Thursday, September 07, 2006

It really isn't very interesting when they give you low-cal chicken fat--there's so little left

A clip from the Ernie Kovacs show.



There's a commercial first. Sorry.

Ernie was an ahead-of-his-time TV comedian who had several short-lived shows in the '50s. The character in the clip above is poet Percy Dovetonsils, a regular. Probably the most famous of his recurring bits involves the Nairobi Trio, three gorillas--Kovacs and two others, one said to be Jack Lemmon--who mime in cheap costumes and masks to playing music and hitting each other over the head. Did I say ahead of his time? He was downright surreal. (BTW, I was reminded of Kovacs the other day when Mark at the Biomes Blog--see blogroll at left--linked to a clip of Harry Nilsson, in which he spoofs the Trio while singing "Coconut." There's a Nairobi Trio clip here. And the Nilsson clip Mark linked to is here.)

I became a fan during the '70s when Kovacs clip shows were a staple on the local PBS affiliate. There are remarkably few clips of Kovacs on YouTube, Google, Yahoo, etc.

2 comments:

unclewilly said...

I'm thinking one of the Nairobis was Mel Brooks. Or maybe Howard Morris (a.k.a. Ernest T. Bass of Mayberry).

Anonymous said...

I'd heard of Kovacs, but growing up, we never had any of his reruns. Thanks for these clips. That Nairobi one . . . yeah, surreal is a good word for it ;)