BlackBerry more valuable than human life, at least to Larry David

Slate recently did a (fairly unfunny) piece imaging how characters from the show Seinfeld would react to Twitter. Since that show is stuck in the '90s, we'll never know, but we can see how the guiding force behind Seinfeld, Larry David, is rolling with the technological changes. In last week's episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry was so tethered to his BlackBerry that he seemed to choose it over saving a young girl's life. Larry was confronted with the choice when, at the beach, he was instructed to keep an eye on Sammy Greene, daughter of his agent and friend Jeff Greene. After playing a game on the BlackBerry, Larry looks up to see Sammy struggling and runs toward the water. But, realizing that the BlackBerry is still in his hand, he backtracks to drop it on a towel. Then he backtracks again when he realizes the phone is exposed to the sun. After Jeff saves his daughter, an irate Susie Greene throws the BlackBerry in the ocean, à la a Corona commercial. Later, Larry is shown complaining that he lost all his contacts, including the number for a handicapped woman he's dating out of guilt, whom he had logged into his BlackBerry as "Denise Handicapped." Yes, times change, but it's hard to see how George Costanza would have handled things differently.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman