Hi folks. Al here. I want to thank all of Ernie's fans who have accepted our friend requests over the last several days. Its much appreciated. Many of the folks we requested we found by entering Ernie Kovacs in the MySpace search engine and sending out requests manually when we found fans. I'm also hoping you will encourage your friends to send us requests. We'll be more than happy to add new friends to Ernie's page (as of this writing we have about 240).
Although I have an Ernie blog already at another site, I will use the myspace blog occasionally to answer questions I get or for quick updates.
I'm going to take some time now to answer a couple of questions and give some history.
WHY AN ERNIE KOVACS MYSPACE PAGE:
The reason for the Ernie Kovacs MySpace page is because I noticed, quite simply, that there wasn't one. Like the rest of you, I'm a diehard Ernie Kovacs fan. One of the reasons I became a performer was because of Ernie and his influence. I noticed that all the major legends have tribute pages on MySpace as a way to draw attention to their work and legacy, since MySpace, when not abused, is a powerful tool for spreading the word. Many of these are run by fans since the performers in question are deceased.
HOW DID YOU START WRITING ABOUT ERNIE:
About ten years ago I was surfing the net myself, looking for an Ernie Kovacs tribute page, assuming that perhaps his estate had put one up. The first hit I got was a link to something called "Kovacsland Online! The Unofficial Official Ernie Kovacs Website." Its still there, located at http://www.erniekovacs.info. The site is run by a gent named Ben Model who's a film producer, composer and accompianist for silent films a subject on which he is an expert (check out Ben's site Silent Clowns to learn more). I loved the site and found it quite informative and contacted Ben, asking if I could contribute. He said yes. Being the busy guy that he is, Ben didn't always have time to update so I decided to start my own site www.erniekovacs.net. What you will find is that both sites have different offerings, varying interviews and things we hope folks will find interesting. We have pieces on our sites that you don't find in the Ernie bios.
I also run The Ernie Kovacs Blog, located at http://erniekovacs.blogspot.com. Ben is a contributing author to this blog, which I personally publish to every Wednesday; Ben, however, may publish at other times so you can check whenever you like. The blog was started because a fan of my main site wanted to know if there was a place to post comments. I like it because it allows me to post fan stories and updates quickly without always having to update the main site. It also looks a lot slicker than this. I will always post a bulletin when the blogspot blog is updated. The next post will be on Wednesday April 11, 2007.
Someone else asked why the MySpace page is http://www.myspace.com/kovcasland instead of erniekovacs. The answer is because erniekovacs was taken. As was thenairobitrio. Kovacsland was chosen because:
1. Its from the title of an early Ernie TV show, "Ernie In Kovacsland"
2. "Kovacsland" is the title of Diana Rico's great Ernie biography (here's a link to it on Amazon).
ARE YOU GUYS THE OFFICIAL SITES:
One question I get a lot is are we "official" sites, which I take to mean did we put up the sites on belhalf and with input from Edie Adams or Ernie's surviving daughter. No, we are not "official," (as you've seen Ben states this in his sites name) but they do know about us and from what I understand are pleased . Ben has been in contact with Edie in the past; in fact he showed a silent short Ernie made at one of his silent film shows several years back. I myself have never met or spoken to Edie. Sometimes I'll get emails asking for contact info. I don't have any and if I did you can rest assured that the answer would be NO.
At one point Edie had put up a site which could be reached at edieadams.org and erniekovacs.org. Both would go to the same page, which was a site for both Edie and Ernie. It was up for a while and had merchandise, a fan club; it was great. They also had us linked in their top ten and when I sent an email thanking them Edie's assistant got back to me and said they really liked both my site and Ben's. Then, one day, edieadams.org/erniekovacs.org disappeared. We never found out why and don't know why to this day. Right now when you go to either URL you are brought to one of those annoying search engine portals. My assumption is that perhaps they did not get the response they wanted and decided it was just too much work to keep the site going. And unfortunately once they let them go the domains were purchased by someone else and used for a stupid purpose.
Of course, I'm asked a lot who has erniekovacs.com. This is owned by some company in New Jersey who have had it forever. For a while they had a photo of Ernie with his theme music playing and "Coming Soon" on the page. Now there is nothing at all; you just get an error. However, they still own it and my assumption is that they will continue to keep registering it. Whether it has an affiliation with the estate I don't know. Hopefully whoever owns it will make use of it soon.
WHY AREN'T THERE VIDEOS EMBEDDED IN THE MYSPACE PAGE:
Here's the deal folks.
1. These embeds make the page download a lot slower and I want people to get here and be able to see the page quickly.
2. Since I maintain the site and my machine is ancient (win98) it makes it difficult for me to view the profile when I need to if videos are embedded.
3. NOW FOR THE MAIN REASON. The people who put these things on youtube or wherever aren't really entitled to do so, therefore, I'm not going to embed the videos here.
Listen folks, I realize that almost everyone engages in file sharing. But I have a great respect for Ernie and his estate and I want to see them get all the royalties they're entitled to. There isn't a great deal of Ernie material available so if you just go buy "The Best Of Ernie Kovacs" 2 DVD set you are getting almost everything that you find on these sites such as youtube. You can also look on ebay for stuff. Here's a link to The Best Of Ernie Kovacs 2 DVD Set on Amazon so you can purchase a copy if you'd like (you can go whereever you want, its just faster for me to find these things at Amazon). The DVD is the White Star 5 VHS series that came out featuring most of Ernie's ABC specials and which aired as a retrospect on PBS in the late 1970s hosted by Jack Lemmon. The DVD has some extras like segments from "Take A Good Look" and Edie's Marilyn Monroe impersonation which you don't get on the VHS tapes. Since these shows were taken from old video tapes from the late 1950s and early 1960s, be advised that the quality isn't always the greatest. For the most part however they are fine and quite watchable.
OK folks. That's it for now. Happy Easter, or whatever you celebrate. Its been real.