Tom Golden

            On Sunday morning my cold was a little worse. I finished transcribing the first set of chords that I found for “A Cannes cet été” (To Cannes This Summer) by Boris Vian from Ultimate Guitar. I’ll search for more tomorrow. 

            I finished memorizing “Variations sur le même t'aime” (Variations on the Usual I Love You) by Serge Gainsbourg. It would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t. I searched for the chords but no one has posted them and so I worked out the first few for the intro. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleared the upper shelf in the bathroom and washed the walls in that area and the shelves themselves. The shelves were very dusty from the sanding I did a couple of months ago. I washed the area above the mirror. The lightbulbs were also very dusty. The mirror came off so I took the opportunity to wash behind it before remounting it. I’ll wash the dust from the lower shelf and the rest of the eastern wall on Wednesday. 

            I weighed 86.65 kilos before lunch. I had Cheez-It crackers and five-year-old cheddar with a glass of low sugar iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. When I have a cold the fresh air and exercise feels good. 

            I weighed 85.55 kilos at 18:24. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:05. 

            I worked some more on the first frame of the second animated rainbow wave for the video I’m creating for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues”. I just have to fill the spaces between each rainbow. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my October 1 song practice it took a while to import the audio for that date because after recording it I hadn’t noticed that Audacity saved it in my Christian and the Lions folder instead of my Sound Recordings folder. I placed the video and the audio in their respective timelines. The audio is behind so I shaved off some of it before dinner. I’ll probably have them lined up on Monday. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with Italian sausage pasta sauce, my last four fish fillets, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episodes 76 to 80 of Batfink. 

            In episode 76, Hugo Agogo is about to steal the world’s rarest coin from a museum when another thief beats him to it. Hugo trips him so he is captured and Hugo is praised as a hero. Hugo gets the idea to make a hero costume for himself and engineer crimes that he steps in to stop. He throws a stick of dynamite into a jewellery store then throws himself on it to put out the fuse. The police chief moves the hotline to Hugo’s lab and Karate decides to quit Batfink to become Hugo’s assistant. Batfink is depressed and out of work. He collapses and ends up in the hospital. Hugo brings a bomb to kill Batfink while he’s down and Karate realizes Hugo is still evil. Batfink anticipated this and was just pretending to be down and out. He saves Karate and puts Hugo in jail.

            In episode 77, a mechanical Trojan horse with Hugo driving it from inside robs the treasury. Batfink makes a roadblock with the Batillac to stop the horse. The horse picks up the car in its mouth and drops it over a cliff. Batfink’s super sonar opens the gate of the dam so they land in water. Hugo is arrested. 

            This episode was co-animated by Tom Golden, who started working at Fleischer in 1935 on “Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad. His first credited animation was “Puttin on the Act” in 1940. He co-wrote the Popeye story Robin Hood-Winked. He created the spinning star opening for all the colour Popeye cartoons. The star spins forward and then Popeye’s smiling face pops out to toot his pipe twice. 

            In episode 78, the city panics when a flying saucer lands. Its little green occupant goes straight to a bank and robs it. Nobody can figure out what a person from outer space would want with money. Batfink suspects that the thief is not an alien at all. Hugo anticipates Batfink’s suspicions and to throw him off drops a replica of himself from the saucer. Batfink flies to save it but the saucer shoots a ray to turn the dummy into a tiny, shriveled blob. The saucer tries to get away but Batfink catches it, unmasking Hugo. 

            In episode 79, it’s Batfink’s birthday and Hugo sends him a box containing a hand grenade. The bow is tied around the pin so that when Batfink unties it he will set off an explosion. But Batfink shields himself and Karate with his wings of steel. Hugo asks how he knew the present was from him and Karate explains it’s because he gave him the same thing last year. Hugo throws three sticks of dynamite and causes a cave-in in Batfink’s cave. The police come and save the heroes before they run out of air. Batfink and Karate go to Hugo’s lab to confront him but Hugo drops a seven layer birthday cake on them made from four layers of cement and three layers of lead. The candle is a stick of dynamite. Karate has a jack in his utility sleeve and so Batfink uses it to get free and throw the dynamite after Hugo. 

            In episode 80, the world’s greatest sculptor’s latest masterpiece is locked in a safe but Buster the Ruster arrives with his rust gun and rusts a hole in the safe to steal the bust of General Custer. Batfink’s super sonar finds Buster’s hideout but Buster hides below and rusts a trap door for the heroes to fall through. Buster tries to rust Batfink’s wings of steel but it turns out they are stainless steel. Buster causes a large weight to fall on their heads. They are chained together and Buster rusts the floor under them so they will fall into a shark tank. But the piece of the floor they fall on gets stuck in the shark’s mouth so it can’t bite. Batfink cuts the chains with his wing, then arrests Buster.