Yesterday, I told you that The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Complete Series on Blu-ray was marked down on Amazon to $62.12.  Well, it's just had another exciting price reduction.  It's now $62.08. Here's the link to order it…and sorry, those of you who ordered yesterday.  I didn't imagine that if you'd waited, you could have saved four cents.

The photo above is of me at a party a few years ago flanked by two great comic actors — Ken Berry on the left, Larry Storch on the right. They've done lots of great things individually and one great thing together — a TV series called F Troop.

In the next week or three, I hope to get around to a series of posts about MeTV, a cable channel named after my life and featuring shows I watched while I was growing up as much as I ever grew up. Some of them, I look at now and wonder what it was I ever found of merit in them. Have you tried watching Petticoat Junction lately? Good heavens. But some shows hold up great and F Troop is/was one of them.

Larry Storch is also a stand-up comedian and impressionist of great reknown. Back in the fifties, he was the guy all the singing superstars wanted as their opening act…and at age 90, he's still at it. Last Thursday in New York, he appeared at Standup NY, a club on W. 78th St. Amazingly, he was not the oldest comedian on the bill. Professor Irwin Corey, who's closing in on 100, was.

Then on September 11 here in Hollywood, Mr. Storch is doing what is being billed thusly…

Comedy Legend Larry Storch makes his final Los Angeles stand-up comedy appearance back where it all began 60 years ago. Before it was The Comedy Store, it was the fabled Ciro's nightclub. This stage was the spot where Larry Storch made his first professional comedy appearance after serving in World War II. Larry returns one more time, with the help of some very special guests, to say good-bye to L.A.!

And one of those special guests will, I'm told, be Ken Berry. Tickets are on sale here and I already have two of them. Thanks to my pal Jeff Abraham for letting me know about an evening I sure don't want to miss.

Today (Wednesday), my friend Stu Shostak chats with my friend Leonard Maltin on Stu's Show. I've known Leonard a long time, first as a subscriber to a fanzine he published in his youth called Film Fan Monthly. An amazing percentage of history that is known about motion pictures first made it into print in Film Fan Monthly. It was a key reason Leonard grew up to be one of the most respected experts on movies in the world today.

We had a number of mutual friends. They were telling me, "You oughta know Leonard Maltin." They were telling him, "You oughta know Mark Evanier." Finally one day when he was out in L.A. more or less auditioning to become the resident film authority on Entertainment Tonight, he called me up and asked, "Are you as sick as I am of people trying to match us up?" I was so we got together for lunch, the premise being that we'd either get along and become pals or hate each other and be done with all that matchmaking. It turned out you can't hate Leonard. He's too smart, too nice, too clever and too passionate — in a good way — about movies. I've had great times talking to him and Stu will today. They'll cover Leonard's early days and some of the amazing celebrity interviews he landed. He's really a great, fascinating guy so it should be a great, fascinating program.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go into serious overtime.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a bargain at 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. It's the same deal Costco is running now on flu shots.

My pal Marc Wielage alerts me that The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Complete Series on Blu-ray is marked down on Amazon at the moment for $62.12. This thing listed for $350.00 so that's quite the discount. Here's the link. I hear it's a great set of what I know is a great show.

Brendan Totten writes…

I enjoyed reading your recent pieces on Bob Kane and Bill Finger. It set me thinking about another major comic character.

I have often been curious as to why Wonder Woman has always been credited solely to William Moulton Marston with no mention of Harry G. Peter as co-creator. He did the original concept sketch which has since become the "iconic" image of Wonder Woman as well as a great body of excellent and charming artwork for the original series. I can't help feeling he is another forgotten hero from the Golden Age who has not achieved the credit he deserves.

Maybe you have some information or theories that would be new to me?

Well, credits like that in comics have always been the result of negotiation. William Moulton Marston made a deal that gave him credit. Harry G. Peter did not. I would guess — this is speculation — that Marston secured a contract that gave him sole credit and then Peter had the option of creating what he created without a creator credit…or not getting the job. Back then, I don't think most folks in comics dreamed of how important that creator credit might someday be. Peter probably didn't even dream of how important Wonder Woman would be.

In television, the Writers Guild of America has set up rules as to what you have to do to have it say "Created by" you on a TV show and the producers have agreed to abide by those rules. There are not and have never been any such rules in comics, which is why the guy who owned the company could sometimes slap his name in that position or deny it to those who actually did the work. There have been writers who have felt that by writing the first script, they'd created the comic and that the artist who drew that script and devised what everyone looked like were not entitled to be referred to as co-creators. Others disagree.

It's possible that this is one of those injustices that no one ever notices or campaigns about. I dunno. I don't think a lot of folks think Peter did excellent and charming artwork for those comics. I sure don't…but that's not relevant to whether he deserves the credit.

I also don't think many people today know much about Harry G. Peter, whereas you had friends of Bill Finger's like Jerry Robinson and Arnold Drake going around decrying his lack of recognition. Some of the things Bob Kane said seemed to cry out for correction, whereas Dr. Marston was not making the rounds claiming he did the whole comic by himself.

But you know, I have to admit: I've seen Marston get sole credit on Wonder Woman for years…on the Lynda Carter TV show, for instance. I don't recall anyone ever asking, "What about Harry G. Peter?" Maybe someone should.

Character actor Bob Hastings, whose career dated back to before the days he played Archie Andrews on radio, passed away June 30 at his home following a long illness. He was probably best known to an entire generation for playing Lieutenant Elroy Carpenter on the TV series, McHale's Navy, but he worked constantly on a wide range of programs ranging from comedy to soap opera and crime drama. He was just one of those actors who was never off the screen for very long.

And when he was off the screen, he was usually in front of a microphone. His radio experience converted nicely to commercial and voiceover work, including many animated cartoons. He was the voice of Superboy on the Superman cartoons of the sixties, the voice of Commissioner Gordon on many recent Batman cartoons and there were dozens of others. Even in his eighties (he was 89 when he died the other day), he could still play youthful characters and could even sometimes squeeze out a line or two that sounded just like the teenage Archie.

A lot of people reading this are probably sad to hear of his passing because they had the chance to meet Bob. He was very active at conventions of fans of old radio shows, often appearing to discuss that end of his career and to participate in re-creations of programs from that era. Also, for years he was on retainer at Universal Studios to appear in connection with their famous studio tour. After you saw the backlot, you got to see a stunt show and an animal show and meet an actual TV star. For a long time, that star was Bob Hastings. He did something like ten shows a day to entertain the tourists and between shows, he'd sign hundreds of autographed photos for tourgoers.

They couldn't have picked a better man to meet and greet people. Hastings had great energy and charm and a lot of funny stories. I got to talk with him on a few occasions and gee, he was a great guy.

No, I didn't misspell "dessert" in the subject line. This is a post about deserting (as in, "abandoning") most toppings on hamburgers.

The New York Times, when it isn't quietly retracting every story they ran about the Iraq War during its first year, has been covering some pretty important topics…like how to make a great hamburger. I like the part of this story where they say…

Finally, there are condiments. You pull your burgers off the skillet, place them on the buns and then offer them to guests to dress. Ripe tomatoes and cold lettuce should be offered ("Only bibb lettuce," Mr. Zakarian said, "for its crispness and ability to hold the juices of the meat") along with ketchup, mustard and, for a hardy few, mayonnaise or mayonnaise mixtures. Onions excite some. Pickles, others. But do not overdress. "People really overcomplicate hamburgers," Mr. Zakarian said. "They substitute complication for proper cooking technique."

Exactly. I find that the more someone aspires to reinvent the form and offer "gourmet" hamburgers, the more I'm likely to be served something inedible. Call me a peasant if you like but what I want is a properly-cooked piece of ground beef with a little fat content, served to me on a traditional white bun with some onions and an adjacent bottle of ketchup. I do not want cheese, lettuce, mustard, tomato, bacon, arugula, thousand island dressing, dressing of any kind, chili, a fried egg, an unfried egg, pineapple, sprouts, your sister's Barbie doll, teriyaki sauce, kale, truffle glaze, green chiles, oobleck, avocado, pickled ginger, secret sauce, non-secret sauce, flubber, wasabi flakes, frosted flakes, etc.

I have no problem with all that stuff being available for those who like it. Fine. But if you can't make a great hamburger out of just meat and a bun, you have no right calling yourself a chef. And that's what I want: Meat on a bun. With some onions and ketchup.

And we're talking basic meat here. Last week, I found myself at a fancy restaurant where their "signature burger" (the only one they had) was a cheeseburger that was — and I quote right from the menu — "A delicious blend of Chopped Sirloin, Smoked Bacon and Sweet Onions." That description of items they mix into their meat says to me, first of all, "We're going to charge a lot for this." Secondly, it says they're using too good a grade of beef to make a hamburger so they have to add extra ingredients to give it flavor.

I'm fine with bacon and onions outside the burger…but those things inside plus unidentified seasonings made this hamburger, to me, not very good. One of the spices seems to have triggered one of my food allergies but, that aside, it was three times the price of a Five Guys burger and about a third as pleasing.  And I came to that conclusion before I began to get the unpleasant feeling that a mild reaction from one of my food allergies was kicking in.  (I'd asked, by the way.  They had no hamburger meat on the premises that wasn't mixed with all those extra components.)

A few years ago, a trend started. Restaurants began opening that not only served a hamburger with all sorts of special condiments but which also had a policy of not allowing modifications of their items. You couldn't not get it with the arugula on it, you couldn't have ketchup, etc. This, from my point of view, was a trend of opening restaurants I would never visit.

That's their right, of course. All I want to say here is that I think there's something to be said for hamburgers that don't need a lot of add-ons. I have eaten in places where to get what I wanted — meat, bun, ketchup and onions — I had to tell the waiter to give me a #1 and to leave off about eight toppings that come standard on it. There is, of course, no price reduction for declining about half of the product.

I've also learned in some pretty fancy places that when you leave off everything except the ketchup and onions, you discover that the burger itself — the meat patty that is, after all, the central component of what you're buying — just plain isn't very good.

One of my favorite musicals is City of Angels, which had a book by Larry Gelbart and songs by David Zippel and Cy Coleman. And one of the best songs in it was "You Can Always Count on Me," which was sung in the original Broadway production by Randy Graff, who won a Tony for her performance. She played the Girl Friday to a hardboiled Chandleresque private eye who never gave her the time of day. Here she is singing the song on a 1990 episode of Phil Donahue's show…

Hey, earlier I linked to a preview of the forthcoming Groo Vs. Conan mini-series without paying much attention to it. It has since been called to my attention that they list me as the Writer and that's not really accurate. It oughta say "Writers: Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier." Pretend it does. I ain't taking the rap for this one all by myself.

I promised I would announce here when the first issue of the long-awaited Groo Vs. Conan mini-series was coming out. Well, it's coming out July 23rd, aka Preview Night of the Comic-Con International. Here's a preview.

• Kind of amazed today by the number of people on the 'net who don't understand the difference between contraception and abortion.

You know, I really don't know what to think of this Hobby Lobby thing. One of the weird things about discussions on the Internet is that every time an election is won or a major decision comes down, you can always find a couple of articles saying the winners were the losers and the losers were the winners. Back when I occasionally tuned in Rush Limbaugh, he was a special master of this. Republicans would lose a big vote somewhere and you could count on Rush to shout, "This is the best thing that could have happened to us! Democrats will regret the day they won this one." I never got the sense in those cases that he would have said the opposite if they'd lost: "Oh, we'll regret our victory!"

So yeah, this could lead to legislation, the battle over which could force Republicans into positions that will cost them more of the female vote. And yeah, the Supreme Court didn't go as far as some right-wingers hoped, suggesting they won't in future cases. And yeah and yeah and yeah and reading all the debate, my overriding feeling is that this again proves that an employer-based health insurance system is impractical and we should unlink Who You Work For from What Medical Coverage You Have.

The current set-up has never made a lot of sense and this makes it worse. Let's say this decision gets carried to other matters beyond abortion.  It does seem like it's just a matter of that…and just a matter of condemning sex not for procreation.  But let's say it extends past that.  Let's say you're working for a family-based company and getting your insurance through them…and let's say they were all Christian Scientists and you're not. And let's say you came down with a terrible disease, the kind that most doctors would say requires immediate surgery. Are they going to tell you because of their faith, that's not covered and instead of going to a hospital, you have to go to a reading room?

Well, as expected, the Supreme Court issued two rulings this morning and I didn't like either. Neither one was quite as bad as it could have been but I think they were both wrong and so did four out of nine Supreme Court Justices in each.  Apparently, corporations are people but women aren't.

Am I misremembering some "good old days" when the Republican appointees didn't almost always vote the way Republicans wanted and the Democratic appointees didn't almost always vote to the satisfaction of their party? When all nine Justices were a bit more unpredictable instead of just one and sometimes two?

I recognize that sometimes these partisan decisions swing the way I want. I just find myself wishing we could respect these opinions as something more than the triumph of Democrats or Republicans managing to get their guy or gal on the High Court at the right moment. Congress works like that and it's supposed to work like that. Bills get passed or don't get passed because of who was elected at a certain time. You'd like to think that the Supreme Court, with its members appointed for life, would transcend that kind of partiality.

If these exact same questions had to be decided four or five years from now, the 5-4 decisions might go the opposite way, not because the issues or facts of the cases had changed but because someone on the court had died or retired due to old age and been replaced by a different partisan. Maybe I'm nostalgic for something that never really existed but I used to think the Supreme Court wasn't quite like that and you couldn't count on the Nixon appointees to vote as Nixon would have wanted, the Johnson appointees to vote all the way with L.B.J., etc.

Anyway, it's Monday so up goes the soup can. All it means is that I'm going to try to pay a little less attention to this site than usual today so posting may not be as plentiful. As you may have noted on previous Mushroom Soup Mondays, I often cannot stay away.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule tomorrow on two important cases. I expect to wake up to at least one decision I think is very wrong and very harmful to our country. Maybe two.

One of my favorite movies is the Buster Keaton film, The General. I thought I knew everything there was to know about it…but as Leonard Maltin tells us, there's suddenly a lot more to know.