Larry David Hated My Caricature of Him.

"Katie Couric wants you to draw a caricature of Larry David for the wall at Sardi's. She would like to present it to him at the restaurant, live on her show."

February 11th, 2015
New York, NY

I've been commissioned to draw thousands of caricatures of people since my 8th-grade geography teacher asked me to draw the school gardener. 

It was a terrible caricature but he gave me 20 bucks for it. It seemed like a crime that I could get paid for doing something I love. (Scene missing: I didn’t go to university... became a cartoonist.)

26 years on, the only thing I love more than drawing school gardeners is watching Larry David do literally anything. It was with immense anxiety, then, that I accepted the most intimidating commission of my life.

(If the video doesn’t play, click here.)

I can't quite explain why, but being insulted by Larry is a great honour. For a comedian, it's like being blessed by the pope.

The job came through a fellow New York cartoonist, Ed Steckley. He passed the job on knowing full well my eyes would pop out of my head when I read the brief. It was a very generous prank. Essentially, the brief was as follows:

"Larry David's Broadway show is a hit. Katie Couric wants you to draw a caricature of Larry David for the wall at Sardi's. She would like to present it to him at the restaurant, live on her show.

We need it hand-delivered in 2 days."

There isn't enough valium in the world to take that in without swallowing your tongue.

You're going to have to pardon the hyperbolic fanboy drool. I generally feel the idolizing of anyone -comedian or otherwise- isn't always the healthiest of life choices, but let me just say, Larry is the exception that proves the rule. He continues to have the finest observational mind in the business. His takes on social intercourse are bordering on genius. (If he'd let anyone use the term around him.)

Read my post on Creative Partnerships here:

Curb.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is the only show I've ever watched on rotation constantly for over a decade without ever tiring of it. I love it more than Seinfeld. I know more of the idiotic minutiae of the Larry universe than I know about my own medical records. Which brings me neatly to…

The Broadway Show.

I snapped up the last tickets to the first night of previews of his new show, Fish in the Dark and took an old friend of Larry's as my man-date. Without a hint of fanboy bias, I can honestly say it was the funniest, best-written comedy I’ve seen on or off Broadway.