Jack Hanrahan

            On Wednesday morning I ran through singing and playing “Celle-là c’est la meilleure” (This is All for the Best) by Serge Gainsbourg in French and English. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing it for publication. I should have it posted tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. Maybe in two weeks Alex Wood will let me know he’s got room in his shop to work on my guitar. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I brought in the stepladder and sanded the areas I’d filled in the upper walls of the northeast corner of my bathroom. Maybe I’ll have time to finish the upper part of the north wall on Sunday. 

            I weighed 86.55 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 86.15 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:45. 

            I made a sepia copy of frame 13 of my first rainbow wave animation and started adding shades of blue to it. This is a tedious process but I think it will be a good way to end my “Seven Shades of Blues” video. There are about 16 frames left to do. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with marinara sauce, the rest of my ham and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 7 of Birdman and the Galaxy Trio. 

            In the first Birdman story, at a world’s fair science exhibit, a scientist is admiring a machine when a beam of light comes out of it and he disappears. This is not the first time it has happened and so Birdman is notified. He goes to investigate. He remembers a Dr. Shado who experimented with matter transference and goes to his old hideout. He sees that Shado has returned but Shado sees him as well. We see that Shado has the four scientists he abducted hooked up to his brain hoarder as lightning travels from their heads into the machine. Birdman flies to smash the machine but crashes into an invisible force wall made instantly by his brain hoarder. The wall then folds around Birdman and forms a capsule prison. The capsule is then loaded into Shado’s projecto cannon and shot into the air. Avenger somehow knows that his master is inside the capsule and follows. The capsule flies up until it arcs and falls down into the ocean. Avenger dives after it and is able to somehow hold his breath while prying open the top with his beak to free Birdman. Avenger lifts his master out of the water and flies toward the sun to recharge the hero’s powers. When Birdman returns to confront Shado he and Avenger are met by larger robot versions of themselves. The robot Birdman’s magnet ray pins Birdman to the wall. Birdman just manages to break free and escape. The robot Birdman flies after him shooting a paralyzer ray that Birdman blocks with his shield. Then Birdman pits his solar beam against the paralyzer and eventually disables the robot. He throws the robot at Shado’s hoarder and destroys it, freeing the scientists. 

            In the Galaxy Trio story, in a metal building on a metal planet a scientist treats himself with a ray that makes him larger and so he has become Titan the Titanium Man. The first thing he wants to do is destroy the Galaxy Trio. Condor 1 picks up a distress signal from the metal planet and so they investigate. As they come in for a landing Titan shoots a beam that suspends their ship in the air. Then he launches cybernoids that fire heat rays. Gravity Girl uses her gravity powers from the ship to stop them. Meteor Man extends his arms from the ship to destroy another. Vapour Man uses a freeze vapor to annihilate the last one. The Trio beams down and begins exploring Titan’s fortress. Titan attacks them with more cybernoids but they use their powers to disable them. Gravity Girl and Meteor Man are captured in glass capsules while Vapour Man escapes at the last minute, then follows. Titan is about to disintegrate them when Vapour Man pulls the release switch to free them. More cybernoids are beaten by Meteor Man, then Titan shoots rays from his eyes but Vapour Man turns into a storm that absorbs the rays and sends Titan back against the machine that controls the cybernoids. The cybernoids go crazy and start firing every which way. Titan either got away or he was destroyed. 

            In the second Birdman story, a snakelike humanoid named The Constrictor has pet boa constrictors that obey his commands. Constrictor slithers into a top secret international police headquarters and steals secret papers that reveal the locations of the free nations missile sites. Constrictor says he will give the papers back in exchange for Avenger. Birdman says he has no choice but to choose the world’s security over his pet eagle. But he puts a tracking device under Avenger’s wing. Avenger is delivered to Constrictor but he reneges on his bargain and keeps the papers. Birdman tracks Avenger and frees him then destroys the Constrictor’s headquarters. Meanwhile Constrictor has destroyed the first missile site with rockets from his submarine. Birdman arrives and Constrictor fires on him but Birdman blocks the blast. Constrictor decides Birdman is too powerful and escapes but leaves the plans behind. 

            One of the three main writers on all these stories was Jack Hanrahan, who first attended theological school before quitting to work as a greeting card writer for Hallmark. There he met another writer named Phil Hahn. In 1966 they drove Phil’s Mustang from Ohio to Los Angeles where within a month they were writing scripts for Hanna-Barbera cartoons. They co-wrote five episodes of The Fantastic Four animated series, three episodes of Get Smart, and 24 episodes of Rowen and Martin’s Laugh-In (for one of which he won an Emmy). He co-wrote the concept of the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate. He wrote for the Sonny and Cher Show but didn’t like putting words in the mouth of people he considered uninteresting. He thought Cher was a truck driver’s wet dream. He co-starred in the movie Up Your Alley in 1988. After his wife died in 2004 he was grief stricken. He got evicted after a garage fire and his landlady held onto his Emmy and his dentures until he paid damages, which he never did. He ended up homeless on the streets of Cleveland about which he had written so many jokes for Laugh-In. He was still homeless when he died in 2008.