Victor Buono

            On Friday morning in my Christian’s Translations blog I finished editing “Come to Cannes if You Can”, my translation of “A Cannes cet été” by Boris Vian. I just need to add a video or audio file from YouTube before publication and I’ll do that tomorrow. 

            I published “No More Romance”, my translation of “Amour jamais”) by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the lyrics on Facebook. There are five more Gainsbourg songs left in my project to translate his oeuvre from 1958 to when he died in 1991. I memorized the first verse of his song “Ardoise” (Shingles), which seems to be about being in love with a cosmic being who works on the roof of the world. 

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

            I weighed 86.55 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since December 9. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos before lunch. That’s the most I’ve tipped the scales in the early afternoon since December 9. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back and broke in my new Pajar boots. They do fit and they are quite comfortable. 

            I weighed 86 kilos at 18:00. That’s the highest it’s been in the evening since December 13. 

            I continued to work on my review of Deadpool and Wolverine and now I was two days behind on my journal. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last piece of pork tenderloin while watching season 1, episodes 27 and 28 of Batman. 

            In episode 27, a golden idol appears in the park. From inside, a woman’s voice announces that the king of the Nile will rise from the tomb today to claim his kingdom of Gotham City. All who oppose him will be killed. Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara are discussing it and O’Hara suggests it might be a publicity stunt by the Gotham Museum. Since Bruce Wayne is one of the directors of the museum, Gordon calls him. Bruce says the museum has no part in it. Gordon then concludes there is something criminal behind the idol and he calls Batman. When the dynamic dup get to police headquarters batman tells Gordon that only King Tut could be behind this. Batman reminds everyone that Tut was once a professor at Yale who after a head injury came to believe he was King Tut and that Gotham City is the reincarnation of ancient Thebes. Batman and Robin go to investigate the idol. Tut’s headquarters is the abandoned Egyptian pavilion of the Gotham Expo. In the park Batman says the idol is a good imitation of the Sphinx of Giza but it looks nothing like it. It has nothing a lion in it. It has goat horns and antelope horns and basically looks half human and half antelope. The “sphinx” has a handle that Batman suspects is a booby trap and so he pulls it with the Bat Rope and it projects a knife. They see a woman dressed in 14th Century Egyptian costume and they confront her. She throws down a fake asp and it’s a smoke bomb that allows her to get away. Then a bunch of Tut’s men attack and the first big group fight with the written sound effects occurs. After a while Tut’s men run away. Batman thinks that Tut’s target is the museum. Later Bruce is giving the press a guided tour of the Egyptian exhibit and he shows then the sarcophagus of the mummy of an Egyptian king. he opens it and the bandaged figure’s eyes can be seen to open. It then falls forward and they see the mummy is alive. A doctor is called, then an ambulance comes to take the resurrected king to the hospital. Bruce accompanies it. When Bruce is alone with Tut and the ambulance drivers one of the ambulance drivers uses a chemical to knock Bruce out. Tut is freed from his mummy costume than then Bruce is strapped to the gurney and taken in the ambulance. Tut takes over the voice of the “sphinx” in the park and announces that he has abducted Bruce Wayne and he will be held until his demands are met. Bruce is awake in the back of the ambulance and the gurney is rolling around as the vehicle twists and turns at high speed up a mountain road. Bruce shifts his body weight to push the gurney towards the back doors. They fly open and the gurney falls out the back to begin rolling down the mountain road with Bruce strapped to it. Ahead is a sign that the road is under construction and that there is a 100 meter drop. He crashes through sign and is headed for the cliff. And that’s literally the cliffhanger.

            In episode 28, Bruce is still strapped to the gurney after it crashes through the caution sign and rolls toward the cliff. He goes over but frees his arms just in time to catch hold of a bar. Tut is watching the news when batman announces that he is flying to Alexandria, Egypt the antiquarian library there to learn the nature of Tut’s cult so he can more effectively combat it and Tut’s madness. Tut is angry that Batman called him a madman but Nefertiti says it’s kind of true so Tut has her thrown in the dungeon. Batman has no intention of going to Egypt but he knows that while Tut thinks Batman is gone he will try again to kidnap Bruce Wayne. Batman has a lifelike dummy of Bruce Wayne built and lays it out on the couch as if asleep. One of Tut’s men arrives disguised as a cop saying he was sent to guard Wayne. The cop uses knockout gas on Alfred and then on what he thinks is the sleeping Bruce Wayne. The fake cop leaves and then Batman replaces the Bruce Wayne dummy on the couch, fully covered by a blanket. Then two of Tut’s men enter the house to carry what they think is Bruce Wayne away. But en route Tut’s men uncover their captive to discover he is really Batman. They knock him out and get rid of the transmitter do now Robin can’t track Batman. Batman and Nefertiti are trapped in giant vases while one by one little pebbles are continuously dropped on their heads with the intention of driving them mad. It has already worked for Nefertiti who now says nothing but “Tick tock” over and over. Supposedly 1000 pebbles will do the trick. Meanwhile, without a transmitter to track Batman, Robin and Alfred have had to use extrapolation of Batman’s coordinates from before they lost his signal. They figure out that Tut’s hideout is in the Egyptian pavilion. Tut has Batman and Nefertiti brought to his throne room and now believing they are his mindless slaves commands them to dance to Batman theme music. Batman does his Batusi until he starts beating up Tut’s men. Then Robin arrives to help out. Batman says he kept his reason by reciting the multiplication tables backwards. Tut escapes and steals the Batmobile and so Batman, Robin and Alfred follow in the Tut Truck. Tut uses the Batmobile smoke screen to curb their pursuit. Batman uses the utility belt transmitter to access the Batmobile remote control circuit via the Batcave relay leak. Batman makes voice contact with the Bat Computer. He tells it to fire the ejection seat but it doesn’t work. But then Tut comes back and raises the Bat Ray to use against them. However when he presses the Bat Ray button the ejector seat activates and Tut is shot high in the air and then crashes to the ground. Tut is taken to Gordon’s office and laid out on the couch. He wakes up and has reverted back to his original personality from just before the head injury that made him believe he was king Tut. 

            King Tut was played by Victor Buono, who in his teens began performing on local radio and TV stations in San Diego. At 18 he joined the Globe Theatre Players and honed his craft in many Shakespearean works. His TV debut was on Sea Hunt. His film debut was in The Story of Ruth. He co-starred in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. He starred in The Strangler, The Mad Butcher, He co-starred in The Evil, in which he played the Devil. He played Count Carlos Manzeppi on The Wild Wild West. He played Jim’s father on Taxi. He played Mr. Schubert on Man from Atlantis. His comedy album Heavy included Fat Man’s Prayer, which he performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He played much older characters than himself and died at 43.