The end result is a bunch of fake action surrounding the fake reunion show, but it is really the real reunion, because they're all back.

Gawker tries to parse the various levels of the Seinfeld reunion taking place on this season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, not only the greatest thing currently on television but one of the single best things that has ever aired.

When [Larry] David approached [Jerry] Seinfeld about a reunion plot on Curb in spring 2008, the comedian wasn’t terribly worried about mucking around with the legacy of his beloved nine-season show. “The idea of working with Larry was just too overwhelmingly appealing to me, and [Curb] is such a great show,” he says. “There was a little part of me that said, ‘Do we really want to tamper?’…But to hell with it. How much damage can you really do?”

The seventh season of David's improvised HBO comedy, which returns on Sept. 20, will be centered around the TV version of David finally agreeing to do a reunion of the defining '90s sitcom. All four "Seinfeld" castmembers -- Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards -- will play themselves in multiple episodes, and the season finale will feature extensive snippets of the show-within-the-show.

It should be said again: the premise for the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm is truly inspired.

Larry David, America's greatest living folk hero, on The Daily Show last night.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Larry David
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

Sorry about No-Post Monday; my summer course starts tomorrow and I'm scrambling to get everything ready. I have a few links before I declare this No Post Tuesday.

* Eliza Dushku is twittering that Dollhouse renewal talks are going on as we speak. A better indication than if they weren't.

* Miscellaneous Star Trek links:

* A fairly well-known story about TOS and MLK.
* Ultimately, then, “Star Trek” was prescient not for its futurism, with the Enterprise crew using communicators that look like flip-phones, but for exploring a universe absorbed with pop-culture history. David Hadju on Star Trek and popular culture.
* Continuity errors as honeypot.
* "Star Trek sucked so bad I can’t even think of a title for my rant."

* The secret history of Jughead's hat.

* Goonies reunion video.

* Larry David is Woody Allen as Larry David in Whatever Works.

* Apocalypse and the academy in The New Yorker.

* And some sad news: Craig Arnold is now believed to have died while traveling in Japan.

A few more missing links from the last few days.

* What sort of game are Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld playing? First the pilot for Curb Your Enthusiasm is a preemptive parody of Comedian, several years before the fact—now Jerry Seinfeld has signed with NBC to do a reality TV show that sounds like nothing so much as Curb Your Enthusiasm.

* Supermen of Pre-Golden-Age SF.

* How they made The Godfather.

* Is Switzerland the next Iceland?

* The Milky Way Transit Authority.

* Simulation of a black hole destroying a star.

* And is the FiveThirtyEight.com brand ruined?

Let's talk about famous people.

* Larry David is waiting for November 4.

* Scott McClellan gives Barack Obama the kiss of death.

* Alan Greenspan's lost his faith.

* Will Ferrell returns to Saturday Night Live.

* And Stephen King again finds himself confronted by one of his own creations.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is returning for a seventh season. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty pretty good.

Larry David on the red phone. I like Larry David, but I wish he'd chosen a few lines that didn't rely on the "hysterical woman" trope. Clinton's discredited herself on the merits, there's no need to call her Sybil.

Marc Ambinder takes a stab at predicting Obama's VP, but misses the smart bet completely: Gen. Wesley Clark. Clark might well have been Clinton's VP and was, I think, the most likely choice for Obama VP even before the race took the shape it has. But Clark's vocal support for Clinton just makes the likelihood of his being picked as Obama's VP all the more likely—picking Clark now becomes a unity move that brings the party back together.

Biden has an outside chance, and Bill Richardson probably has a slightly better chance than Biden—but I still think it'll be Clark.

If it isn't Clark, I think that will be because Obama has decided either that he needs to double down on "change" and pick someone else who represents the future, or else decides the better unity move is to select a woman, or both. In this case look at Obama endorsers like Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, or Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill.

But Obama should keep in mind, if this is indeed his thinking, that there's only one way to lock up now and forever the Jaimee Hills/Larry David demographic, and that's to pick California Senator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Barbara Boxer.

UPDATE: Right, Republicans. Can Huckabee get enough support to edge out Romney? Condoleezza Rice has already said she won't do it, and it would have been hard to imagine the Republicans really picking her despite the obvious demographic advantages she brings to the table.

Is there anyone else who is even on the radar screen over there?

In all the hoopla surrounding South Carolina and the Kennedy endorsement, it's tough to remember that Obama is still heading into Super Duper Tuesday at a significant disadvantage, especially in big states like California, New York, and New Jersey. (Note: as of 2 PM on 1/29 the charts on polllster.com haven't taken South Carolina and the possible Kennedy bump into consideration yet.) But there's reason to be hopeful—the latest Survey USA poll has him down 11 points, 49 to 38, up from 15 points down two weeks ago and 30 points down in December. Nor have the polls been especially reliable this time around; the likely voter models haven't really been reliable in any state, most recently and most notably in South Carolina, where a twelve-point projected victory turned into twenty-eight points.

The always reliable Douchebag of Liberty Bob Novak writes in the Washington Post today that Clinton's lead in California may be significantly softer than it looks:

Clinton's double-digit lead in California polls over Sen. Barack Obama is misleading. Subtract a Latino voting bloc whose dependability to show up on Election Day always has been shaky, and Clinton is no better than even here, with Obama gaining.

...

The poll's demographics are more important. Clinton has dramatically lost support among blacks, now trailing Obama 58 percent to 24 percent. It is a virtual dead heat among white non-Hispanics, 32 percent to 30 percent. The 12-point overall lead derives from a 59 percent to 19 percent Clinton edge among Latinos.

In California, the Latino vote is notoriously undependable in actual voting, especially when compared with African American turnout.

Novak also notes that independents (who can only vote in the Democratic primary in California) and young voters (who are notoriously unpredictable) are two additional wild cards that may work in Obama's favor.

In the New York Times, David Brooks echoes the thoughts of a lot of people when he writes that "something fundamental has shifted in the Democratic party":

Then, in the speech’s most striking passage, he set Bill Clinton afloat on the receding tide of memory. “There was another time,” Kennedy said, “when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a New Frontier.” But, he continued, another former Democratic president, Harry Truman, said he should have patience. He said he lacked experience. John Kennedy replied: “The world is changing. The old ways will not do!”

The audience at American University roared. It was mostly young people, and to them, the Clintons are as old as the Trumans were in 1960. And in the students’ rapture for Kennedy’s message, you began to see the folding over of generations, the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy united with the service generation of the One Campaign. The grandparents and children united against the parents.

Matt Yglesias and his commentators even offer some slim hope for a close finish in New York City and State, albeit with a possible assist from the Good Lord himself:

A big icestorm upstate and a light rainstorm in the city on Feb 5 could be very good for Obama. Remember there is no early voting in NYS. To vote absentee you have to specify a reason why you can't make it to the polls.

All I'm trying to say is this: Keep hope alive, bald people.

Larry David is stumping for Obama in New Hampshire. A longish excerpt:

Throughout the event Larry was... well, Larry. Completely himself and utterly hilarious. At one point he noticed a student scratching himself and asked, "What are you doing itching your balls at an Obama event?"

Another student asked him what he thought Obama's chances were. He answered with his signature "Pre-tty, pre-tty good," leading to a raucous outburst.

"I'm undecided between Obama and Hillary," one young woman said. "Aren't you tired of the old?" he replied. "Don't you want to put on some clean clothes? Voting for Hillary would be like doing Frasier again on TV. Don't you want something fresh, new and creative?"

"I mean, haven't we had enough with Bushes and Clintons and Bushes?" he continued. "The country needs a shower, a good, long, hot shower. That's what Obama is, a hot shower. So fresh you can smell him. Delicious."

Another student asked him when he first met Obama. "I met him in Martha's Vineyard," he replied, "in the summer of '04. I liked him from the first moment, even though he's a skinny man...not presidential in a bathing suit. And I decided to support him when I first heard him speak at the Democratic Convention." [Editor's note: Me, too. —GC]

When asked which Republican he would vote for, if he had to vote Republican, Larry replied: "Candidates who do not believe in evolution are not my cup of tea."

When a young woman said that she was trying to decide whether to vote for Obama or John McCain, Larry took a beat, and pursed his lips. "Let's see," he said, "one was against the war in Iraq from the beginning, and one wants to keep the troops there for another hundred years. I can see your dilemma."

...

"What about Giuliani?" asked another student. "He did a good job for you in the low-fat yogurt Seinfeld episode." "Yes, he did," Larry responded, "but he's a lunatic."

Thanks to Jaimee for making my day with this.

Cell-phone jammers: threat or menace? I understand why these things have to be illegal, but there have been plenty of times I would have loved to have one (and I've been known to be a cell-phone chatterer myself).

“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. “The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights.”

No, no! The jammer is an altruist; she jams for the community.

And of course, there's always the Larry David option:



Via Steve. MetaFilter has more discussion.

I'm surely going to hell for thinking it, but as sorry as I am to hear Larry David's marriage has fallen apart, I'm very hopeful that it will eventually wind up as the plot of a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.