R.I.P. Haim-ster

In wake of the tragic news that the world today has one less Corey in it I sadly post these three articles I wrote for back in 1996 for Crunchy Magazine (Published by crunchy Music in Greensboro NC). These were written long before the two Corey’s resurfaced when the world was experiencing a vast and dark Corey void. The 80s had only just begun to make a comeback and their revival was nowhere in sight. There was no Surreal Life or Two Corey’s reality show. We had no idea what had become of them All we had were memories and with tongue firmly in cheek I penned these short odes to everything Corey.

Totally Corey!!!

Article One: Why we’re all Goonies!

Article Two: Corey v/s Corey?

Article Three: The Best Corey Flick of All Time!

We are all Goonies; Searching for something that isn’t there anymore, placing all our hopes in a past that isn’t real, fearing what cannot really hurt us. We are all Goonies; Misfit adventurers who live in our own fantasy realms where we are all the heroes. If we are lucky we will be thrust into a real adventure and finally be able to live. Or we will spend our lives chained in front of a television, junk food our only diet, until one day a Goonie will set us free and make us one of them.

We are all Goonies; getting by on luck and old movies. Our lives already acted out before us, long before we were even born. If we only remember where all the booby traps will be, then we’ll be alright. We might even make it on T.V. If we remember how it was done on screen, and play our roles, the bad guys will always get caught. If we have someone up above us watching out, the police will show up just in time to haul them off.

We are all Goonies; if we look deep down inside of us and do what’s right, we will get a kiss or a hug, and discover our true friends along the way. And if we believe hard enough our ship will sail.

We are all Goonies!

****

Which Corey did you like the best? Corey Haim, with his mouth open and neatly trimmed hair, prepubescent crackly voice, always unsure, yet always right. Boy next door with his weird friend and back-pack full of comics. He’s always happy and headed for trouble, hyper and full of beans.

Or do you like bad boy Corey Feldman? Feldman with his long hair always draped over just one eye, (which is often covered by shades day or night). Sweet, charming, and up to something. The kid who is always “just hanging out”, yet you know he is going to get you into trouble.

Your mom would like you to hang out with Haim more. He could help you with your Algebra. He could take you to the cabin with his rich ass parents. She would trust him. Your dad would warn you about Feldman. He would frown when he came over. He would say things like “Don’t you have any other friends?”, or “Doesn’t he have a home?” Feldman would convince you to steal candy from the corner store. He would keep you out past curfew, and give you your first beer, then hit you on the back and make you choke.

Haim would be there if you ever got caught in a jam, while Feldman would be the one to get you into that jam. Though Feldman would point his finger at you and go click-click and say “You owe me one”, Haim would just ask if you were okay and invite you back to his parents for hot co-co.

If you’re the type of person who likes to drive safely and kiss your mom on the forehead before you go to school each morning, then this Corey is for you.

If you’re the type of person who likes a little danger and excitement, and would outright like to piss your parents off then this is the Corey for you.

Either way, if you get one Corey, you inevitably get them both. Because as anyone in Hollywood can tell you one Corey is good but two Corey’s is even better!

***

What is the best Corey movie? It is so hard to choose just one. They starred in so many classics together and separate. Feldman has “The Goonies”, “Stand by me”, and “The Burbs” (with Tom Hanks). Haim has “Lucas” and “First Born”. Together they have “License to Drive”, “Last Resort”, “Dream a Little Dream”, and of course the timeless “Lost Boys”. They were so talented, so amazing in each and every performance it’s hard to pick just one.

The Corey’s are such a part of our childhood growing up in the eighties, their movies were constantly on rotation on Cinemax and HBO, or one of those UHF Saturday matinees (UHF were the Channels beyond 12 in the pre-cable days kids). We all grew up with the two of them. They were as much a part of our lives as Loony Tunes and You can’t Do That on Television, as timeless and ageless as Red Foxx or Cap’N’Crunch.

They gave to us their teenage years, and what have we given them but an adulthood in obscurity, rehab and of course The Viper Room. The Corey’s were so special, not because of their considerable dramatic range (they basically played the same two guys in all of their films), but because they played us! I mean whether you were the shy kid afraid of Vampires and the world, or a bad-ass who killed Vampires, but was still afraid of the world-there was a Corey for you to relate to. If you were into comics (Lost Boys), old movies (Goonies), or really-really into Michael Jackson (Dream a Little Dream). No matter how old I get or how cool I like to think I am I know deep down I will never be as cool, anti-jock, anti-hero, anti-old, or anything in between as the Corey’s were. Even in the Tom Hanks Classic “The Burbs” Feldman represented me, and I mimicked him, the smart-ass, wise-acre, boy next door stirring up mischief in the neighborhood, until the neighbors house blows up.

Sure “The Breakfast Club” said it all first, and “Some Kind of Wonderful” made it even clearer. That was for our older siblings and the Baby sitters generation. For us it was the “Goonies” that defined it all. Too bad it only featured one Corey. Even though John Cusack’s movies (“Better off Dead”, “One Crazy Summer”) showed us how to live outside the norm-nothing and I mean nothing drove it home like the Corey classic “Dream a Little Dream”! When they’re on the football field and the titular song is playing and everything is moving in slow motion, that is the best! You can keep all your Tim Curry flicks, John Hughs classics and Tom Hank’s movies, great as they may be. They got nothing on a Saturday afternoon filled with Corey films and cereal.

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Now playing: Bob Marley & the Wailers - Easy Skanking
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I am a broken man

When was the last time that I wrote anything personal about myself? It has been sometime I would have to say. For the last few months at least I have stuck to writing mainly silly little blog post, Monkee stuff, or various subjects. Well t the urging of friends I have sat down to try and write "what I'm feeling". The problem is I don't know what that is. My precious ego seems so battered and bruised; the depths of depressing emotions seem so low each day that I can't articulate them. With each passing hour I fall further into a landfill of hopelessness and despair. I, who profess to have an endless ego, have reached the end of endless. I am a broken man. I feel like the Rock creature from "A Never Ending Story".

"They look like big strong hands…" I don't want to go, but I don't want to go on. At least not like this, this cannot be how my adventure ends. Alone, depressed, feeling trapped and helpless. My pride destroyed, my dreams shattered, my goals lost, and stuck cowering in an apartment in Oakland. I have to believe that I can make it out of this. This was supposed to be different, I keep saying, but it's the same. Only this time I am not the one who couldn't refrain from going around and sleeping with other people. I am the one left crying himself to sleep.

It would figure that California took my powers away. The "Left Coast" as it were, must have somehow revered my abilities to be myself. I had forgotten them during my time in solitude (in the Mid-West). I had also somehow convinced myself that I could be a family man, but I cannot. It's simply not in the cards. The choices of what I can be however are becoming increasingly less. As far as a career as a chef, I will never see it if I don't get hired somewhere soon. As far as being an artist or writer, well let's just say that maybe posthumous at best. The enemy of me this time however is the same enemy I have faced every phase of my life-ME! My own attitude and actions is the cause of my own misery. My lack of faith in myself is what is keeping me there. Beaten and broke down by events, that is at the crux, my own damn fault. I attempt to dig myself out but I keep getting more dirt heaped in my face. The world is crumbling around me, and planes are dropping from the sky every day. It seems the shift into 2012 maybe more than speculation. The real question is; how long before I arise out of the ashes and what will I become then?

With each obstacle in my life I have found the exit, but it is never been pretty. I had to go to prison to get out of Winston-Salem. I had to walk away from people whom I loved, to get out of Atlanta. I was forced out of New York, and to escape St. Louis, I had to move across country. But, of course, these are over-simplifications. The grave reality of my life has been that I have made a lot of tough choices, which have sometimes turned out great, and more often than not they have turned out painful. The truth of it is, is that I need more than anything to have a brain in my head. Yet, that doesn't seem to be in the cards either. My mind is bouncing off the walls now. I feel so trapped in this apartment. I want to go somewhere, but I have nowhere to go. I have nothing to do, and no money to do it with. I would love to just pick up and go-but to where-to what? There is always, turning around and going back where I came from, but to me that has always felt like admitting defeat. I guess I still have a little pride left…

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Now playing: フレーミング・リップス - レース・フォー・ザ・プライズ
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Heart Ache to Heartache we stand

CASE OF THE GOLDEN mONKEY (stARt)

"THE CASE of the GOLDEN MONKEY"

I'm a dick. A Private Dick. My name is unimportant, I won't be alive much longer. Right now I'm lying on my back in growing pool of my own blood. I'm surrounded by a bunch of punks in monkey mask who're about to finish the job by bashing my skull in. I'm not even sure how many times I've been shot, stabbed or whatever else. Instead of looking up and thinking about my wife-well-ex-wife, or my two kids (both of which hate me by the way), or my poor mother (who never wanted me to get into this line of work anyway). Instead of thinking about my father,whom I've hated most of my life for one reason or another, I can only think about her. In 22 years on the force, 12 years as a P.I., I've never been in a worse situation than this and all I can think about is the bitch that got me here. And, you know what? I'm not even mad. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and I'm including the ones on television too.

I was sitting alone in my office as usual as Wednesday or maybe it was Tuesday. The radio was on and I was listening to a horse lose what little money I had left, as i bounced a tennis ball of the wall. I remember that because the ball knocked one of my plaques off the wall. One of my few commendations formally years on the force. I think it was for attendance or something. I know what you're thinking. How typical a down on his luck private dick. yeah I was a walking stereotype alright,except I never had anything exciting enough happen to me to warrant a book. A short story maybe but definitely not a book. I know, so why should you are right! Well, I'm not asking you to care. I'm just telling a story. Anyway, so that's when she walks in. I'm bent over picking up the broken pieces of the plaque when I look between my legs to see the most gorgeous pair of gams I'd ever laid eyes on. I'd always had a thing fr Asian gals, I got a whole drawer full of Asian porn in my office to prove it. I guess who ever cleans out my office can have it now. She looked Thai or maybe from Hong Kong. Thick full lips like that actress, John Voight's daughter. Her skin was flawless not a mark or a mole on her whole body, or at least what was showing which was a lot. She was wearing this short black dress cut real low in the back and the front. and this wide brim hat like she was straight out of some forties picture. Although I'm a P.I. I was never really into that Bogart stuff. I was more in to Bruce Lee. Obviously.

"What can I do for you miss"I barely spit out trying in vain not to stair at her chest. Which was small but perfect. As was her smell a perfume that I had never smelled before, probably nothing we get over here.

"I need your help!", she said.

"What's the matter you're husband running around on a you? If so you can even the score with me right now. I won't mind I assure you." I tried to laugh at the end just in case she was offended. She didn't even flinch.

"No. Nothing like that. I need you to locate an item that belongs to me."

"I don't do that." Missing items are a matter for the police. Usually when someone come in with that kind of request it's because their trying to recover something they stole first. "Sorry miss, I'm not that kind of Dick. I do divorce cases, cheating spouses that kind of thing." I know it's sad but what do you expect. The kind of man who spend his time following people around and digging through their garbage isn't the type to have good hygiene or a lot of friends and the kind of man that loses all his money gambling, drinking and buying cheap hookers isn't the type to go running rescue missions for some lady just because she's the hottest thing to ever walk into his life. Though she plead ed with me some more, said she couldn't involve the cops because then her old man would know she lost the thing. And with his temper he'd probably kill her before he called the cops. Say's it's a real rare piece of Chinese Art. A Golden Monkey.
She even knows the jerks that swiped it. Some young gigolo she was dipping out with when her old man wasn't looking. He's due back in town in a few days and she needs the Monkey back in the house before he returns. Now normally I would pass on something this outrageous. The whole case reeked of trouble from that first moment. But if you could just lay eyes on this broad, you'd be laying here in a pool of your own blood too. Or maybe not. You might be a little smarter than me. I poured us a each a drink of some cheap rum I had in my desk and told her I had to think about it. She didn't want a drink but she pulled out a stack of money and put it on the desk instead. Five Grand she said. There would be another five when I brought her back the monkey. I downed her drink right after mine and picked up the cash. Five grand is a whole other story. Big bills and a beauty too I didn't have to think about it for long. I took the case and sealed my fate.


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Listening to: In The Hidden Places - The Mountain Goats
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