VIDEO: The Nairobi Trio performs "Solfeggio"

Sixty years and three months ago, Newton Minow, then Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, that television was a  "vast wasteland". Things have gotten worse since then. Now, daytime TV offereings such as The View makes one pine for the bad old days when you could at least watch some shows (live and in glorious black-and-white) which were entertaining, without being political or (shudder) politically correct.

Every now and then, one could see real creativity and talent. Six years before Mr Minow spoke, I used to watch Ernest Edward Kovacs doing experimental and often spontaneous live comedy on the curiously-named Ernie Kovacs Show. [Shouldn't you have been in school? Ed.]

Yes, well... Mr Kovacs delighted his viewers with such characters as Matzoh Hepplewhite (a hapless magician), Percy Dovetonsils (a poet who may just have been "gay", although we used other words, in those days) and Mr Question Man, who inspired Johnny Carson's "Carnac the Magnificent".

My favourite recurring skit, however, didn't show Mr Kovacs' face at all. He was just one of three derby-hatted apes who made up the Nairobi Trio. The shtick was always the same, more or less. They mimed, mechanically and rhythmically, playing Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio". Try to watch this without laughing!

  

Ernie Kovacs has been credited as an influence by many individuals and shows, including Johnny Carson, as well as David Letterman, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Jim Henson and The Muppet Show, Conan O'Brien, Andy Kaufman, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Pee-wee's Playhouse.

Chevy Chase thanked Mr Kovacs during his acceptance speech for his Emmy award for SNL. While Ernie and his wife Edie Adams received Emmy nominations for best performances in a comedy series during 1957, his talent was not recognized formally until after his death in a car accident in 1962. A short time later, he received a posthumous Emmy for Outstanding Electronic Camera Work, as well as an award from the Directors' Guild.

A quarter-century later, Mr Kovacs was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television. The Pulitzer Prize–winning television critic, William Henry III, wrote "Kovacs was more than another wide-eyed, self-ingratiating clown. He was television's first significant video artist."

Ernie Kovacs' particular brand of insanity helps to keep us sane in an increasingly insane world. He's gone, but not forgotten!

MAD no longer

It was a noisy weekend in this neck of the woods, what with the July 4th celebrations and all. Independence Day was great, if not greater than ever. We didn't see any tanks rolling down main street but the Fort Mudge fire department put some extra wax on Old Number 1 and it looked great, pulled by those beautiful white horses. Over at the Arts Park (named after Art Holmgren, Art Ross and Art Fuldodger) last night concluded with a truly spectacular fireworks show, which must have lasted half an hour. Good weekend to be proud to be an American!

Walt was saddened, though, to hear that one of America's greatest-ever magazines, MAD, will no longer be available on newsstands after next month's issue. After that, they're going to do only reprints (with new covers) until subscriptions expire, and then it's lights out.

Perhaps it's just as well. The mag isn't what it was in the glory days of the `50s and `60s, when I first discovered it. Founded in 1952 by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines, MAD launched as a comic book before it switching to a larger magazine format.

So it was when I first saw it on the shelf (amidst the Disney and Warner Bros. "comics") at McQueen's Variety Store (on Queen Street, natch). I was dismayed to see that the cover price was a whole quarter -- half my allowance for a week -- and more dismayed that Old Man McQueen, being a dour Scot, didn't take kindly to kids thumbing through his wares. I was forced to take a paper route to finance my reading.

I couldn't help it. I was hooked on MAD's well-written and well-illustrated satire on all aspects of life and popular culture, politics, entertainment, and public figures. My liking for their "humour in a jugular vein" (the subtitle to the early comic books) was heightened by the contributions of guest writers, notably Bob and Ray, whose radio show I never missed.

In its earliest years, MAD frequently used outside "name" talent, with Bob and Ray's [Bob's and Ray's? Ed.] contributing no fewer than 12 pieces, more than anyone else. MAD simply illustrated their preexisting material. When MAD learned that Tom Koch was the writer behind the Bob and Ray radio sketches, the editors hired him, and he wrote more than 300 MAD articles over the next 37 years.

Second only to Bob and Ray, Ernie Kovacs -- one of my TV favourites in the `50s -- contributed 11 pieces. His off-the-wall humour was perfect for MAD, if not for your average boob tube viewer. Other irregular contributors included Tom Lehrer, Wally Cox, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan, and Sid Caesar. There were also single pieces by Charles M. Schulz, Chevy Chase, Will Eisner (the great "dark" illustrator), Jean Shepherd, Jules Feiffer, and the late great Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo.

MAD didn't rely solely on guest shots. It had its own excellent (and not-so-excellent) writers and illustrators, as well as writer-illustrators like Don Martin and Dave Berg. I was never a fan of either of them. Don Martin, in particular, pandered to the truly juvenile. Too bad he couldn't illustrate fart jokes.

The artists deserving of the name who stick in my mind were Wally Wood, Mort Drucker, Bill Elder and Jack Davis. Their work graces the issues of the `50s and `60s, and can be found in pocket-book collections of the early issues. Their drawings were really edgy. Wally Wood, in particular, used to crowd every panel with little bits and pieces which would only reveal themselves to the keen and careful reader. The more anodyne style of the more recent illustrators was, IMHO, one of the reasons for MAD's fall from the heights.

In 2015, "Weird Al" Yankovic served as MAD's first and only guest editor, writing some material and guiding the content in issue #533, while upping his own career Mad byline total from two to five. On social media this weekend "Weird Al" expressed his sorrow at the magazine's demise. "I am profoundly sad to hear that after 67 years, MAD Magazine is ceasing publication," said the singer-songwriter. "I can't begin to describe the impact it had on me as a young kid--it's pretty much the reason I turned out weird. Goodbye to one of the all-time greatest American institutions. #ThanksMAD."