Besides laughing my head off at Mr. Newt’s belated conversion to the cause of conservatism now that the elephant-backed Dede Scozzafava has crashed and burned in NY-23, the second-funniest thing I’ve seen lately is the now-infamous Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in which the world’s second-greatest living neurotic, Larry David, made fecund in his stream by unnamed prescription drugs, manages to let fly with a mighty flow and accidentally moisten a portrait of Christ hanging conveniently next to the toilet, as it does in all good Christian homes, thus rendering the Savior apparently lachrymose. David’s mighty, uncontrollable urge to relieve himself is one of the running gags during the episode, something in which he indulges repeatedly to comic effect. I personally had to skip to the loo three times, I was laughing so hard.
So far, so hilarious, but there’s more! In one short half hour, the show also manages to make fun of Maureen, the zaftig office secretary, whose bare midriff and luxurious muffin top is the subject of much merriment between Larry and Jerry Seinfeld (as himself!), as well as her pious mother, in whose bathroom the miraculous painting hangs in the place of honor beside the throne. About the only way it could have been funnier would have been to make the young woman and her mom Latinas — you know, the kind of superstitious peasants who see Jesus’s face in a tortilla on a regular basis. That, to use Valerie Jarrett’s phrase, would have been speaking truth to power!
The episode also featured Richard Lewis as Larry’s whiny friend; an uncomfortable scene in a diner among Richard, Larry, and Jerry; Larry getting stopped by a cop after grabbing too many free napkins from a take-out joint; and Larry nearly falling off a rooftop, desperately saving himself by latching onto said muffin top, after he’s explained to the two Catholics that Jesus wasn’t crying, he was just wet from water sports. I realize that many of you think Curb Your Enthusiasm is fiction, but believe me — to those of us who live and work in L.A., it’s a documentary.
Oh yes — and Larry never once washes his hands.
— David Kahane is the nom de cyber of a writer in Hollywood.