George J. Lewis

            On Tuesday morning I saw a bedbug for the first time in a couple of months. I knew they were still in the building somewhere but at least it had no blood inside. 

            I finished memorizing “À la manière de Brassens” (In the Style of Georges Brassens) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll look for the chords. 

            I finished working out the chords for “No Man’s Land” by Serge Gainsbourg. On Wednesday I’ll run through singing and playing it in French and English and then I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. It went out of tune more than usual but it’s such a great sounding guitar. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleaned the newer warm mist humidifier. I had the other one off for most of the day but the temperature dropped again and so it had to be turned back on.

            In the second Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “seven Shades of Blues” I continued to edit the copy of the BBC documentary “When Hippies Ruled the World”. I kept all the clips I used before and deleted everything else. There are 24 minutes left to go through. 

            I weighed 86.15 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. On the way back on Richmond another cyclist asked me how I like my bike. Surly seems to be a popular brand. At around Ossington and Queen it got very windy and something blew into my eye that wouldn’t blink out. It was impairing my vision and it felt like a little rock. As soon as I got to my building though I didn’t feel it anymore. 

            I weighed 85.55 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:30. 

            In my “Seven Shades of Blues” Movie Maker project I got rid of all the parts of “When Hippies Ruled the World” that I don’t need. I even kept some parts that I didn’t use before. Next I’ll arrange the clips in the order of their use and then start adding them to the main timeline. This is the most difficult part of the recovery because I don’t remember exactly how the clips from this doc were organized before I absent mindedly deleted the project. After this though everything will be fairly easy because I remember which clips from the other videos I used. 

            I had a potato with the rest of the lima bean chili while watching episodes 8 and 9 of the 1943 Batman serial. 

            In part 8, Daka’s men have just thrown Batman down an elevator shaft and sent the freight elevator down to crush him. They leave but Robin regains consciousness just in time to shut the elevator off. When Bruce and Dick get home Linda is waiting for them. She says she’s going to go to Ken’s mine to try to find him. Bruce agrees to go with her. Meanwhile Ken is a prisoner of Daka who is about to use his mind slave machine on him. The electronic dome is placed over his head and the machine is turned on but Ken calls out for him to stop and agrees to show them his mine. Maybe Daka had the machine on a different setting since the other victims have always gone into a trance. Ken guides Daka’s men past his cabin and leads them into the mine. But then he tricks them and gets away. Meanwhile, Bruce, Dick, Linda and Alfred find Ken’s cabin. Bruce and Dick leave Linda and Alfred at the cabin while they decide to take a look at the mine. They recognize the car belonging to the thugs they tangled with before and change to Batman and Robin. Linda and Alfred are sitting at the table when it’s knocked over by an opening trap door and Ken emerges from his mine. Ken grabs some dynamite and a plunger and heads back into the mine to kill the gangsters. Alfred runs to warn Bruce and Dick not to go into the mine but he is captured by two of Daka’s men and taken back to the cabin. Linda escapes down the trap door but they follow. Meanwhile Batman and Robin enter the cave and start fighting with Daka’s men. They meet Ken and also soon are fighting the men who chased Linda. In the struggle Ken falls on the detonator plunger and in the explosion there is cave-in. That’s the cliff hanger. 

            In part 9, Batman, Robin, Linda and one of Daka’s men survive the explosion. On the other side of the cave-in four of Daka’s men are unscathed and leave. Batman and Robin bind, blindfold and gag the captured Marshal and put him in Bruce’s camping trailer. When they get him back to Wayne Manor he is transported to the Batcave before his blindfold is removed. He’s not scared of bats like his colleague was and refuses to answer any questions. Batman and Robin leave him alone. They deliberately didn’t bind him tightly because they want him to get free and find a phone. Upstairs Bruce is able to see the number the crook is calling and then he answers it. Marshal thinks he’s talking to Bernie and that he’ll be able to trace the call and rescue him. Batman calls the number and finds out it’s for the Sphinx Club. Batman disguises himself as an unsophisticated criminal type named Chuck White and goes to the Sphinx looking for his friend Marshal. Chuck is led to a private room where some of Daka’s men are playing cards. They tell Chuck that Marshal is dead. They want to search him and so Chuck pulls a gun and says he only came to meet Marshal. But they disarm him and search him. Robin throws a rock that smashes both the window and the overhead light, then he shines the Bat Signal on the wall. They go looking for Batman and chase Robin, who evades them behind crates until they see him and start shooting. But the gunfire alerts the cops. Robin runs up the gangplank of a freighter and some of them go after him. Meanwhile Bruce has changed from Chuck to Batman and jumps the men who are still on the dock. Two men come after Robin but he jumps off the ship into the water. Batman gets knocked out and is lying under the gangplank but they hear sirens and have to run. One of the men cuts the rope that holds the gangplank up and it falls on Batman. That’s the cliffhanger. 

            Burke, the driver for Baka’s men was played by George J. Lewis, who in the 1920s began acting in the short subject series of films The Collegians, the first of which was The Spanish Dancer in 1923. Born in Mexico he spoke Spanish fluently and yet had no trace of an accent when he spoke English and so he was able to get film work in both languages. He co-starred in the serial Federal Operator 99. He co-starred in Zorro’s Black Whip. Thirteen years later he would play Zorro’s father Don Alejandro in the popular TV series.