The Unfortunately Relatable Larry David

I started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm recently, and I am angry that it took me so long to get into, especially since I had grown up watching Seinfeld on weekday nights and loved it.  To give a very brief explanation of the show, it follows the misadventures of Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld, through Hollywood.  First off, this show is brilliant, do yourself a favor and watch it if you haven’t already, I can almost never see the jokes coming, which is a rare feat in situational comedies.  The show is semi-scripted, which means that the writers present the actors with a loose explanation of how the scene is supposed to go, and what beats the actors are supposed to hit, but other than that it is entirely improvised.  But despite how funny this show is, it’s also profoundly uncomfortable.

The reason I say this is because Larry David, or at least the fictionalized version of him portrayed in the show, is very close to the character of George in Seinfeld.  In that he is a socially clumsy putz that only makes situations worse by interacting in them.  I’d give examples, but every single joke requires too much context to set up, so instead I’ll link a few of my favorite clips.

Larry David is incapable of winning, and is insanely petty and neurotic, and unfortunately I relate too much with his character.  Watching the show, I found myself relating with the character despite his often clearly objectionable actions, which made the cringe factor of the show much more palpable for me, because I could see myself being in many of the same situations.

Often I envision the worst possible scenario when dealing with people, and I find myself in many uncomfortable situations.  To give an example, I was once talking to a girl when I was in High School, and things seemed to be going pretty well, she even sent me a topless picture once, because I was “cool”, so I figured that it was pretty much a sure thing that we’d start dating or whatever.  That was until, she asked me what my favorite Disney film was, and me being the ironic funny man that I am, said Cars 2.  She did not think it was as funny as I did, because she ghosted me shortly afterword.

Larry David also has many rules for engagement in the show, such as an aversion to stop-and-chats, which is when you see someone on the street and they stop and have a chat with you, as well as having a specific cut off for when it’s inappropriate to throw a late birthday party for someone.  I too, have such arbitrary rules, for example, my little cousin (she’s 11) sent me a chain letter saying that a friend asked her to gather prayers for someone named Dakota, who had been having seizures and had been life-flighted.  My response was “Dakota who”, because I was dubious as to whether or not Dakota existed, and if he didn’t I didn’t want to waste a prayer on him.  Eventually I found out that there was a Dakota, but it was noone she knew, and this had happened in December of last year.  It is now almost May, which is way too far past the cut off for prayers and chain letters.

Seeing the closeness between myself and the fictionalized version of Larry David is troubling to say the least.  I need to make a change, man.

Why My Immortal is the Ultimate Piece of Fiction of All Time Period Ever.

My Immortal is a Harry Potter fan fiction written in 2007.  The story follows the author, Tara Gilesbie’s original character Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way, a 17 year old “goffik” vampire going to Hogwarts School of Witch Craft and Wizardry.  That’s about it, the story has no real discernible plot, things just sort of happen, like there’s a part early on where Ebony goes on a date with Draco Malfoy to see Good Charlotte and My Chemical Romance at Hoggsmeade, where they fall in love, later going to the forbidden forest to have sex, which is described in the story as him “putting his boy thingie in [her] you know what [and] they did it for the first time”, but their coitus is interrupted by  Dumbledore, who screams at them, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!”, now you might be thinking to yourself, “wow, that seems pretty out of character for Dumbledore”, and you’d be right, but the author awares us that he only swore because he had a headache.

At about this point, you’re probably realizing that this fan-fiction is not actually good, and you would be right, dear reader.  In fact this is often regarded as the worst fan-fiction ever written, but why is it the worst?  Well to give a short list, it has awful two dimensional characters that always act nothing like they do in the original novels, most of them are sorted into the factions of Satanists/Goths or Preps, it has awful prose practically written in early 2000’s text speech, impossible to comprehend plot lines, the main character is a blatant Mary Sue with everything that happens to her being poorly veiled wish fulfillment, and in my opinion the worst sin this fan fiction commits is that every single time a character comes on screen, we know exactly what they’re wearing, from their head to their toes, down to what kind of makeup they’re wearing.  This last one probably sounds innocuous, but believe you me, it is grueling after 44 chapters.

Essentially this story uses every single trope that can make a fan fiction terrible, but it almost seems too good to be true, like there’s no way that it could be real, like there’s a part where Voldemort gives Ebony a gun to shoot Harry Potter (who now goes by Vampire Potter), and a part where “Morty McFli” shows up with his “blak tim machine” to take Ebony back to the future.  So this must be a piece of satire on bad fan fictions right?

Well, I honestly don’t know.

I personally think that it was written with legitimate intent because, for one this thing is 104 pages long, and there’s too much of a paper trail connected to the author, with several other accounts on websites, and honestly My Immortal is way too complicated to fake, there’s no way I could ever sit down and write something as astoundingly bad and hilarious as this.  I think of it as a movie that’s so bad its funny, you can tell when a movie was made to be bad, they stick out like a sore thumb, and they’re nowhere near as enjoyable as the genuine article.

At the end of the day though, we will never know whether or not My Immortal was written legitimately or as satire mocking fan fictions as a whole, but despite this it remains as possibly the funniest thing on the internet, and a monument to how for we’ve come since 2007.  Please read it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Okay, this story doesn’t make any fucking sense.  I’m not talking about how like, the Grinch alternatively stole Christmas, I understand that, it is a kid’s book and all.  Okay, what I’m talking about here is- okay so Whoville is populated by Whos, who have a different physiology and culture from humans entirely.  This is further proven when we look at Horton Hears a Who, which takes place in the greater Seuss universe.  In Horton Hears a Who we learn that Whoville exists on a speck on a flower, further proving that Whos are not humans.

And yet, they celebrate Christmas; the story of Christ’s birth and resurrection.

Okay, stay with me here, this must mean that the Whos have their own version of Christ, a Who-Christ, who was a betrayed by Whodas, was a practicing Who-Jew, and was crucified by some sort of Who analogue to Romans.

But it goes deeper than that, this must also mean that the Whos have their own version of the bible, probably written in seussian rhyme, with lines like

“We’ll show this false prophet, we’ll beat him with ease!
We’ll beat him with use of our crucifixion machines!”

and

“With nails in his hands and one in his feet,
We’ll show this Christ that Romans will never be beat!”

 

Anyway.. How the Grinch Stole Christmas doesn’t make any goddamn sense.