Batgirl

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the third verse of “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s just one verse left to nail down. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice, it only needed to be tuned once and it sounded good. Tomorrow I begin a two session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleaned the old warm mist humidifier. In a few weeks I can put the humidifiers away until fall and free up my Tuesdays. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On the way I felt my knee was bending more than before. I stopped and put both feet on the pavement and could almost touch my heels, while before it was just the balls of my feet on the ground. Obviously the seat had dropped. I dug in my backpack for the Allen key and raised and tightened the seat. But later I had to do it again and later still again. When I got back I took it to Mark at Metro Cycle. I established the seat level I wanted and he tightened it with a torque wrench. He said it should stay in place now. 

            I weighed 86.25 kilos at 18:40, which is the least I’ve weighed in the evening since February 9. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:15. 

            I imported Blackboard Jungle to Movie Maker and copied it to the end of the timeline of my Seven Shades of Blues project. I started editing out the parts that I don’t want, which is most of the movie. There’s a segment at the beginning of the middle aged lead actor watching boys swing-dancing with each other and I think I can use that. 

            I had a potato and steamed peas with gravy while watching the series finale of the 60s Batman TV show. 

            In Minerva’s Mineral Spa Bruce Wayne is getting a massage. He is offered one of Minerva’s eggplant jelly scalp massages but doesn’t have time. However millionaire William Dozier does have time. Minerva places what looks like a hair dryer over his head and then flicks a secret switch on a machine labeled “Deepest Secret Extractor”. Then she picks up a receiver and hears Dozier’s thoughts turned to audio and learns that he keeps $2 million worth of negotiable securities in his grandfather’s clock. Later television producer Howie Horwitz is getting the same treatment. Minerva asks how he became a rich television producer and he says, “By never hiring method actors”. She learns from her machine that he keeps his loot inside his TV set. As Bruce is leaving, Minerva learns about the diamonds in the Wayne Foundation vault and steals his watch so she can get him to come back for it. Later Commissioner Gordon learns that Dozier’s securities and Horwitz’s cash have been stolen from hiding places no one knew about. Meanwhile Minerva calls Bruce to tell him she’s found his watch and if he comes for it himself she has a treat for him. Then Bruce as Batman talks with Gordon and learns of the thefts. He observes that all of the victims are customers of Minerva. Bruce goes to get his watch and Minerva gives him the eggplant jelly scalp massage on the house to make up for the watch mistake. Minerva’s machine extracts the combination to the Wayne Foundation safe from Bruce’s mind. Bruce leaves but returns shortly afterwards as Batman accompanied by Robin. They ask for a full treatment. Minerva tells her man Atlas to put the heroes in the pressurizer while she goes to the Wayne Foundation. Batman and Robin are forced into the pressurizer and the heat is turned up. Meanwhile Minerva opens the Wayne Foundation safe and steals all of the diamonds. She then resets the dial so that it will take two or three weeks for them to open the safe and discover the diamonds are gone. When she returns to her spa and sees that Batman and Robin are gone she thinks that they have been pressurized to nothing. But we see Batman and Robin driving back to the Batcave, having been saved by the steam neutralizing Bat Pellets in Batman’s utility belt. Minerva is brought in for questioning but she convinces Gordon that it was all a misunderstanding that her men tried to kill Batman and Robin. Batman asks where she picked up her three male assistants. She answers, “I don’t pick up men. Men pick me up. Don’t be so square”. She says she has an appointment with her friend Lord Easystreet, the richest man in the world and so she leaves, just as Barbara Gordon arrives. Batman says he knows a person who looks like Lord Easystreet. He needs someone to detain the real Easystreet so Batman’s friend can take his place. Barbara says she knows Easystreet to be an avid birdwatcher and she happens to have found a book on the vesper sparrow that he was looking for at the library earlier that day. Batman’s friend who resembles Lord Easystreet is Alfred and he arrives at the spa. Meanwhile Batman opens the Wayne Foundation vault with his Three seconds Flat Bat Vault Combination Unscrambler. Batman and Robin rush to the spa to stop Minerva from extracting any Bat Secrets from Alfred. Batgirl does the same. The fact that Alfred is not Lord Easystreet is extracted by the machine and it is about to tell Minerva who he really is when Batgirl arrives to disconnect him. Batgirl struggles with Minerva, then Alfred tries to help her but they are both captured by Minerva’s men and placed in the pressurizer. Shortly Batman and Robin enter the room and the final fight takes place. Robin frees Batgirl and Alfred and they both join in the fight. When it is all over Batgirl jokingly imitates Minerva and calls Alfred, “Daaahhhhrling!” Minerva is trying to escape when the police arrive to arrest her. She takes it all very positively and says “How divine! I’m going to make Gotham State prison the world’s most elegant spa!” Commissioner Gordon gentlemanly offers her his arm as he escorts her into custody. 

            The last lines of the Batman TV series come when Robin asks, “What happened to Batgirl?” and Batman answers, “Who knows Robin? Who ever knows?” It’s a good question. This is the last time Batgirl appears onscreen as a live action character for the next 29 years until Alicia Silverstone plays her in the Batman and Robin movie. There is however no comparison, as Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl has never been matched, even though she was disappointingly not allowed to fight with her fists. I think her skin tight costume was somewhat inspired by that of Emma Peel of the Avengers but Mrs. Peel was at least allowed karate chops. All Batgirl could do was straight kicks and hitting her opponents with props. Yvonne Craig’s fighting style was appealingly unique though in that she used a lot of ballet moves rather than anything that resembled martial arts. 

            The first Batgirl in the comics was basically a female version of Robin, named Bette Kane, created in 1961 to dispel the suspicions by critics that Robin and Batman were in a gay relationship. Her character was not popular and didn’t last. 

            But the Batgirl created in 1967 for the Batman TV series became very popular in the comics as well. I like her because she doesn’t have Batman’s dark baggage and just seems to want to fight crime out of a combination of a sense of justice and a sense of adventure. 

               

              In a controversial decision in the comics, Batgirl officially retired in 1988. But then in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, the joker shoots and cripples Barbara Gordon, causing her to be wheelchair bound from then on. Yvonne Craig found it very upsetting that the beloved character she portrayed would be so cruelly dismissed. Alan Moore regretted having written batgirl’s downfall but he said that when he pitched the idea to the DC’s editor in chief at the time Len Wein, he said, “Go ahead and cripple the bitch.”