Looking back at the blog entry I wrote about The Two Coreys in the summer of 2007, I guess the news of Corey Haim’s death should not have come as a surprise. But it did. Somehow I always assumed that the kids I watched onscreen would grow up to be okay, and every time I learn that a once-promising life has gone off the rails, it evokes a combination of shock and disappointment. On some level it always drives home the fact that the expectations and ideals we had as children are fragile and fallible. Like so many things in life, this simply should not have turned out this way.
At age twelve (in 1990), did I anticipate things ending this way for Corey Haim? I did not. In fact, at age twelve, my friend and I shifted from playing Barbies to writing “life stories”. They were basically an extended game of M.A.S.H., wherein you’d write your BFF an absurd future featuring every boy she’d ever had a crush on. We’d torture each other with marriages to Hollywood heartthrobs that resulted in scores of absurdly named children and ended in a comically bitter divorce or an absurd death. "Ha ha! I’ll let you have your Tom Cruise, but *this* is how it turns out!" The funny thing is that the one happy ending I wrote involved Corey Haim. After the usual string of mishaps, I had my friend (aged forty-six in the story) marry a fifty year old Corey Haim, adopt a pile of kids, and live happily ever after. At the time, I literally could not imagine anything going wrong in a marriage to Corey Haim. He would be endlessly sweet, funny, and even-tempered. He would make movies forever. It would be perfect. If you were a tween in the late Eighties and early Nineties, then you understand that a little piece of perfect died with him. He was part of our dreams.
Regardless of where life took him, Corey Haim’s talent is undeniable. Even his earliest performances reveal the pathos and vulnerability that made him so endearing and relatable. He was funny and cute, genuine and real. Had he not possessed these qualities himself, he never would have been able to bring them to the screen.
If you never knew what the fuss was all about, or if you would simply like to remember Corey as he was, I would recommend checking out Murphy’s Romance and Silver Bullet, two 1985 films that hinted at great things to come. Just one year later, he would bring Lucas to life in a performance that any veteran actor would be pleased to call their own. The Lost Boys followed in 1987 -
flat out one of the best things to come out of the Eighties.
Things would drift downhill after that point, but Haim’s place in film history was secure. For the roles he gave us as a child and a teen, he will be remembered with love and affection.
It seems as though the sad news out of Hollywood is neverending these days. Today we say goodbye to Merlin Olsen, better known to some of us as Jonathan Garvey on Little House on the Prairie. Olsen died at the age of 69, of complications of mesothelioma, a form of cancer.
Like Garvey's friend Pa Ingalls on the show, played by the late Michael Landon, and like Dan Haggerty's Grizzly Adams, from the same late-70s/early 80s TV era, Olsen's character of Jonathan Garvey was both an inarguable man's man, yet was a gentle, kind, and thoughtful person. He wasn't afraid to get teary eyed when the kids had to put a wounded animal down, or if someone died in fire (those kinds of things seemed to happen every week on these shows). He could make the tough decisions, build a house with his bare hands, and hug a child. These shows seemed to have such a nice moral center without being preachy, and even if I had met Merlin Olsen as an adult, I probably would have wanted to give him a huge hug, just like I did when I met Dan Haggerty a few years ago.
It just feels like another friend from childhood has passed away, and I know I'll miss knowing that this gentle giant is out there, somewhere, helping children and small woodland creatures:
If you grew up watching Growing Pains, then the news of Andrew Koenig's death probably hit home. It was like discovering that an old schoolmate or a kid from the neighborhood had died - someone you didn't necessarily keep in touch with, but whom you assumed was still young and vital and thriving. I can't say that I ever lost sleep wondering what Mike Seaver's pal Boner was up to these days, mainly because in my mind he remained locked in a sitcom world where the Seavers themselves still live and breathe. I think I was as stunned to realize that he was an actor with a real life as I was to hear that he was missing. The fact that he disappeared in Vancouver only made it weirder, because the Olympics had dropped the city into our living rooms. I had friends in the area for the games (including Linda of Moviepie), and suddenly the world seemed very small. How had Boner emerged from a 1980's sitcom and become a face on a MISSING poster on a telephone pole?
(Photo taken February 22, 2010 in Vancouver, BC, Canada)
Would his life have taken the same path if he had known how many of us still held a place for him in our hearts? It's a question we will never be able to answer. The most we can do at this point is savor our memories. I spent yesterday afternoon trying to find the Growing Pains episode where Mike sneaks out of town and Boner takes his place at home in an attempt to fool Mike's parents. Poor Boner spends most of the day shoveling snow in the driveway (in a ski mask), but runs into trouble when Mrs. Seaver thoughtfully brings him a cup of cocoa. How to sip it without revealing his face? How to put her off without seeming rude? Boner drinks it *through* the mask. Though I was only able to stream the episode from a Chinese site, it's all there:
Looking back at the 
