This is an attempt at chronicling our wayward adventures through South America. We have been somewhat lazy up to this point, so this will be an (un)chronological account of these travels as we catch up to the present.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

First Entry: Friends

That night after we got back from watching the dancing in the park we went up to the common room to see what was happening and do some writing. The room was busy, full of people drinking máte and sitting around on every flat surface. Miriam and I sat on the roof for a few minutes and wrote in the low glow of the Lima night before we were joined by one of the guys from the front desk, with whom we spoke at length concerning the United States and English and surfing and Lima and soccer and a great variety of other topics. If you've been following this day through the last several posts, you'll believe that we were spent following this latest exercise in trivia and Spanish conversation. Overall the day had been very fine, hell even incredible, albeit with a couple of outstandingly low points, this is what I wrote about before we turned in that night:


February 28, 2010
Stop & Drop Backpacker Hostel
Miraflores, Lima

Today's most ridiculous cultural discovery has got to be the international appeal of the program "Friends".

Right now, I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of Argentinians who could easily be providing a laugh track just a raucous as the one dubbed down by NBC. I suppose I should note a few things with respect to my feelings about this revelation.

First, I have remained, remarkably - I'm told - and perhaps woefully ignorant of the "Friends" phenomenon since hearing its theme song on the radio back in '93. Even ten years later, (eleven?) when the show was winding down, my freshmen companions were in disbelief about my inability to identify the primary cast members, each of whom was pulling a cool million per episode.

It was around this time that I was corralled into watching bits and pieces of the show, with which I was, admittedly and perhaps with too much attitude, not at all impressed. Even then the show seemed like an awful relic in a number of ways. Schlocky jokes, unrelateable characters who seemed to be artificially stagnant in that they were dealing with the same group of people for an interminably long time in a world that had changed a great deal over the course of the show's run, and a laugh track so consistent as to remind one of every single sitcom, lame or not-so-lame, that had ever existed. I can no longer watch Seinfeld either, and having its Thursday timeslot buddy around seems somewhere between very premature nostalgia and outright televistic necrophilia.

Third, and perhaps the oddest aspect of this alien-enthusiasm for the amigo show, has to be the fact that the humor comes across via subtitles that are astonishingly un-nuanced in a show that is already heavy-handed in its comedy.

Nevertheless, here we are chortling confusedly, and my well-tanned companions guffawing unabashedly as they pass their máte around the room. Its hard to tell who is the crazy asshole in this equation. Is it those amused by this poorly translated, limply-acted look into a banal, cushy, TV-New York, or is it me who cannot seem to appreciate this sort of tranquil pleasure of an easy day-to-day where social relations of the lightest variety can come to the funny forefront of what people do, rather than all the baggage that seems to be a part of our real lives?

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