matthew_perry raze i_remember_you not so much for the character that made you a household name, but for a low-budget romantic comedy with a heart of glass. a movie you starred in when your fame was already on the wane. i watched you smoke pot from a bong that broke your brain. watched you ruin the best thing in your life because you didn't believe you deserved to be happy. you spelled out the name of the woman you loved with pastel pills that might as well have been sugar for all the good they did you. maybe you didn't have much range as an actor. but you felt real to me for those ninety minutes and change. your life away from the screen was a fifty-four-year car crash with too many casualties to count. your heart stopped beating for five minutes in the middle of surgery. bringing you back to life broke a third of your ribs. you should have died so many times. you weren't supposed to pull through when your colon exploded. you were the only patient in your ward to survive. you taught us how to track your addictions onscreen. when you were carrying extra weight, it was booze. when you slimmed down, it was pills. when you had a goatee, it was lots of pills. there must have been times when you thought your life was a drug-soaked dream without end. like when you bit into a piece of toast and all your top teeth fell out. once, when you were in the hospital for one self-created ailment or another, you started slamming your head against the wall as hard as you could. trying to cave in your own skull. when your face was a bloody mask, someone asked why you were doing that to yourself. "because i couldn't think of anything better to do," you said. i can think of a few things. but the dream is over, and whatever happens now is a mystery to me. 231030 what's it to you? who go blather from