Friday, October 24, 2008

How I Spent Today

As you may recall, my kitchen was annihilated last year by a burst water line. When I began the process of getting it rebuilt, I had no idea I was embarking on my life's work.

The current task is to find a new light fixture to install on the wall over my new kitchen sink. This should not be difficult. Millions of homes have kitchen sinks. Most have lights over them. There must be a big market for them. Why, oh why, can I not find one?

I tried looking online, clicking my way through a dozen or so sites which offer hundreds of light fixtures. I'm looking for something that would use two standard, non-Halogen bulbs and can fit in a space about a foot wide. I don't want something frilly or ornate and I don't want something with such dense globes that only half the light ever makes it out into the room. You would think this would be simple. Yeah, you would, wouldn't you? I found a few maybes on the websites of lighting companies but nothing that I was so sure of that I was willing to buy it without seeing it in person.

This afternoon, I had to go out to the Warner Brothers lot to be interviewed for little behind-the-scenes videos that will appear on two upcoming DVDs of cartoon shows. One is of the 1979 Saturday morning Plastic Man series, which I worked on for one season. The other is of the 1985 syndicated Jetsons revival, which I worked on for about an hour.

I'm not kidding...about an hour. I was summoned to a meeting where a short-term Hanna-Barbera exec who didn't seem to have ever watched the original show began talking about "modernizing" it. I asked why he thought it necessary to "modernize" a show that was set in the future. While he was trying to come up with an answer, I added that I thought the '62 version was pretty darn good and in no need of improvement. There are certain projects in one's life where if you're lucky, you get a sense very early on of "This is not the project for me" and you can get out while the getting is good. The ensuing discussion convinced me this was just such a project and I was back in my car and heading home before you could say "His boy, Elroy."

Anyway, whilst out in Burbank, I took the opportunity to visit a huge lighting fixture shop out there. Nothing on display matched my needs but a pushy salesman who looked way too much like Morey Amsterdam told me he could get me any fixture made in the world. "Just pick it out," he said as he motioned towards a wall of bookcases that contained about as many catalogs as I have of comic books. I thought of challenging Morey to give me a joke about two camels and a sailor, but instead asked if he could point me to the catalog that might contain what I wanted. He shrugged and said, "Any of them...just flip through 'til you see the one."

I flipped for about fifteen minutes before my eyes glazed over and I could look no more. "Tell you what," Mr. Amsterdam said. "You on the Internet? Browse around websites, find what you want, then print it out and bring it in. I can match anything you can find and get it for you." I told him I'd tried the Internet and come up empty. (By now I was growing weary so I didn't bother telling him that if I could find it on the Internet, I could just order it on the Internet. I also didn't ask him if he had a brother who'd been working at Hanna-Barbera in '85 but I was tempted...)

Before I hit the road, I ducked into the lighting store's men's room and — wouldn't you know it? — there, over the sink was pretty much the kind of fixture I was seeking. I went back to Morey and said, "I can show you what I want but you'll have to come into the bathroom with me." If someone said that to me, I wouldn't follow them in there but he did.

He studied the fixture for about six hours and then told me, "I'm not sure where to get those." I'm beginning to get the feeling that by the time my kitchen is finished, those reruns of The Jetsons will look like they're set in the past.

• Posted at 10:28 PM · LINK

More Damn Soup News

As you know too well, this weblog shamelessly pimps for the Creamy Tomato Soup that is occasionally available at the chain of restaurants known variously as Souplanation or Sweet Tomatoes. This is perhaps our greatest public service as proven by the kind of e-mails it invariably yields. Here's typical testimony...in this case, from Corey Klemow, a devout reader of this blog...

I have a deeply ingrained prejudice against tomato soup. Sometime when I was very, very young, I decided I hated tomato soup; probably had a lousy batch of Campbell's or something. I have studiously avoided tomato soup all my life (with one exception too convoluted to go into here). So it was a big deal for me to try tomato soup of any sort. Even a highly recommended creamy variety. Goddamn, that was some friggin' good soup. Extreme thanks for the extreme recommendation. (Ever tried dipping the foccacia bread in it? Mmmmmmm.)

There you have it: Independent verification. And I will remind you that this soup will disappear from those eateries some time this weekend (call first to check) and will probably not be available for months. They usually have it in March but, as the lady at the Customer Service line keeps telling me, the menus are not set this far in advance. They do this to toy with my emotions.

Also of note: As so many of you informed me, this past week on the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, one of the characters made a special mention of the Creamy Tomato Soup at Souplantation. It was a nice bit of timing from my point of view. This is the first week since the end of March that my favorite soup has been available there...and this is the week it got mentioned on The Big Bang Theory. Not only that but the show aired the first night I was able to get over there and shotgun a couple of bowls. I wondered here if the mention could have anything to do with my relentless hectoring of you all to go out and slurp some of this soup.

Turns out the answer is yes...and I feel dumb for not realizing this. So startled was I that I plumb forgot my pal Lee Aronsohn is one of the Executive Producers of The Big Bang Theory. Lee, who reads this here blog, informs me he wrote that line. I shoulda known...

• Posted at 9:44 AM · LINK

Follow-Up

Recently, I linked to this article by Jeffrey Goldberg which charged general ineptness on the part of the TSA department at the airport that is allegedly screening passengers for signs of terrorism. If you read it, you might be interested in this response from the agency. It's not all that convincing to me.

• Posted at 9:23 AM · LINK