The Time I Was Living in an Episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm

The host of the Deep Shit Podcast shares a recent experience that he considers to be the most "Curb Your Enthusiasm" moment of his life. He explains that skiing is a predominantly white sport, and his wife, who is half black, stands out in the crowd. They meet a man who turns out to be the father of a talented African-American skier, and he tries to recruit their daughter to the National Brotherhood of Skiers. Although the situation is awkward, the host finds it reminiscent of a scene from the TV show "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Hello and welcome to Episode 2 of the Deep Shit Podcast, a podcast about harrowing, scary, odd, funny, quirky, embarrassing, and or life changing experiences and what we can learn from them. I'm your host, Mark Zimborg, and since we're still kind of in the getting to know you phase of our relationship, and I'm still in the process of lining up all my guests for season one, and to be honest, figuring out the technical and audio setup part of it, which is not my strong suit, I thought I'd just quickly tell you about a recent experience I had that I definitely classify as being the most curbed or enthusiasm experience of my life to this point. Also, as a quick aside, I hope you noticed that I added some production value via intro music. That only took me about three weeks to figure out. I originally had the idea of putting Duran Duran's Save a Prayer as my intro song, but I ran into a few licensing issues with that one, so we're just going to go with this for now. So, about my real life curbed your enthusiasm story. If you've never seen Curbed Your Enthusiasm, it's basically a show about the daily absurdities and indignities suffered by Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld. It's fictional, but he uses his name in the show and bases it on his own life in LA and his personal observations of the many ways that people behave absurdly, people that he then proceeds to shock and offend in some way. It's safe to say we all probably have an inner Larry David, I certainly do, and we all at some point get to experience a Curbed Your Enthusiasm moment, some of us many of them in any given year, depending on where we live and who we associate with. So this particular Curbed moment, by far the most Curbed moment of my life, occurred this year, actually back in March, when I was attending the Junior National Moguls Championship in Park City, Utah, which my 13-year-old daughter was actually competing in. As a quick parenting tip, I would recommend against putting your kid on a pair of skis, because once you do that, you're kind of signing up for, it's like a lifetime investment type thing, kind of like a second mortgage on a vacation home that's way more expensive than your original home. But I digress. So it's March of this year, my wife and I are attending the Junior National Mogul Championships in Park City, which are being held at what's known as the Utah Olympic Park, which is like a separate special facility for Olympic athletes and these special junior events, like the Junior Nationals for Moguls. It's really cool if you haven't seen it, and I'll include a link in the description and description notes. It's basically like a high-tech mini ski mountain unto itself, with a ski racing part, a mogul course part, ski jumping parts, free riding parts, big water ramp facility for skiers to practice their aerial tricks, it's pretty impressive. So my daughter's there, representing the Olympic Valley Freestyle Team, or what was once known as the Squaw Valley Freestyle Team, which I was actually on in high school, although back then it was, of course, a totally different sport. We weren't doing cork 1080s, we were doing double daffies, or in my case, just single daffies. So she's there, and there are a bunch of other ski teams there from across the country, from Montana, Vermont, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, everywhere. Now I'm just going to come out and say this. Skiing is still a very, very white sport, very white. Not as white as it was back in the 80s and 90s, but still very white. If back in the 80s, one of every, I don't know, 1,000 skiers on the mountain was black, now it's maybe one of every 500 or so. It's unfortunate, but it's the reality. It's probably the most Caucasian sport there is. Now my wife is half black, her dad is African, and her mom is Spanish. I met her when I was living in Madrid when I moved there in my mid-20s. So yes, she stands out like any other black person does in a ski crowd. The current top competitor, actually, in my daughter's age group, which is the U-15, under-15 group, is a girl named Ava Keenan, who, as it turns out, is African-American and has a goal of becoming the first African-American to win a skiing medal in the Olympics. She's obviously a really amazing skier, and I think she can definitely achieve that, and I really hope she does, because it would be a much-needed milestone for the sport. And technically, as far as I know, currently the only other competitor, not just in my daughter's age group, but in the entire female freestyle skiing world, who is somewhat of color, if we're defining somewhat of color as being part African, is my daughter. She's got a long ways to go until she gets to Ava's level, but she's progressing rapidly, and at least she was good enough to make the junior nationals this year. So the way the junior nationals course is set up, the course leads right down to a pretty tightly confined spectator area, which is packed to the brim with the parents of the competitors. The day of the competition, all the parents are there, of course, including Ava Keenan's dad, who at this point we don't know is Ava Keenan's dad, but he stands out not just because he's the only other black person there besides my wife, but he's also a tall, fit, good-looking guy who seems super friendly and confident, and he's very involved and appears to know pretty much everyone there, including the event organizers. So my wife and I are standing there in the crowds of the parents at the bottom of the course. My daughter takes her run. She does okay, but of course she did better in her practice runs, as usual, and of course she's pretty unhappy with her run. Now when my daughter finishes a ski competition run, it's rarely a question of if she's going to be upset or not. It's more a question of how direly despondent and depressed she's going to be. She's kind of like the Woody Allen of mogul skiing. Usually I don't even try to talk to her after a run or assuage her in any way. That's my wife's job. So we're standing there all together, my wife, daughter, and I, after her run. My wife is trying to console my daughter, and this black man, Ava Keenan's dad, who at that point we don't know who that is, Ava Keenan's dad yet, saddles up to my wife and says, good to see ya. Kind of just like that. Good to see ya. And he has kind of like a Barack Obama vibe, you could say, kind of stately, mellow, confident. And my wife and I are just standing there like, all right, who's this guy? I was thinking it could be one of those really embarrassing situations where we met someone before and they remember meeting us, but we don't remember meeting them, but this guy we would have definitely remembered meeting him. And then he says it again, staring right at my wife, good to see ya. But she should know what he's talking about. And that's when it dawned on me where he was about to go with this little conversation. And if I had the gall, this was the point where I would have been trying to make meaningful eye contact with him and kind of shake my head and maybe give him one of those throat slashing abort gestures. Because he was really kind of walking into a trap, but I didn't know him, and I didn't have the gall to do that. So I just kind of stand there and watched this train wreck. Yes, my wife is half black, but she's also half Spanish and grew up in Spain. And even though black people are very much a minority in Spain, race isn't really a thing there. It doesn't really exist. Like nobody cares, and there aren't all these weird and heavy narratives and darkness and guilt and hurt around race. So my wife could really care less about something like this. She's still very confused about what's going on, but I know where he's about to go with the conversation, and he can tell my wife is still confused and didn't pick up at all on the good to see you part. So finally, he introduces himself to us. He says, it's great to see us here. He says his daughter is Ava Keenan, and he asks us our names and where we're from. And as soon as my wife opens her mouth and he hears the Spanish accent, you can tell it's kind of like a record scratch moment for him, but he can't just bail out of his pitch now. So he goes with it, and then he says, you know, you don't see many black people out here, and he's really hoping to change that, and we need to get more of us out here. And in light of that, he's part of something called the National Brotherhood of Skiers, and he gives my wife a card and tells her to contact him about having our daughter become a member. And then he starts asking Logan and my daughter about her run and how it went, and I'm just thinking, oh God, this is not, like, he had very unfortunate timing with this whole thing. My daughter responded to him, but she wasn't in the best mood at the time because it was after her run. Finally, he leaves, and my wife and I just look at each other and kind of start laughing, and I think, first of all, let me say this. I think it's great that there's even something called the National Brotherhood of Skiers, and this guy's daughter is an amazing athlete. I hope she really does win gold. But afterwards, I couldn't help but see this as a very Curb Your Enthusiasm moment. And you know, I'm Jewish, and Larry David is also Jewish, and Jews have an ability to spot other Jews in public, we kind of just have a sixth sense for it. So if this were an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David would, of course, take this somewhere totally absurd and kind of offensive, and the next time he was out in public and spotted someone who was clearly Jewish, he'd sidle up to them and say, good to see you, and maybe offer this awkward fist bump kind of thing, and then of course they just look at him like he's crazy. Anyway, so that was the Curb Your Enthusiasm moment of 2024 for me, and likely the Curb Your Enthusiasm moment of my entire life. If they'd ever get to beat, I'd be very surprised. If I thought anyone was actually listening to this, and I had any kind of social media presence, I'd probably do something like, hey, what was your most Curb Your Enthusiasm moment? But since I'm pretty sure nobody at all is listening, I'll just leave it at that. Thank you for listening. I promise that I actually have a bona fide guest with a true deep shit story to tell on the next episode. So, good to see ya.