Happy requiems for the dead and dying

How to tell the end of an era [1]
How to kill your Friends

The end of a television series, especially a successful one, is like the feeling near graduation. You're about to let go of something you know how to do very well, and at the same time you're eager to let go of something you've had enough of. I can't say I am a really huge fan, but I've watched it often enough, and it defined a specific time of my life. Friends works because it's an easy pitch:

In the beginning there was a pilot, and it featured these six: Ross, a sensitive-guy paleontologist who has been ditched by his pregnant lesbian wife; his sister, Monica, a fastidious chef who, all appearances to the contrary, is said to have suffered an unsvelte adolescence; Monica's rich-girl high-school pal, Rachel, who dashes into Central Perk in a wedding gown, having fled her appointment at the altar with an orthodontist; Monica's neighbor Joey, a vapid, hunky, aspiring actor; Chandler, Joey's smart-aleck roommate, who works as a data-processing drone; and Phoebe, the dippy vegetarian twin of a character on ''Mad About You.'' The friends were plucked from the chipper, optimistic wing of Gen X: they were as loyal and attractive and well heeled as they were aimless, solipsistic and irony-drenched.

I can't say I'm a huge fan, but I've watched it often enough and I can more or less say that Friends has an influence on television writing. Simple three-pronged plotlines, and titles with "..when Joey and Chandler had a duck" or something like that. When I first started working, I remember one teacher saying that they couldn't place see me writing for [certain tv show] because my humor is more like Friends-type, not that sitcom. I don't know if that's good or bad though. I still can't hack sitcoms.

.........

How to tell the end of an era [2]
The end of hiss:

The tape will die, but the tactile nature aof it, and some of the lexicon, will remain: "Fast forward" will always mean something, will forever recall the chirpy, panicky sound of tape being sped to and fro, as its surgeon-fingered listeners searched for a particular few seconds of words or music; and how that gibberishy sound came to stand, as aural icon, for haste and excitement, or for admissions of guilt, or certain refrains where you don't know what the singer is singing, so you RR or FF to it, back to it, back to it, back to it, back to it: dweee-deely-wedee-deely-we-dwee-deely-wweeeeee-dweeeep.

People don't talk about doing mix tapes anymore. We download mp3s and burn them on CDs to make our own compilation albums with such irresistible titles like "Banished from the Catwalk" or "Music from the Barracks." I was talking with this friend, when I had this sudden blast of music in my head. "What song was this: Huwag nang malumbay/ang pag-ibig ay tunay/ Sabihin man ng iyong kapitbahay/na di ako nagsusuklay." I couldn't place the album, but she knew the song. "I was already back in Manila when that came out. I know what I'll give you this christmas already. It'll have all those band songs."

Making mix tapes reminds me of that scene in Virgin Suicides. The girls couldn't really talk on the phone. So the boys would call up, and play music and not talk. All their emotions condensed in the smooth vinyl relayed across the phone lines. Someday perhaps, music will be like air. Something we breathe naturally, and we will never have to acquire players and bulky stereos. But then we will lose the romance of pressing play and pause, waiting for the right moment to begin recording, unspooling tape and transmitting all our thoughts and emotions in pop songs mix tape.