IKEA & FRIENDS

Constructing furniture is fun, but sometimes you make a mistake and end up with some parts that you don’t know how to use. In the very first episode of the TV program FRIENDS, Joey and Chandler struggled to build Ross's bookcase, but unfortunately found something metallic left in Joey's hand after they had finished.

Joey: "What's this?"
Chandler: "I have no idea."
Joey: "Done with the bookcase!" 

Such scenes have since evoked universal sympathy more vividly, especially since IKEA has now expanded its business all over the world.

Speaking of IKEA, another example I remember is a trivial scene from Thomas Pynchon's novel Bleeding Edge (2013):

Later Maxine finds Horst in the dining room trying to assemble a particleboard computer desk for Ziggy, blood already streaming from several fingers, reading glasses about to slide off the sweat on his nose, mysterious metal and plastic fasteners littering the floor, instruction sheets torn and flapping everywhere. Screaming. The default phrase being "****ing IKEA."

Some people say Pynchon is too difficult to get through. In fact, in order to write his historical novels, this legendary, reclusive writer goes into detailed cultural data from a time that most readers are not really knowledgeable about. This means, however, that it can be familiar to readers when he writes about their own time like he does in Bleeding Edge. Interestingly enough, in this novel which depicts the lives of several people in New York in 2001, there are some references to Rachel from FRIENDS.

"Maybe," Maxine gently, "you aren't really supposed to, like, what's the word, be . . . ?"
"No, no! that’s just it! I love Jennifer Aniston! Jennifer Aniston is my role model! on Hallowe’en? I’ve always been Rachel!" 

IKEA and FRIENDS. Had Pynchon been a friend of yours, he might have said "I'll be there for you" when you were at a loss at how to assemble your brand-new IKEA furniture!