Dick Beals

            On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Qui lira ces mots” (Whoever Reads These Words) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think the other verses are the same and so there should be only the chorus left to do. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 86.75 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since April 24. 

            Around midday I renewed my application for the federal dental plan. 

            I weighed 87.25 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. When I got back I met my upstairs neighbour David and we chatted for a while in front of the building. 

            I weighed 87.15 kilos at 18:15.

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:04. 

            I finished adding seven shades of blue to the sepia copy of frame 18 of my rainbow wave animation. I made a sepia copy of frame 19 but didn’t have time before supper to add blue to it. I’m only getting one done a day lately. There are 11 frames left to make. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching episode 12 of Birdman and the Galaxy Trio. 

            In the first Birdman story members of F.E.A.R. have artificial wings that they use to swoop down and abduct the ambassadors of three foreign powers from the Conference of Peaceful Nations. Falcon 7 asks Birdman to protect the others but warns him that these F.E.A.R. agents only strike at night. Birdman’s powers diminish in the dark. Later when Birdman and Avenger are staking out the Peaceful Nations building, Birdman sees “FEAR” written in red in the sky but when he is distracted, two F.E.A.R. agents abduct Avenger and also grab Ambassador Tubor. Birdman confronts them and they say they will give back Avenger if he lets them abduct Tubor. Birdman agrees to that but that sounds odd since he’s sacrificed Avenger before. So they take Tubor but minutes later drop him to the street because he was a robot decoy. Birdman says “Tubor” spelled backwards is “Robot”. (I have noticed that in old science fiction movies they pronounced “robot” as “robut”. Early English pronunciations of the word “robot” as derived from the Czech word “robota” for “servant” often came out as “robut” or “robit” before finally solidifying as “robot” in the 70s.) Birdman follows F.E.A.R.’s heloship disguised as a dark cloud but Number 1 shoots maser rays at him and knocks him out of the sky. His powers are drained and he has to give up for the night but he asks Falcon 7 to track the cloud. Back at the Birdlair, Birdman either invents or acquires solar energy storage batteries so he can have the sun’s power with him even at night. Why didn’t he think of that in the first place, since he’s constantly running out of power when there is no sun? The cloud is tracked to the Andes. Meanwhile at F.E.A.R.’s mountain headquarters, Number 1 says he plans to brainwash the ambassadors before returning them. Birdman attacks the complex and takes out their defenses. Number 1 is cornered and he tries to kill his hostages but somehow Avenger has freed them from their chains and then it takes away Number One’s gun. Number 1 sets off a nuclear grenade but Birdman is able to slow down the detonation until after everyone has safely left and then the mountain is destroyed. 

            In the Galaxy Trio story, raiders approach Centauri III to rob the Intergalactic Treasury. They attack the building in many small ships. The Trio is called and they arrive to see that the building has been breached and the vault melted open. Then Condor 1 is surrounded. Gravity Girl asks Meteor Man if they should fight and he says, “I’m surprised at you. Until we find who we’re dealing with we surrender”. This is the first indication that Meteor Man is the leader of the Trio. Each of the heroes is placed in their own pod and launched into space. Vapour Man is able to leak out and free himself. Then he uses a heat vapour to free Gravity Girl and she seems to disintegrate Meteor Man’s pod with powers she’s never displayed before. I assume this extra power of hers is animator’s laziness. All three of the Trio seem to be able to fly through space without a ship or a suit. The raiders attack but the Trio takes out all the pods. Zakar launches his ultimate weapon, the Multoseeker. Gravity Girl slows it down, then Vapour Man heats it up while Meteor Man smashes it. 

             In the second Birdman story, Birdman goes out on patrol and over the ocean sees a boy on a raft fighting off sharks with an oar. Birdman chases the sharks away with a solar blast and finds the boy unconscious. Birdman takes him back to the Birdlair and renews his strength with some of his solar energy. The boy doesn’t remember his own name but he remembers sailing with his father and landing on an island that was armed with a lot of hidden high tech weapons. The owner of the island fired at them. They escaped in their boat but the man pursued them in an advanced submarine that destroyed their boat. The boy woke up alone in the raft. It’s unlikely that he would remember all that and still not remember his own name. The boy has developed solar powers from Birdman’s energy transfusion. Birdman makes the odd choice of calling him Bird Boy, giving him artificial wings and making him his sidekick. The kid even calls out “Birdboy!” when he flies just as Birdman calls “Birdman!” The Barracuda sees them from his sub and attacks with missiles. The Bird duo use their solar powers to knock out the projectiles. Barracuda uses his nuclear magnetizer to capture Birdman. Avenger has a homing device on his leg that connects him to Birdman so he and Birdboy fly to save him. Barracuda launches missiles meant to start a World War. Birdboy destroys them then finds Birdman and frees him. Birdman destroys Barracuda’s weapons but Barracuda escapes in a mini-sub just before Birdman destroys the big one. 

            Birdboy is voiced by Dick Beals, who was too small for sports as a child and so he started cheerleading instead at the age of seven. He started acting in Jam Handy films from the age of eight. He continued cheerleading through college and earned his BA in 1949. Because of a glandular condition, in adulthood he was only 1.4 meters tall and his voice was still like that of a boy. While still in college he began radio acting and playing children on various shows. He was the voice of Speedy Alka Seltzer in over 200 commercials. He did other voices in 3000 other commercials, including Oscar Mayer, Bob’s Big Boy and the Campbell’s Soup Kids. He was also the voice of Sticky the Vaseline mascot but there is not one image online of what that character looked like. He was the original voice of Gumby and of Davey from the Claymation Christian series Davey and Goliath. he was the voice of Buzz Conroy in Frankenstein Junior and the Impossibles. Directors often chose him over child actors for voice work so they didn’t have to deal with kooky stage parents. He was also a licensed pilot, coached little league, raced sailboats, and competed in bridge tournaments. He opened an ad agency in Escondido, California. His autobiography was called Think Big.