When HBO announced yesterday that Curb Your Enthusiasm would return next year, I gave a quiet little yelp of glee. Though we don’t get the cable network around here, my fiancé and myself wait like anxious children for each season to come out on DVD. When we get our mitts on one, we always make plans to parcel out the episodes like decadent slices of comedy dessert -- but invariably wind up gorging on the genius of Larry David and his brilliantly dysfunctional cast of kooks.

The former head writer and executive producer of Seinfeld, David was ranked No. 23 in a 2005 “Comedian’s Comedian” list (a poll of professional comics taken by the BBC's Channel 4) of the greatest comic minds of all time. No surprise -- his ability to transform the self-centered, absurd essence of modern culture into a biting comic mirror is dazzling. Anyone who’s seen the show recognizes instantly when they’re having a “Larry David moment.” You can practically hear the theme music playing in the background.

According to the hilarious Susie Essman, who plays foul-mouthed wife “Susie” to the character of Larry’s manager, “Jeff Greene,” keeping the revolutionary, retroscripted Curb alive is no mean feat.

“When we are shooting and when the season is done Larry will always say, ‘I'm not doing another (one),’” she says, in an interview on the show’s website. “And then after he's finished editing, and is doing nothing for a couple of months, he gets a little itchy to do another season ... the problem is Larry doesn't want to repeat himself. He wrote all those Seinfeld episodes and now fifty episodes of Curb. He's got to keep coming up with these new ideas and new ways to be fresh and funny, and it's hard.”

The new Curb episodes are scheduled to premiere at the top of 2009, marking over a year between seasons. I can bear the drought, and even the wait for the DVD release, as long as I know that David is still crankin’ out the comedy magic. With Dave Chappelle in early retirement and Wanda Sykes’ (a Curb regular) television career in retrograde, this guy is pretty much the last man standing in terms of boob tube brilliance. And, I have to say, it’s heartening to know that, at 61, you can not only get funnier – but better looking. Check out David (as the plastic surgeon) in this sketch from the short-lived early ‘80s comedy show, Fridays, for proof.

Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.