Leonard Penn

            On Thursday morning I memorized the first verse of “No Man’s Land” by Serge Gainsbourg and almost nailed down the second. This song won’t take long to learn. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of four sessions. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I finished editing my fourth Batgirl video and published it but the rendered movie froze halfway through every time I played it and so I deleted it and will try again later. Movie Maker has done that before and so it might be just a matter of republishing it when the app isn’t tired. I tried it later and it worked. 

            I weighed 86.15 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I got up about 18 minutes late from my siesta and didn’t get away for my bike ride until after 17:00 so I didn’t go downtown but rather just as far as Ossington and Bloor. Even if I’d gotten away earlier I probably wouldn’t have gone downtown because it was raining and snowing. I stopped at Freshco on the way home. I was all ready to do a price match on their grapes but they were all too soft and so I didn’t buy any. I got a pack of raspberries, bananas, some avocadoes, and a bunch of cilantro. I was looking for the Canadian product sign of the maple leaf and noticed that Post Shreddies has it but not Post spoon size shredded wheat. Apparently they are both manufactured in Canada. I was also surprised Simply Orange juice had the symbol. It’s a US brand owned by Coca Cola but made in Canada, one assumes though not with Canadian oranges. The only salsa with the symbol was Tostitos. It’s made by Frito Lay Canada but that is owned by Pepsi. It’s pretty complicated. I got two jars and I also bought a pack of Nabob Full City Dark coffee. I know Nabob is Canadian, although it’s owned by Kraft. 

            I weighed 86.05 kilos at 18:30. 

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

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I edited the clip of Captain Kirk wrestling the Andorian down to about seven seconds. I still haven’t decided which wrestling clip, the Buster Keaton or one of the two Star Trek ones that I’ll insert into the main timeline to match my line, “So wrestle with that angel but never let it lose”. I’ll try the Keaton one first to see how it looks. 

            I had the rest of the stew I made yesterday from edamame beans and broccoli. I ate while watching the last two episodes of the 1949 Batman and Robin serial. 

            In part 14 the now invisible Wizard has put a bomb in front of the safe at the research plant. Batman is inside the vault to protect the plans for the superjet. The Wizard leaves without the plans. Just before the explosion Batman steps into the back chamber of the safe and is not affected by the blast. Back at the Wizard’s headquarters Neil is under orders to shut off the machines that are making the Wizard invisible when they get too hot. Wizard is exiting the research plant building and seconds later finds he has become visible. Guards see him and begin shooting as he tries to get away. He hides behind some crates as Batman and Robin join the search. They find a door open that should be closed and discover it was opened by Dunn the private eye. One of the guards is sure he shot the Wizard in his right hand and Dunn has a fresh wound in the same place. He says he snagged it on the barbed wire while climbing the fence. Batman finds on the ground one of the Wizard’s gloves torn by a bullet. He thinks that back at the lab in the Bat Cave he might be able to get fingerprints from the inside. Wizard makes it back to headquarters. Batman suspects that the Wizard gained the ability to make himself invisible and deduces how. The remote control machine at full power can cause disintegration while the neutralizer with its electromagnetic force counters those rays. If the beams cross each other to focus on one object they can together make it invisible. Commissioner Gordon calls for Barry Brown to come to his office but he still refuses to reveal his sources that sometimes tip off the Wizard and sometimes the police. Gordon tells him to take his glove off and sees that he also has a wound on his right hand. He says it came from moving broken glass in his garage. Gordon leaves the office and Brown plants a bugging device before leaving. Bruce finds out whose fingerprints are on the glove and they belong to Professor Hammil’s butler, Carter. Batman and Robin head for Hammil’s estate. Meanwhile Carter is snooping in Hammil’s study when the door opens and we see a hand holding a gun. It fires and Carter is shot. Batman, Robin, and Gordon arrive. Shortly after that Hammil is walking out of his house, while before he kept his ability to make himself abled a secret. Batman finds Carter dead. Then Hammil walks in and is surprised that his butler is dead. Hammil also has a wound on his right hand, which he says he burned in the lab. Batman thinks the Wizard is much too smart to end up dead in this way. Barry Brown gives a special broadcast to tell the authorities that they are wrong in their assessment of the identity of the Wizard. He says the wizard plans to kill Gordon at 14:00 in his office. He is about to give the real information of who the Wizard is when an invisible force begins choking him and he is rendered unconscious. He has a throat hemorrhage and won’t be able to talk for a while. Approaching 14:00 Batman is in Gordon’s office to protect him. Vickie Vale arrives and Batman gives her a special infra red bulb for her camera, which he says will make the Wizard visible on film. The Wizard’s car arrives and shortly after that the machinery at headquarters is turned on to make him invisible. At 14:00 a rope lowers outside the window of Gordon’s office and a gun seems to be floating in the air. Vickie sees it and shouts as she sets off the flash. The gun fires as Gordon hits the floor. That’s the cliffhanger. 

            In the finale, Gordon hit the floor below the bullet’s path. Vickie takes her film to be developed. Two cops check out the Wizard’s driver and arrest him because he’s Jason who was allowed to escape earlier when Batman wanted to follow him to the hideout. That was stupid of the wizard to have Jason as his driver since he knew all that. Since they’ve confiscated the car the Wizard will have to use a payphone to call for another. Batman tells Gordon to get the telephone company to listen in on all payphones in the area. As they suspected, the Wizard makes a call and it is traced to the address of the phone booth. The Wizard tells Neil to keep the machines running to keep him invisible even though they are overheating. He says to have a car pick him up at Ocean Blvd and the city line. Vickie’s developed film shows the Wizard to be Carter although they saw him dead. Batman tells Robin to go to the cliff where the Wizard and his men disappeared twice before. He says for him to hide and see if he can learn how they vanished. When the cops arrive at the phone booth the Wizard slips away. He steals their police car and escapes. He crashes through a roadblock and then later hits a pole. He hides in the bushes and becomes visible as the police arrive. Wizard’s man Nolan arrives to pick him up. Robin parks near the cliff and shortly after that so does Vicki Vale. She is captured by the Wizard’s men just before Wizard gets there. He says to get rid of her and so she is tied up and placed in her car and then pushed as her car moves towards the cliff. Batman arrives and then rushes to pull her emergency brake at the very edge of the precipice. Meanwhile Robin sees the Wizard and Nolan move the camouflage bush from the entrance to his cave. The men who tied up Vicki are arrested. Batman meets Robin and he shows him the cave. They catch one of Wizard’s men returning the submarine after it has taken Wizard to headquarters. Batman and Robin jump him and force him to take them to Wizard. They remain out of sight until the door to Wizard’s lab opens and then they confront the villain. There is a fight with his men while the Wizard escapes the back way that leads to Hammil’s mansion. They find Hammil and Carter’s twin brother in Hammil’s study. Hammil tells Batman he’s willing to make a full confession. But Batman says the dead twin was not Carter. He grabs Carter and accused him of forcing Hammil to confess he was the Wizard. Hammil confirms that’s true. Back at Gordon’s office Vicki invites Batman to have dinner with her and Bruce Wayne and he agrees. But then she gets a call from Bruce Wayne saying he can’t make it although it’s really a recording of Bruce being played by Alfred. She says she had the silly idea that Bruce was Batman and they all laugh. 

            This was actually a pretty good series. It was suspenseful, exciting, intriguing and it kept the viewer guessing. Some of the pseudo science was almost as good as that of Star Trek while the 60’s Batman series had some absolutely ridiculous science.

            Carter, his twin brother and the Wizard were played by Leonard Penn, who was a stage actor in six Broadway productions from 1934 to 1941. He appeared in 81 films and 21 television productions from 1937 to 1960. His film debut was in Song of the City in 1937. His TV debut was in The Lone Ranger in 1949.