Matthew Perry died last week at the age of 54, found drowned in his hot tub by his assistant (which made me wonder whether all actors all have assistants at home with them) – and, sadly, could not be revived. Mr. Perry main claim to fame is being cast at the age of 24 – three decades ago, which is hard to believe – as one of the stars of the show ‘Friends’, which ran from 1994 to 2004. Perry played a character unrealistically called ‘Chandler Bing’, but, realistic or not, the name sort of fit. I don’t think I ever saw a complete episode – I was otherwise occupied for most of that decade – but, from what I can glean, the show was somewhat like the contemporaneous Seinfeld, subtly – and sometimes not so subtly – undermining of traditional mores, especially of the sexual sort, with attractive young characters sleeping around and changing ‘partners’ in an ongoing romantic, hedonistic melee.
Friends and Seinfeld, edgy and risqué in their own day, now seem so quaint, but they did much to begin the untethering of our society from what we were, and what we should be. The full bitter fruits of this loss we are witnessing today. as mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, as Chandler Bing dies a lonely middle-aged man in a hot tub.
Mr. Perry had his troubles. Purportedly, he was at one point so dependent on alcohol and various drugs that he does not recall three entire years the filming of of Friends, but still making about a cool million per episode. That’s some gig. People who knew him say he was generous and kind-hearted, but ’tis sad that he died a bereft and lonely bachelor, having been recently engaged – as Jane Austen put it, It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife – but the wedding was, alas, called off, for reasons undisclosed.
He was one of the most zealous promoters of the mRNA ‘vaccine’, even selling t-shirts after his whatever-number-of booster, ‘Could I be any more VACCINATED?’ – emphasis in the original – which now seems more than a little tragic. Did the ‘vaxx’ have anything to do with his sudden heart attack? Many suspect so, but we’ll likely never know and most out there don’t want to know, and, as a Google search will tell the reader, are, with the algorithm of the search engine, in a state of absolute denial, which ain’t a river in Egypt. As the ‘excess deaths’ pile up, they can’t admit even one ounce of harm from the ‘vaxx’ – for to do so would collapse their whole world view. But, as a friend of mine is wont to say, the collapse is comin’ – whether we want it or not.
It is reported that in their elite high school, a teenaged Matthew Perry beat up fellow classmate Justin Trudeau, who likely had that sort of face, even back then. That speaks something to Mr. Perry’s character – what, exactly, I won’t hazard to say. We leave his soul to God, and pray for him, and every soul, in this week of All Souls. There is hope for us all, as God’s grace seeks out the lost sheep most, and we may pray that in some way, Matthew opened himself to that grace and mercy.