I'll tell a story--lest you think a journalist's life is all champagne on ice and press passes and access.
First, I'm street-smart.
I'm a proud New Yorker.
(My Philadelphia Jewish mother once said,"It's shameless how you New York Jews step all over each other when a bus comes.")
Maybe. Maybe it was raining that day.
Anyway, until last night I saw myself as unstoppable in reporter mode.
I get in.
(Did I mention the increasingly nervous stomach? Occupational injury.)
To get in, I use influence which includes criminal connections. I use physical appearance. (Joan Didion says her small stature made her easy to overlook.) I even use brute force (which for me means extreme trickery of a mental nature.)
Just reliving last night's defeat at the hands of the burly thugs guarding the 92nd Street YWYMHA makes me shiver and yes sweat.
I would feel only slightly more humiliated if I was accused of stripping to Macarena music in the 42nd Street library reading room. (This hyperbole is meant to spice my narrative.)
Well, enough about my professional pride.
Here's how my world spun out of my control.
Monday
2:39
I see in the tabloids that actress Susie Essman will be interviewing Larry David at the uptown Y on Thursday night. Ms.Essman plays one of several screeching,invective-spewing Medusas who despise fictional "Larry" on "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
I am thrilled by the prospect of laughing with Larry David.
I must go and cover it. It's a rare opportunity since Larry hates reporters and speaking in public.
Background: After my articles on Seinfeld ran in the Times, Larry honored me by naming a witchy woman on "Curb" "Susan Braudy". "Larry" sarcastically thanks her husband "Stu Braudy" for finally picking up a restaurant check, and "Susan" (played by Amy Aquino) loudly demands "Larry" thank her too.
Surreality.
2:41
I am googling Larry David.
A ticket costs $35.00.
I'd pay a lot to sit and laugh with Larry David. Particularly if I am not called upon to speak. (I'm ludicrously shy.)
In truth, I've grown so fond of Larry's humor that I really like the way he looks. (It's a shame that success hasn't made Barbra Streisand, for example, look like a more perfect version of herself.But hey life is sexist.)
Our Larry is a loose-limbed grasshopper of a man. He dresses perfectly---in the sportif Los Angles mode--bespoke dark suit jackets, golf shirts, (probably custom tailored) khakis and sneakers.
I worry sometimes when anger hisses out of "Larry's" ears. He's out there on an edge of his own making. Anger roils in him mercilessly. I think it's why he's so thin. But his anger produces great stuff. When Larry laughs, I laugh.
Back to my hunt.
My computer alerts me: no more tickets available for Larry David's interview.
Sold out?!?
I know this hurdle wouldn't stop a good reporter. We all know from experience the best stories are the ones people don't want you to get. The best stories relate to secrets.
But I did mention my nervous stomach.
Worse yet, my interior landscape includes the premonition (to paraphrase Larry) that defeat lurks behind every desire.
3:30
I rally. I telephone the Y to plead with strangers for a way in.
First, a female press officer announces no press seats---as per Larry David's orders. (Why am I not surprised?) My curiosity intensifies. Maybe he and Susie Essman'll tell backstage secrets about how the comedy I love is born.
A man hangs up after telling me all I can do is to line up inside the lobby at 7'oclock on Thursday, one hour before showtime. "Maybe you'll score a returned ticket," he says.
Okay,what're my chances?
"Zero."
What?!?
"Nobody returns our tickets."
Another Y employee tells me that if a ticketholder fails to show up, the Y won't fill his seat.
I ask, do people line up outside the building in order to position themselves for the line inside the building?
I don't know and I don't care, says my informant.
My stomach gurgles and goes ominously silent. I know Larry would have a comeback--if there's a fight to pick, he'll pick it.
4:15
My gallant,long-suffering friend Joe Weintraub evaluates the ongoing battle. Abandon all hope, says Joe. But he's not a reporter cursed by curiosity and ambition.
5:00
I am a spy gathering intelligence.
I call my former agent who lies (it's cozy how some things never change). She says she can't help me at all because her Y membership lapsed. She implies she knows a lot about Larry and Laurie David's marital breakup--she sees them on Martha's Vineyard.
6:30
I rush uptown after flagging a gypsy cab (remember the cab strike) to eyeball tomorrow's battlefront.
I need a strategy.
6:50
Inside the lobby, I pester a burly security guard. He agrees to let me (and anybody else who's insane enough to arrive three hours early) inside the lobby at 5 o'clock on Thursday to queue behind an American flag.
Three hours isn't long, I say. (Acting confident builds confidence--I think it's Kierkegaard who said act as if-- but he was talking about the big picture. He meant act as if you exist and you will exist.)
The guard reads my mind. "You won't be able to sit on the floor."
Two minutes later a box office guard tells me I'll never get in.
I fight back. "But I'll give up my seat if the original buyer shows up."
"Not policy."
I wonder if "Larry" would accuse him of old testament eye-for-an-eye morality. (Of course "Larry's" tirades don't win the day either. But he gets a big kick out of them.
I was defeated---although I swear I suddenly heard trumpets--perhaps from a nearby church-- playing "Onward Christian Soldiers".
Not a marching song of my people alas.
Thursday
4:20
While checking Barney's silly windows on Madison, I'm flooded with fresh resolve.
I call Joe and ask him to pack up gear for a march to the front. He agrees to pin the miniature microphone of my spyware tape recorder to his shirt pocket. "I think my black shirt works best with the black wire,don't you?" he asks. He's a good dresser..
5:07
Three young girls stand in line in front of of Joe and me in lobby behind the American flag. Forty people behind us.
Joe talks into his pocket---"testing one two three". The tape recorder is critical--I can't misquote Larry.
Five years ago I put quotes on a paraphrase in a Times piece praising Jerry Seinfeld--and his wife hit the roof. She demanded a retraction. I ate humble pie with a pr lady until Jerry diffused the situation by writing a letter protesting another allusion to his wife in another Times article describing her strong-arm tactics in a Hermes store.
I leave Joe in line and wander into the street to join an instant community of ticketless Larry David fans. Instant communities are part of reporting a story. One young girl in a black summer mini-dress says "I hope you get in," and I know she means it.
5;30
Three police cars idle engines. "Are you here for Larry David?" asks my new friend in the black summer dress. "Sort of," one policeman says. His partner adds, "To keep the peace."
Suddenly the sidewalk fills with wholesome teenagers---so clean-cut that I wonder if they are in disguise or actors in a play about the 1950's. White blouses, combed hair. No makeup. No piercings.
They're picketing the Y's other scheduled speaker, a Jewish leader named Abe Foxman, who I gather is affiliated with the Anti-Defamation League.
The wholesome teenagers are of Armenian descent and are angry that Foxman refuses to use the term "holocaust" to describe the wholesale murders of Armenians in 1915.
"We're in a Larry David show," says my incredulous colleague in the black dress.
Absolutely right!
I wish Larry would jump out of the lobby--like he might on tv--to comment on the war between the Armenians and the Jews for primo holocaust victim status.
I love that episode in which "Larry" invites a holocaust survivor to dinner to meet a fellow survivor. The "fellow survivor" turns out to be a victim of the reality tv show, The Survivor. The two "survivors" fight viciously over which "survivor" has suffered more.
"Larry David hates Armenians," jokes a new member of our ticketless club, a blue-eyed boy in Bermuda shorts. We don't laugh.
I step into the crowd of wholesome Armenians. One Armenian teenager pulls a lush long-stemmed white rose out of a city trashcan filled up with fresh flowers. He hands it the girl in the black summer dress.
"How'd you fall in with this crowd," she asks me smiling. We both politely decline two picket signs reading: "Shame on the Anti-Defamation League".
We cull roses and fragrant branches of lilacs for the next few minutes. "No trashcans this good in my neighborhood," she says.
A girl with a sweater tied around her waist is writing pages and pages about the Armenian protest in a reporter's spiral notebook. She's from a feminist magazine "Lilith", and she's shocked I read it. "Only on a Manhattan street," she says happily, "can I meet somebody who knows my magazine."
One ticketless Larry David fan is chatting up a Y janitor. Seconds later the fan reports back to the rest of us, "Larry just ducked in the side entrance."
"I bet Larry doesn't cross picket lines," says the girl in the black summer dress. "Or maybe he's uncomfortable in crowds of people who like him," I say,. "nobody to fight with."
A man with sorrowful rings around his eyes and who looks familiar asks me to sell him an extra ticket.
7:30
I line up yet again to go into the lobby to hearten the troops---Joe. The security guard paws too familiarly at Kleenex and pens in my shoulderbag.
I give Joe the fragrant lilacs. He's in good spirits--chatting with a prep school teacher behind us who stood in line to score a house seat for the original Chorus Line. Seated next to the Choreographer he felt part of the show.
Outside again, the crowd moves faster. Joy Behar strides inside. "Larry did her show the View today," says one ticketless boy. Ms Behar's wearing tv makeup and her eyes look more alert than anybody's. There's something about the way she holds her neck that belies her unlined forehead.
The girl in the black summer dress is nowhere to be seen. I have to believe she made it in.
The cops push the Armenian children across Lexington. They shout,"What would Hitler say? What would Hitler say? What would Hitler say?"
If this was tv, "Larry"'d jump out of the lobby again and make a Hitler jokes. Maybe "Larry"'d put his forefinger across his upper lip, assume a German accent and declare "my holocaust is a helluva lot better than your holocaust. Ve got more complainers and more press and more tsores and more glitz."
Oh, it's no use trying to conjure Larry. He's utterly unpredictable and that's a good thing--most of the time.
I bump into a friend Stephanie Elvanian who sells me fabulous antique costume jewelry. on Sundays. We commiserate--she's Armenian and looking for a ticket to Mr. Foxman's speech--it too is sold out.
7:55
A rumor sweeps the crowd that a man with a Jesus beard has a Larry David ticket for sale. Just then I see Joe waving lilacs from the lobby entrance. A box office official has said we're going in.
I feel enormous relief.
8:01
I cruise the box office and watch with a sinking feeling while a ticket bully bestow the last five tickets on a tearful girl. Her seats had been mistakenly re-sold to other people.
I make an end run. The ticket guy disappears inside a swinging door. I grab the door in time to hear applause from across a wide hallway.
Larry's applause.
Heart pounding, I step toward the auditorium, armed with the certainty that there will be empty seats. Then I'm inside. I feel larcenous, it's scary. I can't really see anything yet.
A cool-looking black usher with two corn rows jumps at me. I stall and ask him if this is the Larry David interview, trying to formulate a next maneuver.
"You gotta go," he says. As I write this, I wistfully realize that a really tough reporter might've offered cash.
Thursday night
11:30
I watch my recording of Larry's Wednesday night Letterman appearance. Larry looks great---albeit tv-sized and flat.
Larry opens aggressively. He claims he's never done the Tonight Show before because Dave has hair. Larry announces that he's a proud bald man. (We know this riff from "Curb Your Enthusiasm.")
Larry airily tells Dave to lose the hair. (Larry's voice is a high-pitched,breathless. His stage fright endears him.)
Paul Shafer interjects. Throwing open his arms, he welcomes Larry as a fellow bald man. But Larry angrily rejects Paul. Raising his voice, Larry calls Paul a fake bald man. I am embarrassed. I wonder if Larry resents Paul for horning in on his segment. Or maybe Larry harbors an old Saturday Night Live animus.
Meanwhile Larry is shouting that he can't tell if Paul really is bald because Paul's head is shaved.
Paul is wide-eyed. Maybe he's afraid Larry'll explode into flames.
Or is it all a setup?
Larry tells a wonderfully funny story about George Steinbrenner's bad performance on Seinfeld. But I am discomfited by Larry's relish at describing how he axed Steinbrenner.
Friday morning
10:30
Page Six claims Larry and Jerry Seinfeld were at a tennis game at Arthur Ash stadium. (Giving hope to all of us who dream of new Seinfeld episodes!)
At the tennis game, Larry pipes up and tells a reporter that he'd win a tennis game against Jerry, because Larry's a better tennis player.
"Really?" said Jerry Seinfeld, refusing to fight back. Ever soothing. Really kind.
And maybe Jerry Seinfeld's negotiating, trying to get Larry back on the job. The intoxicating mix of Jerry's benign and ironic presence and Larry's angry words---boy it'lll still cook!
Go Jerry Seinfeld!
But here's a glitch: Larry's marriage is kaput and he's dating again, and maybe he'd rather write another season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" for himself. The episodes might be invigorated by Larry's his real-life misadventures with cursing and screeching girlfriends.
Either way---more "Seinfelds" or more "Curbs" --we can't lose!
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Posted September 9, 2007 | 09:04 PM (EST)