Because posting is light while I'm at Comic-Con, we bring you a Golden Oldie from 10/24/08…
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.