For most Curbed Your Enthusiasm fans, the use of the name Journey Gunderson was just another example of Larry David and his writing team coming up with a name for an off-camera character that one will surely remember.

It’s a lot like another one of David’s characters from Seinfeld, the never-seen but oft-mentioned Bob Saccomano, a name that still pops up in the pop culture zeitgeist more than 20 years after Seinfeld went off the air.

The name-drop has a different meaning in Chautauqua County. David’s choice to name-drop Journey Gunderson’s name on the series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm shows Gunderson, the executive director of the National Comedy Center and the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, is traveling in all the right circles as she and her team work to secure notable pieces from the world of comedy to be showcased at the National Comedy Center.

A picture can be worth a thousand words – and the photo of Gunderson with David says a lot. But in this case, the word is potentially worth thousands of pictures, scripts or memorabilia from Curb Your Enthusiasm or from other friends of David’s.

One of the jobs an executive director of an organization like the National Comedy Center has is to travel in the right circles as they work to build the center’s name recognition outside of a local market. Gunderson has funny proof that she is doing just that.