Curb Your Enthusiasm

My brother, who lives in China, has just returned for his annual 10 days in the UK. This time, as part of his aid package from the Orient, in amongst the knock-off dvds is an absolute gem, the 5^th series of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I often wonder what exactly it was that I did when I lived in Sydney. Yes the Olympics were on when I was there, although inexplicably I didn’t go to any events. The opening night was fantastic as I remember. I had a job in a bank in the middle of Sydney – St.Georges Square – and it was a dull job which earnt me money, and I lived in a house with 9 others, two dogs and lots of cockroaches, but it only cost me $60AUS per week, which is nothing. I wasn’t short of cash. I made some good friends too, an Irish girl and a Glaswegian guy, and now that I really think about it, I smoked an inordinate amount of weed. I went to the odd bar too, and the odd beach. I went to Manly, and Maroubra and Byron but Sydney beaches were weird affairs. The sea was dangerous with really big surf which is crap for swimming and the sand was packed with lots of people which all in all is a far cry from Thailand. Back to the subject, so I smoked loads of hydro which our next door neighbour usefully grew and sold to us. And when we all came in from work, Seinfeld would be on tv, and we’d all watch it, and it was one of the funniest tv shows I had seen. I used to watch Sex and the City too but I can’t remember why.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is absolutely brilliant. It follows Larry Sanders, who wrote Seinfeld, go about his daily life in LA, and it plays out in a pseudo reality-tv fashion. Poor Larry has such a terrible time. In a Woody Allenesque manner he goes through life getting angry over the most insignificant things, whilst being surrounded by gruesome people, and while having the worst luck in the world. And its not like the people that upset him so are even that bad. They seem to me to be entirely normal in a Californian kind of way. Its just he sees something and it upsets him, and he’s not entirely rational and then circumstances are rarely in his favour. So in two days I’m 10 episodes in. That’s how good it is.