OK, so…I had this solid discussion of bawdy in Cymbeline cued up for today. But then–sometimes–the world intervenes.
Adam West died.
I am … of a certain age. I was born in 1963, and as I left my terrible twos, the 1960s Batman TV series was beginning its run. It ran twice a week, and I knew it. It was my thing.
My obsession.
My parents had an old black and white snapshot (you know, the kind with a white border, scalloped edges, and the month and year printed on it) of me in my little chair which I had pulled up to the television (or at least as close as an overprotective Japanese mother would allow). They told me that the first song I ever sang was the theme song as I would run around our double-wide trailer at Fort Benning. There was a scrapbook that at one point had a piece of paper with a poorly scrawled “B-A-T-M-A-N” in caps surrounded by an even more poorly scrawled outline of the bat (or so we assumed).
So. Batman.
The first show I ever liked. The first song I ever sang.
The first word I ever wrote.
You may thing this has nothing to do with Shakespeare. But au contraire, mon frere.
The button that enabled the Batpole down to the Batcave where the Batmobile was parked was hidden in a bust of the Bard. I didn’t know it then; hell, I didn’t even know it until last year when it was pointed out to me by Eric Gladstone, the artist behind the No Holds Bard comic.
But it’s fitting.
Batman. It was my obsession then.
And…well, you all know my obsession now.
But for today, here’s a look back, a fond farewell, and maybe even a memorial Batusi.
RIP, Adam West, 1928-2017