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.

Ernie Kovacs - The Poet Watch Video Clip

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.