Trump keeps talking about how much money his tariffs are bringing in…so much, he says, that this country may be able to do away with the Income Tax. Steve Benen of The Maddow Blog says that the numbers Trump is citing are bogus. So the idea that you will soon not have to pay Income Tax is unrealistic…unless, of course, you're really rich.

We haven't had a Laurel & Hardy film here for a while so here's Perfect Day, which was released on August 10, 1929. When it first appeared, it did not have the famous "kuku" song that you'll hear in the opening here and which most of us know as the boys' theme song. That didn't appear until a year or so later but it was later edited onto earlier films when they were reissued.

This was their fourth "all-talking" film and, in my opinion, the first really good one. The film is lively, funny and it gains a lot from the participation of the great character actor, Edgar Kennedy. Reportedly, the material you'll see in this short — the family heading out for a picnic — was only supposed to occupy the first half of this short but with on-set improvisations and add-ons, it ran so long so they decided to not shoot the picnic and end it as it ends here…

Dan from Nova Scotia is one of many who've asked me about the episode I saw filmed of The Dick Van Dyke Show…

I assume that at the end of the filming of an episode, the actors were re-introduced, and the audience gave them one last cheer and applause?

Can you share any anecdotes about that? Did the audience get to mingle with cast and crew?

Mingle? No. Actually, I was hoping that would happen because, if you recall the story, my parents and I went to a filming on the invitation of Morey Amsterdam and he said he'd introduce me to Dick and Mary and Rose, et al…but as it turned out, the week we chose to go, it was an episode that didn"t involve Morey or Rose Marie so they weren't there. Usually, they did the warm-up and the hosting duties, welcoming the live audience and keeping us interested during lulls. Instead that week, Carl Reiner did that. He was very, very funny and charming…which I suppose doesn't surprise anyone.

But there was no opportunity to meet anyone. I did talk to Dick Van Dyke a little from my seat in the front row of the bleachers. I don't know of any show that at the close of a filming or taping lets the studio audience mingle but I suppose somewhere, on some series, it may have occurred.

That evening and at every filming/taping I've ever attended, they bring the cast members out for a final bow before they thank everyone for being there…and you reminded me of a moment in my life. It was at the taping of the third or fourth episode of Welcome Back, Kotter that I worked on back in the previous century. The taping was over and Gabe Kaplan was bringing out the cast members, one by one, for some applause and a couple of them were doing something backstage and couldn't get out there when Gabe wanted to introduce them again.

He was filling time, waiting for Travolta or Hegyes or someone to get out there and he spotted me in the wings. Just to have something to keep the energy going, he yelled out, "Here's one of our writers, Mark Evanier!" So I stepped out and took a bow. It was the only time that ever happened on that show or any other show I ever worked on but it made two people very happy. Gabe had no idea that my parents were in the audience that night.

I think my father wanted to come to every taping ever thereafter just to see that again but I assured him it was a one-time occurrence, not to be repeated.

Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post tracks some of the inaccurate things Donald Trump has said about water over the years.

FactCheck.org tracks some of the inaccurate things Trump has said about coal.

And FactCheck.org tracks some of the inaccurate things Robert F. Kennedy has said about food coloring.

Disney has had a formidable presence on Broadway for thirty years now.  Here's a concert celebrating the shows that have played — often for long, long times and even still — on The Great White Way. The performers are Michael James Scott (the current genie in Aladdin), Kara Lindsay (who was in Newsies), Rodney Ingram (also from Aladdin), Kissy Simmons (The Lion King) and your host Ashley Brown (Mary Poppins, Beauty and the Beast). Be our guest…

I've been collecting and reading comic books as long as I can remember — and I can remember back for most of my 73 years. It was not something I ever hid the way you might hide a shameful bad habit or something that made people question your I.Q.

Every so often over the years, some fellow reader/collector has asked about if I've ever been mocked or criticized for love of that reading material and they're amazed when I tell them the answer is "Almost never." And you could lose the "almost" if I'd never ventured near local science-fiction fandom of the late-sixties and early-seventies.

I was also a reader of science-fiction…some of it, anyway. I favored the kind that was anchored on the planet on which I resided in time periods not too far into the past or future. Before we had comic book conventions in Southern California and for a few years after the first on in 1970, I sometimes mingled with the local s-f crowd and attended a few such conventions but I didn't fit in with that crowd. The cons all seemed to be there largely for the consumption of alcohol with one's friends. I didn't have many friends at these gatherings and I didn't and still don't imbibe — ergo, the not fitting-in.

I never faulted anyone for what they read or drank but at these particular s-f events, the air was often thick with condescension towards those who read comic books. You'd think people who themselves were mocked or called "nerds" for their tastes in fiction would be more tolerant of someone else's…but no, not there and then.

One older female fan used to lecture me that Comic Book Fandom was an unfortunate outgrowth of Science-Fiction Fandom and oughta stay that way…or better still, disappear entirely. What they read was for sophisticated adults and what "we" read (drawing a firm, uncrossable line with that "we" there) was for the kiddos. Her suggestion was that there was something wrong with us for not outgrowing it.

The last such lecture I got — this would have been around '73 — was from a guy wearing Spock ears and brandishing a plastic phaser that fired little multi-colored discs. One of these…

Understand please that I'm talking about certain s-f fans I encountered; not all and certainly not any these days. I haven't been to any pure s-f conventions for close to a half-a-century. At the kind of cons I attend, everyone's interests seem pretty welcome and it's often hard to tell where one category leaves off and another begins. At WonderCon this year, I was showing my friend Gabriella around and explaining to her that a gathering like that is a convergence of loosely-associated interests: Fantasy on TV or movie screens, videogames, comic books, animation, anime, cosplaying, Lego, Funko Pop, model kits, toys, artwork, prose novels, collectible items, newspaper strips…and on and on.

And the worst thing that anyone has to say about someone's interest is "I'm not interested in that."

I feel very "at home" in such surroundings. I feel I'm among friends even though I might never have met 98% of them. I didn't feel that way at the early science-fiction conventions I attended. Too many people there were too damned defensive about being faulted for what they liked.

Lots of people have lots of things to say about Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, that gentleman who due to an "administrative error" was shipped off to El Salvador. Politifact corrects a number of things that are being said and which are not true.

Debuting this Wednesday on the CW Network — and other channels in other countries later this year — is a new TV series created by my friend Brendan Foley. If you were a fan of his work on Cold Courage or The Man Who Died — which you were if you saw them — you owe it to yourself to tune in for Sherlock & Daughter. It stars David Thewlis, who you might know best from the Harry Potter series, as the master of all detectives and Blu Hunt, who you might know from The New Mutants as Amelia Rojas, who might or might not be the daughter of the eminent Mr. Holmes. Early reviews describe it as "a high-quality, well-made adventure and mystery series" and we could always use one of those.

Here's a little preview…

The Showrunner is the Emmy-nominated James Duff (The Closer, Major Crimes, Star Trek: Picard) and the writing crew also includes Micah War Dog Wright and my good buddy Shelly Goldstein. With talent like that involved, I've got my DVR set to record it and you should set yours. In my time zone, it's on at 9 PM.

Randy…

I'm keeping odd hours but at some point, I'll be awake when everyone else is awake. For now, here's a look at the impact that The Fantastic Four made on some of us in the sixties, courtesy of my pal, Gary Sassaman…

Thanks to all who sent the latest waves of Good Health Wishes. I'm taking a little vacation from anything stressful or which interferes with sleep. Not answering the phone. Not responding to most e-mails. I just need a little peace 'n' quiet and I'll be fine, thanks.

Steve Benen itemizes just some of the spectacularly-wrong assertions we've recently heard from our Secretary of Health and Human Services. Putting this man in charge of our nation's disease prevention is like putting the Reverend Jim Ignatowski in charge of…well, anything.

Thanks to all of you who wrote to wish me improved health. I'm sure I'm going to be fine but I am going to take it easy — in terms of activity that includes blogging — in the coming week. I just watched some video of the Celebration of Life I hosted last Sunday and I was amazed. I was exhausted but I thought I did a much better job of not showing it. In the video, I look like the kind of person who's about twenty-four hours from being rushed to the Emergency Room on a gurney…which I was. When that video's posted here in a day or three, you'll see what I mean.

I keep forgetting I'm 73 years old and while I don't think a number like that should prompt you to act like an old person, it doesn't hurt to keep in mind that maybe you can't do everything you did fifty years go. I can write faster now than I could then but that might be the only thing. Anyway, thanks for the concern from those of you who were concerned.

We are tentative fans — "tentative" meaning we haven't seen it but are hopeful we'll love it — of Boop the Musical, which opened recently to mixed reviews at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway. I probably won't get back there until later this year and I hope it's still running. The folks I know who've see it — cartoon fans, all — have been unanimous in their praise. The critics who I've seen panning it seem to be saying "Why the hell is there a musical on Broadway about an old cartoon that no one cares about?" So there are two views for you.

One of the many things that interests me about it that they did one of those "video diaries" covering the making of the show. Four installments have been released so far. Here's Part One…

…and here's Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. I wish more shows did this. I really liked the ones for Something Rotten and Catch Me If You Can.