‘SNL’ Alum Kevin Brennan Doubles Down After Fury Over His Matthew Perry Death Jokes

Kevin Brennan, a former Saturday Night Live writer, has shrugged off criticism of jokes he made about the death of Friends star Matthew Perry.

Soon after TMZ reported on Perry’s passing on Saturday, Brennan posted on X (fka Twitter): “DROWNED IN A HOT TUB. HAHAHAHA.”

In another message he remarked on Perry’s well-documented history of abusing alcohol and prescription drugs, saying: “I do love it when junkies die.”

The host of The Misery Loves Company Podcast faced a backlash from X users over the remarks, with one person describing him as a “ghoul.”

Brennan, who worked on SNL between 1999 and 2000, appeared unperturbed by the anger. “Why is drowning in a hot tub funny,” asked one user, to which he replied: “Because it’s not very deep.”

By Monday, he appeared to be reveling in the publicity he had received over his remarks, posting a number of news stories based on his social media posts.

“Am I trending yet?” he asked, before linking to a New York Post article with the message: “I’m going to consider retirement. This is the pinnacle. Too many people to thank.”

Perry, one of the stars of the long-running television hit Friends, died October 28 from an apparent drowning in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home in the Pacific Palisades. He was 54.

An autopsy has been completed on the actor, but it is inconclusive pending toxicology tests, according to a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.

I laughed when I saw your ping on this...so thanks!

(This is long, you don’t have to read it, but I found myself going down memory lane and began writing it for my own memory before these things leave, as they do for us all...:)

I began to write about my impressions of Steve Irvin. And my knowledge about Steve Irvin is admittedly thin. Pieces of shows I saw, visiting a friend watching TV, sitting in an airport, at a motel. Or interviews and online video. That kind of thing.

I don’t watch television in general, but if I am associating with someone and they are watching something on television, I can watch and interact.

But watching television by myself? Not even for a second.

From the impression made on me, Steve Irwin seemed like a nice guy who would have been fun to know. In my case, I felt somewhat of an affinity with him.

Everyone has known someone as a kid who was fearless, and handled animals and fish with equal determination, if not always with skill. I think in a lot of young guys it is a thing.

I lived in the Philippines for about two and a half years when I was 12 or 13, and there were all kinds of things that crawled and flew about in the environment over there. Monkeys, bugs, snakes, lizards, spiders. Amazing carnivorous and aggressive red ants.

I used to snorkel and catch shells, and had a good sized collection when we left to go stateside. Probably a hundred to two hundred shells of dozens of varieties. I didn’t catch a lot of them myself, but I traded and one birthday, my parents gave me a large cardboard box with high quality shells.

But the thing is, in the ones I caught myself, I had trouble with some of them because I didn’t know the proper way to get the entire creature out. A few of them had a characteristic scent of decay which I couldn’t get rid of.

Then, my best friend at the time, Brett, showed me how to do it. His LCDR father had some kind of position at Cubi Point where the US Navy had a SERE program (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) and he had two older brothers (I think high school Junior and Senior). I remember one of them was named Jake, but can’t remember the younger of the two.

Their dad encouraged them, and aided them. Got them all kinds of stuff. Real Diving gear with tanks, knives and spearguns. They had nicknames that were embroidered on jackets. They were legendary to us in the Sixth and Seventh Grade.

They were Brett’s older brothers.

Brett had an older sister who was my age, and she was nice, but I pined after the girl with the braids whose name was next to mine in the alphabet. Funny, hadn’t though of her for a while, and couldn’t now recall her name without working at it...Rebecca. She was always in the seat right in front of me in every class, so perhaps it was her braids I had the crush on...:)

But Brett taught me all kinds of stuff, ranging from the way to catch a six foot long monitor lizard to...cleaning the dead creature out of the shell.

It was brilliant. It made them bone clean.

Find a red ant nest, and place the shell on top of it. The ants go inside and completely demolish the inside, picking it scrupulously clean down to the hard shell. No smell!

But there we so many varieties of non-human creatures. Mean, non-lovable aggressive monkeys with great big canines. Big Boars with tusks. Six to eight-foot monitor lizards. Giant Fruit Bats whose homeward flights to God knows where as the sunset approached would fill the entire sky. All flapping, heading in the exact same direction. Snakes, including massive black King Cobras.

My friend next door had one of those curled up in his screened in porch one morning before school. We were waiting for the bus, and we took turns running over to look at it-it looked like a big, fat coiled up black garden hose. Our bus arrived before the Animal Control people showed up to take it away...)

I didn’t mess with the monkeys or snakes, but the monitor lizards fascinated me.

I was never brave enough to grab one, though we did trap one. And the smaller lizards up through the big geckos a foot long whenever their tail wasn’t gone were fair game, as well as all the bugs that flew as well as all the things in the sea. They had great big massive bugs, ones with great horns, and some with nasty pincers and long antennae that could be 4-6 inches long. Rhinocerous Beetles. Ox Beetles. Stag Beetles. Giant snails in a big shell.

Their carcasses, meat and fragmented shells would cover the sidewalks where people had trod on them, and rot, giving off a peculiar and unpleasant smell. We used to have fights with them between kids, snatching them off the ground and flinging them at each other. When you got hit with one, it hurt. Just as bad were the nauseating sounds it made as it splatted against your back, but worst of all was being slimed. When the snail splattered on your defensively turned back, it exploded in a wet smack, and the goo would soak through your shirt, and you could feel the slime on your skin.

It was totally disgusting.

Like when I lived in Japan, the oceans were sometimes choked full of non-poisonous white jellyfish. When we sailed in our dinghies, we would scoop them out of the water as we passed them, then either crush them by closing our fists, or hurl them water ballon-like towards each other. Those things, as the slime dried on your hands, gave off a rude and foreign smell that you couldn’t seem to wash off even with soap and fresh water.

And the bugs and lizards. We would catch them around the outdoor lights in the carports on each house. The moths and bugs would fly to the lights, and the lizards, distributed randomly around the lights, would snag them as they flew by.

We, armed with brooms and jars, would stalk them. They would see you, and dart around something to hide, and stop. You creeped slowly around, and with the broom, swiped them off the overhead and away from somewhere they could run to. Because it was dark out, you had to follow their trajectory to the ground and listen to where they landed. Then a merry chase would ensue as the lizard ran to the nearest cover, and you and your buddy scurried shoulder-to-shoulder in hot pursuit, running into each other and stepping on each other as the escaping lizard ran for all it had.

But those were the small lizards. The bigger ones were Geckos, and they were more intimidating. I remember them not being the type to run, I guess because they weren’t that fast. They always seemed to prefer standing their ground and defending themselves. They were very intimidating to me. They had bizarre striped and spotted color schemes with variants of black, white, or yellow spots or stripes, and their eyes were odd.

But the thing that made me approach them with trepidation was their large triangular heads. Those triangular heads had entire hinged bottom sides of that triangle that opened into strongly muscled mouth, usually white, that had dozens of very small but clearly visible teeth. I got bit by one, and I had about twenty tiny little black pits in a triangular pattern on both the top and bottom of the web of skin between your thumb and forefinger. Those little minuscule black holes eventually oozed a tiny smidgen of blood.

When you got close enough, they would turn to face you as you approached. Their mouth would open widely, and they would move slightly as you did, trying to keep their body behind the business end of that triangular head.

You had to walk around in a circle, getting it to follow you, keeping it moving, as you spiraled in closer. Then you lunged to grab them by the neck just behind its head. (That was when I got bit!)

We would examine them, and I was always fascinated by their feet and their tails. On their feet, they had little textured pads that felt like sandpaper when you put your finger in it and could feel the toes of the feet, each with its own little pad, grasp your skin. It made me understand fully just how they could effortlessly walk upside down.

Once, at school, our Shop Teacher, Mr. Stauffer, left class, and we were horsing around outside near the wood shed. We saw a gecko in the overhead, so I grabbed a broom and swept it off.

It fell directly on my upturned face!

With a neck-wrenching animal shake of my head, my glasses went flying off, to land on the ground with the the gecko completely fastened onto the black plastic frames. (In the Navy as a sailor in Boot Camp, I found out those kinds of black-framed eyeglasses were commonly called BCD Glasses, which means Birth Control Device Glasses...:)

I have wandered as I wrote this one, remembering the details. And that is why I liked Steve Irwin. When I looked at him, I could easily imagine him, with his eager, excited face, grabbing creatures in his bare hands as an eight year old Australian kid to whom the world of wild things was an oyster...I could relate to that.

I don’t know what he was like as a person, but he reeked to me of genuineness, and in a good way. May he Rest In Peace!

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