He’s the sex symbol’s sex symbol: four-eyed and beaky-nosed, pencil-necked-geek skinny, eligible for Medicare and then some, with a cranium as bald and gleaming as Kim Kardashian’s mons pubis. (Actually not quite that bald and gleaming. A silvery-white fringe circles the base of his skull like a fallen halo.) Not the stuff of which hunk-of-beef heartthrobs are typically made. Yet Jennifer Lawrence, as luscious a starlet as Hollywood’s ever produced, has it bad for him, is completely over-the-moon hot-for-his-bod gaga. In the November issue of this very magazine she sotto-voce’d to contributing editor Sam Kashner, “I worship Woody Allen, but I don’t feel it below the belt the way I do for Larry David.”

In case you don’t own a TV—are one of those people—Larry David is the co-creator, head writer, and voice of a curiously child-like George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld, the greatest television program of all time, according to TV Guide. He is also the creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a comedy series on HBO about Larry David, the co-creator, head writer, and voice of a curiously child-like George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld, the greatest television program of all time, according to TV Guide. Curb, which ended its eighth and perhaps final season in 2011 (David has been playing it flower-petal-pluckingly coy about the possibility of the show’s return, there-will-be-a-ninth-season, there-will-be-a-ninth-season-not), was the funniest thing going, not only on the small screen but on the big one as well. At no point did it slow or slacken or flag or flake, go soft or through the motions, settle for shtick, descend into self-parody. It just kept getting better—weirder and wilder, ever more daring and provocative and inspired, ever farther out with each passing year. “Palestinian Chicken,” arguably the crowning achievement of the entire series, came in the last season, the most gonzo scene featuring a supine David, glasses fogged, brow furrowed in concentration, gamely trying to meet the exacting demands of the hot-stuff Palestinian restaurateur writhing on top of him. “Fuck me, you fucking Jew,” she tells him. “You Zionist pig. You occupying fuck. Occupy this. I’m going to fuck the Jew out of you. You want to fuck me like Israel fucked my country? … Fuck me, you Jew bastard. Show me the Promised Land … you circumcised fuck,” etc. It’s hate sex, sure, and hateful even for that, but still, it’s sex, which means there’s a little bit of love involved, too. Famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a poker-player bud of David’s and David’s self-proclaimed “house Jew,” brought a copy of “Palestinian Chicken” to his dinner with Benjamin Netanyahu in the hopes that the Israeli prime minister would toss a bag of popcorn in the microwave, invite Mahmoud Abbas over for a viewing party. The two leaders would laugh, they’d cry, they’d braid each other’s hair, they’d realize they’re not so different after all: Bam, world peace. (Netanyahu, a fan, did watch the episode. No word on whether or not Abbas has seen it, though the recent escalation of conflict in the Middle East would indicate unh-uh.)

It’s early November. Larry David and I are meeting for lunch at a stodgy-hip, fogyish-glamorous restaurant in Los Angeles. I suggested it because it happens to be close to my hotel. At least that’s partly why I suggested it. The other part: because I had to suggest someplace, since David, in our e-mail conversation, asked me to. As I read his message, “I’m terrible at these decisions”—mm-hmm, O.K.—and “dr’s app’t at one”—yeah, that sounds about right—then shot back a message of my own—the name of the restaurant, followed by a question mark—I thought, Oh goody, I’m in a real-life episode of Curb, my favorite show, and Larry David, my favorite comic, is acting exactly the way I’d imagine he’d act, is behaving according to type.

Also behaving according to type, L.A. traffic, the reason David’s running a few minutes late. (Another e-mail communiqué.) I’m in the restaurant, at a table at the back, sipping a Diet Coke with lime, listening to the piano player work over that tune from Casablanca, watching the lippy starlet sitting mutely at a booth with a couple of gangster-looking guys in fedoras loudly discussing the Spanish financing falling out of a movie one of them is developing. And then I hear my name called. I turn and see him walking toward me, and that’s the precise moment my expectations go blooey. They go still blooier as we settle in, exchange greetings and small talk, because here’s the thing you realize about Larry David when you encounter him in the flesh: there are actually two Larry Davids. There’s Larry David and there’s “Larry David,” and until 30 seconds ago you didn’t even know the former existed.