The Masked Man Finally Is Un-Masked!

OK. I know that there are many of you that are dying to know the answers to the infamous trivia question and I'm happy to say that someone has finally gotten it. I promise I won't keep you in suspense for much longer.

But first, I want to thank (as I always do each week) anyone who has accepted a friend request or requested to be a friend on Ernie's MySpace Fan Page. As of my last post there were 348 friends and there are now 361. Please let other Ernie fans who have MySpace pages know about us if they don't already. We will gladly process their friend requests.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. The trivia question was answered by our dear MySpace friend Brian, pictured to the left ( I think this photo may have been taking after some painful dental surgery). Here are the answers. Ernie would have been proud:

1. What was the name of this western?
"Das Einsame Aufseher"

2. What is the LITERAL translation of the title.
"The Lonely Overseer"


3. Who is the character a satire of? The Lone Ranger

4. What is the name of the desperado Ernie is going to fight, as played by Joe Mikolas? "Schwarze Bart"

5. What is the translation of the desperado's name?
"Black Bart" (Or "Black Beard" since Bart = beard in German)

6. What does Ernie put in his six shooter? "Silber Kugels!" = silver bullets

7. What language are they supposedly speaking in this "European Western?"
Mangled German

Brian speaks some German and I accept his answers as more correct than the ones I came up with when I first wrote the question. I thought that "Das Einsame Aufseher" meant "The Lonely Custodians," but that was probably because the translation website I used is inaccurate.

Here's Brian's take on it:

In fact, I remembered the whole sketch except for the word "Aufseher", and had to play the video to get that. "Aufseher" means literally "out-seer", and the dictionary says it means overseer or supervisor. I think Kovacs might have meant it in the sense of a scout, which would be "Spaher" (umlaut (little dots) over the a). I speak enough German to wince at how "Wolfgang Sauerbraten" mangles the language!

So there you have it. A profound thanks to Brian for his good sportsmanship and fine effort. I'm giving him extra points because he had to look on the VHS tapes to get some of the answers and didn't have the help of an easy to search DVD.

Another MySpace friend, "MadWriter," was asking me about the two versions of "Eugene" (aka "The Silent Show") that were done. Yes, there were two! The first was in color and was the only time Ernie ever appeared on TELEVISION in color. He appeared in movies in color all the time. Here's what I told "MadWriter":

When Jerry Lewis split with "Dino" in 1956 he was given a 90 minute special by NBC to go out on his own with. Thing is, his agent told them Jerry didn't want to do 90 minutes.

So, they needed to fill the extra 1/2 hour. They offered it to many well known comics but NO ONE was crazy enough to go on after Lewis who was extremely popular at that time. No one except for Ernie that is. And he did Eugene for his 1/2 hour and garnered lots of acclaim. That version is in color. The only place I've ever seen it, or part of it anyway, was at the "Museum Of TV And Radio" here in New York (http://www.mtr.org/). And its the only time Ernie was ever in color on TV. And, it was LIVE. Of course, Ernie was in color in the movies quite a bit.

The version on the VHS or DVD is one of the ABC specials from 1961 (November I believe) and that is the one most everyone knows.

Last week a magician named Glenn Bishop wrote a very nice post about this blog and I hope you'll all go read it. Once you're there be sure to check out all of Glenn's blogs. There are some great video clips and info on magic, which used to be a hobby of mine. Glenn's a really talented magician and a fellow Ernie fan with an interesting take on Ernie's process. Thanks for the post Glenn!

I'll close as always with some other blog posts and articles I found this week in cyberspace:

The column "Pop Matters" talks about the pros and cons of "The Nairobi Trio"

Steve Gerber Gives Us A Quick Opinion On "The Nairobi Trio"

Inner Toob Gives A Quick Nod To Ernie

Some more "Nairobi Trio

Until next week, friends, "Its Been Real!"

Ernie On MySpace; "Mad Writer" Meets Edie Adams

Good morning folks (its almost afternoon actually, but to my tired middle aged body it feels like a hangover at 6am). I have several good things to tell you about today so let's get started.

First I want to address the frequency of the posts to this blog. I have three blogs (the other two are GEOMOP and Jazz Guitar Corner) and have found that its impossible given time constraints to write in each one every single day. So, I've put them on a weekly rotation. This blog will now be published to on Wednesdays, usually by the late morning or early afternoon. You can always look at the upper left corner of the blog to see when the next post will be. The exception here is because there is a contributor other than myself (Ben Model) there's a possibility that posts may show up on other days. Please feel free to check at anytime. You can be guaranteed, however, that there will at least be a weekly post. If for some reason I can't post on a particular Wednesday this will be notated in the upper left corner of the blog along with the next publish date.

I have a few MySpace pages and started to notice that many famous artists, jazz musicians, comics, etc. have tribute pages (most people know what MySpace is. If you don't, you can click the link to find out). While I was able to find someone using the MySpace addresses "Ernie Kovacs" and "The Nairobi Trio" I found they haven't logged in in almost a year, so the pages have nothing to do with Ernie accept for the fact that the avatars are pictures of him or the trio. Ernie deserves his own page on MySpace, so I went and created one. The address is http://www.myspace.com/kovacsland. I got the name from the title of one of Ernie's early TV shows titled "Ernie In Kovacsland." If I remember correctly the announcer Bill Wendell (David Letterman's announcer for years) used to say at the beginning "And now its time for "Ernie In Kovacsland," a fifteen minute program. It only seems long." Love it.

I started searching MySpace for Kovacs fans and sending out friend requests manually, something I will continue to do today. At first the page had maybe 7 friends, 5 of whom consisted of other pages I run and a couple of my comedian friends pages. As of right now, about 24 hours later, we have 125 "adds" out of the 200 or so I've sent so far. So the response has been overwhelming and I thank everyone who has added the Ernie page. People have posted great comments about how much they love Ernie Kovacs and have sent very nice messages. If you have a MySpace page and are reading this, I hope you will visit Ernie's page and put in a friend request. One person told me he was gratified to accept an "add" (MySpace parlance for adding a friend to your page) from Ernie as opposed to the usual requests from "Porn Whores." This made me laugh out loud, as MySpace is notoriously used by spammers who want to get traffic to porn sites. When used correctly, however, it is a great marketing tool and I certainly hope it will help to make the public more aware of Ernie's genius.

One MySpace friend, "MadWriter," sent me a reminiscence of an encounter with Edie Adams that I'd like to share with you:

I have been an Ernie Kovacs fan since the late 1970s when PBS was running The Best of Ernie Kovacs every Tuesday night. I have all the tapes and a poorly copied documentary hosted by John Barbour, and one hosted by Shecky Greene.

When I was working at Radio Shack in Studio City, California, a rather fed-up customer was pushed off onto me because no other sales associate wanted to deal with her. She wanted to return a portable DVD player. No biggie. I listened to her spout off about the inferior quality of the player and the troubles she had. Again, nothing to complain about. I gave her the return and put it back on her credit card.

As I looking at the card, I was shocked to read "EDITH ADAMS, EDIAD PRODUCTIONS." At which point I turned from helpful sales associate to babbling moron praising her for the work she had done to bring Ernie Kovacs to the world. And like an idiot, I forgot to praise her for her own works in music and acting. (I'm STILL kicking myself over that!)

Anyway, I love your site!!!

Thanks for the great story, "MadWriter."

One thing I plan to do everytime this blog is updated is look for articles posted to blogger in the last week which in some way mention or are about Ernie so you can go have a look. Here's a list of what I found today:

Changes In The Glass tells of an interesting "Ernie Kovacs Mashup"

Widescreen Mentions One Of Ernie's Famous Quotes About Television

The Second Rendition Likes Ernie's Famous Quote Also

Ernie Makes Forelle's Filosphy's List Of The Top 50 TV Shows List

Thanks for stopping by folks. Its been real!