how i wish life was [was not] like an episode of "friends"

radina's_coffee

i have a theory..........well......maybe not so much a theory as it is an observation. the sitcom known as "friends" has had a larger effect on my generation then one might assume. just think about it. the show was incredibly popular while we were in high school. we were glued to our televisions every thursday night, watching a group of people 10 years older then us, trying to make it in the real world. for thirty minutes, we learned about the issues that we would face as young adults. we saw, what life is like, to be young, adult, and single. these images have stayed with us.

i believe the impression left by this show, is why certain aspects of our society are changing slightly. my peers are entering the work force and starting their own lives. we are looking to live in studio apartments in the city, close to work, much like the set of "friends". we enjoy walking down and getting coffee, while discussing classes, projects and relationships, a classic scene from the show. i also see more and more of my peers deciding to focus on their careers before getting married. my generation was led by the cast of "friends" in this thinking. we are now placing more importance in the time after we graduate college, on ourselves, then the previous generations have. it is becoming a very important time to continue to grow and mature and learn about ourselves.

sometimes i wish my life were more like, and sometimes less like "friends". life, in my opinion, is a comedy, but even comedies need human drama to keep things moving. most of the plot of "friends" consisted of people falling in and out of love, and the incredibly idiotic things people do in both instances. in my life i know i've done things in both situations that would make an audience laugh and cry. i'd like to think of myself as a "chandler"most of the time, but i've been a "joey" once or twice, and lately i've felt a little like a "ross",the character that was always able to take a situation and make it worse, and known to constantly dwell on subjects and not let them die.

everyone can identify with one of the characters of the show and the situations they found themselves in. i do wish, that like the show, my problems could be solved in a half hour, or at least a continued episode. until my problems fade however, i'll just wait around for joey to do something dumb, and make everyone laugh.

looking_in_radina's

happy birthday pop

well it's only fair. i posted my mother's senior picture on her birthday, so here is my dad's. this picture always cracks me up, because of the fact that my father has had a beard since before i was born. so i believe this is one of the oldest pictures of him without any facial hair. the year on this photo might be hard to figure out, due to the extremely clean cut look of my dad. i can however tell you that in the year he graduated, the radio stations would have been playing lots of creedence clearwater revival, three dog night, the youngbloods, and billboards number 22 song of the year, you guessed it, sweet caroline, by america's greatest singer, songwriter, and performer, neil diamond.

happy birthday pop.

a day for my [inner] geek

today is an important date. it is the 50th anniversary of an event that changed my life. now, you may ask yourself, "what could have changed eric's life november 5, 1955?" to give you a hint, it's a red letter date in the history of science. well, if you don't know your fictional history, this is of course the day that dr. emmett l. brown invented time travel. he was standing on the edge of his toilet hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet, he slipped, hit his head on the sink, and when he came to, he had a vision, a picture in his head, a picture of the flux capacitor. and as you all know the flux capacitor is what makes time travel possible.

yes, i am this much of a geek.

back to the future has been my favorite movie ever since i first saw it in 1986. i identify with this movie because it deals with the subject of time travel. traveling through time fascinates me on two levels. first of all, it gives a person a chance to see before or after their own life time. i would love the opportunity to travel back to any year between 1955 and 1965. i've always had a strong fascination with these years, i can't explain why, i just do. the other level runs deeper. time travel gives you the chance to go back to moments in your life, with knowledge you've gained from the future, and change them for the better. however having this opportunity, brings up several questions. are we, in fact, suppose to live with regrets from past decisions? is this what gives us character and helps us grow? does everything truly happen for a reason? if we could always go back and fix mistakes in our past, would we ever learn? are there moments in our life that were just not meant to happen? i don't have the answers to these questions, but i think about them a lot.

however, now that you know what today is, if you get a chance, pick up the movie, place it in the dvd player, and enjoy a great movie. if you don't get to it tonight, don't worry, you've got until the 12th. that's of course the day that lightning strikes the clock tower, sending the necessary 1.21 gigawatts into the flux capacitor, sending marty back to the future.

sending the elevator back down

about a year ago, i was flipping through the television stations and i came to oprah. now normally i would have kept going, however on that day kevin spacey was on the show promoting his movie, "beyond the sea". while watching the interview, he mentioned some advice that jack lemmon had given him while shooting a movie. jack's advice to him was to make sure that in your life you always send the elevator back down. this means that wherever you are in life, you are there because someone else helped you in some way, shape, or form, and once you get to that position, you need to make sure that you reach down and help others in the same way. in my life many people have sent the elevator down to me. first of all my parents. they have always been there to help with advice. being a year ahead of me, jean has always been there to help me out with advice on studio and classes. and lastly the firm were i did my internship, allowed me to come in and learn the profession of architecture within their office, which provided an enormous amount of information about where i want my life to go.

today i had a small chance to "send the elevator down". i singed up to give a tour of the college of architecture to 6th graders. they were eager to see what went on inside these walls. while showing them the maze of models that line the halls, you could see at how fascinated they were with the miniature buildings. i was curious as to what they did in there lives right now that might apply to architecture. many of them stated that they love "sim city". this can be a very complex game, and it occured to me that these kids, though in 6th grade, are probably very good with using a computer, having grown up with them. it was 1992 when i was in 6th grade, and computers were not apart of my life, however legos consumed most of my free time. i would spent hours building, destroying, and rebuilding structures back up. so i asked them if anyone still played with legos, and to my relief many hands went up. i'm glad to see that they're not always in fornt of the computer, they'll have plenty of time to do that in college. it was however, great to show them around and answer their questions. who knows, maybe in ten years one of them will be giving a tour of seaton.