Post-CYE Finale: Larry David and Friends' Influence on Animal Guy

Welp, the years of comedy fans waiting for whenever the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm airs have come to an end. I may as well write a blog thanking Larry David (and his Seinfeld co-creator, as well as others) for many hours of entertainment, and for their influence on my creative pursuits.

I started watching Seinfeld reruns not long before Season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was when my dad introduced me to Larry David's HBO sitcom –– and it so happened to have been the Seinfeld reunion story arc, which was basically an anti-Seinfeld reunion.

My dad and I got two seasons of Curb during my high school years. The six years between Season 8 and Season 9 were long, but we survived.......... And Season 10 premiered in 2020, the year the entire world became affected by COVID-19.

Having to ditch my job for a life of quarantining with two high-risk parents, I had quite an overabundance of free time. There was a dispute between HBO and our TV provider at the time, so we had to get HBO Now months prior in order to watch the final season of Game of Thrones –– which meant that my dad and I had access to all other seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm. :D

I watched Seinfeld reruns for several years, but this was my first time watching the earlier seasons of Curb –– and my dad and I also watched Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on Netflix, so it'd be needless to say that I was watching a lot of comedy early in the pandemic. You can't enjoy too much comedy in trying times, right?

Anyhow, I mentioned having creative pursuits.......... So what are they?

I actually had no creative pursuits whatsoever until one night during mid-2020.

One night, while walking around outside my house, I made a completely random attempt at getting into the mind of someone who goes out on stages to tell crowds of people jokes, as Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, J. B. Smoove and Richard Lewis have done in their careers. (Glad we had Richard in the final season. RIP.)

Standup was among the last things I ever would've thought about legitimately doing.......... Until I thought about animals.

I've always wanted to spend my life doing something related to animals, but I was never sure what my calling was. At the very least, I thought it would be entertaining to see how many minutes of written material I could possibly come up with from wanting to educate people about animals, while making them laugh about animals at the same time. After all, it wasn't like I had too much else going on in quarantine.

Four years later, I've only done four standup open mics under the stage name 'Animal Guy' since my first open mic on March 21, 2023. My hands have been a lot more full with responsibilities to my family, and the closest weekly open mics are 1 1/2 hours away, so I haven't gotten many opportunities to try material out.

It's always fun, though, when I do get to tell jokes and facts about animals. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a few comedy fundraisers for animals. Hopefully, I can do standup slideshow presentations at colleges, with the intent of promoting animal conservation and welfare causes. Hopefully, I can use standup to change people's perceptions of overlooked animals (porpoises, tapirs, etc.) and others that are often scrutinized (vultures, wolves, etc.)

Regardless, it's pretty funny that such education- and passion-filled ambition came to be because of a show about nothing, and another show where the main character tells a random little boy in the finale "I never learned a lesson in my entire life!"

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