Have you ever noticed the similarities between the show Friends and How I Met Your Mother?

The concept is the same: a group of 20-somethings venture through life together weathering the ups and downs of dating, getting jobs, and everything else that comes with growing up. Granted, there’s a lot of shows built around this premise, but these two always strike me as especially similar.

The only difference is the time lapse, and HIMYM (the nerdy abbreviation) is only an updated version of the same type of story. Friends spoke to the 90’s. In Friends, there was the Jennifer Aniston hair revolution and Courtney Cox tiny waist/red lipstick combo. Rachel was the hot chick learning how to navigate independence and looking for a nice guy, and Monica was the OCD cutie with a ticking maternal clock. Now it’s modern relationship-retarded professional Robin and long-term relationship sweet girl Lily with a mountain of credit card debt. If I were making a chart, I’d draw a line from Rachel to Robin and from Monica to Lily. Joey and Barney are equivalent characters—essentially they play the outrageous, lady-obsessed funny guys. Chandler and Marshall are the sweet, slightly gullible dopey guys. (P.S.—This stock character always gets me, gotta love the Chandlers/Marshalls of the world!) And finally, Ross and Ted are the “Average Joe” type…you know, the guy you’re definitely rooting for but when you take a look at the whole cast they are admittedly a little boring. The “Average Joe” character usually serves as the glue between all the other relationships, which I won’t spell out but holds true for both shows. Apparently the Phoebe stock character got the boot after the millennium, which makes her all that more precious in Friends—where did all the kooky hippie friends go?

You know what, here’s the visual aid since I apparently have way too much free time on my hands.

So aside from Phoebe, what’s changed between the old and new story? In many ways I think answering this question gives us a clue about some of the shifts in our culture between then and now. Maybe I’m funneling this argument a bit to prove a point, but hear me out cause I think there’s some validity to this.

In my humble opinion….the biggest difference between Friends and HIMYM is drinking. Think about it, in Friends they hang out in a coffee shop, but in HIMYM the hangout spot is a bar. Try and think about the number of times the Friends cast was drunk, now compare it to HIMYM.

One episode of HIMYM actually nodded to the Friends connection and the difference in venue when the cast tries to hang out at a coffee shop. Here’s a YouTube clip which includes a funny parallel to Friends. So, the connection is pretty apparent to others as well, especially the makers of HIMYM.

On a side note, I think the level of self-awareness that HIMYM exercises is one of the best features of the show. Similar to how The Office characters nod to the camera, HIMYM does a lot of winking to plot structure of the show. The fact that they play with the audience in this way, I think, is indicative of modern sitcoms and a modern audience in general. We like that you know that we know, ya know?

Anyway, what does the Friends/HIMYM connection mean for us? To me, it opens a lot of questions about how we socialize today. Like I said, try to think of how many times there’s drinking on Friends and now think about your everyday life with your friends. How often are you hanging out in a bar? Personally, I can count on one hand how many times my friends and I have said, “meet you at the coffee shop!” and I couldn’t really add up the amount of times I’ve been socializing at a bar. How many times is beer/wine/liquor involved? For me, there’s a personal attachment to this type of contemplation because while I used to absolutely adore a good drink and have and do work at bars, I can’t drink. For about the last year (give or take cheats) I’ve been taking long-term medicines that prevent me from drinking. My doctor says 2-3 drinks a month….go ahead and think how far that’ll get you. I almost cried when I heard that stat. So, being a forced teetotaler has made me recognize what a big chunk of our social life is made up of drinking, getting drunk, hanging in bars, etc. I’ve dubbed our generation the Bar Generation, and I wonder how much you think this applies? Give me your thoughts: Do you think the Friends/HIMYM connection is a decent reflection of our lives now?

This post is in many ways the introduction to a question I’d like to explore further (as well as a kinda funny pop culture example), but I’d love more opinions on this than my own. Give me your feedback lovelies!

My silence isn’t coincidental—there’s been a lot going on in my life as of late. But since I don’t plan on divulging my private life, I hope y’all can settle for the confessions of someone a whole lot more interesting. As a rule, when my own thoughts seem lacking, I run to the greats.

This book crossed my path at the High Museum exhibit, which by the way was fantastic and as another aside, if you live in an Atlanta zip code admission is free on the first Saturday of every month. I found out the free admission thing by accident, and then as another pleasant surprise I found this book at the end of the tour. I was shocked that an artist as eccentric as Andy would be organized enough to sit down and write such a lengthy explanation of his “philosophy.” Turns out the book is more a collection of quotes about life, love, sex, and art that was ghost written by Andy’s secretary but the content is pulled straight from Warhol’s self tapes of his private thoughts and conversations with his “Warhol stars” like Brigid Berlin.

Andy and Berlin’s relationship alone is enough to peak interest. The book alludes to their strange interactions which were mostly over the phone. “I have a telephone mate. We’ve had an on-going relationship over the phone for six years. I live uptown and she lives downtown. It’s a wonderful arrangement: we don’t have to get each other’s bad morning breath, yet we have wonderful breakfast together every morning like every other happy couple…We don’t have to worry about kids, just about extension phones.” The pair also had a serious obsession with recording every event in their lives. Possibly these self-obsessed tape recorders of the 60’s were an early example of our blogger world?

The whole book is a peek inside the artist’s head, which at times will blow you away with the insanity of his thoughts as well as the perverse rationality that is the by-product of an artist’s observations of the world.

I’ve chosen some of my favorite Warholisms for your consideration and contemplation:

At a certain point in my life, in the late 50s, I began to feel that I was picking up problems from the people I knew…I had never felt that I had problems, because I had never specifically defined any, but now I felt that these problems of friends were spreading themselves onto me like germs.

Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets anyway. Let the kids read about it and look forward to it, and then right before they’re going to get the reality, break the news to them that they’ve already had the most exciting part, that it’s behind them already.

You can be just as faithful to a place or a thing as you can to a person. A place can really make your heart skip a beat, especially if you have to take a plane to get there. (This quote made me think of Rome.)

The symptom of love is when some of the chemicals inside you go bad. So there must be something in love because your chemicals do tell you something.

I’m fascinated by the boys who spend their lives trying to be complete girls, because they have to work so hard—double-time—getting rid of all the tell-tale male signs and drawing in all the female signs. I’m not saying it’s the right thing to do, I’m not saying it’s a good idea, I’m not saying it’s not self-defeating and self-destructive, and I’m not saying it’s not possibly the single most absurd thing a man can do with his life. What I’m saying is, it is very hard work. You can’t take that away from them. It’s hard work to look like the complete opposite of what nature made you and then to be an imitation woman of what was only a fantasy woman in the first place.

I don’t see anything wrong with being alone. It feels great to me. People make a big thing about personal love. It doesn’t have to be such a big thing. The same for living—people make a big thing about that too. But personal living and personal loving are the two things the Eastern-type wise men don’t think about.

I believe in low lights and trick mirrors. A person is entitled to the lighting they need. Plus, if you learn about sex when you’re forty, as suggested earlier, you’d better believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

If a person isn’t generally considered beautiful, they can still be a success if they have a few jokes in their pockets. And a lot of pockets.

Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said, ‘I knew he loved me when he didn’t come in my mouth.’

People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look.

So I guess everybody has their own time and place when they turn themselves on.
Where do I turn on?
I turn on when I turn off and go to bed. That’s my big moment that I’m always waiting for.

I’m not saying that popular taste is bad so that what’s left over from the bad taste is good: I’m saying that what’s left over is probably bad, but if you can take it and make it good or at least interesting, then you’re not wasting as much as you would otherwise. You’re recycling work and you’re recycling people, and you’re running your business as a byproduct of other businesses. Of other directly competitive businesses, as a matter of fact. So that’s very economical operating procedure. It’s also the funniest operating procedure because, as I said, leftovers are inherently funny.