After lunch, Friedman found himself in a familiar position: gripping a podium with both hands.
Boys jumping into the East River, James Dean walking through Times Square, a sprawling family picnicking in Central Park, teenage gangsters in 1950's Coney Island and a man in a maid's outfit in a private club for sadomasochists: these and many other images tell a familiar, intermittently gripping story about the city's human diversity.
The story, however familiar, is reliably gripping; the characters are relatable, whether through pity or revulsion.
There is plenty of blame to go around — that familiar malaise that gripped the offense for the first three months of the season has returned for the Angels, who have lost 13 of 18 games since July 23.
That would have been a harsh outcome, but a familiar frustration began to grip the home fans.
Perhaps that was inevitable given the weight of resources at José Mourinho's disposal but Wenger will have departed gripped by familiar frustrations.
High friction is needed for the satisfactory functioning of nuts and bolts, paper clips, and tongs, as well as in the familiar processes of walking, gripping objects manually, and building piles of sand or of apples.
Meanwhile in London, you enter Ministry of Sound on a Friday night after panicking about the number of exits at the Elephant and Castle underground, spend £16 on two drinks in shallow tumblers at the bar, and search for familiar faces – keeping a firm grip on your belongings because you've read the crime rates.
His meticulous work gives new insights into familiar characters and makes for gripping theater.
I was watching an excellent new British film called The Goob when gripped by that familiar sensation: where had I seen the soulful-looking older brother character before?
