Dick Kallman

            On Saturday morning for the first time in the 28 years I’ve lived here I locked myself out of the bathroom. I had to remove the left vertical moulding and tear out the strike plate, resulting in the deadbolt breaking off as well. There’s no reason for me to have a lock on my bathroom door anyway. That took about twenty minutes out of my morning. 

            I finished working out the chords for “La main du masseur” (The Hand of the Masseur) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through playing and singing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing my translation and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. It was in tune when I started and still in tune at the end. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            The doorknobs on my bathroom door have been loose since I moved in here 28 years ago. I made one more effort to tighten then then decided to remove them. I undid a couple of screws but that did nothing and since I couldn’t see anything else to unscrew I hit one of the knobs with a hammer until it broke off and I could remove the other knob. Now there’s a hole to fill and I have to look for new knobs or handles. 

            Around midday I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my March phone plan. Then I rode to No Frills where the grapes were all to soft and there were no raspberries other than expensive organic ones. I bought some bananas, a pack of chicken drumsticks, dental floss, two liters of skim milk, two liters of soy milk, a container of skyr, a jar of natural peanut butter, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s barbecue flavoured chips. In front of my place the bike stand has been buried in a snow bank for the last three weeks but now it’s half uncovered. I decided to lay my bike on its side to lock it to the post but should have unhooked my trailer first because I couldn’t undo it from that twisted position. I had to prop the bike upright again so I could unhook it and then lay the bike back down while I took the trailer upstairs.

            I weighed 86.6 kilos at 14:48, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since last Saturday. 

            I took a siesta from 15:30 to 17:17. 

            I weighed 86.45 kilos at 17:43. That’s the least I’ve tipped the scale in the evening since February 12. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45.

            I watched over half of Riot On the Sunset Strip. It has a fake looking acid trip but the solo dance by the woman who is supposed to be on her first trip is well choreographed. It just doesn’t look like anything one would do on LSD. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 21 to 23. On September 21 and 22 I played my Martin acoustic guitar. On September 21 the take at 37:00 was okay until the very last chord. On September 22 the take at 46:00 was one of the best. On September 23 I played it on my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar but left off at 32:30 because it was time for supper. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, parmesan, oven fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 3, episode 16 of Batman. 

            The Joker has such good behaviour in prison only a few months after trying to murder Batman and Robin that Bruce Wayne the chairman of the parole board and Warden Crichton agree that he has been rehabilitated. Time must move differently in the TV Batman universe, since it’s only been six weeks of the viewer’s time since Joker was last captured. But seconds after leaving the prison Joker is picked up by Catwoman. Joker tells her to make it look like a kidnapping because Bruce and Crichton are watching so she pulls her Catgun and they drive away. Batman and Robin arrive at Commissioner Gordon’s office but Catwoman and Joker are watching from the sleazy hotel called The Sleazy Hotel across the street. Catwoman shoots her gun at a framed certificate on Gordon’s wall. Batman removes the bullet and finds the message inside, which is just a promise that the next one will kill him. He works out the algebra and figures out the hotel room from which the bullet was shot, but that’s what Catwoman hoped he would do. Batman and Robin go to the hotel room The only thing they find is the torn corner of a piece of parchment, which Robin tosses onto the table. Batgirl arrives and Batman asks how she is just as on top of the caper as they are. She tells them a woman crimefighter uses tea leaves, crystal balls, and astrology to find clues, while she sneaks the paper into her belt. She leaves and Batman tells Robin he saw her take the paper and says it’s a woman’s inborn desire to outsmart men. Meanwhile at Catwoman’s hideout she introduces Joker to her new henchmen Giggler and Laugher, who she obviously hired to make Joker feel at home. She shows Joker a scroll containing a poem that was handwritten 200 years ago during the French-Indian War by Garcon Maltese. It’s a clue to finding the half a million kilos of gunpowder that they will use to blow a hole in the Federal Depository. In the poem it says, “My old nightshirt will do for a start / In its hem is a clue that’s a chart / Then from there find my crib / On its side is a fib…” She says she left the torn corner of the parchment in the hotel room on purpose. Meanwhile the librarian Barbara Gordon discovers that the poem has been stolen from the Gotham Library but she accesses it on microfilm. Then she changes to Batgirl and sneaks into Commissioner Gordon’s office to call Batman on the Batphone. She tells him to meet her at the apartment of Little Louis Groovy. Louis Groovy is a music producer with a Midas touch who the writers apparently modeled after Phil Spector. Catwoman and Joker get there first and steal Louis’ night shirt from his body. Batman and Robin arrive and as usual the henchmen attack with Joker joining in (although it's clearly a stuntman in Joker makeup and costume) and Catwoman smashing the occasional vase on a hero’s head. Batman and Robin win and wonder why the crooks went to so much trouble to steal a nightshirt. The Joker says Catwoman kidnapped him and put him up to stealing the nightshirt as a practical joke. He says it was a mistake and offers his hand to Batman and Robin in friendship. Batman says to forgive is divine and they agree to shake Joker’s hand. But they are shocked by his lethal Joker buzzer. He tells them that one by one their senses will leave them and then their lungs will collapse. He and Catwoman laugh and leave while Batman and Robin are twitching and dying on the floor. But Batgirl arrives and gives them each a Batgirl antidote pill to save them. She tells them about the nightshirt and the cradle being clues to a cache of gunpowder. Karnaby Katz has the cradle. The three heroes arrive at the Katz mansion too late to prevent the theft. But Joker and Catwoman are waiting outside to ambush them when they leave. 

            Louis Groovy was played by Dick Kallman, who at 18 won a Theatre World award for his performance in Seventeen. His TV debut was on the Billy Rose Show. He was also a singer who recorded an album of standards in 1963. He performed one of his songs on Hullabaloo. From 1965 to 1964 he starred in the sitcom Hank. In 1975 he went into business manufacturing women’s clothing and was also an antique dealer. In 1980 he and his partner were found shot dead. The killers were caught but the stolen items were never recovered.