Lester Dorr

            On Wednesday morning I searched for the chords to “À la manière de Brassens” (In the Style of Georges Brassens) by Boris Vian. No one had posted them and so I worked them out for the first line and part of the chorus. 

            I ran through singing and playing “No Man’s Land” by Serge Gainsbourg in French and English. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog to begin preparing it for publication. I should have it posted tomorrow. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer electric guitar. 

            I weighed 85.15 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since February 4. 

            At around midday I started packing up my dirty laundry to take to the Speedy Queen laundromat on Queen between Fuller and Sorauren. It was more crowded than usual. Someone was folding their laundry in front of the only free $7.50 washer. I started loading a $10 washer until he moved and then loaded the cheaper one. The liquid detergent loading part was clogged but I poured liquid in the powder hole and it worked. On my way to put my laundry in a dryer I stopped at Vina Pharmacy to see if they’d gotten a response from my doctor about renewing my prescription but they haven’t. Figured he’s either on vacation or observing Passover. I was done at around 15:30. 

            I weighed 85.05 kilos at 15:45. January 30 was the last time I was that buoyant in the early afternoon. I had saltines with peanut butter and a glass of ice tea. 

            I took a siesta at 16:30 and didn’t get up until 18:18.

            I weighed 85.5 at 18:30. That’s almost as light as last Wednesday. 

            I got a call from Vina and the pharmacist told me that the number for my doctor’s office is now out of service. He’s associated with the Forest Hill Family Health Centre so I’ll try to reach him there. He’s been my doctor for more than 40 years so I don’t want to lose him. Meanwhile Vina said I could get a special prescription directly from the pharmacy and so I might try that. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:49. 

            In the second Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I organized the clips from the BBC documentary “When Hippies Ruled the World” in the order that I’ll probably use them. I added to the main timeline the clips that correspond with my opening lines, “Freedom loving children, virgins to the thrust that rips the hole in innocence and frees the fire of lust”. I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it before supper but I’m making progress and I don’t think it will take a lot of time to rebuild this project after absent mindedly deleting it six days ago.

            For supper I had four ramen noodle cakes with Manchurian flavour packets. I ate the soup with my first beer in a month while watching episodes 10 and 11 of the 1943 Batman serial. 

            In part 10 a gangplank is falling on Batman but he rolls out of the way just in time. At the same time Robin emerges from the water where he’d jumped to escape Daka’s men. Alfred has been faithfully waiting for them in the car and he drives them home. Unlike the Bat Poles in the 60s series, the entrance to the Batcave in this series is through a grandfather clock. Daka’s man Marshall is still a prisoner in the Batcave but Batman and Robin now turn him into the police. Meanwhile since Batman keeps turning up alive after Daka’s men being sure they killed him, Daka is beginning to wonder if there is an organization consisting of several Bat Men. Bruce gets a coded telegram from Washington and sends Dick to decode it. Linda comes to see Bruce and she’s angry that he stood her up last night. She also doesn’t like that Bruce is associating with the seedy character of Chuck White, not realizing that Bruce is Chuck White. After Linda storms out Dick reveals that he has decoded the message. It says a large amount of radium has been stolen from a hospital in Chicago and they suspect connections with the radium thieves in Gotham. Meanwhile Daka learns that an agent with the radium will be dropping the package from a plane tonight. Bruce changes to Chuck White and returns to the Sphinx Club. One of Daka’s men who is in charge of replacing some of the henchmen that died, tells Chuck to come with him. They take a cab that is driven by Alfred. Chuck is led to a room where Daka spies on him and thinks he looks like a cheap gangster but tells his man to try him out on tonight’s assignment of picking up the radium from the plane drop. Chuck leaves with Daka’s men and Dick and Alfred follow. Out in the country somewhere they are waiting for the package to come down by parachute. Chuck tries to sneak away but they catch him and so he begins to fight. He gets away and signals Dick with a special birdcall. Dick signals back and they rendezvous. They change to Batman and Robin. Daka’s men light a flare and the agent on the plane makes the drop. When they see the parachute, Batman and Robin attack the men. Batman commandeers one of the cars but the men shoot out the tires and he loses control. The car goes over a cliff in flames. That’s the cliffhanger. Most of the cliffhangers seem to involve cliffs.

            In part 11, Batman of course jumps out of the car before it goes over the cliff. He’s picked up by Robin and Alfred. Daka’s men successfully find the radium and take it back to Daka. Hearing about Chuck White’s betrayal, Daka thinks he is a member of Batman’s organization. He says White must be eliminated. Meanwhile Chuck White gets himself arrested and is placed in the cell next to Marshall. They strike up a conversation and Chuck says he got picked up for prowling. Then he tells a story about breaking into a place and then ending up in a cave full of bats. He says one of the bats was the size of a man and sitting at a desk, so he got scared and ran. Marshall asks Chuck if he could find that house again and he says he can. Marshall says he knows someone who would pay him plenty for that information. He tells him to go to 112 Mill Creek Road and ask for Croft. Daka learns that White is in jail and arranges for his bail so his men can kill him. Chuck leaves the station and catches a cab. Daka’s men are in a truck and ram the cab from the side, flipping and wrecking it. The men drive away, assuming that Chuck has been killed, but he’s fine. He calls for Alfred and Dick to pick him up and goes to the address that Marshall gave him. Bruce and Dick change to Batman and Robin and go to the hideout. They enter with their fists flying and get the best of the guys in the front room but Batman gets slugged over the head by a gun from the guy in the radio room. Robin sneaks to the radio and calls the police to come to that address. One of the men takes off Batman’s cowl to see that he is really Chuck White. Robin is caught and knocked out but they know he’s called the cops and so the men set an explosive to destroy the cabin. Batman grabs Robin just as the bomb goes off. That’s the cliffhanger.

            The agent on the plane was played by Lester Dorr, who claimed to be a theatre producer in Chicago during WWI when he registered for the draft. During the 1920s he worked onstage in New York, including on Broadway. In 1930 he appeared in the comedy shorts All Stuck Up and Ride ‘em Cowboy. He was a day player and played a different role in a different film every ten weeks for ten straight years. In 1933 he was one of the original members of the Screen Actors Guild. He played Gray, one of the crooks in the 1939 serial Mandrake the Magician.