On Thursday morning I memorized the third verse of “Le petit Lauriston”. Each verse is harder than the other because more and more nasty gifts for the French Gestapo are added to the list.
I worked out the chords for the third and fourth verses and the first two and a half lines of the chorus of “La main du masseur” (The Hand of the Masseur) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think that once the chords for the chorus are established the next four verses and chorus will follow the same pattern as the first.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar for the second of two sessions and it sounded good. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer electric. I have to recharge my foot switch before then because it’s stopped lighting up and on the left switch that I use for reverb I get nothing right now.
I weighed 86.8 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I got caught up on my journal and then I searched to find out who I could vote for in Parkdale. In previous elections there were several non-mainstream party affiliated choices. I guess since this was a snap election the smaller potential candidates didn’t have time to prepare to run. There’s a homeless guy that ran last time and several times before but he wasn’t on the ballot so I decided there was no alternative but to vote Green.
I weighed 86.95 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon as I headed out for my bike ride I went to the Parkdale School to vote. I ran into my upstairs neighbour Sean. It was not only his first time voting in Canada but he’d never even voted when he came of age in Jamaica so I congratulated him. He said that as a social worker he has a responsibility to try to get rid of Doug Ford. I thought that Sean had moved out and gave his place to his brother but it turns out his brother is only there temporarily. Sean wants to buy a copy of my book and offered to do it by E-transfer but I said he can get it when he moves back in.
I rode to Ossington and Bloor and on the way home I stopped at Freshco. Their green grapes were super cheap but only five bags had firm ones. I also got a pack of raspberries, bananas, a rack of pork ribs, a jar of marinara sauce, and a jar of salsa.
I weighed 86.9 kilos at 18:37.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:38.
In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I finished cutting and shuffling bits from the BBC documentary “When Hippies Ruled the World” sufficiently to have enough material to cover until the end of the instrumental. I started to look for video clips that could correspond to my line “Mom and dad want baby’s freedom”. Nothing turned up of interest and so next I’ll try “people pretending to be hippies in 60s TV and film”.
I had a potato with gravy and some pork ribs while watching season 3, episode 14 of Batman.
At a fashion function attended by Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara, real life fashion designer Rudi Gernreich is naming the ten best dressed women in Gotham City. When he finishes the list he says he has created a new category, that of the best dressed crime fightress in Gotham. The first annual Batty Award is presented to Batgirl. Gordon and O’Hara accept the award on Batgirl’s behalf. Suddenly Catwoman arrives and says it’s ridiculous because Batgirl can’t be the best anything when Catwoman is around (Catwoman seems to have become a version of the evil queen with Batgirl representing Snow White). Then she accuses the well-coiffed women at the table of knowing nothing about beauty. Catwoman throws a Bad hair bomb and causes every woman at the table to have permanently out of control tresses. The women scream in horror while Catwoman laughs and leaves. Somehow the bomb was gender specific and had no effect on the men at the table. Gordon calls Batman, and Barbara Gordon is in the office when he and Robin arrive. She suggests that they catch Catwoman by using Batgirl as bait. Batman advises her to leave the crimefighting to the men. Meanwhile in an abandoned loft in the fashion district, Catwoman has her headquarters where she makes plans to steal the single most valuable piece of clothing on Earth: the Golden Fleece. It’s a gown made of 24-karat gold cloth and it belongs to Queen Bess of Belgravia. There is no market for the gown but if they take it Queen Bess will pay a fortune to get it back. Catwoman sends a telegram to Commissioner Gordon outlining her plan. When Barbara learns of Catwoman’s scheme she changes to Batgirl and heads out on her Batgirl Cycle to stop her. Meanwhile in the showroom of Fashionation Magazine Rudi is giving a show of his own designs. Catwoman arrives to steal all the one-of-a-kind clothes so she will be the best dressed woman in the world. But Batman comes and tells her that where she’s going there are no fashion shows (But that’s not exactly true. There have been and continue to be fashion shows in some women’s prisons). While Batman and Robin are confronting Catwoman, her men catch them in a net. But Batgirl arrives and frees them. Catwoman runs into the models’ dressing room where Batman and Robin are afraid to go, but Batgirl isn’t. However, as soon as Batgirl steps in she is ambushed by Catwoman and rendered unconscious by her knockout spray. After waiting for a few minutes Batman and Robin close their eyes and comically venture into the forbidden dressing room. The models tell them that Catwoman kidnapped Batgirl and went out the back door. Batman and Robin stumble around with their eyes closed until the models let them know that they are fully clothed. Later Batgirl is tied up in Catwoman’s lair. Catwoman says that Batman and Robin are scheduled to meet Queen Bess at exactly 15:00 but she lets them know that at precise hour Batgirl will be killed in her hideout. Batgirl is tied to a table where a pattern cutter is set up to cut her body into the pattern of a pinafore. Meanwhile Batman figures out that Catwoman plans to steal the Golden Fleece. Catwoman calls Gordon’s office to tell Batman the address of her hideout so he can save Batgirl. Batman calls Alfred and tells him to disguise himself to go and save Batgirl while he and Robin deal with Catwoman at the Belgravian Embassy. At the Embassy Queen Bess is preparing for her guests when Catwoman arrives and knocks her out. At Catwoman’s hideout the blade is about to begin slicing into Batgirl’s head when Alfred rushes in disguised as a hippy and shuts off the machine. He frees Batgirl but tells her he did it because he’s the janitor there and didn’t want to have to clean up the mess if the blade had done its work. She tells him he looks familiar but he says he’s the world’s oldest hippy. Gordon and O’Hara arrive at the embassy and find Catwoman wearing the Golden Fleece while sitting on Queen Bess’s throne. Batman and Robin arrive and shortly after, so does Batgirl. Catwoman orders her men to attack and the final battle takes place, with Batgirl joining in. Of course the heroes win and Catwoman is arrested.
In this third and final season Catwoman is played by the great Eartha Kitt. I love Eartha Kitt but she did not make a great Catwoman. She just didn’t have the comic timing of Julie Newmar and the writers made her entirely sinister to a disturbing degree. Newmar’s Catwoman is also a murderer but she’s funny while being one. Also conspicuously absent is the sexual attraction that underscores the relationship between Newmar’s Catwoman and Adam West’s Batman. Obviously it’s because Eartha Kitt is black and the racist producers thought the racist audience would be turned off my an interracial romance.
Rudi Gernreich played himself. He spent much of his childhood in the dress shop of his aunt and uncle in Austria, making sketches. When the Nazis took over Austria, Rudi’s mother escaped with him to the States. He learned about anatomy in his first job, which was washing corpses to prepare them for autopsies. He joined Lester Horton’s modern dance company as both a dancer and designer. He said dancing made him aware of how clothing works in motion. He started his own line of clothing in 1951. In 1952 he introduced the first swim suit without a built in bra. In 1964 he created the monokini, the first topless swimsuit. In 1966 his designs were featured in the first fashion video: Basic Black. He broke fashion’s unwritten rule and began selling his name designs to chain stores. He designed the Moonbase Alpha costumes for the TV series Space 1999. He was a pioneer at using plastic and vinyl in clothing. He invented the transparent bra and the thong. He was also a gourmet cook.
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