Dear Diary: Day of Princessing
Doodle's last comment may not have made much sense to anyone here. Actually, I can't see why it would make sense to anyone here, except for me of course. What the youth was looking for was a photo she had taken of me, her uncle and one of my (many) heroes (and I don't mean K-Dog, Burton Bell, Melissa Rivers, Tonya Harding, or Mr Obama). No, said hero would be none other than the one and only Mr. Larry David 
. There is a story behind this photo, and so here we go.
It was a few years ago, Jeri dragged me out to California - as if the time served in the Orange County Penal System wasn't enough to break my spirit. Actually, the joke was on her...it was her family we were visiting. As our jetliner landed, I remember feeling my epiploic apendidcies tearing off, as the devil called California (in this case the, subdemon called Los Angeles) reached out to grab my soul and pull me into it's palm tree laden hell. Once again, I ignored the selfish whine of the demon (this time appearing as a flock of happy go lucky L.A. denizens), grabbed Jeri, and our pretentious rental car, and headed North to West Hollywood and the safety of Fast Eddie's "As Republican As You Can Get" arms.
I mainly kept to myself, letting Jeri and her fams reuinte, get all loveydovey and so forth. It got a bit nauseating a few times, but really that was only when her dad would speak of politics, utter racial epithets, praise Bush for murdering the non Christians etc. But I bit my lip and cheeks, because I didn't want to miss out on my chance to hopefully meet Larry David. And this meeting, was hopefully going to be facilitated by none other than Jeri's Uncle Al.
I kept checking the clock in the room, in eager anticipation of Al's arrival home. Apparently he was working on some sort of Pilot for a new show. This one involving the antics of a dysfunctional family. (This would later become known as The War At Home). I didn't care about any of that, I just wanted to find out if he A) Knew Larry David, B) Knew where Larry David lived and C) Could help fill in some blanks in my Larry David scrapbook.
Finally....finally the knock at the door was heard. The Al stepped in, and sweetly embraced his niece. (There's a certain tv character modeled after young Doodle by the way). I let The Al make the rounds of the room, and then pounced on him.
For a man of smaller build, he flung me off pretty hard.
So, I waited, and then over dinner, (at a *famous* diner, where Jeri ordered a $13.00 sandwich, and ignored it), I began with my litany of questions for The Al. Try as he might to shrug them off, ignore them, talk around them, use the old "he never comes to this side of the hill" line, I wasn't going to give up.
This sort of attack went on at every meal we had with The Al (2-3/day), until I finally broke the man down. Towards our last day, Jeri and I were forced to attend a luncheon at some sort of shishi, "Look at me I'm a Republican and hate blacks too" restaurant. I went outside to clear my head of all the elephant shit, and saw The Al was doing the same. (He's not a hater of the American people either). "Hey Moishe," he said. (He always calls me that). "I wanted to show you something."
And from around the numerous SUV's, came Larry David. I pounced on him too, and he, was nowhere near as strong as The Al.
And that, in a nutshell is the story behind the photo, my encounter with Larry David, and how I learned that one time God took a shit and created California. And the Republican Party.
