RIP Batman

RIP Adam West

This is the end of an era for me. This is the day that Batman died. And by Batman I mean Adam West, who just passed away at the age of 88.

During the psychedelic 60s when I was a 2nd grader in a flyspeck of a town in New Jersey, one of my favorite comic books suddenly came to life in brilliant color on television. Batman back then wasn't a dark and foreboding fellow riven with anger down in his batcave, brooding over the senseless deaths of his parents.

Instead, he was a detective (the world's greatest!) armed with gadgets who dressed in a blue, light grey, and yellow costume vaguely reminiscent of a bat. He was on good terms with the cops who were constantly calling him via bat-signal or beeping red bat-phone to solve the alarmingly frequent super-villain crimes of Gotham City. Batman at this point in his life wasn't scary or particularly mysterious (though no one knew who he was), just a colorful super-hero, like Superman over in Metropolis, who was probably his best friend. I owned quite a few of their comics.

ZAP!

Then one Wednesday night (January 12, 1966 to be precise) all of that world abruptly appeared in our TV.  Even the sound effect balloons -- POW!, ZAP! -- translated over, and the theme song was unforgettable. Batman and his trusty, even more colorful sidekick Robin were trying to stop the Riddler's perfidious crimes in this episode. And I sat there mesmerized. But then, at the very climax of the story, with Batman drunk (they spiked his orange juice) and Robin kidnapped and about to be operated on -- it ended!!  Instead we got this:

WILL ROBIN ESCAPE?

CAN BATMAN FIND HIM IN TIME?

IS THIS THE GHASTLY END OF OUR DYNAMIC DUO?

ANSWERS...TOMORROW NIGHT! SAME TIME, SAME CHANNEL!

ONE HINT--THE WORST IS YET TO COME!

Whaaaat???  I suffered through the whole next day! Until finally, after the longest Thursday in history, we tuned in to find Robin not dissected after all (only used to make a rubber Robin mask for special guest star Jill St. John to wear) and Batman all sobered up. Naturally he goes on to win the day, although poor Jill St. John perishes in the Batcave's nuclear reactor.

Being 7 years old I took this all as straight adventure, never quite catching on that it was being played so deadly serious that it was hilarious to the adults. The utterly straight-arrow Batman played against the surreal atmosphere of the late 60's (which had a vibe even a kid could pick up on) was such a disjunction that Batman and Adam West became the hottest thing on television.

The Grey Ghost

Batman was such a vivid cultural event that, even though Bat-fever quickly drifted away like smoke, Adam West radiated it for the rest of his life. Try as he might he never really escaped the Bat. I remember reading in the 70s and 80s about how he raged against being typecast. But eventually he learned to embrace being the 1960s Batman, attending conferences and appearing with the super-cool 60s Batmobile.

In 1992, West appeared in an animated Batman episode called Beware the Grey Ghost, portraying an actor who once had great fame as a TV superhero, but now was unable to find work due to being typecast by the role. In the end he helps Batman defeat a criminal and gains a new-found popularity with a younger audience.

According to Wikipedia, the producers almost canceled the production because they felt it was uncomfortably close to Adam West's actual life. But West insisted on playing the character.

One has to wonder if it was a sort of catharsis for him.

Skim Milk

Photo by Carsten Schertzer

So, when is skim milk not skim milk (Florida answer, please)? When it's skim milk, of course!

"Let me ‘splain… No, there is too much. Let me sum up." Once, there was a little dairy in the state of Florida called the Ocheesee Creamery that sold good, old fashioned, healthy, all-natural skim milk. And there was much rejoicing.

But then one day the Florida Milk Police (FMP) swooped in and informed them that their skim milk could no longer be called skim milk. It would have to be called something like "I Can't Believe It's Not Skim Milk" instead.

The heroic creamery helpfully informed the FMP that their skim milk met the standard definition of skim milk, i.e.:

Milk from which the cream has been skimmed.

"No! You are totally wrong!" a burly Milk bureaucrat responded. "That is most certainly not the definition of skim milk. We here in the state of Florida define skim milk as:

Milk from which the cream has been skimmed AND some vitamin A has been added."

Mary Lou, the owner of Ocheesee Creamery, was nonplussed. But, quickly recovering her wits, she mounted a classic David vs. Goliath court battle, from which she has just emerged triumphant.

Pretty much.

Florida still holds that theirs is the one, true, and immutable definition of skim milk. And Mary Lou has offered to add, "no vitamins added" to the label. The Milk Police are mulling that compromise over.

RIP Green Hornet

Since he always wore the appropriate color for St. Patrick's Day I want to belatedly note the passing of Van Williams -- the Green Hornet. He was 82 years old.

Mr. Williams actually died on November 28th of last year from kidney failure. I knew of it at the time and meant to write about him but got no farther than storing an obituary link in a draft post, meaning to come back later and flesh it out. Life was a bit hectic at the time though and I never returned to it. 

But one thing I've always hated to see is lesser known celebrities being forgotten and fading away. Well actually, anybody fading away. One of my favorite pastimes when I'm editing Wikipedia is creating biographies of old bit players from the movies, especially the ones who had a taste of fame but never really attained it. It's a little like the ancient Egyptian belief: as long as your name lives on here, you live on in the afterlife.

Van Williams was one of those hunky actors who emerged in the early 60s, like Troy Donahue and Tom Tryon. During that time he starred (with Troy Donahue!) in Surfside 6, about three super-cool Miami detectives frequently seen in swimming trunks, who solve crimes from the posh houseboat they live on. I've never seen the program but the theme song is quite memorable ("cha-cha-cha!").

After that ended in 1962 he did guest shots on TV until 1966 when he landed his signature role as The Green Hornet. This I watched every episode of. It was from the same group that produced the campy but cool Batman, and the Hornet even made his debut in a two-part Batman episode ("A Piece of the Action/Batman's Satisfaction"), but his own series was played straight and I liked it better.

Together with his trusted butler Kato (played by Bruce Lee, who went on to achieve godlike status in certain circles), the Green Hornet prowled the night in his weaponized, high tech, super-car Black Beauty searching for low life thugs and crime syndicates to be smashed. Aside from Kato's deadly kicks and chops the smashing was often done using the Green Hornet's weapon of choice: the "hornet sting," a sleek ultra-sonic gun that had the effectiveness of a laser beam.

Unfortunately, The Green Hornet lasted only one season and unfortunately has been supplanted in most people's memories by a truly odious movie of the same name.

But I'll always remember.

RIP Van Williams.

Godspeed, John Glenn

John Glenn, doing what he did best -- being a hero

There were a few moments during my childhood that I can now pinpoint the exact time they occurred. The earliest one happened during the 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds on February 20, 1962 when John Glenn was orbiting the earth.

I was 3 1/2 years old, and I remember sitting cross-legged on the the living room in front of our black and white TV set completely enthralled. I think I was there for the whole 5 hours, my mother supplying graham crackers and tea to keep me going. I knew enough to know at that early age that something extraordinary was happening, that somewhere way above my head was a man in a metal box wearing a silver suit.

What he was doing was so important (said the man with a mustache on our TV) that everybody in the world had stopped to watch. This was the biggest thing I had ever seen. For some reason I can remember with crystal clarity one particular point, when the TV man told us, "John Glenn is now passing over Red China!" And a little cardboard cutout of a Mercury space capsule slowly crawled over communist China on a large map.

It takes a lot to make an impression on a 3 year old boy's mind that lasts the rest of his life. All my other memories of world events -- the Kennedy assassination, his funeral, a speech Pope John XXIII made where he said he was, "bleeding inside" -- came when I was a little older.

But John Glenn hurtling through space impacted my little imagination early, and he became one of my childhood heroes.  Come to think of it, he still is. Come to think of it, that's what a hero looks like to me.

He passed today at the age of 95.  Godspeed, John Glenn!