(a Seinfeld-in-culture note before getting on with some more original Seinfeld-isms very soon)
I don’t see Seinfeld coming out of our lives. And not because Netflix just shelled out $425 million to be the one to continue airing the smash show 20 years past its prime-time end.
I say that because of the media-saturated 30th anniversary of TV’s greatest sitcom back in July.
Take that, Lofty Literary Agent in New York City.
Wait. Sorry. Here’s the back story to that…and a teaser from my forthcoming book, Seinfeld-ism: How the Wisdom, Philosophy, Yadda Yadda Yadda of TV’s Greatest Sitcom Can Help You Live Survive Life:
“I don’t think anyone outside of New York City cares that much about Seinfeld anymore,” a NYC literary agent emailed me a decade ago, rejecting my proposal of a book based on this blog (which the New York Times cited in 2015, tipping the hat to Seinfeld).
The 30th anniversary obviously proved her wrong, I’m delighted to say.
And it proved that Seinfeld has become, in our time and society, a sort of holy writ.
Not in the biblical sense, of course. But “utterances of unquestionable authority” nonetheless. Moreover, the show is, as one pop culture maven put it, an “iconic, culture-defining show.”
Consider its comic canon of 9 seasons comprising 172 episodes. Sure, some of the situations and references (and clothing and…) are antiquated. Some details are baffling, including unresolved plot points. Further, you can quote the simplest of the most famous lines…No soup for you!…and people who don’t know the show will grin and nod politely and eyeball you like you’re some crazy believer in a cult they want nothing to do with.
And yet.
Countless are the people who quote the show daily because it speaks with verity—ensuing hilarity—over every facet of life, be it physical or mental, emotional or spiritual.
It’s silly writ, really.
And here, three decades later, people are still discovering the collective of voices from Jerry to J. Peterman, permeating our reality today as though the show were unfolding for the first time. That timeless relevance means Seinfeld stands to sway minds and win hearts and save souls in generations to come.
Hence the opening line here: I don’t see Seinfeld coming out of our lives.
That, of course, was not the sense in which Jerry used the words at the top here, to George.* Throughout the show, Jerry’s career-challenged friend pined to wield a planer as a professional planner of buildings that awe the world. The first we hear of it comes in the first season—and that was Jerry’s reaction.
I don’t see architecture coming from you.
By now, faithful readers, you may have thought of me, I don’t see a book coming from you. (That goes back to my June 2015 post on aiming to publish Seinfeld-ism the Book.) Most assuredly, I can say…the book is coming. Soon.
It may be a Christmas gift, but it’s coming.
All new material woven through a selection of the best of the material here—the most popular posts, that is, like the one that a law professor at Georgetown University passes on to students who don’t understand a certain Elaine line he drops now and then.
Nine years to the day on July 5 this year I launched this blog for the same reason millions reflected with a smile on Seinfeld turning 30 that day. This semi-swan-song post was originally slated for that day…but watching the aforementioned celebratory hullabaloo unfold online that week delighted me to no end—and changed some of what I wrote here about this end.
The end of the blog, that is, which will coincide with the publishing of the book.
Stay tuned. The publish date is certain to be tied into another Seiniversary date.
I’m speaking, of course, only to those who live in New York City.
*From “The Stake Out,” Episode 3, Season 1
Seinfeld Volume 1, Disc 1 | Time code for the scene: 12:38
Seinfeld-ism 