Howard Duff

            On Monday morning I didn’t get to bed until 2:20 because I fell asleep at the computer and fell behind on my journal. 

            After yoga I continued work on memorizing the final verse of “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian. I should have the song done in a day or two. 

            I memorized about half of the third verse of “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice and it sounded good. But my amp is humming again like it did before I got it fixed last year. I don’t think I’ll take it to Li’l Demon because it took a long time to repair there last time. Maybe Long and McQuade. 

            I weighed 87.05 kilos before breakfast. 

            At around midday I worked on getting caught up on my journal. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I noticed while riding on the quieter streets that there was a slight clinking sound in my front wheel. The squeaking when I use the brakes is still sometimes there as well. I also felt that my handlebars need to be even higher. I still find the bicycle seat uncomfortable. When I got home I decided to take my bike to Metro Cycle. The front wheel clinking was due to the wheel not having been put back properly in place by the other guy at Metro on Saturday after the release lever had been pulled. The back brake pads were dirty and Mark also made them a little less smooth to stop the squeaking. He raised my handlebars as high as they’ll go with the new post extension. The cables didn’t need to be changed. He just said I wouldn’t be able to make a 90 degree turn, which I wouldn’t make anyway. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos at 18:30, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since February 23. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:40. 

            I converted Blackboard Jungle to WMV but it was a more than three hour process. 

            I reviewed the videos of my acoustic performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on October 1 and 2. On October 1 the take at 47:00 was okay. On October 2 the take at 33:30 was not bad until the E flat at the end. 

            I had a potato and steamed peas with gravy while watching the penultimate episode of the Batman TV series. 

            Dr. Cassandra and her husband Cabala are at the bank. They each take one of her pills, turn invisible and then rob it. Later when Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara hear of occurrence they are about to call Batman when they are held back and subdued by invisible forces. Then the Bat Phone levitates in the air and Cassandra talks to Batman. She issues a challenge that he can’t stop her and then hangs up. Batman and Robin head for Gordon’s office and Barbara Gordon is there giving her father and O’Hara first aid when they arrive. Batman and Robin decide to accompany Barbara to the library where they look up the occult to get a lead. Cassandra explains to Cabala that they aren’t really invisible but rather fully camouflaged. Cassandra comes from a long line of failed alchemists and is obsessed with proving herself. Cabala is obsessed with pleasing Cassandra. Her plan is to free all the arch criminals from the Gotham prison, give them invisibility pills, then rule over them as their empress of crime. In addition to the pills she has her Alvino Ray gun. Batman learns from his library research that Cassandra is Cassandra Spellcraft, from a long line of failed alchemists. Cassandra challenges Batman, Robin and Batgirl by announcing that she will steal the Mope diamond from Spiffany’s Jewellery store at precisely 14:00. She is about to take the golf ball sized gem when she and Cabala are confronted by Batman and Robin, followed by Batgirl. Cassandra hits them with her Alvino Ray gun. Batgirl says she feels like she is getting flat. Cabala says, “What a pity!” Cassandra turns the three heroes into two dimensional figures that look like cardboard cutouts. Later when the flattened heroes are slid under the door of Gordon’s office, he and O’Hara think they are just cardboard until O’Hara picks them up and says he feels their pulse. O’Hara suggests they ask for help from the voice they hear sometimes at the other end of the Bat Line when they call for Batman. Alfred answers and when he gets over the shock of this turn of events tells them to send the three figures general delivery to the main Gotham Post Office. Alfred picks them up disguised with a goatee and takes them back to the Batcave. Meanwhile electric eye alarms are going off at Gotham State Prison but there is no one seen tripping them. Cassandra and Cabala appear in Warden Crichton’s office and while Cabala holds Crichton off with the Alvino gun, Cassandra flicks the master switch to release Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, King Tut, and Egghead. Meanwhile Alfred places the flattened heroes in the three-dimensional Bat-Restorer and turns it on. Then he makes himself scarce so Batgirl doesn’t see him, since she only knows him as Bruce Wayne’s butler. A mist rises and when it dissipates, Batman, Robin, and Batgirl are restored to their three-dimensional selves. This is Batgirl’s first time seeing the Batcave. Batman learns that Cassandra has instigated a mass jailbreak. He consults the Bat Computer and somehow it knows that the villains will all be in the basement of the Mortar and Pestle building. The heroes pile into the Batmobile and Batman tells Batgirl he’ll have to put her to sleep. She agrees to the Bat Gas and after she is out Robin comments that she looks very pretty when she is asleep. Batman tells Robin that’s a sign he is growing up. Meanwhile Cassandra addresses her new gang of super villains and tells them how they will divvy up Gotham. Catwoman gets the fish markets, Egghead the poultry farms, Penguin the ponds and parks, Tut the museums, Riddler and Joker get all the amusement parks. She and Cabala get 50% but supply camouflage and protection. Cabala distributes the pills and the effect will last for eight hours. Batman, Batgirl and Robin confront them and the villains swallow their pills. What follows is a fight scene in which Batman, Batgirl and Robin are getting knocked around by unseen forces and swinging and kicking at nothing. Finally Batgirl suggests they make it so they can’t be seen either and Batman knocks out the lights. In the dark the heroes win and one of the characteristics of the pills is that if the taker is unconscious they become visible again. 

            Later Gordon and O’Hara go to Minerva’s Mineral Spa where O’Hara has been before. Minerva greets them and tells them that after treatment they will feel like new men. She adds, “I certainly feel like a new man”. 

            Cassandra and Cabala, talking in hippy slang alien to their generation, were played by the at the time real husband and wife but already separated team of Ida Lupino and Howard Duff. Howard Duff studied acting after graduation and began theatre work in Seattle. He was the announcer for the radio series Suspense. After the war he won the role of Sam Spade on the radio and played the character from 1946 to 1950. His film debut was in Brute Force in 1947. Around this time he had a tempestuous affair with Ava Gardner. He co-starred in The Naked City, All My Sons, Red Canyon, Calamity Jane and Sam Bass, Tanganyika, The Yellow Mountain, Flame of the Islands, Woman in Hiding, Jennifer, Private Hell 36, A Wedding, and Too Much Sun. He starred in That Kind of Girl, The Lady from Texas, Spaceways, Roar of the Crowd, Blackjack Ketchum, The Broken Star, Sierra Stranger, Johnny Stool Pigeon, Illegal Entry, Shakedown, and Spy Hunt. On television he starred with Lupino in the sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve in 1957. He starred in the adventure series Dante. His most successful series was The Felony Squad from 1966 to 1969. He directed some episodes of Felony Squad and also some of Camp Runamuck. He appeared in all 38 episodes of Flamingo Road. He played Magnum’s grandfather on Magnum P.I.. He and Lupino married in 1951, separated in 1966 but didn’t divorce until 1984.