Tourette's doesn't have him.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

In the hit HBO comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm," there's a scene in the final episode of the 2002 season in which the French chef at a new restaurant finally does what everyone fears: He explodes in an uncontrollable fiery tantrum of obscenities in front of a packed room of customers.

The chef comes highly recommended, but he has Tourette Syndrome.

The response of the restaurant's co-owner - played by star Larry David - in the scene? After a moment of shock, he starts yelling the most foul things imaginable right back at the chef. Others join in and soon everyone in the restaurant is cussing and swearing to make the chef feel more comfortable.

For fans of the show, it was a hilarious episode.

For those with Tourette's? Not so funny.

"It really bugs me," says Riley Webber, a soon-to-be senior at Churchill High School who was diagnosed with the hereditary neurological disorder when he was 7. "I can't stand it. It makes Tourette's look like a walking disaster."

He's also not too fond of a Web site created by a man who has the disorder and shows videos of himself yelling and screaming at people.

Tourette Syndrome is largely misunderstood, says Riley, 17, who moved to Eugene from Southern California last summer with his mother, JuneDee Webber.

"It's not a cussing syndrome," he says. "But the media has picked up on that and made the most fun of it."

A bright, exuberant boy with a perpetual grin, ice-blue eyes and a mop of blond hair, Riley was one of more than a dozen children who appeared in the 2005 Emmy-winning HBO documentary, "I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me."

He was 14 then and, despite his disorder, a California state champion in karate.

Misunderstood

"Can you shut up?"

While growing up in California, and moving from one grade school to another to try to fit in, this is a comment Webber heard more than a few times.

"There was no hope," Riley says, sitting in the condo he shares with his mother in southwest Eugene. "I just wanted it to end, I was always crying. I was always being picked on. It was a big mess."

And, sometimes, it wasn't just other kids who didn't understand.

"Teachers were the worst," he says. "They tried to put me in the worst places on Earth." Twice he was taken out of school and sent to mental institutions, his mother says, just because he said: "I wish I were dead."

She would be called to school in the various places they lived - Balboa, Granada Hills, Van Nuys, Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks - and find Riley all by himself banging his head against a hallway wall. She had to volunteer at one grade school just so she could be there if a problem occurred.

Riley began to show symptoms when he was 6, she says. His neck would twitch. His shoes would fly from his feet at school because he'd kick them off.

Riley's older brother, Zack, 19 and a student at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Calif., was also diagnosed with Tourette's as a child. That's when her now-ex husband, Ron Webber, disclosed that he and some of his brothers also had Tourette's, and that his father had suffered from it, too. She never knew, she says, because he'd learned how to hide it well.

Riley, who was diagnosed at 7, says he's learned how to do this, also. His favorite way? Dancing. He demonstrates by breaking into a head-shaking, body-gyrating boogie.

"Anything positive - you can put that into a tic," he says.

Tourette's is named for Georges Gilles de la Tourette, the French doctor who discovered it in 1885. It is characterized by motor tics - brief, repetitive, involuntary movements of muscles. Eyebrow raising, nostril flaring, head shaking, neck twitching, teeth gnashing, finger cracking, jumping, stamping and kicking are some of the more common ones. Vocal tics include grunting, barking, belching and speaking unintelligibly.

A few years ago, Riley began to make ear-piercing screeching noises.

"It would fill a room," he says.

"You could hear it three doors down," his mother says.

Whenever they move somewhere new, JuneDee Webber tells the neighbors about Riley's condition. Just in case.

One time, his grandmother thought he was possessed. He went through a phase called "altered voice tic," what Riley calls his "satanic tic," where he sounds like something out of "The Exorcist."

Tourette's is almost always accompanied by obsessive compulsive disorder, but Coprolalia, a symptom of Tourette's that results in the blurting out of inappropriate remarks and obscenities, is actually quite rare, according to the documentary. Riley says it's not part of his affliction, which today he controls with medication such as Geodon and Depakote.

The karate kid

You have to have something to focus on, Riley says. For him, that's theater (he's already been in two plays at Actors Cabaret of Eugene), running, dancing, bike riding, karate, swimming, art and drawing comics, among other things.

Riley wants to get the message out about Tourette's in his new hometown. He's met other kids with the disorder, he says, who try to hide it. As do their parents.

"Life is worth living," he says. "You really have to show that you can do something, that you can be proactive and you can be as out-there as you want to be."

He began channeling his energy into karate at 12 years old.

"It gave me something to do and made me feel really good inside," he says, demonstrating some moves in his bedroom, which is loaded with karate trophies and medals.

His goal for college is to get a scholarship to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. After that, he wants to one day own his own comic book company, much like his idol, Todd McFarlane, the Canadian comic book artist who draws Riley's favorite, "Spawn."

"I want to build an empire," he says. His mother can be heard giggling from the kitchen, not that she doesn't believe he can do it.

RILEY WEBBER

Claims to fame: Featured in Emmy-winning HBO documentary, "I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me'; also a California state karate champion

Age: 17

Just read: The "Splinter Cell" series

Reading: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

Favorite movies: "The Transporter," "Pan's Labyrinth," "Kill Bill Vol. 1," "Sin City" and "Brick"

Favorite video game: "Black"

Favorite comic: "Spawn," by Todd McFarlane

Favorite snack: American cheese wrapped around a Butterfinger

TOURETTE SYNDROME

The documentary "I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me" is available from many movie rental outlets. For more information or to order the DVD - Riley Webber is the silhouetted boy on the cover in a karate pose - go online at www.tsa-usa.org