Reuben Timmins

            On Friday morning I continued to edit both “Le petit Lauriston” by Boris Vian and “Sacha Distel et Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Song and Dance” by Serge Gainsbourg in my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare them for publication. I should have the latter posted tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. I made a lot of mistakes. 

            I weighed 85.35 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since February 10. 

            Around midday I finished filling the holes, cracks and gaps in the bathroom. Next I have to do the dreaded ceiling sanding, which will be a pain in the neck and messy. 

            I weighed 86.35 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 18:00. That’s the same as the evening of January 8.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:54. 

            I tried to find old movies that depict the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel but I only found one from the 50s or 60s and it wasn’t very good. I’m surprised there are no silent films. 

            I compared the song practice video of my Kramer electric performance of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on October 5 to that of October 3. Although October 3 sounds and looks generally better I do handle the E flat chord better on October 5. I compared October 6 to October 5 and they are about the same except that on October 6 I mispronounced “sixteen” as “sixtain” at the end. I compared October 9 to October 5 and on October 9 I forgot I was playing the Kramer and didn’t use the tremolo bar but rather the volume pedal for that effect. I compared October 10 to October 5 and October 10 is generally better but I play the E flat better on October 5. There’s one more video to compare. 

            I had a salad of lettuce, cucumber, scallion, avocadoes, and grape tomatoes with raspberry vinaigrette and a glass of Caesar mix while watching the last two episodes of The Adventures of Batman animated series. 

            In the first story, giant spheres of ice the size of a truck are appearing in craters. Batman is researching the phenomena of ice meteors and the Bat computer says they are real. I doubted that very much but looked it up and saw that there are ice meteors or megacryometeors and some of them are big enough to form small craters but they don’t fall from space. They are formed in the atmosphere and are bigger than hailstones. One that was about two meters in diameter fell in Scotland in the summer of 1849. In this story, many in Gotham are speculating that the ice spheres are caused by Mr. Freeze. They aren’t but Freeze decides to take advantage of being identified with the phenomenon and cuts in on all the TV broadcasts to threaten to rain ice meteors on the city if his demands are not met. Batman thinks he’s bluffing. He tracks Freeze’s TV interference beam to his submarine and drops charges on it from the Bat copter that force him to surface. Freeze emerges from his vessel waving a white flag. He tells Batman to come below and take over but he escapes in a smaller sub while the doors of the main sub are sealed, the vessel dives and the temperature is lowered to below freezing. Batman puts Robin in a torpedo tube and sends him to the surface. A little later Batman does the same. Freeze predicts through the media that he will cause an ice meteor to fall in Gotham recreational park. But what he does is dynamite the semblance of a crater and then forms a large sphere with his ice gun. Batman sights Freeze’s ice cream truck and goes after it. Freeze creates an ice bridge over the water and the Batmobile follows but Freeze blows up the bridge behind him. Batman is able to put the Batmobile in reverse just in time to escape the explosion. Professor Dilworth at the observatory confirms that the ice meteor came from outer space (But a meteor of rock or even iron would burn down to just 5% of its original size in the Earth’s atmosphere. If there were any made of ice they would instantly vaporize while falling). Freeze and his men arrive at the observatory and attack. All of his men are beaten but Freeze uses his cold gun on Batman, Robin and everyone else to freeze them before he escapes. As everyone thinks that Freeze can still drop ice meteors on them, he uses that belief to plunder the city. He holds a fake electronic box with a button, telling the people in charge of the places he robs that he can send an ice meteor down at the push of a button. Batman somehow edges his frozen body towards a ray of sunlight. He thaws one hand, then moves the telescope to catch the ray of sunlight and to thaw his whole body. Then he thaws everyone else. During the fight Batman placed a bug on one of Freeze’s men and so they listen in to learn that Freeze has a secret plane at the airport. Batman turns the telescope into a heat ray and aims it at Freeze’s plane. The plane’s temperature rises so high that it threatens Freeze’s life since he can’t survive temperatures higher than 50 below. He lands and surrenders. 

            In the second story Batman is monitoring a notorious international criminal who is up for parole on Satan’s Island. Batman sends the judge on the case the data on the crook that he’s gathered in his Bat Computer. Based on that information the judge denies the convict parole. The convict attacks the judge but it is only to secretly switch gavels. After the guards pull the prisoner back the judge hammers his gavel and it explodes. The crook takes the wig and the robe from the unconscious judge and puts them on, declaring himself The Judge as he escapes. Later Batman and Robin attend the trial of the Cosgrove Gang but as soon as the judge of this case opens up the files on the gang the book turns out to be another knockout gas bomb and The Judge escorts the gang to freedom. At his hideout that is made to look like a courtroom, The Judge has the gang sit in a jury box. He says tomorrow they will liberate more criminals to complete a jury of twelve. The judge stops a bus carrying a load of prisoners to the penitentiary. He subdues the guards with some kind of streamers that shoot from a scepter and tie them up. The judge needs money to finance his operation and so he goes to see Bruce Wayne. He hands him a statue of Lady Justice that electrocutes him and renders him unconscious. Bruce is abducted but Robin follows in the Batmobile and forces the Judge’s vehicle off the road. Robin retrieves Bruce and puts him in the Batmobile, which he sends back to the Batcave by remote control. Robin remains behind and is immediately captured and is taken to stand trial where he is found guilty. But Robin is wearing a transmitter and so Batman heads for the location of the signal. Robin is placed in a giant book that will slowly close and press him flat. Batman arrives and turns the switch to open the book but nothing happens. he tells Robin to cut himself out with his Bat laser and he does. But his hands are clamped so how he reaches the laser isn’t shown and besides that the book fully closes before Robin can burn his way out and so why is he not flat? The judge and his men are defeated and the Judge is sent back to Satan’s Island. It wasn’t a very well written series and the portrayals of the villains were one dimensional. I also didn’t like most of the voices, Catwoman sounded like the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. 

            Some of the animation for these stories was done by Reuben Timmins, who worked for Fleischer in the 1930s and worked on several Betty Boop shorts, such as Somebody Stole My Gal, Just a Gigolo, and Cupid gets His Man. He worked for Terrytoons in the mid 30s on Farmer Al Falfa’s 20th Anniversary. Then he worked for Disney on several Donald Duck cartoons among others. In 1949 he illustrated a series of Laurel and Hardy comic books. In the late 50s he moved to television and over the years worked on Crusader Rabbit, Mr. Magoo, Charlie Brown, Spiderman, The Archie Show, The Batman/Superman Hour, Fat Albert, and Star Trek.