Don C. Harvey

            On Tuesday morning I posted “Our Pretty Gestapo”, my translation of “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian on my Boris Vian Facebook page and on my personal Facebook page. Tomorrow I’ll start learning the next Vian song on my list. 

            I gave up trying to transcribe from the audio the 1964 Serge Gainsbourg song “Al Cassel’s Air”. There is no text available online. I know I have friends on Facebook who speak french but none that I feel I can ask to transcribe the audio for me because they don’t visibly follow my posts. I marked the song for future reference but for now I’ll consider it outside my Gainsbourg project. I moved on to the next song that I’ve yet to translate and in the 1965 Gainsbourg file found “No Man’s Land”. In this case I found the lyrics on Gainsbourg.net and transcribed them. I translated the first verse. Tomorrow I’ll finish my translation and start memorizing the song. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of four sessions. It’s cold outside, the heat and the humidifiers are still on but hopefully spring will arrive next week and I can get the Martin fixed. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleaned the older warm mist humidifier. Hopefully I won’t have to use it again until fall and will only have to clean the newer humidifier one more time. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown through the injustice of a freezing cold April and stopped at Freshco on the way back. The red grapes are still on sale but most of them were too soft. I usually squeeze one or two grapes in a bag before deciding if they are firm or not. Someone asked me, “Are you squeezing every single grape in every bag? That’s disgusting!” I said, “I’m only squeezing one grape in each bag”. If it’s firm I buy it and if it’s not then nobody would eat it anyway. But it’s disgusting that she doesn’t wash her grapes before eating them. I don’t think she realizes how many hands touch grapes from the field to the store. The pickers touched them, the people who sort them touch them, the people who bag them touch them, they are probably re-bagged more than once before they are sold, plus they are covered in insecticide and need to be washed. I only bought two bags. I also got a carton of soy milk, and two packs of Full City Dark coffee. There were some new salad dressings on the shelves with some interesting flavours. I got miso lime ginger, and maple Dijon. I forgot to buy ripe avocadoes. All the ones I have are too green right now. 

            I weighed 85.45 kilos at 18:41. 

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

            I imported to Movie Maker the video clip of Captain Kirk wrestling with the Andorian and copied it to the end of the timeline of my Seven Shades of Blues project. I edited out all the parts with the knife and with hitting. Then I edited further the clip of Buster Keaton wresting with the attractive woman in The Three Ages. I steamed a bunch of asparagus and added it to a salad with cucumber, tomato, and scallion, topped by balsamic vinaigrette. I ate while watching episodes 10 and 11 of the 1949 Batman serial. 

            In part 10, Batman has been trailing the Wizard’s men, but the Wizard takes control of the car Batman is driving and sends it over a cliff. Batman and Robin bail out just before it goes over. Meanwhile Jimmy Vale is in the office of his sister Vicki and while she is running an errand, he calls Wizard’s lieutenant Neil to receive his instructions. Vicki and the police think Jimmy has turned against the Wizard and his gang but that was all meant to divert the efforts of Batman and the cops. When Vickie comes back he pretends to be asleep. When she steps into the darkroom he leaves but she comes out shortly to see him gone and follows him to the Markham Building. On a certain floor of the Markham building is one of the bases of operations for Wizard’s men. The floor is wired with high tech detection devices that can track anyone in the hall and look through the door to see who’s on the other side. They let Jimmy in and a little later Vicki comes snooping in the hall. Two of the men grab her and take her into the room. Neil says to lock her up and Jimmy tries to stop them but gets knocked out. They lock Vicki in an office where the phone isn’t plugged in but she reconnects it and calls Wayne Manor to tell Alfred she is being held captive in an office building downtown. She is about to give the address when she gets caught. When Bruce learns of the incomplete call he figures that the best chance of learning the address of the building is to get it from the man they captured a few hours ago. Later the man in question, Jason is being escorted from the police station while handcuffed to a cop. The policeman is slugged and the man who hit him takes his key to free Jason. He tells Jason not to ask questions and to “Get in that delivery truck and take off!” Jason drives to the Markham Building without realizing that Batman and Robin are in the back. When Jason gets to Rendezvous D in the Markham Building he learns that they didn’t arrange for his escape and so it must have been a trick. Neil pulls a switch so that anyone who touches a doorknob in the hall will be electrocuted. All the men leave to look for who’s in the hallway now. Jimmy wakes up and tries to set Vicki free but the door is locked so he tells her he’ll be back and leaves. Meanwhile Batman is in the hallway and tries a door only to be shocked into unconsciousness. Jimmy finds him and looks under his cowl to learn that Batman is Bruce Wayne. I knew at that moment that Jimmy would be dead before he could tell anyone. That’s a trope of all double identity hero stories. He drags Batman into one of the rooms. Shortly we see Batman running down the hallway. He hides, then jumps and knocks out Neil to take his keys, then he frees Vicki. But the men return and Batman fights with them while Vicki escapes the building. Batman subdues the men long enough to leave the room but they are soon after him. He tries to get out through a window when they catch up with him and he has to fight again until he stumbles backwards through the open window and plunges far below to the street. 

            In part 11, Robin has just seen his partner Batman plunge to his death but then sees Bruce leave the Markham building wearing Jimmy Vale’s clothes. Bruce explains that it was Jimmy Vale who died in the Batman costume. While Batman was unconscious from the electric shock, Jimmy removed his costume and put it on, probably trying to make things right with Vicki by opposing the organization that got him into trouble. Meanwhile at the Wizard’s headquarters the men are discussing whether Jimmy was really Batman and conclude he couldn’t have been. One of the men says he saw Bruce Wayne leave the building and drive away with Robin. The Wizard says they need to focus on Wayne. Later Bruce goes to see Professor Hammil, who is his usual anti-social self. He makes it clear that the answers to the questions Bruce asks are none of his business but nonetheless invites him to stay for dinner. Bruce says he has a date with Vicki Vale at the French Café. As soon as Bruce leaves, Hammil locks his study door and heads for the room where he hides his revivifying electronic chair. Then we see the Wizard radioing his men that Wayne will be meeting Vale at the French Café. That night when Bruce arrives to meet Vickie, two men force him back in his car and make him drive. Vicki arrives in her car and seeing Bruce driving away, follows, but loses them. Meanwhile Bruce asks what’s going on and they call him Batman but he plays dumb. He presses a button on the floor with his foot and it turns on a microphone transmitting to Dick in the Bat Cave. They have Bruce drive to the industrial section of town and when they get to the warehouse Bruce says out loud “52 Commercial Street”. Dick changes to Robin and heads for that address. Bruce is taken to another room that acts as a base of operations. Robin arrives and goes to the window of the room where Bruce is being held which is conveniently at street level. Robin shines the Bat signal on the wall. Four of the men go looking for whoever is out there and leave one man to guard Bruce. In the alley the men see Batman and go after him. He evades them in a maze of crates but sneaks out to punch one of them unconscious. Meanwhile Robin returns to the window. He removes his cape and uses it to snag the back of the chair of Bruce’s guard to pull him backwards to the floor. Bruce piles furniture on top of his guard and then escapes through the window. The Wizard arrives and when he learns what happened he tells the men to call it off as he and Neil leave for Rendezvous C. Bruce and Robin see the Wizard leave and Batman says they’re going after him. Robin asks, “What about Alfred?” We see Alfred was the one dressed as Batman to confuse the Wizard’s men. Alfred gets into a car and drives home. Bruce changes to Batman as Robin drives after the Wizard. But Neil notices they are being followed. As they gain on the Wizard he pulls a lever to send a smoke screen behind his car that blinds Batman and Robin so the car heads for the trees at high speed. That’s the cliffhanger. 

            In episodes 1 to 6 of this serial, Nolan, the later dismissed leader of the Wizard’s men was played by Don C. Harvey. he started his career in tent shows, repertory companies and on the radio. His first credited role was in his second film, Dragnet. He played supporting roles in a few other serials such as Adventures of Sir Galahad and Atom Man vs. Superman. He and his wife Jean owned a horse named Goldie that they rented out for movies. It played Kit Carson’s horse Apache in the serial The Adventures of Kit Carson.