, two packs of raspberries, bananas, four bags of avocadoes, fifteen vine ripened tomatoes, mouthwash, lemon dish detergent, two jugs of orange juice, and two jugs of Garden Cocktail. I had the feeling I was forgetting something but couldn’t remember what. Walking down every aisle usually helps fix that but this time I didn’t bother. When I got home I realized it was vinegar for cleaning my humidifier that I’d forgotten. I don’t need it until Tuesday and so I’ll pick it up from Freshco on Monday. 

            When I left the supermarket my brakes were squealing and grinding very loudly. After I hauled my trailer upstairs I took my bike over to Metro Cycle. Gordon said disk brakes do that when they get wet and one just has to shake the water out by riding the bike and slamming the brakes a few times. He took my bike for a spin and shook the squeaks out. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos at 14:30. I took a late siesta at 15:30 and woke up at around 17:15. It was too late to take a bike ride and it was raining anyway. 

            I weighed 86 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:48. 

            I downloaded all of the video clips I could find of the 1913 film Lime Kiln Club Field Day, which was the first movie ever made with an all black cast. 4K Downloader downloads everything in MP4, which won’t work in Movie Maker and so I used Total Video Converter to convert all but one to WMV. It rejected that one file as did my WinX converter but Cloud Convert online did the job. 

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on October 14 and 15. On October 14 I played it on my Martin acoustic guitar and the take at 31:30 wasn’t bad. On October 15 I played it on my Kramer electric guitar and the take at 8:15 in part B wasn’t bad but the E flat seemed off. I now have eleven acoustic and nine electric takes of the song to compare and to decide which was the best of each. 

            I had a tomato, avocado, cucumber and scallion salad with lemon juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching episodes 21 and 22 of The Adventures of Batman. 

            In the first story, a young stowaway on a freighter arriving in Gotham City is, except for his blond hair, a dead ringer for Dick Grayson. When the crew see him he jumps ship and swims to shore. On the docks he sees the Catwoman being chased by cops but doesn’t recognize her or them. All he knows is that a woman is in trouble and so he throws a knife to drop a net on the cops. Then the ship’s crew grab him, Catwoman decides to return the favour as she sends her men to take out the sailors. She learns that he has amnesia and then notices that he looks identical to Robin so she takes him on as a protegee (If she recognizes this boy as looking like Robin without a mask, why hasn’t she ever done the same with Dick Grayson?). She dyes his hair, dresses him as Robin and begins training him until she’s sure he can fight like Robin. Because she saved him he’ll do anything she asks. She plans to replace Batman’s Robin with her Robin. Catwoman stages a robbery to attract Batman and Robin to the scene. She lures Robin apart from Batman where he is pulled into the back of a van and knocked out. The van is driven away while the fake Robin pretends to be unconscious on the street. When Batman finds him he says he was hit from behind. Catwoman drives the van towards a construction pit and jumps out at the last minute, sending the van with Robin in it crashing below. The fake Robin pretends to faint and so Batman takes him home where he is put to bed and cared for by Alfred. Meanwhile the real Robin is inside the van that is buried in rubble. He manages to push open the back doors only to have more rubble rush into the van. The fake Robin pretends to have amnesia and asks Alfred to show him the way to the Bat Cave. When Batman sees him in the Bat Cave he orders him back to bed while Batman goes after Catwoman solo and thwarts her robbery of a fashion house. Meanwhile Robin continues to try to dig his way out. The fake Robin tries to call Catwoman to tell her Batman’s secret but Alfred stops him. He says the real Dick would not disobey an order. The fake Robin steals the Bat Copter and awkwardly flies it to try and reach Catwoman. Meanwhile the real Robin finally reaches the surface and makes his way to the Batcave. He takes a mini helicopter after the Bat Copter. The Bat Copter crashes and the real Robin confronts the fake one. They fight but the real Robin is weak from digging. Catwoman arrives and the fake Robin runs to her to tell her Batman’s secret but one of Catwoman’s men thinks he’s the real Robin and throws a rock that hits him in the head. The real Robin reunites with Batman. When the fake Robin regains consciousness he remembers that his real name is Christopher Collins and that he ran away from home to seek adventure. But now he doesn’t remember anything that has occurred since before he met Catwoman and so he’s forgotten Batman’s secret. 

            In the second story, the Maharaja of Taipoor is about to land at Gotham airport. When the Maharaja’s plane lands, a jeep drives in front of it with a sign on the back reading “Follow Me”. The plane taxis after the jeep to a remote part of the runway. As soon as the Maharaja emerges from the plane he is abducted and transferred to Mr. Freeze’s black plane. The Maharaja thinks they are shooting a gangster movie and is enjoying being part of it. Batman and Robin take to the air in the Batplane but they are looking for a black plane. Freeze covers his plane in frost until it turns white, then doubles back to Gotham airport. Freeze’s plane lands and the Maharaja is transferred to a limo. The limo drives into the back of a frozen food truck. Batman and Robin see the truck from the Bat Copter and Batman is lowered to the ground in a small Batcar to go after it. Freeze ices the road behind the truck, causing Batman difficulties. Then freeze turns the fog bank solid so Batman has to eject before the Batcar crashes into it. The ladder from the Batcopter is still there and he returns above. The truck goes to Freeze’s hideout at the old ice house. Freeze encases the Maharaja in ice. Batman and Robin descend to the roof on the ladder. They take out Freeze’s men easily and Freeze’s cold gun has no effect because they have the thermal power turned up on their utility belts. Freeze is arrested. The whole reason for all of this was for Freeze to get the Maharaja’s crown jewels but the Maharaja reveals he never goes out wearing his real jewels. 

            Some of the animation for these episodes was done by Bob Carr, who got his BA from the California Institute of the Arts. After graduation he became an assistant animator at Walt Disney. After that he worked freelance, animating for Hanna Barbera, Filmation, and Ralph Bakshi. He also did book illustrations for McGraw Hill. For Filmation he worked on Superman, Batman, Super Friends, and Scooby Doo. For Hanna Barbera he worked on Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, Quick Draw McGraw, The Harlem Globetrotters and Space Ghost. For Bakshi he worked on American Pop.