Dee Hartford

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Rue Traversière” (Traversière Street) by Boris Vian. 

            I revised my translation of “Ardoise” (Shingles) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in English. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog to begin preparing it for publication. 

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

            After song practice I threw on a scarf, my hoody, my motorcycle jacket and my Blundies and quickly rode to Parkdale Legal to get my Notice of Rent Increase copied. I have a telephone appointment on Monday just to find out if the rent increase is on the up and up. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t meet someone in person. I suspect this is another holdover from the pandemic. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since December 26. 

            I was a day behind on my journal and so I spent some time before lunch trying to catch up. 

            I weighed 85.55 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on my way back. I bought five bags of green grapes, a pack of raspberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a carton of spoon sized shredded wheat, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, sea salt, a jar of salsa, and a pack of Sponge Towels. I wanted to do a price match on the grapes with the Metro price, but my phone battery was too low and my phone shut down. I don’t know why since it was at 60% earlier. I mentioned it to the cashier and she said she’d find the match but the customer behind me said she had it saved on her phone and was kind enough to show it to the cashier. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 19:00. 

            I worked on getting caught up on my journal but was still behind at suppertime. 

            I sliced a hunk of peameal bacon into four steaks and grilled them. I had two with a potato and gravy while watching season 2, episodes 19 and 20 of Batman.

            In episode 19, the Miss Galaxy contest is down to five contestants and one of them is Miss Iceland. Suddenly two of Mr. Freeze’s henchmen enter the dressing room and throw a net over Miss Iceland to carry her off. Commissioner Gordon learns of this and starts to call Batman but Mr. Freeze calls to him from behind the grid of the air conditioning system, then shoots him and Chief O’Hara with his cold gun. The entire office looks like it is caught in a blizzard. Bruce picks up the Batphone but all he hears is “Help!” and then silence. Batman and Robin head for police headquarters. Gordon’s office door is frozen and so Batman has to use an explosive to break through. Batman and Robin help Gordon and O’Hara recover their circulation. Meanwhile Mr. Freeze tells Miss Iceland he is going to lower her body temperature so that she will learn to love him. In Gordon’s office reporters have arrived, the most outspoken being Nellie Majors of the Gotham City Herald. Suddenly a man delivers a block of green ice with a note reading “To Batman for incidental crime expenses”. Inside is cold hard cash and Nellie asks if it’s a reward for not revealing what happened. Nellie writes the story that becomes the headline: “Is Batman Being Bribed?” Mr. Freeze’s headquarters is in an abandoned cold storage plant. Miss Iceland is in a cage and tells Freeze she hates him. He tells her that once her body temperature is lowered to minus 50 she will begin to love him. Two of Freeze’s men arrive dressed as Batman and Robin. Meanwhile the real Batman and Robin can’t pursue Freeze right now because they have to attend Aunt Harriet’s garden party as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. When the party is underway Mr. Freeze arrives and tells everyone not to move. A police guard tries to stop him but gets frozen. All of the waiters turn out to be Freeze’s men and they begin robbing the guests of their jewellery and cash. Freeze forces all of the guests to step into the pool and then he freezes the water. Suddenly the fake Batman and Robin arrive and pretend to challenge Freeze. They fight the waiters but deliberately take falls and are easily beaten. Freeze leaves with the treasure and the fake Batman and Robin leave without helping the guests. Alfred arrives and turns on the pool heater. The Bat computer suggests that a likely hideout for Freeze is the Frosty Freezie Factory. They go there where they are attacked by Freeze’s men. After the thugs are defeated Mr. Freeze opens fire on Batman and Robin with his freeze gun. Next we see Batman and Robin each submerged in a giant Frosty Freezie treat. Freeze and his men leave them there to I guess freeze to death and that’s the cliffhanger. 

            In episode 20, Bat man and Robin are trapped in giant Frosty Freezie treats that really look more like coloured soap suds but for the sake of the story they are freezing. The heroes feel with their feet for valves or blowers that might inject the flavour or colour into the ice. They each find a spigot which Batman says might be the heat exhaust valve. He says they need to get their feet to recycle the exhaust in the heating unit of the containers to reverse the process of refrigeration and the heat transfer will melt their way out. It doesn’t sound plausible at all and they know it because they don’t show Batman and Robin escaping. They just present Batman’s pseudo technical logic and later show they’ve escaped. Mr. Freeze promises Miss Iceland that when her body temperature lowers to his she will become Mrs. Freeze. She says not if she lives to be a hundred below zero. A front page faked photo shows Batman wearing Commissioner Gordon’s wristwatch that was stolen at the garden party. Batman says they have to stop being Batman and Robin for a while in order to lull Freeze into a false sense of security. Freeze threatens to bury Gotham in ice if he is not paid a billion dollars and to prove he is serious he has already frozen the city’s water system. The city reservoir is frozen solid. Traffic is jammed for ten kilometers as people are trying to evacuate the city. Freeze’s plan to lower Miss Iceland’s temperature slowly is not working as planned and so now he plans to freeze her body solid. Bruce and Dick change to Batman and Robin and head for Freeze’s hideout and climb to the roof where they damage Freeze’s TV aerial causing one of his men to investigate. They knock him out and head downstairs. Freeze is very surprised to see them alive but has his men attack. They beat the men but wind up trapped in the refrigerated cell next to Miss Iceland, who is now encased in a block of ice. Freeze fires his cold gun at Batman and Robin but it has no effect because they processed their costumes with a special Bat anti-freeze activating solution. They blow open their cage and begin fighting. They beat the thugs and then use an ice pick to free Miss Iceland who somehow does not have hypothermia. Mr. Freeze’s refrigerating collar is damaged and he is dying so Batman and Robin save him by placing him in the block of ice from which they rescued Miss Iceland. That night Batman and Robin attend the Miss Galaxy pageant because such contests are a middle North American institution. 

            This story really deteriorated in the end. For some reason the writers abandoned the most interesting plot element, which was idea that if Miss Iceland’s body temperature was lowered it would make her love Mr. Freeze. It would have been far more interesting if Freeze’s romantic plan was successful and then was reversed somehow later. I suspect they planned on completing that particular outcome but ran into time problems wrapping up the story. 

            Miss Iceland was played by Dee Hartford, who started as a Vogue model in the late 1940s. Her screen debut was a small part in the Groucho Marx film A Girl in Every Port in 1952. She played Verda the android and Nancy Pi Squared in Lost In Space. In 1972 she married rich and dropped out of the entertainment industry. Her little sister was married to Groucho Marx. She played Helen of Troy in an episode of Time Tunnel.