Welcome to Monday’s News on the March – The week that was in my digital world.
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Larry the Gentile
Video extract at Curb YourTube
Being a Curb and Seinfeld fan – as most of you will know – I occasionally slip scenes from these shows into my music posts whenever there’s even the slightest connection to the subject matter. It’s my thing. Anyhow, this scene from Curb popped up in my feed last week, and it made me chuckle and reminisce about the show – which, by the way, I haven’t watched in quite a while.
In this particular episode (Season 5, Episode 10, “The End”), Larry David – who is Jewish – mistakenly learns that he is actually a gentile. What follows is a series of scenes in which he takes on stereotypical Anglo-Protestant activities – things anyone familiar with Larry up to this point would never imagine him partaking in, even in his wildest dreams. Take, for example, a grease-covered Larry repairing a vehicle: no complaints, no snide small talk – just quietly and skillfully doing the job with a kind of understated Anglo-Protestant dignity.
There is another very funny scene here, comparable to the one above, in which Larry and his wife Cheryl pretend to be card-carrying Republicans in order to gain admittance to an exclusive country club. Larry’s savvy, nuanced comedic acting chops are on full display here.
Mark Twain Documentary to Fall Asleep To
Documentary at Mind Palace
Sometimes when I wake up – as I did last night at around 3 a.m. – and can’t fall back to sleep, I’ll put on an ad-free documentary to ease myself into a gentle slumber. It usually works, but not with this week’s featured documentary. No matter – I’d gone to bed early anyway.
As someone aptly remarked, the documentary was simply too good to fall asleep to. I’d read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) as a youngster, and watched TV adaptations of them, but I was largely ignorant of the man behind the pages. Well, blow me down – like the great American author Ernest Hemingway, I found Mark Twain’s life just as captivating as his most celebrated work.
Video description:
‘Discover the complete life of Mark Twain with other name Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the iconic American author and humorist known for classic works like “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. We explore Twain’s early years, literary career, personal struggles, and lasting impact on American literature and culture. Dive into the fascinating story of Samuel Clemens, his wit, social commentary, and influence on 19th-century writing and humor. Learn about Twain’s legacy as a master storyteller, satirist, and one of the greatest voices in literary history‘.
CB Bucknor missed 20 calls in one game, a breakdown
Well, we are well into the 2026 Major League Baseball season, and I’m quite the happy camper – especially since they’ve introduced the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System, something I argued for strongly in one of the first articles I wrote on my blog back in 2014, Baseball Romanticism and Perfecting the Strike Zone.
The ABS Challenge System allows players to challenge ball and strike calls made by home plate umpires using Hawk-Eye tracking technology. Each team starts with two challenges per game and retains a challenge if the call is overturned, but loses the ability to challenge after two unsuccessful attempts.
To say it has been a success would be an understatement. It has not only removed a great deal of human error from umpiring, but it has also added a whole new layer of entertainment and intrigue to the game. Spectators now cheer just as loudly for the result of a challenge as they might for a home run.
To demonstrate its effectiveness in a single game, I point you to this video: CB Bucknor missed 20 calls in one game, a breakdown
That’s all for now – until next time. Thanks, as always, for reading.
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Happy Monday morning to you! I enjoyed this post. My sweety and I weren’t together for Seinfeld, but enjoyed many seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm together. I had forgotten the episode from which the clip came from, and was waiting for Larry to be offensive or obnoxious in that way only he can. What a brilliant series! Both were terrific, though Larry certainly took it up a notch with ‘Curb.’ Priceless stuff.
Listening to a doc is an interesting way to get back to sleep. When working in a very busy public servant role, I often woke at 2 or 3 am, then would remain awake pondering the many contentious files I was carrying. Something like this could have served me well…. Now retired, I no longer fret if I wake up; I’ll just get up and watch some pro cycling to change the mind rhythms, knowing that I don’t have a set time to get going in the morning, 99% of the time.
I’m not into baseball like one of my sons is, so I will have to ask him about his thoughts on this fascinating use of technology!
I just love the moment in the Gentile video when his mother (who, incidentally, looks about the same age as Larry! lol) does the sign of the cross and he responds, “What have you got there?” Very funny — and just so Larry. And in the country club golf scene, it’s something as subtle as him taking off his glasses that really lands. His accent while playing a Republican is priceless. Wonderful that you enjoyed the show with your “sweety.”
It sounds like you had your work cut out for you with such a demanding job. I used to ask my mother what she would do when she woke in the wee hours, and she told me she’d eat something light, put on some TV, and then head back to bed shortly after. Watching pro cycling in your retirement seems to be doing the trick for you. Pogacar, I see, is getting fined for running a red light — one day I hope I can pronounce his name correctly.
I only really got into baseball after moving to Colombia, but I think the brilliant film Field of Dreams laid the groundwork for that later interest in the sport. I’m so happy about the implementation of this technology, since about 15% of calls made by umpires were incorrect before ABS came in. I hope your son also finds it a more than welcome change in what was fast becoming an archaic system of arbitration.
So many priceless scenes….
Oh, I haven’t been following the spring scene on the pro circuit. Interesting. Pogacar is an incredible athlete, quietly ruthless. I sometimes just watch a bit of Netflix’s ’Tour de France’ and love how the Team Jumbo – Lease-a-Bike manager calls out over the radio to motivate his rival Jonas Vingegaard saying, “Come on Jonas, you’ve got ‘poe-GAH-chah’ (as he pronounces it) on the ropes!” The show is good at highlighting the strategy the teams use. For a while I had a subscription to the live stuff but found it hard to keep up with it all.
I can see how Field of Dreams would lay down a foundation. I’ll be sure to chat with the lad about ABS.