good news: no "Friends" on Besterberg

[Miss E.]

about a month ago i posted that the review copy of Besterberg included some dialogue from the Friends goobers at the end of Stain Yer Blood. i just got my final copy of the CD and praise the lord, the dialogue is nowhere to be found. as i'd hoped, it got lopped off during the mastering. so, sorry for the false alarm -- all's well. the CD sounds and looks great.

[The Indoor Boy]

Thanks Christ for that. I must say, I'm pleased to discover that the Westerberg forum is also a hotbed of anti-Friends sentiment.

[The Indoor Boy]

Actually, some of you might enjoy the following. A little hunting turned it up.

Will Self, The Independent Television Review

God I hate 'Friends'. No, I don't simply hate it - I loathe it; I'd like the earth to open up and its creators - the pin-headed Bright, Kauffman and Crane - to disappear down into Hades. I like to think there's a special circle of the inferno reserved for the creators of shows like 'Friends', in which they're obliged to go through the action of just one of the mindless skits they've spawned, inhabiting the minds of the cardboard cut-outs they've created, over and over and over again, while being incapable of altering the action one jot. It would be like 'Groundhog Day' without free will, and after a year's worth of this (17520 episodes, for anyone who's counting), they'd come to rue the day they ever conceived of a song called 'Smelly Cat', or imagined that 'Central Perk' was a witty name for a coffee shop.
But why do I need to wish this fresh hell on Bright, Kauffman and Crane when they're there already? They've done another twenty-six episode series of 'Friends' - their sixth to date - and now it's we who must suffer for their comedy. Yes I hate 'Friends', and frankly I'm not in the least bit surprised to learn that the actor who plays Chandler has recently been in treatment for his addiction to prescription pain-killers. I'm screaming out for the things every time that credit sequence rolls, and we're propelled into this saccharine little cubicle of a cosmos, where the inner children of its creators have been confined for too long, pissing on the lino.
Have you ever noticed how nobody in 'Friends' really belongs to an ethnic group? Sure, it's obvious that Ross is Jewish and I suppose Joey must be Italian, but no one ever makes a big deal about it. Has it struck you at all that the Manhattan backdrop to 'Friends' is as implausible as Oz? Not just that the dirty, scummy city of Gotham has been transmogrified into a vapid lot in Hollywood, but that the dirty, scummy mores of its inhabitants have all been air-brushed into ditsiness?
Occasionally, over the six years the show's been running, I've found myself slumped down with friends of my own and we've begun watching it. As I moan and groan they reassure me that while this particular episode may not be that good, the show used to be better in the past; that once upon a time there were some absolutely vintage gags, and if I'm not enjoying it now I certainly would've then. No wonder people take this sentimental line with 'Friends', because what it's all about is an evocation of young adulthood - seen through the eyes of children. The characters in 'Friends' act as prepubescent kids like to imagine that young adults behave: living a near carefree existence, where their only troubles are the gratification of small desires, and the bruising of the aorta rather than the breaking of a heart.
The world evoked by 'Friends' is one in which everyone is on a lifelong sleep-over, playing at sex and relationships, watching TV and eating Ben & Jerry's. No one smokes and they get drunk soley for the comic effect; their bodies only seem to metabolise coffee. Have you ever clocked that the characters in 'Friends' not only act like big kids, they also talk like them and even walk and skip like eight-year-olds? But what's bizzare and hateful about adults' liking 'Friends' is that it's an indulgence in an imagined past that not only never has, but never could have, existed. Liking 'Friends' is the Holocaust denial of television appreciation - and if I were in control I'd pass a law against it.
Another thing: it's so sedative watching 'Friends' that if you allow yourself to settle in front of it for more than a few minutes, you're in serious danger of remaining there until your brain turns to cream cheese. I can just about bear my kids watching 'Friends', but only if I stay with them the whole time, whispering in their ears, like a slave poised on a chariot behind a Roman general at his triumph; 'It's a load of cack. Adolescence is awful. You will experience a lot of pain and disillusionment in your twenties. New York is not Never-Never Land, it's full of venal, money-grubbing perverts.' I suppose the one good thing to be said about the show running this long is that the actors are getting damn long in the tooth. It won't be long before Joey makes his entrances behind a Zimmer frame, and Rachel falls down and breaks her hip every five minutes because of osteoperosis. I'll no longer have to do my whispering act and the kids will be grown-up themselves and deriding some other piece of dumb-ass dreck.


So there you have it. Cruel, mean, spiteful and intended to wound. I love every word of it.

[jlsgli]

thank god!!!! as soon .that whole friends thing freaks me anyway , that show should be banned the name should be changed from friends ,to "who has'nt slept with whom yet"

[cellarfullofnoise]

Good News, no _____ on ______

No "E.R." on Dyslexic Heart
2. Knocking on Mine
3. World Class Fad
4. Runaway Wind
No "Jeopardy" on Things
6. Seein' Her
7. Man Without Ties
No "Melrose Place" on A Star is Bored
No "Buffy" on Stain Yer Blood
10. Love Untold
11. Once Around The Weekend
No "Flying Nun" on Angels Walk
13. It's A Wonderful Lie
14. Lookin' Out Forever
No "I Am Sam" on Nowhere Man
16. High Time
17. Let The Bad Times Roll
18. What A Day (For A Night)
19. All That I Had
20. C'mon, C'mon, C'mon

[scoOter]

cellarfullofnoise said:

Good News, no _____ on ______

No "E.R." on Dyslexic Heart
2. Knocking on Mine
3. World Class Fad
4. Runaway Wind
No "Jeopardy" on Things
6. Seein' Her
7. Man Without Ties
No "Melrose Place" on A Star is Bored
No "Buffy" on Stain Yer Blood
10. Love Untold
11. Once Around The Weekend
No "Flying Nun" on Angels Walk
13. It's A Wonderful Lie
14. Lookin' Out Forever
No "I Am Sam" on Nowhere Man
16. High Time
17. Let The Bad Times Roll
18. What A Day (For A Night)
19. All That I Had
20. C'mon, C'mon, C'mon

no rin tin tin on "c'mon little bitch"?