Larry David Sticks The Landing

If you didn’t love the finale that Larry David cooked up for ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ then you have a heart of darkness. Not only did the episode completely resolve, in the most laid-back way possible, all the complaints people have had about the ‘Seinfeld’ finale for decades, but it did so while also paying homage to that finale, even repeating it, while also featuring all the character banter and social-moré side plots that people have loved about ‘Curb’ since it debuted. Jerry Seinfeld even shows up in the second half, and features a major role.

Leon Black’s role in the finale, other than a monologue about keeping a “spare dick in your pocket,” is to binge-watch all of Seinfeld and discover that it is a show “about weekly ass,” which has a ring of truth. Meanwhile, Larry David gets deep into a mess with Alison Janney, who shows up playing a long-lost love of a ghostly Richard Lewis, questioning her story about whether or not she tried to kill herself when Lewis broke up with her. Larry and Jeff manage to steal a secret salad dressing recipe as an anniversary gift for Susie. Ted Danson preens for the camera and Cheryl doesn’t like Mexican food. Everything ends with the major players bickering at one another in the first-class cabin on an airplane. It’s ‘Curb,’ David nails it, and you can check any complaints at the door.

But what now? With the ending of Curb, my Curb-loving friends and I are sending around a text thread trying to figure out which one of us is the most Larry David-like of the bunch. There’s no doubt who the winner is. It’s me.

In the 24 hours before I watched the finale of Curb, I got into an argument with a guy who was blowing vape smoke in my face at the poker table, complained to the management of the Alamo Drafthouse because someone brought a noisy autistic child into an adults-only revival screening of ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ and made my wife change tables four times at an indoor food court to get away from children, people lining up next to us, a busing station, and someone slurping their soup too loudly, in that order. It was just another day for me. I live and breathe Curb reality.

Larry David and I share a lot of qualities: Jewishness, unspoiled good looks, an uncanny ability to make people hate us in public, and so much more. But the differences are also vast. He is one of the most successful people of his generation, while I’m still down here in the middle-class pits trying, like Willy Loman, to get people to pay attention to me. His problems are rich-people problems. He gets into fights at the golf club, alienates his housekeeper, is constantly at war with the proprietors of expensive restaurants. Mine are smaller and even more petty. Here’s the most Larry David thing that happened to me in the last week.

I was grinding live low-stakes cash poker on a weekday night. The guy sitting on my left was wearing a pancho and John Lennon-style glasses. He had long curly black hair. There was maybe about $60 in the middle. On the river, I made a six-dollar bet. He called. I won the hand. I reached to my left and pulled the six dollars over while the dealer pushed the rest of the pot to me.

“That was disrespectful, sir,” he said.

“What?”” I said.

“That is the dealer’s job. You can’t take my money.”

“I didn’t take your money. I won the pot. It was sitting right next to me.”

“You are showing me disrespect.”

“You are being a sore loser.”

“You need to use poker manners.”

I stood up and racked my chips.

“I’ll show you disrespect,” I said. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Have a good night, sir.”

“Don’t sir, me, asshole.”

“OK, sir.”

“You just accused me of stealing from you. I won that pot fair and square!”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

I counted my chips. I had lost $18 for the session. Furious, I stormed over to the blue-shirted management.

“That guy over there accused me of disrespecting him,” I said. “I don’t come here to get into arguments with weird hippies. I am a loyal member of this club!”

“How can I help, sir?”

“I want redemption!”

The weird hippie was pointing at me and everyone at the table was laughing.

At this point I didn’t even know what I was saying, I was just in a furious rage. And so I drove across the street to another poker club, where I won $500 from a guy who was blowing vape smoke in my face. I could barely Curb My Enthusiasm. Larry David’s show may be gone, but at least I’m still living in a grimy, middle-class version of it.