Remembering Ernie Kovacs at 3:00 AM

At 3:00 AM, I woke up to something that smells like old socks in my CPAP mask.  After taking it off, I realized the smell was the result of my forgetting to put water into the humidifier.  Not being able to go back to sleep, I headed to the sink to clean it with soap and water.

From there I sat down at the computer and saw that someone had put a comment on my YouTube video of my grandmothers Hungarian stuffed cabbage recipe. She mentioned that her mother was the "Capusta Queen", capusta being the Hungarian word for cabbage.

That brought back a flood of memories of my youth and growing up in a Hungarian home.The first memory was of the Ernie Kovacs show and one of my favorite segments, the Kapusta Kid in Outer Space.  Here, right after the Sid Cesar commercial., is one episode.


But that was just one memory.  My mother went to Trenton High with Ernie and as I got older, she would let me in on the secret of why the family would laugh so much at things I didn't understand or see as funny.

Being Hungarian, Ernie would sometimes include references that only the Hungarian community would catch.  The Kapusta Kid (Cabbage Kid) was just one innocent reference.  Others were not quite as innocent.  Take for instance, the episode where Kapusta was asked were he had been and responded that he was around the corner at the curve house. I think there were probably three cracked ribs in our family as they laughed hysterically.

Year's later it came up in a conversation and I asked what was so funny.  Everyone remembered that episode.  Mom explained that when Kapusta said he was around the corner at the curved house, it was a play on the Hungarian words kurva haz.  I'll let you check out Google Translator to see the Hungarian to English translation and understand what kind of things were often going on between the lines on the Ernie Kovacs Show.

Ernie was a genius and a classic!