Aaron’s Top 10 Friends Moments

Hard as it is to believe, Friends has been off the air for ten years now. And what that fact really drives home for me is just how much television has changed since it was on. The show started in the middle of VCR culture, but tens of millions of people still sat down on Thursday nights to watch it. Today, if two or three million people watch a network comedy over the course of the week after it airs, it's counted as a hit.

Amy and I were definitely one of the many who made it a point of being home on Thursday evenings to watch the latest episode. It kind of became a yearly tradition to tune in to the premiere episode to see if they finally succumbed to outside pressure and changed their theme song (and each year, I thought they couldn't possibly resist Rembrandt backlash again).

I started thinking about making this list, and immediately came up with the list of moments I wanted to put in it. Full disclosure: Amy and I own the DVDs and have cycled through them multiple times, so I think I'm fairly well-versed in the lore. Here, then, are the ten bits that consistently make me laugh, even after more than a decade, in no particular order:

1. Early on in the series, Joey starred in a stage production called "Freud!" and forced his friends to come to it. Not only is the idea of a musical biography of Sigmund Freud funny in and of itself, it contained a song explaining the famous psychoanalyst’s theory of penis envy, accompanied by the most inept soft-shoe routine ever performed. Basically any show that Joey performed in was great (e.g. "I'm gonna get on this spaceship, and go to Blargon-7 in search of alternative fuels."), as you'll see as you get further into this list.

2. Anytime Phoebe yells is hilarious to me, since she's such a laid-back character, but the best one is when she references a so-far-unmentioned roommate named Denise. When no one else knows who she's talking about, Phoebe says she talks about her all the time, and finally storms out of the coffee shop screaming, "NO ONE EVER LISTENS TO ME!"

3. While helping Joey rehearse for an episode of his robot-buddy-cop series "Mack and C.H.E.E.S.E.", Ross and Phoebe try to help him run his lines, and in the process prove themselves even worse actors than Joey himself. Ross, taking the part of the show's villain, over-enunciates his lines, including the immortal "That'll be a neat trick, when you're--" (glances at script) "--when you're DEAD!" Say what you will about Ross being the most annoying character on the show (something I tend to agree with), but as an actor, David Schwimmer consistently makes left-field acting choices that I find really entertaining. Drunk Ross has several moments that just barely avoided making this list.

4. Some moments go by so fast that you don't even notice them until the third or fourth time around. Case in point, the episode where Monica refuses to admit that she's extremely sick. Everyone else can see that she's feverish, lethargic and stuffed up, but she keeps insisting "I'm fine!", completely unable to make that last word sound like anything other than "find". The first time she says it, watch her face as she reacts to what she's just said. For the briefest of instances, she makes what is perhaps the strangest face a human has ever made on television, then goes right back to normal. It's awesome.

5. Another joke that I didn't catch until after multiple views is the episode where Phoebe finds out that her twin sister Ursula has become a porn star, which starts to bring Phoebe a lot of unwanted attention. Later, we get to see a brief clip of one of Ursula's films -- "Bouffay the Vampire Layer" -- which involves a lot of latex, hair spray and black drapes. The dialogue is all hilariously bad, but at one point Ursula calls her vaguely Dracula-resembling co-star "Nosfera-tool". Subtle, but hilarious. (Honorable mention: In this same episode, Chandler can't understand why people cry at sad movies. Given the example of Bambi's mother dying, he sarcastically quips, "Yes, it was very sad when the man stopped drawing the deer.")

6. The only moment I have to include here that wasn't actually enacted by any of the Friends comes from when Rachel goes to get an ultrasound of her and Ross's unborn child (12-year old spoiler alert!). Earlier, Phoebe has contributed two possibilities to the baby-name pool -- "Phoebe for a girl, Phoebo for a boy." Later on, Rachel mentions these names to her obstetrician when asking if they'll be able to tell the sex of the baby. They can't yet, but the doctor deadpans as she leaves, "I know it's not my place, but please don't name your child Phoebo."

7. As I said before, I'm biased toward Joey's acting jobs when it comes to picking out classic moments, and another one is when he auditions for Jeff Goldblum. He inadvertently figures out that the only way he can get the intensity he needs for the scene is to not go to the bathroom for several hours beforehand. It's funny in and of itself, but what really makes the scene is when he gets so flustered he starts reading the stage directions in his script aloud... as in, "Oh, I want to, Long Pause!" We still say that around my house. (We also have been known to mimic his inept Italian accent: "That's-a what I suspected-a-da-da!")

8. Early in the series, Ross takes Rachel on a romantic after-hours date to the natural history museum where he works. More specifically, to the museum's planetarium. He has it all: a picnic lunch to eat under the stars, a blanket to lie on... but he forgets to turn down the volume of the planetarium show's narration as it starts, so it suddenly blares in a tranquil moment: "BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO--" before he can hit the switch.

9. Okay, just one more Joey Acting Moment: Our hapless Friend gives himself a hernia lifting weights, and has to live through a day of shooting a medical drama before he can get his health insurance activated. This actually ends up working in his favor, because he has to play a terminally ill patient saying goodbye to his son. Sweating with pain, he asks the director, "Is it all right if I scream right up until the moment you say 'Action'?" For some reason, the director approves, and we get to hear Joey groan "Aaagghghhahaaatake good care of your momma, son."

10. The last moment I chose is actually a whole episode, which is the one where Monica and Chandler's relationship is finally uncovered by the other characters (appropriately titled "The One Where Everyone Finds Out"). They've been trying to keep it secret that they've seen sleeping together since their London trip, but haven't done a very good job of it. Joey finds out, and almost immediately reveals the information to Rachel and Phoebe... and just as quickly leaks the fact that he accidentally told back to Chandler and Monica. This leads to classic sit-com lines like "They don't know that we know they know!" and a game of sexual chicken as Phoebe pretends to seduce Chandler, knowing that he can't go through with it without spilling that he's in a relationship with Monica. It's convoluted, well-written, and brilliantly acted. I can't think of a more perfectly crafted sitcom episode, from any series.

Let's face it, there just will never be a time again when television will be as communal as it was in the 90s, and thus no show that's as universally remembered that comes after Friends. And now, I'll spend the next week coming up with other moments I'll wish I had included in this list. But I'll leave you with a final word:

Meshuggahnuts!

Introverts Unite! (Separately. In Your Own Homes.)

For the title of this week's entry, I just had to borrow the words of a meme I saw currently, just because it sums up my opinion on the subject perfectly. I've always considered myself a classic introvert. I enjoy solitary pursuits, or things I can do side-by-side with a select group of people I feel comfortable with. It's not that I'm afraid or repulsed by group activities, I just won't go very far out of my way to seek them out.

I gravitate toward situations where I'm working away at some big project on my own, whether it's working to catch up to all the shows I have on my DVR, engineering a huge Minecraft structure, or tracking down and digitizing all my analog works (and by that I mean, handwritten or shot on 8mm film). I often have to remind myself that when I look back at experiences, I won't think of the hassle of getting to wherever it's happening, or the trouble it takes to organize the trip, even though it's all I think about beforehand. If I thought this way consistently, I might never leave the couch. (And incidentally, having a five-year-old is a great way to get yourself to change the way you approach activities... if you were to undertake something only after thinking about how much time it would take to clean up, you'd never do much of anything.)

I've been working at my new job for about nine months now. It's right in my wheelhouse, too; sitting at a computer and ninja-flipping spreadsheet data. It's mentally challenging and detail-oriented, but it still gives my mind some time to roam, listen to podcasts, plan what I'm going to write that day, etc. However, up until recently, I didn't quite know what to make of most of my co-workers. I've been working alongside many of them for the full duration of my time here, but I certainly don't feel like I can start talking to them without some kind of question or agenda. I just don't know them that well.

It started to concern me a little bit that there were several members of the staff who wouldn't make even eye contact with me when we passed in the hall. I was used to the way things were at my other workplaces, where it was kind of expected to at least meet eyes and say hello as you pass a colleague. Even a simple smile and a nod was acceptable. But with some of the people here... you get nothin'.

The explanation for this didn't really hit me until recently, when I had to sit down with a few of them to be trained on a new procedure. And each time, I pulled up a chair, and we started interacting as if we had been collaborating this whole time, and knew each other well. That's when it hit me: I work in the middle of a whole room of introverts.

It was actually a really satisfying feeling, figuring this out. And it made me a little more proud to be an one of their number. In a culture that tends to play up (or at least, tell more stories about) people who would rather go out and *do* *stuff* instead of stay home and read about them, it's easy to feel that the inclination to sit and think is frowned upon in some way, even if it's not true. The discovery that most of the people I work with are quite a bit like me was nice. It's kind of like finding my tribe. Or realizing that I've been among them all along.

I bet I wouldn't have come so late to this revelation if I had worked in a bigger variety of offices in my work life. Really, I'm only working with a sample size of two: Borders, and here. Borders was a much more fully integrated team, now that I think about it. We were all sitting at computers in identical cubicles, yes, but there was a wide variety of types of business being done. In daily activities I stuck with my data folks, but we were sitting right alongside marketing teams and buyers who worked regularly with outside sales reps. We were a heterogeneous mix of personality types. At my new workplace, we're all part of a data team, having similar jobs that run in parallel. No one would be here if they had a burning need to interact with the public. On the contrary, we work with personal patient information sensitive enough that we need to work in a separate room, accessible only by a keycard. Privacy is something that we take seriously, and that attracts a certain type of person.

It prompted me to do a little research about the subject, to see just how well I fit into the modern conception of introvert. And I seem to follow right down the line, starting with Jung's classical definition of the introvert/extrovert dichotomy. He said the introverts are more inclined to pay attention to their (and others') psychic activity, while the extrovert looks for stimulation in the environment around them. Neither state is better than the other, necessarily, for it would be a poorer world if there were no one to build and move and accomplish, just as poor as if there were no one to ponder, extrapolate, or to create an uncompromising, singular vision of something.

There's probably a chemical component to this, too... recent studies have shown that introverts have higher blood flow in the brain's frontal cortices -- the "thoughtful" parts of the brain -- while extroverts' brains are more focused on the senses, and register the dopamine rush of physical reward more strongly. Extroverts appear to have stronger and more positive emotions, but introverts have more temperate moods, which can be a good thing to have in stressful situations.

I've often felt that I used to be more extroverted than I am now. But after some thought (no surprise there), I'm not so sure. I realized that my most extroverted times were during two of my major extracurricular activities as a student: high school drama and college men's chorus. Even now, I can recall how good it felt to be in those environments. I felt like I could literally walk up to any other member and talk to them freely, about almost anything. But what I have to consider is that these were times when I was part of a large group, united in a common cause, over the course of several years. Upon examination, I can see that these were, in actuality, insular groups within the much larger society of school. No wonder I felt so in my element there; I had plenty of time to get acclimated. Even the high school choir I took part in didn't seem as close-knit, because it was an official class, more a part of the outside world. And it wasn't that I didn't have great friends there, I did... but I didn't get that same feeling that I could initiate conversation with any other person.

If anything, thinking about this has helped me understand how other people view me. One of the things that introverts worry about (but not enough to change their natural inclinations, you understand) is that they'll be seen as snobs or stand-offish, when that's really not what they are. We're really just quiet and reserved. The fact that I, classic introvert that I am, thought this about some of my co-workers makes it clear how easily this sort of judgment can be passed.

So let me see if I can explain a little bit of introvert behavior here... both for people who aren't of that disposition, and maybe to get a little self-insight for those who are. I guess it comes down to whether or not you enjoy being a focus of attention. Speaking for myself, I don't, and it doesn't take much to make me feel like I am. Every time there are more than one or two people watching what I'm doing, my mind somehow qualifies it as a performance. This might seem contradictory to someone who has done a lot of drama and choral performances, but those experiences are very different. They're often done within a group, and always with a framework and a clear, rehearsed plan of what's supposed to be done.

So is it a confidence thing? While I tend not to pass judgment on people who make a public mistake, but when one happens to me I tend to replay it and analyze it. The introvert's propensity for self-analysis leads to a highly critical view of the things that they themselves say or do. I'm certainly guilty of this... even with something as informal as Facebook statuses, I often rewrite them several times to make sure my tone and intention are clear and concise, and even then I'll think of a better way I should have said it later on. And as for these blog entries? I put them out on a weekly schedule because I'd endlessly revise them if I didn't give myself a deadline.

But why do I do that? I should at least address that, as long as I'm diving deep about this. What makes tracking the mind's inner workings so irresistible to the introvert? Because we're not just analyzing ourselves, we're also trying to guess how others will analyze us in turn... Maybe the fascination comes from trying to understand a complicated, intricate system with a lot of uncertainty in it. It would be hard to find a better example of that than human psychology. And I do spend a lot of time mentally examining minutiae, whether it's considering the motion of distant stars, or the way the plot of a favorite book is structured, or paying extra attention to the background orchestration of a good song.

All my life, even without actively meaning to, I have found myself taking something that seems random and chaotic and trying to break it down to its simplest elements. And maybe that's the most basic difference (see, I'm doing it right now!) between extroverts and introverts. We're all trying to understand the world around us, a world that seems sometimes to be just barely holding together, with so many unpredictable elements and random occurrences. An extrovert will jump in and take the macro view of things, maybe not caring so much about the inner workings of life, but getting out there and figuring out the broad strokes by participating. The introvert, on the other hand, will take in everything about a particular subject and analyze it until they get it.

Of course, no one is purely one way or the other, so we're all this odd amalgam of sometimes contradictory impulses, focused toward one goal: figuring out just what the hell is going on, and what we should do with that information... if anything. And I've found that not only are there things to be learned from being around people who are nothing like you, there's a lot to learn from those who very much like you, as well.

A Tale of Two Cosmoses*

There are precious few pieces of pop culture that have influenced me the way the original Cosmos series did in 1980. I have no idea how I found out about it, or what motivated me to sit down and watch the first episode, but I do know exactly where you could find me for the next twelve Sunday evenings during the fall of that year. I would be faithfully watching Carl Sagan and his Spaceship of the Imagination soaring through a Universe that was suddenly much bigger, more awe-inspiring and mysterious, than I had ever dreamed it could be, on the wings of the music of Vangelis.

Along this incredible journey, the epic saga of how humans learned this vast, all-encompassing story was embroidered with stories of those who discovered tantalizing pieces of the answers: Copernicus, Kepler, Newton (lots of European white dudes, yes, but hang on, that gets somewhat rectified later)... despite their differences in era and levels of education, these pioneers were curious people like me who just kept asking follow-up questions.

By that time, I had read just enough about outer space to know there was much more to learn. But I already had an inkling that it had some kind of tangible link to my terrestrial life. In fact, my first real brush with the concept of death didn't come with the tragic passing of a relative, but instead with my discovery of a Time-Life photo essay about the life cycle of stars. Knowing that the sun, something that seemed like the ultimate constant, would one day burn out upended my concept of life and its meaning.

Cosmos took me further into these thoughts, taking something as unsettling as that idea and putting it into the largest possible context. I learned how everything in the Universe, as small as atoms or as huge as galactic superclusters, changes on vastly different scales of time. Everything is born, lives, dies, and is born again in some drastically different form. Out of the ashes of stars come planets... from the dust and dirt of planets comes life itself. Something disturbing was transformed into something uniquely comforting.

And that, I think, is the most important part of the whole experience. Our short, human lives are simultaneously exalted and trivialized when you put them in the context of all time and space. When you come to understand that you are a part of a vast tapestry of not only places and people, but worlds, suns, and galaxies, every single one of them brimming with the same potential for wonder that we have here on Earth, it suddenly brings you outside of yourself. This, I could tell even at the age of eight, was what it was all about.

Now, thirty-four years later, I'm watching Cosmos again, a new incarnation that was produced by Seth McFarlane, probably the only creative mind with enough clout to get Fox (Fox!) to air it. Carl Sagan passed away almost exactly at the midpoint between the airing of these two series, but his torch has been picked up by the equally charismatic host Neil deGrasse Tyson. The most vital key to the success of the show, of course, is to have it narrated by a scientist who can bridge the gap between the layperson and the scientifically literate, enlightening and entertaining them both. Both Carl and Neil have the sort of relatability that can pique the general public's interest in the history of the Universe, and in this sense we have to consider that Tyson was perhaps the one that the continuing story of Cosmos was waiting for.

Of course, some time has passed since the original Cosmos aired. There are things in common knowledge that were mere conjecture back then. We weren't quite sure that black holes actually existed in 1980, they were more mathematical concepts that hadn't been actually found yet, never mind that we would soon realize that one formed the heart of many galaxies, including our own! Mysterious dark matter, and the 84% of the Universe that it compromises, was unknown as well. Planets orbiting other stars? Lakes of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan? Solid evidence that water used to flow on Mars? None of this stuff was part of the original show, but now can be included to give us a much clearer view of how amazing -- and amazingly weird -- the Universe is.

Going back and looking at the original Cosmos now, I'm stunned by how glacially paced it seems, how drawn out the biographical scenes are. I should point out that, aside from the late Dr. Sagan, the writing team behind the show is actually the same as the original. Carl's widow, Ann Druyan, and Steve Soter, apply the same kind of human's-eye-view and overall sense of wonder of the 1980 version.

One of the many things that the new Cosmos does right is to show that it just wasn't white European men who were figuring out the basic laws of the Universe. Until now, it always has seemed like after the decline of the Greek and Roman empires, no one even thought seriously about science until the Renaissance. In truth, during that time it passed into the hands of their Middle Eastern brethren. Algebra? The numerals that are now used the world over? Those are Arab inventions. And most of the stars are still called by Anglicizations of their original Arabic names. The new Cosmos spends a fair amount of time outlining these contributions, while also suggesting that it was the use of toxic, brain-altering lead in Roman plumbing that led to the European Dark Ages. While they were literally drinking themselves stupid, the Byzantines and Egyptians kept the flame of knowledge alive.

After all that praise, I do have one quibble with the new series... In general, I think it's a mistake to call any scientific concept a "fact", no matter how well established it is. The whole reason that science works as a path of rational thought is that it is never above revision, or even wholesale page-one correction when necessary. Nothing is ever proven definitively, we just keep constructing more and more accurate models of the Universe and the way it works. One unexpected experiment result could prove that any theory is in need of refinement. Even gravity itself isn't a "fact". It's called "the theory of gravity" for good reason... no matter how much Newton and the three hundred years of scientists who came after him considered his version of gravity as gospel, Einstein showed that they didn't have it quite right. Close enough for most practical purposes, but not exactly.

With that in mind, I'm not sure why scientists in the public eye keep saying that things are "facts". Tyson comes flat out in the new Cosmos and calls evolution a fact. Look, I understand why it's good to be clear that there's a near-unanimous scientific consensus about its accuracy, and to not leave a lot of room for ambiguity, but if a slight tweak to our understanding of it were to come along next week, it would definitely undermine that sense of authority.

Case in point: the reason politicians are dragging their feet on climate change is that, while there's a definite consensus that humanity's actions are warming the planet, whenever politicians ask climatologists if they've proven it, or if they have *all* the data, they have to honestly say "no". That sound bite then gets trotted out by everyone who has a vested interest in denying it, and any action gets tabled until some time when we know more than we do. But that's exactly the point... science is in the business of predicting what will happening the future, the only way it can be 100% sure that projections are right is when the predicted future actually happens. We'll *never* have all the data, but at some point you just have to consider that we know what we're talking about.

I say that we should be more focused on educating people on the definition of scientific "fact" and "theory", instead of making it sound like we have the ability to put the finishing touches on anything. In science, as it should be, everything is a work in progress. It's the only way to keep an open mind.

The final episode of the original Cosmos series was titled "Who Speaks for Earth?". The story goes that Carl Sagan wanted to talk about the possibility of intelligent life on other planets (one of his pet projects), but Steve Soter pointed out that what was needed more in the midst of a nuclear-age Cold War was for people to understand that *we* are the intelligent life. The result is a stunning hour-long mosaic of human life on Earth, with Carl presenting the idea that *we*, as far as we know, are the most advanced beings in the Universe, and perhaps we should take some time to remember this, and starting acting like it.

People joke all the time about how intelligent we can really be, considering the way we treat each other and our surroundings, but I think -- and I believe Carl would back me up on this -- that we can never reach our potential if we continually put ourselves down by pointing out our shortcomings. That's as true for mankind itself as it is for us as individuals. Maybe we really are the very first beings who have looked out into space and are able to start comprehending our place in it. Maybe we're the initial generation of a grand, galaxy-spanning civilization... but first we've got to get our house in order. To treat ourselves as less than worthy would be a crime against the Universe itself.

As Carl was fond of saying, we live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. What Cosmos did for me, and what I hope it will do for my daughter when I share it with her (it will be, after all, only three short years until she'll be my age when I first saw it), is to show simultaneously how utterly insignificant and important we are, and how there's really no conflict in thinking both ways. Ultimately, scale doesn't matter -- there's as much wonder in a single drop of water as in all the vast rings of Saturn. It's right here around us, and it all makes sense, if you just keep asking the right questions.

(*Yep, that's the correct plural of "cosmos", but it seems a little silly to me, because as Carl says at the beginning of the original series, cosmos means "all that is, all that ever was, and ever will be". Who needs more?)