Why I Cried When Corey Haim Died

In case you missed it, Corey Haim died on March 10 this year. I never had a chance to write this post then because I was having computer issues, and also, March 10^th also happens to be my birthday, I was a bit busy.

But, the other day I was having a Twitter conversation with a friend about Mr. Haim, and I realized I had a post to write.

See, I loved Corey Haim. He may, quite possibly have been my first celebrity crush. Yes, even before Donnie Wahlberg.

Those who’ve been reading my blog for a while, may remember a few posts on him. In fact, besides Donnie himself, Corey Haim has the honor of being the only other celebrity I’ve written multiple blog posts about (all the way back in 2005 and 2007 respectively).

If you’re curious, you can read those here, and here.

A quick perusal through those posts should tell you what an impact Corey Haim had on my adolescence.

Not only was he my first celebrity crush (oh how I remember swooning as he sang in the bathtub in the Lost Boys)

But he was also my first brush with drug addiction.

I remember being crushed and horrified when I learned of his drug problem. I remember, in my sheltered innocence, writing him a fan letter pleading with him to get help, and then, taking down all of his posters from my wall. Exchanging them for posters of other, more clean cut actors. And yes, eventually for Donnie Wahlberg and the rest of the New Kids On The Block.

For me, drug addiction was beyond my comprehension, and I couldn’t support someone who had succumbed to its allure. My heart broke for Corey, but I could no longer be a fan.

Years passed, and word of his struggles would surface now and again, and each and every time, my heart would break.

Later, as an adult, I would find this photo of him

And again, my heart would break. Where was that adorable little boy with the lisp and the crooked smile?

Then, more recently, word came of a reality show, The Two Coreys. Haim and Feldman would reunite, now that Haim had cleaned up his act, and regale their old fans with their new adventures. With this picture, hope was restored.

He was back. This time, he would make it.

And yes, I watched the show, faithfully. And it was apparent very quickly that Corey was not over his demons. As the show exploited his problems, as Feldman tried to get his friend to seek help, and his denial grew stronger…again my heart broke.

On March 10^th of this year I woke up in great spirits. It was my birthday. My 35^th birthday. I’m not one of those women who hides (or hides from) her age. I treasure each birthday as what it is, the gift of another year of life.

Checking my facebook that morning a friend posted these words: RIP Corey Haim.

My heart broke for the final time for the “Lost Boy” who never found his way.

A small piece of my childhood died on my birthday this year. I’m sorry you couldn’t find your peace on earth Corey, I truly pray you are finally at peace.

Sweet Mercy - Movie Review - 17 Again

OMG, can I, like, just tell you how glad I am that I am NOT 17 again? LOL, WTF!

Yes, I know, there was definitely some 80’s valley girl mixed in with the text savvy new millennium teenager in that last sentence. It was done on purpose, I swear it.

But the sentiment, the sentiment is certainly there, regardless of what decade the language comes from.

After watching “17 Again”, the new Matthew Perry/Zac Effron movie, in a room full of teenagers, all I can tell you is I walked out thinking “Thank you God for allowing me to survive my teen years and make it happily to my mid-thirties. I don’t ever want to go back”.

My friend Chick Flick and I have decided to make Tuesdays our “movie night”. Our local theatre offers $6 Tuesdays, and since both of us tend to have pretty hectic weekend schedules, our “school night movie night” was born. We’ve been going pretty regularly for the last 3 months or so, and we’ve found that it works beautifully. The theatre is not crowded, the price is right, and with both of us being movie lovers, we get to go to the movies without the annoying side effects theatre going usually means.

Except last week, when unbeknownst to both of us, because neither of us have any kids, we decided on “17 Again” and arrived at the theatre to discover it was school vacation week. The theatre was packed. With teenagers. And we? Were planning to watch a teenybopper flick. Because, whether or not we happen to be in our 30’s, we just love teenybopper flicks.

It was touch and go for a moment, and we almost vetoed the movies altogether, but at the last minute we decided to suck it up, and go watch the movie with the teens.

The experience wasn’t as horrible as we had initially feared. The movie was packed, but for the most part, the kids were well behaved. And, truth be told, watching this particular movie in a room full of teenagers really did add a certain level of…realism to an otherwise ridiculous movie premise.

I should take this time to tell you that I am not one of those people who thinks all teenagers are horrible, in fact, I work very closely with a large group of teens and I think that for the most part, teenagers today are amazing, wonderful and far exceed most adults’ expectations of them. That being said, there are certain times I would really rather not be surrounded by them, and a movie theatre is one of those times. Truth be told, I don’t much like being surrounded by full grown adults at the movies either. People can be especially obnoxious in a dark movie theatre, so the emptier a movie room is, the happier I am.

But, back to the movie, because, this was, after all supposed to be a review, wasn’t it?

Right…so, 17 Again, if you don’t already know, is basically your typical “waking up in another body” story. (for more information about the movie, click on the picture above to be taken to the Yahoo Movie Page) Much along the lines of “Big” or “13 Going on 30”, where a young character wakes up in the body of their adult self, 17 Again takes the formula and reverses it. Matthew Perry is a disenchanted, disgruntled adult, who was his high school’s star basketball player, but somewhere along the way traded in his basketball dream for family life, and has never made peace with that decision.

Through a chance meeting he magically wakes up in the body of his former 17 year old self Zac Effron, and hilarity ensues.

The formula is well known, and has been time and time again. The plot is predictable, and not all that unique or original. But the writing was good, the jokes were indeed funny, and the actors made the characters likeable (or dislikable as the case may have been) enough to make this movie worth watching.

The main story line of Mike O'Donnel (Perry/Effron) trying to do right by his family, even while in his 17 year old body is a nice sweet twist on the story we’ve come to know so well. And I got a kick out of slightly twisted story line where his soon to be former wife finds herself inexplicably attracted to this 17 year old kid, lending itself to quite a few laughs for the audience.

My favorite character by far, though, was Ned, Mike's best friend played by Thomas Lennon of Reno 911 fame. He was absolutely hilarious, and for me, the real star of the movie. Without his comic relief, I’m not sure the movie would have been nearly as enjoyable.

That being said, I can’t possibly do a review of this movie without mentioning the adorable Zac Effron. From the moment he walked out on the screen a collective “swoon” was heard in the audience. All the little teen girls (and some not so teen women, yours truly EXCLUDED) let out audible sighs. Probably the funniest bit for me in the entire movie was when the teen girl behind me shouted “He’s so hot”.

To be honest, Zac Effron is most definitely not “my type”, and even if he was older than a mere 21, he’d still not be my type. But, I will hand it to the kid, he is absolutely adorable and likeable. He is also, I must admit, a great comedic actor. I thought he did an excellent job delivering the one liners, and tripping over himself with the physical comedy aspect of the film. This kids’ got a bright future in the business, no doubt.

As for the idea of being 17 again and getting to do-over my adolescence? That part made this movie almost a horror flick for me. As if being a teenager wasn’t hard enough when I went through it, I can’t imagine doing it again in the age of YouTube and MySpace. So Not Interested. As I heard the teens in the room laugh at some of the jokes, all I could think was how terrible it must be to be an unpopular kid now a days. It wasn’t easy when I was there (trust me, I know), but it has to be so much harder now.

It was a sweet, sweet feeling to know I could walk out of that theatre and be in my 30’s, having left the teeny boppers on the curb waiting for their parents to come pick them up.

Overall, this wasn’t a “masterpiece” of a film, but then, nobody is expecting it to be. It was what it set out to be, which was an entertaining, funny, enjoyable flick.

For the entertainment value alone, I give it 3 ¾ Martini glasses.

Attack of the Teen Idols - Fun Monday

Before we jump into Fun Monday, I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who stopped by over the weekend to offer words of support after I announced that I lost my job on Friday. THANK YOU. I posted a more detailed account of the whole situation yesterday, if you're curious.

Okay, now, to:

Fun Monday this week is being hosted by Jo Beaufoix. The challenge we were issued couldn't have come at a more apropos time. The challenge?

"I want to know about your first ‘celebrity’ crush. You know, the one you fancied from that band, or that film, or who read the news, or who won Gold at the Olympics.Did you have their pictures on your wall or in your locker? Did you dress like them, style or colour your hair like them, follow them, meet them, marry them? (It could happen.) Photos of THEM would be good, photos of YOU at the time you liked them would be even better. Also, if you have time, I’d like to know whether they had any influence over your life, the person you became, or if they were just an embarrassing blip you would kind of rather forget about.”

Well, if you read my blog at all, then it should come as no surprise that I could have gone one of two ways with this. I could have waxed poetic about my love for Corey Haim, who was my first real celebrity crush. But I've already devoted at least two posts to my dear Corey.

Or, I could have gone with my other crush, the one that last through my most impressionable teen years, and the one I've n0t-so-secretly kept into adulthood. The one I was telling you about just last week. Yes, we'll go with that one. None other, of course, than Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block fame.

Donnie then:Donnie now (ish):

Yep, still hot.

I was a faithful Donnie fan from day one, and never wavered from my choice of the band's resident bad boy as my favorite member of the original boy band. Once the band split up, and they all went their own ways, my love for Donnie never disappeared, it just went into hibernation for a bit. But when Mr. Wahlberg entered the world of acting my dedication to him returned, and I've watched practically everything he's been in, except for those creepy "Saw" movies...Even Donnie can't get me to watch those. Well, you know...unless he wants to watch them with me..uh...WHAT? It could happen.

Back to reality here folks...I want to answer some more of Jo's questions, she asked if we dressed like them: No, but we "Blockheads" had our uniforms of t-shirts, buttons, and denim jackets with their names and pictures stitched right into them. Followed them: No, because I did not have the means, but, along with my two cousins PM and M&M, we created our own fan club for them, we had 100's of pen pals with whom we exchanged photos and posters and stories about them, and I even met other NKOTB fans from as far as Germany, all because of our love for the boys. Met them? Not then, and I have never had the chance to meet Donnie, but I did meet Joey McIntyre about 10 years ago, when he was doing the play "Tic Tic Boom", and he was a very pleasant and gracious.

Did he have an influence over my life or on the person I became? I could say no, because in a general sense, no, he didn't. But in a smaller sense, yes, he and the rest of the New Kids absolutely did. The height of their fame was during a prime time in my life, therefore, a lot fo my most powerful memories from that time include them in some way or another. I have fantastic memories of people I met, places I went, and experiences I lived that happened solely because of my love for The New Kids...so without a doubt that shaped me. In another small way, Donnie influenced me in a way I realized only recently...being the "bad boy" of the band, he was my first "bad boy". He wasn't the last. This propensity to fall for the "bad boy" could definitely explain why I'm still single, so one could say it's all his fault. Or not.

Jo also wantes us to share photos of "US" at that time...I've actually shared these before, and really, should be too ashamed to share them again, but....how could I not, she asked so nicely...

(That would be yours truly in the hammer pants, some boy whose face I've sort of disguised because I no longer know him, and my cousins M&M and PM, with my "wall o' New Kids" behind us. You know you're jealous).

So there you have it, my celebrity crush. Oh, and in case you're wondering, unlike Jo, I have no shame about this crush, and I DO plan on going to see them perform live now that they have reunited. Call it what you want, but just the feeling of nostalgia that seeing the five of them together again has brought up in me is worth it. I leave you with this:




Go to Jo's to check out what other Teen Idols had the Fun Mondayers dreaming of their wedding days.

And be sure to visit the Nekked Lizards, they are hosting next week.

We Interrupt our Regularly Scheduling Programming...

I know I promised to tell you all the story of how I came to be birthed in Africa...but we have breaking news folks. This is something that normally would be saved for Cafe Karina, my pop culture blog (and in fact will be posted in there as well), but the news are too major to contain in just one blog...

We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow...but today...well...today I give you:

A few months ago I posted about the rumors that the New Kids on the Block were staging a reunion. Well, ladies, grab your old t-shirts and buttons because it appears the rumors were indeed true.

This Friday at 7AM NKOTB will appear on the Today show...ALL FIVE members, together in public for probably the first time in at least 15 years. A big announcement perhaps? A performance perchance?

Click here, to be taken to a page with some more information and links to videos of interviews with some of the guys. In one of the videos Joe alludes to time in the studio...a new album in the works?

Call me silly, tell me I'm acting like a teenager, but I don't care. I'm giddy with excitement and yes I will be standing in line for tickets if they go on tour. We've discussed before how there's a certain amount of nostalgia tied up with certain icons of our childhoood, and for me, none hold more than NKOTB. So go ahead, laugh at me, but I wore their buttons proudly back then, and I'll do it now too.

Well...okay, no...I won't really wear the buttons this time around, but you know what I mean.

UH, right...okay, well, go on about your business...I...uh...I'm going to go back to work. Yeah...I'm a mature adult...I...uh...right.

Thursday Thirteen #40

As promissed, this week's Thursday Thirteen takes me back to my youth, my love affair with the New Kids on the Block. This is of course brought about by the rumors which hit the interwebs (and radio and television news) that a NKOTB reunion might be in the works. As rumors go, there are suspicions, there are theories, and there are, of course, denials. As a die hard NKOTB fan, (once a fan, always a fan, admit it), I'll choose to keep hope alive, and hold onto the fact that their once defunct website has been revived, and the little video playing on that website teases us to stay tuned by asking "Are You Ready?" AND the song playing over that little video is no New Kids song I ever heard...and trust me, any true NKOTB fan would know all the songs, so, a new song perhaps? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, I give you 13 NKOTB memories and tales, and reasons why they played such an important part in my life during my adolescence.

1.

Hangin' Tough, The Right Stuff, Please Don't Go Girl...yes, now that I'm older I realize they weren't exactly musica masterpieces, but oh, how those sounds bring back a sense of nostalgia only music tied to memories can evoke.

2. The New Kids craze was something I shared with my cousins M&M and PM, and we would spend hours pouring over teeny bopper magazines, clipping articles, hanging posters up on our walls, memorizing facts about the five members of the group. We all have not only great memories of that time, but we also still have boxes full of binders with those clippings, the buttons, the t-shirts, the books...yes, we kept them.

3. My first concert. New Kids on the Block at Foxboro Stadium (now Gillette Stadium) in the Boston area. Our seats were terrible,in the nosebleed section, but man, we could have sworn Donnie and Jordan and Joey were singing directly to us. They could hear us screaming how much we loved them. What an event that night was.

4. Pen Pals. The NKOTB craze came long before the internet boom, long before myspace and facebook, so as fans, we had to find a way to connect. Those not involved can not even begin to imagine the network of fans, how connected and amazing it was, via regular snail mail. We wrote letters, we exchanged photographs, created "friendship books", shared stories. At one point I had over 50 pen pals, all New Kids fans. My cousins and I even had a small fan club, we created a newsletter, sent it out to members/fans. Looking back on it, with the knowledge of how easy technology makes it today, I have to admit, we were ingenius in how we made it work.

5. Pen Pals. I met girls from all over the place through this pen pal network. The most memorable was a girl from Germany, who spent a summer a few towns away, with a host family, and spent a weekend at my house. We became fast friends, through our love for the New Kids. Amazing experiences all. I wonder where they are now, my pen pals.

6. Friendships. I met my best friend in high school because of my "NKOTB buttons" on my denim purse (ah, the early 90s). She was a fan too, we got to chatting, we became fast friends. Made many other friends that way...some enemies too.

7. Life lessons. The New Kids craze was one of those "love them or hate them" situations. Being a fan meant you had to have a strong character, you had to be able to take a lot of criticism to defend them from the critics, mostly made up of the teenage boys who hated them so.

8. Crushes. I learned early in life that I'm prone to like the bad boys. My first clue? Donnie Wahlberg was my favorite New Kid. He of the "allegedly" setting fire to hotel rooms, starting fights, and being the general "bad boy" of the group. Oh, how I loved him so.

9. Crushed dreams. All good things must eventually come to an end. We got older, they got tired...the group broke up, and with it, went a bit of our youth, our innocence.

10. And yet...a lifelong love affair. I'll admit it, I have followed their careers, in particular, Donnie's career, and I get a secret thrill whenever I hear of a new movie or television show he's in. I've seen them all. Well, all except for those "Saw" movies he's in...I just can't handle the blood and gore of those. I'll continue to follow them too, and be proud of their successes.

11. It's a silly thing, but it's those "idols" from our youth that hold a special place in our hearts, is it because of a crazy "fan" fantasy, or is it because it's in reliving those moments that we feel a certain sense of that carefree time in our lives. That time when it really was all about dreams of a cute boy on a poster smiling at us from a stage miles away? Whatever it was, watching these old videos, looking at these old photographs, gives me a sense of peace, and joy...it's hard to explain it really.

12. Just another video for you:

13. And one more:

Ah well...thanks for traipsing through my youth with me for a bit...it's been fun.

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.