Shirley Patterson

            On Friday morning I memorized the second verse of “À la manière de Brassens” (In the Style of Georges Brassens). There are three verses left to learn. 

            I memorized the second verse of “No Man’s Land” by Serge Gainsbourg and almost nailed down the rest of the song. I should have it done tomorrow.

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice. Tomorrow I’ll play my Kramer. 

            I weighed 86.45 kilos before breakfast. Around midday I brought in the stepladder and sanded the northwest quarter of my bathroom ceiling. I should be able to finish the ceiling on Sunday and on the following Sunday I’ll start the upper part of the eastern wall. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I was almost downtown when I realized I’d forgotten to wear my denture. Fortunately I hadn’t planned on stopping at the supermarket where I might have smiled at somebody. 

            I weighed 85.95 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:06. 

            I opened Movie Maker to work on my Seven Shades of Blues project but I couldn’t find it. I deleted a few Movie Maker projects yesterday because I’d already published the projects and didn’t need the project files anymore. I must have absentmindedly deleted the Seven Shades of Blues project. It’s extremely frustrating for me to depend on somebody as stupid as I am. I still have all of the animation frames I created for the project and all of the videos from which I made clips. I started the project again, adding the audio and then recreating the first rainbow wave animation that I’d put together frame by frame over a period of two weeks in October. It helped to scroll back in my diary to remind myself of exactly what I did. I left off my review at the December 15 point in my journal when I was still building the frames for the second animation. I’ll probably be able to add the entire second animation to the timeline tomorrow and then start remaking the video clips I need. It’s especially exasperating because I was only a couple of video clips away from finishing this project. I might have been done with it next week. As it is it might take me two weeks to get back to where I left off yesterday. But the damage is done and I’ll just have to move forward. 

            I steamed a package of frozen edamame beans. I sautéed three cloves of garlic and added the beans, a cup of water and a jar of hot salsa. I had the chili with plantain chips while watching episode 1 of the 1943 Batman serial. 

            The story starts with Batman and Robin catching a couple of crooks and leaving them handcuffed with bat symbols on their foreheads after notifying the cops where to find them. Then he changes to Bruce Wayne for his date with his girlfriend Linda Page. Linda works at the Gotham City Foundation. Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson arrive to wait for Linda to get off work. Bruce is made to be the same lazy rich guy as in the 1949 serial. Dick is played by a seventeen year old actor and so he’s the first and last age appropriate Robin. Tomorrow Bruce and Dick will accompany Linda to meet her Uncle Martin when he gets out of prison. The next day when Martin Warren is released, Foster one of his old cellmates and two other men are there to meet him. Foster tells him his niece couldn’t make it but they’re going to take him to her. But as they are driving away Martin sees Linda in Bruce’s car and tells them to stop the car but Foster tells him he’s going with them. Linda learns from the guards at the gate that Warren left with three men in a black sedan. They remember passing the car and Bruce tells Alfred to drive after it. The abductors notice they are being followed and when they turn a corner and are out of sight they release a gas that changes the colour of their car from black to white and they also pull a switch that flips their licence plate to a new one, then they turn around and meet Bruce’s car on the road without being noticed. Foster’s car arrives in a part of Gotham called Little Tokyo. Then unbelievably the narrator says, “Since a wise government rounded up the shifty eyed Japs it has become virtually a ghost street where only one business survives, eking out a precarious existence on the dimes of curiosity seekers”. Foster and his men escort Warren to a House of Horrors ride like one would find at a fair. They get off in the middle of the ride and go through a secret passage where in a room decorated in a semblance of Japanese style, Warren is greeted by Dr. Daka (played by a white guy made to look sort of east Asian) and the League of the New Order. All the others at the table Daka says have been dishonoured like Warren. Warren insists he committed no crime but Daka says he’s still dishonoured. Daka says he is the humble servant of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito. He says his country will destroy the democratic forces of evil in the United States to make way for the New Order to liberate the enslaved people of Middle North America. Warren refuses to cooperate and says no torture can make him. Daka says he does not believe in torture. Then a man with electronic attachments to the top of his head walks in like an automaton. Warren recognizes him as his former partner, Bob. Daka says Bob also refused to cooperate and so he was deprived of his ability to think. He’s been converted to a zombie. From the metal headpiece there is a wire leading to the spine. This is tuned to a microphone through which Daka speaks commands that Bob obeys, no matter how far away he is. Warren still refuses to cooperate and so he is taken to Daka’s electronic lab. Daka tells him he is not going to destroy his brain until he gets the valuable information it contains. Warren is injected with truth serum and he answers all of Daka’s questions. He asks where the radium is at the Gotham Foundation and he says it’s in a safe behind the picture. Daka says he does not need the combination to the safe as he has his radium gun. He demonstrates that it can turn a cement block into a pile of dust. He gives the gun to Foster so he can steal the radium. Meanwhile Bruce and Dick are with Linda at the Foundation but they leave to let her get her work done. As Bruce and Dick leave they recognize Foster from the black car the day before. They change to Batman and Robin to investigate. Foster and his men enter Linda’s office and grab her. She is taken to another room while Foster uses the raygun to blow open the safe and take the radium. Batman and Robin climb the fire escape to the roof and then climb down the side with Bat Ropes and smash through the hallway window just as Foster and his men are leaving the office. They chase them to the roof where Foster fires the ray gun at them but they dodge it. They climb up and jump behind them but Foster fires again but they again dodge, then the heroes close in for a fist fight. One of the men is one of Daka’s zombies and his mindlessness has given him great strength when he attacks Batman. Meanwhile Linda calls the cops. The zombie has Batman by the throat and is pushing home over the edge of the roof. Daka tells his zombie to leave the roof and he jumps down to the street below. Two more men attack Batman and he is thrown off the roof. He is still falling at the end of the episode.

            Linda was played by Canadian actor Shirley Patterson, who was born in Winnipeg and then lived in Eastend, Saskatchewan but her father moved to California for his health and she went to high school in Sherman Oaks, California. She won the Miss California pageant in 1940 but was disqualified because it was learned she was underage. She appeared mostly in serials, B westerns and Three Stooges comedies. Her film debut was in North of the Rockies. She starred in The Vigilantes Ride. She co-starred in Riders of the Northland, The Spirit of Stanford, Riding Through Nevada, Law of the Northwest, Driftin River, Tumbleweed Trail, Stars Over Texas, Black Hills, The Land Unknown, and It! The Terror from Outer Space. She married Alfred Smith and took time off from acting from 1947 to 1953 to raise her family. Then she re-emerged as Shawn Smith to co-star in a few science fiction films. In 1958 a skiing accident broke her leg in eight places and ended her film career. 

            I added the first 27 frames of the second animation to my “Seven Shades of Blues” project and shortened them to 40% of a second like each frame of the first wave. This is where I was on January 15 and so while I was six months behind when I discovered that I’d deleted the project, I’m now three months behind. I might have the animation done tomorrow and then I’ll start recutting and arranging all the video clips.