Guess where I am and what I'm eating.

If you live in California and you're struggling with all them weird propositions, take a look at this blog post by Kevin Drum. I don't quite share his automatic denials of bond issues, though I guess I agree with the theory. I voted for two of the ones he says no to, but otherwise, I think he's correct.

Methinks we especially should not pass Propositions 4 and 8 — for reasons that should be obvious — and Proposition 10, which looks at arm's length like something that will advance the cause of "clean energy." Actually, it would more likely advance the financial well-being of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who seems to have decided there's serious money to be made if you can out-Algore Al Gore. This editorial explains why. Mr. Pickens is turning up on my TV more often than the Geico Lizard and looks even slimier.

There are folks who don't believe in Global Warming simply because Gore says it's so and they think anything Al Gore says must be automatically disbelieved. I don't think that makes any sense…stopped clocks and all that. But I am skeptical of anything T. Boone Pickens says, especially when he's pouring millions into advancing a cause that should net him billions. If Pickens wants to convince America that he has the world's best interests at heart, he oughta do it as a pro bono project. And it would help if he apologized for funding all those Swift Boat ads against John Kerry.

The late Bill Everett was a giant among comic creators, widely admired by his peers and popular with the readers. His name is invariably linked with his greatest creation, the Sub-Mariner…but he also drew the first issue of Daredevil and claimed to have come up with the basic idea behind the character. Here's a piece on another "creation" of his…his daughter Wendy Everett.

Last evening, I was napping — or rather, trying to nap — when I heard someone pounding on my door. Turned out, it was a McCain volunteer working the neighborhood, trying to convince folks to save the world from the inexperienced commie-terrorist on the ballot.

We have a simple policy here at Casa Evanier: We don't buy anything from or give any money to anyone who comes to the door that way. Ever. If you were going door-to-door handing out free hundred dollar bills, we'd slam said door in your face. Especially unwelcome are those who think a brief porch visit will prompt me to change my religion…and the McCain worker was perilously close to that category.

Still, she seemed like a nice, sincere person…nice enough that instead of scolding her for waking me up or mocking her for thinking she could possibly make one bit of difference, I talked to her for a few minutes. She admitted that California was a lost cause and even told me that she'd been ringing doorbells all day and didn't think she'd flipped one voter from blue to red. The few positive notes had come from other McCain backers thanking her and encouraging her…but also, she told me, declining to donate cash to a lost cause. I did say to her, "John McCain has written off this state. Don't you think it's about time you did, too?" (For some reason, possibly because I was still half-asleep, I forgot to tell her that I'd already voted. As bad as the odds of her convincing me seemed at the moment, they were actually worse.)

One of two things she said that made an impression on me came when she admitted her efforts wouldn't change the outcome but explained, "I just couldn't sit and do nothing." In other words, she was standing on my welcome mat, not so much for the nation's benefit as her own…and y'know, I could almost respect that. She's not going to swing California's 55 electoral votes over to the McCain column but she might make herself feel a little better for having tried. In a like situation, I think I'd feel like I was compounding the loss, adding a colossal waste of time (mine and others') to all the other bad things I believed to be occurring. But obviously, she and I do not see the world in much the same way.

The other lingering impression was not something she said so much as the urgency in her voice. She's scared…scared Obama might be a secret Muslim and/or radical who'll destroy America with a socialist agenda. (I said, "Yeah, he might even start partially nationalizing banks," but she didn't hear me or didn't get it.) On the one hand, I think the current McCain-Palin crusade to make people feel as she does is great — great because it isn't working. Every day, their campaign demonizes Obama by another notch and every day, another state that formerly seemed bright red moves to pink or even light blue. On the other hand, it's a shame to scare people like that. They panic, they get ulcers, they divide our country and spread apocalyptic visions of the future…and worst of all, they knock on my door and wake me up when I'm trying to sleep. That kind of thing — the waking-me-up part — has got to stop.

Thinking of sending out for pizza? Well, if you're really hungry, Big Mama's and Papa's Pizzeria on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles will send over a 54-inch square pizza for "only" $199.99 plus tax. That's just for your basic cheese. Toppings will run you fifteen bucks apiece. They say it'll feed 50-70 people.

The pizza comes in a 54-inch box and I guess if you order one, you have to have a doorway that can accommodate it. After all, you can't exactly turn the box vertical to get it inside.

I was at a party a few months ago where they brought in Big Mama's and Papa's pizzas but in the less awesome 36-inch round size. They came cut into slices, most of them square, and I remember thinking it was very awkward to reach the ones near the top. People ate the slices at the front of the box and then someone had to elevate the back of the box a little to allow the hard-to-reach slices to slide down to the front where they'd be accessible. I also remember thinking that if you'd spread tomato sauce and melted cheese on the cardboard box, it would have been tastier. Bigger is not always better.

I don't know how many of you have been following this story but the other day, a low-level McCain campaign worker named Ashley Todd reported that she'd been assaulted at an ATM in Pittsburgh. A tall black man (she said) had noticed the McCain bumper sticker on her car and this had led to him blackening her eye and carving a backwards "B" on one of her cheeks. The "B" apparently stood for "Barack."

There was a brief period when some bloggers and McCain's Pennsylvania communications director tried to drum up outrage in a way that might make people mad enough to vote for McCain. But most people seemed to sense that there was something amiss with her story…and sure enough, she has confessed it was a hoax and that the damage was self-inflicted. (I don't think, by the way, that this reflects in any way on Senator McCain except, of course, for the fact that his Pennsylvania communications director is kind of a sleazeball.)

Police reportedly knew instantly that the young lady had done this to herself. It was because of the backwards "B," which suggested Ms. Todd had applied the damage in a mirror. When I heard that, my mind flashed back to another unscrupulous fraud who tried pretty much the same scam and made the same mistake.

Some of you probably remember Morton Downey Jr., who had a loud and shrill talk show back in the eighties. He was like Jerry Springer but without the class. Downey was a right-winger who was hated by right-wingers for making them look like screaming maniacs and by left-wingers for what he screamed. His show was popular for a brief period — about fifteen minutes, as I recall — and was cancelled after two years.

Soon after, Downey was in the news again. He reported he'd been assaulted in a men's room at the San Francisco Airport. A bunch of neo-Nazis beat him up, shaved his head and painted a swastika on his face…or so he said. Police noted that the swastika was painted in reverse…and Downey eventually admitted that he'd applied it and that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt.

Moral of the story? When you fake getting assaulted by someone who wrote on your face — and you will; I know you — don't look in a mirror. See what valuable things you can learn from this website?

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.

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…

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.