Oh Corey - Thank God You're Hot Again!!

(Big Bopper picture found here on flickr, she's got scans of some of the inside pages too...what a riot!)

There have been many celebrity crushes in my lifetime. As a young girl growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was a part of the culture of teenybopper magazines, walls plastered with posters of adolescent boys and teenage fantasies. Before the true advent of the internets, we greedily collected any magazine we could get our hands on that had even one picture of our crush of the moment. Be they television stars, movie icons, or musicians, we couldn’t get enough of our dream boys.
(You know you love the Hammer pants! With me are my two cousins M&M and P.M., and a boyfriend of another cousin, who's face is semi-disguised because I no longer know the guy, and didn't want to advertise him to the internets in all his 80's glory. My cousins? Well...they'll get over it! Also, not really visible in the picture, but the wall on the left was the Corey Haim wall)

In my attic bedroom, with the sloping ceilings, and the ugly yellow striped wallpaper, I decorated by covering every square inch of that ugly wall paper with the faces of Kirk Cameron, River Phoenix, Ricky Schroeder, Johnny Depp and many others, and later replacing most of these with all five of the New Kids on the Block (although Donnie always got the largest wall area), and of course, Marky Mark. And then there were the Coreys. I was never actually big on Feldman, but Haim? OH, how I loved Corey Haim.

It is with much trepidation that I share the following photograph, but I do so in order to better explain my love for the Haimster.
(That was a poster mounted on a cardboardish backing, of the Haimster himself. And that is my little brother, so proud to be in a picture with his big sister. And yes, that was a really bad perm).

You see, it had no boundaries!

So, it was with much pain, as an innocent and naïve teen girl, that I learned of Corey’s drug problems, and was forced to turn my attentions to more wholesome and less troubled heart throbs. (Because really, Donnie Wahlberg was such a better alternative, wasn’t he?)

But, back to Corey…In a blog I authored prior to creating this one, in November of 2005, I discussed my heart break when I learned, through the serious (cough cough) docudrama that is E’s True Hollywood Story, of Corey Haim’s downward spiral into addiction, bankruptcy and depression. I’ve transferred that entry into this blog, here, so that you can get a little more backstory into my love affair with the Haimster. It broke my heart to see him so beaten down. I was also crushed that he’d gone from hot teen idol to, well, to be politically correct…not so hot.

Oh Corey, how that pained me!

So it was with great glee that I opened T.V. Guide earlier this year and found a photo of the Coreys starting back at me.

A photo which elicited the following from me: “Oh, thank God, he’s hot again”. You see, the Two Coreys, have a new semi-reality show on Bravo/A&E. And as much as celeb-reality tv makes me cringe, I could hardly contain my excitement at getting to be a voyeur into the life of Corey Haim. The little teeny-bopper part of me, that fell asleep looking at Corey on her walls, couldn’t believe her luck. And then the thirty-something adult that she’s become promptly forgot all about it, and moved on with her “real” life.

And yet, this weekend, Tivo, in its infinite wisdom, chose to provide me with the first two episodes of “The Two Coreys” and that teeny-bopper giggled in ecstasy. “Hee hee, I get to see Corey Haim on t.v.!!!” And again, as the opening credits sequence began, I found myself saying “Oh, thank God, you’re hot again!”. He’s shed something like 130 lbs., is clean and sober, and is hoping to re-start his failed career. And then there’s the reality show, which is semi-scripted, and fully-lame. Yet, completely addictive. Corey Haim has moved in with Corey Feldman, who after a stint in rehab himself at the age of 18, and a “questionable” friendship with Michael Jackson, managed to become the more “stable” of the two. And Susie Feldman, the other Corey’s wife, who at first glance I thought to be spoiled and whiny, but after watching a few more episodes last night, actually thinks is a bit of a saint to put up with not just one but BOTH Coreys in her house. I don’t envy her in allowing Haim to move to her pristine home, with his slovenly ways. Because love him as I might, the guy is a slob, and I’d have kicked him out in the first 10 minutes of him being in my house. And although the show admits to being semi-scripted, with scenarios that are set up for pure television drama, the interaction between the two Coreys is just so much fun to watch. They are like little kids together, yet they both have struggled with their own demons (Haim more so than Feldman) and Feldman seems genuinely proud of his friend for persevering, and concerned for his well-being. Somehow, this has turned into a review of the show, which is not what I meant it to be. The show is corny...but I'm addicted.

So, yes, I will be watching “The Two Coreys” with unabashed glee. And yes, I will be rooting for Haim’s come-back, if only to be able to say “thank God, you’re hot again”, a few more times before this is all over.