One Sunday morning the news came unexpectedly: Matthew Perry had died. Chandler died. It’s not a bad joke. The actor returns from sports, gets into the hot tub and suffers a heart attack. The second and last heart attack of his life. Worldwide mourning for arguably the most popular actor in arguably the most-watched live-action series of all time (only surpassed by The Simpsons), Friends.
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In his memoirs – published just a year ago and published in Spain by Contraluz – he describes himself as a born addict in constant flight from the emptiness that torments him. “I can stay sober as long as nothing happens,” he writes. An eternal teenager who makes fame unhappy but can’t stop looking for it, be it in others or in himself. And a man who has systematically escaped everything that could have filled his emptiness. In short, a comedian. Aren’t they all like that? I don’t know if a happy comedian was ever born.
There is an unfunny joke that changes the protagonist depending on the time and context of the person telling it. It’s about a man who goes to the doctor (we would openly say he goes to the psychiatrist) because he is sad. The doctor tells him that he needs to do something to entertain him and that a well-known clown is performing in town that very night. Then the man looks at him sadly and says, “I’m that clown.” The unfunny joke is that this man can’t make himself laugh. “Unfunny joke” could be the definition of irony. And in our context, the psychiatrist told him to watch “Friends” and the patient replied, “I was Chandler Bing.”
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