I continued to rework my translation of the fourth verse of “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian. I was trying to find out what “rastrons” means, and it seems to be another made up word by Alfred Jarry. As near as I can tell without extensively studying Jarry’s absurdist work, rastrons seem to be porkchop holders.
I worked out the chords for the antepenultimate scat segment and about half of the tap dance in “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg.
I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. It continues to go out of tune but I can’t try to get it fixed until the heat goes off, and that won’t be for at least a few more days.
I weighed 86.35 before breakfast.
Around midday I removed my bathroom mirror from the wall. It didn’t come off as clean as I’d hoped since one of the adhesive Velcro strips came off with it. I filled the holes on the eastern wall behind and around where the mirror goes. I covered the big hole that I used to hang the mirror from, but I’ll have to cover it again because it’s now an indent. I left the mirror off for a few hours until the compound was dry. I had to use a new adhesive Velcro strip for the top of the mirror before remounting it. I’ll have to remove it again when I sand and so I might lose more strips and have to buy a new pack.
I forgot to buy tomatoes yesterday so before lunch I walked over to Queen Fresh and got three vine tomatoes.
I weighed 86.05 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride but only made it to Brunswick and Bloor before it started raining and so I headed south to Harbord, west to Ossington, south to Queen, and home. It was a first real rain I’ve driven through with the new fenders. I got wet but my ass didn’t.
I weighed 85.9 kilos at 18:38.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:38.
In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I added the clips I made from the movie Wings of Desire to the main timeline. To correspond with my line “Man wants to be the angel that desires to be a man” I added clips of the trapeze artist wearing angel wings followed by the angel with his wings fading away. The next line of the song is “Freedom marries slavery and their child transcends them both”. I looked for the earliest movies featuring black people and found the very first film with an all black cast. It's a 1913 silent picture called Lime Kiln Club Field Day. I found clips from the movie and I also found the whole film but that file has a Museum of Modern Art watermark for most of it. I think that I can harvest what I need from some of these files.
I had a tomato, avocado, cucumber, and scallion salad with lemon juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching episodes 19 and 20 of The Adventures of Batman.
In the first story, in Gotham Park a replica of a small French castle has been erected to house an exhibit of the crown jewels of Charlemagne. The alarm system is so state of the art that it would be impossible for a thief to break in. So Catwoman has decided to steal the whole castle. She uses three helicopters to grapple and then carry it away. Four would make more sense since it’s a four cornered object. She just happens to have a mountain hideout with a crater into which the castle can be lowered and then a false mountain peak is placed on top as camouflage. When Batman investigates the theft he finds a note from Catwoman saying she’ll deal with the highest bidder. Robin alerts all of Batman’s underworld contacts that Bruce Wayne wants to bid for the jewels. Meanwhile Joker is jealous of Catwoman’s ingenious crime and plots to steal the jewels from her. That night at Wayne Manor Catwoman sneaks into Bruce’s library for her scheduled appointment with him. He offers her $1 million for the jewels and gives her a $100,000 down payment. But the cash contains a homing device so Batman can track her. Later Joker blocks Catwoman’s way on the road and asks her to take him in as a partner. She flatly turns him down but he only really stopped her to plant a homing device in her vehicle. He arrives outside of her hideout shortly before the Batmobile gets there. The Joker uses trained mice to carry a message to Catwoman to warn her about Batman. She readies an ambush for Batman and Robin but while she’s dealing with them the Joker is stealing the stolen jewels with the help of his trained mice. Catwoman causes a cave-in to trap the heroes. When she discovers the jewels gone she knows it was the Joker so she has her pet cheetah track his mice while she follows from above in her Cat Copter. Batman and Robin free themselves with explosives from their utility belts. Cheetah finds Joker’s car and Catwoman descends on it, clamping and lifting it. She flies it to a river where she begins dunking it until Joker agrees to give her back the jewels. Finally Joker gives in and she lowers him a ladder. Batman and Robin arrive below and use their Batapults to hurl themselves towards the Cat Copter. They catch hold and climb inside. It doesn’t show how Batman beats Catwoman but in the next scene the helicopters are taking the castle back to Gotham Park with the jewels inside. There is no explanation as to how the castle came out of the explosion intact.
In the second story, a ritzy rooftop charity bazaar takes place in which dolls are the prizes. Suddenly a police doll comes to life, grabs the generous donation box and drops it off the roof where it is caught in a net extending from a van that drives away. Batman is summoned with the Bat signal and Commissioner Gordon shows him the police doll, telling him that Doll Man is back in action. This is the first time this cartoon series invented a Batman villain. Up until now they’ve used comic book established adversaries. Dollman sends his banker doll for his next caper. It climbs into a bank’s night deposit box and then unlocks the door from inside to let two more dolls in. The dolls are preparing to blow open the vault when Batman throws a baterang to knock the explosive away. The dolls put up a fight but they are defeated easily. The Dollman gets away in his van. The next day at the Gotham Museum Gordon shows Batman and Robin the three penny blue stamp that’s worth a million. That night Dollman’s postman doll is already inside the museum in a display case. It steals the stamp and is leaving when it is stopped by a suit of armour with Batman inside. The postman throws a grenade that briefly stuns Batman but Robin catches the doll. Later Dollman plants two Batman and Robin dolls in the glove compartment of the Batmobile when it’s parked outside of police headquarters. When the heroes are driving, suddenly the compartment flips open and the dolls fire darts, but the heroes eject from the car just in time. Batman programs the dolls to return to Dollman and Batman and Robin follow. Dollman sends his whole doll army after the heroes but they defeat it easily. Dollman explodes but he’s just another doll controlled by Dollman who is caught.
Some of the animation for these episodes was done by Lenn Redman, who was a caricaturist at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. He was also a caricaturist on the You Asked For It variety show. In his career he created more than 100,000 caricatures. He was an animator of early Porky Pig and Oswald Rabbit cartoons. He drew the Mary Worth comic strip for the Chicago Tribune. He was an animator for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment of Fantasia, The Archie Show, Aquaman, Superman and The Cosby Kids. He wrote How To Draw Caricatures. He created the socially activist “What Am I?” poem and illustrated book series. He taught cartooning at the Lenn Redman Commercial Art Studio.
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