Corey Ian Haim

Back in 2001, my second year in Korea, the hagwon that I had recently signed a one-year contract with paid me up front to stay, for one week, in a love motel of my choosing in Sinchon. That love motel was the Orange. I wonder if it's still around.

The me of 2001 being much like the me of 2010 (at least habitually), my first night I hit up Family Mart for some domestic beer (remember when convenience stores in Korea sold beer only in glass bottles?), sandwiches (remember when Korean convenience stores used to sell tuna sandwiches?), and cigarettes (I used to smoke This back then; I recall they were approximately 200 won a pack, but my memory of the time -- much like Bill Denbrough's memory of the horror which plagued Derry -- has grown foggier each passing year, so maybe that's incorrect).

Korean love motels in 2001 being nothing like Korean love motels in 2010, there wasn't much to do in my room. Nowadays they have wall-mounted plasma/LCD televisions, PCs with free Internet access, and hot tubs; back then, though, the perks were a lot less grandiose. My room at the Orange had all the simple amenities one staying at a love motel in Korea in 2001 could expect: a comfy, double-size bed; a small refrigerator; a nightstand with hair dryer, hairbrush, comb, hairspray, hair gel, and mosquito repellent; and a 27-inch LG TV/VCR combo.

After my first bottle of Hite and an episode of Standby Cue, I was bored to shit, and it was only seven o'clock, so I ventured into the hallway to peruse the motel's selection of VHS tapes. The titles could easily be categorized thusly: softcore porn and Dolph Lundgren. Since the TV in my room already had two "porn" channels, I found the former category redundant, the latter distasteful. Much has been written about Korea's insensitivity vis a vis Nazi symbolism, but I don't recall ever hearing or reading anyone decry the peninsula's past fascination with Dolph Lundgren, a grave cultural misunderstanding in my books. The man killed Apollo Creed!

Crouching on my haunches, I delved further into the Orange's limited, shitty library of films. And that's when I saw, on the bottom shelf, a movie titled Never Too Late (1997). It stars Olympia Dukakis and Cloris Leachman, but what caught my eye was that it featured Corey Haim. Us 80s kids held -- and still hold -- Haim dear in our hearts, for reasons perhaps indefinable, inexplicable. He was Sam in The Lost Boys! An adolescent kid defeating vampires and saving his family! He was also Les Anderson in License to Drive, which is by no means a good movie, but was, for a kid my age, empowering. I would soon discover the allure of pornography and illicit substances, but back then the Coreys automobile adventure hooked me the same way Mr. Toad must have felt when he first espied a motor car.

Never Too Late it was, for nostalgia if nothing else. A Canadian production, the film is dull in a made-for-Lifetime sort of way. I vaguely remember the plot (something about a Shakespeare play to raise funds for something), but what I do remember is Corey Haim, mohawked and tatooed, slurring his way through both the movie and the Shakespearean play within the movie. My two thoughts were: South Korea is where direct-to-video Corey Haim* movies go to die and Olympia Dukakis is still alive?

In the years following, I sometimes wondered what Haim was up to, whether he had righted his course or fallen off the map completely. In this hallowed blog's earliest days, I posted a video (which has -- as per the unreliable nature of the Internet -- since disappeared) showing Haim at a weight far more rotund than his fans or admirerers expected. Yet there was no malice. Websites such as Defamer and TMZ should accept blame for being -- as per their nature -- overly snarky and, in my best Church Lady voice, downright mean when it comes to kicking a person when he's down**, but that was never my intention. I wanted Haim to pull out of his funk. I think we all did. (At least I hope so.)

He didn't. Unless you live in Ilsan, you probably know that by now. Corey Haim died at home on March 10 of an apparent overdose. He was 38 years old.

Tragic? Not really. Unexpected? Not at all. Sad? Yes. It's always sad when a mother loses her son, and it's especially saddening when one of a decade's defining idols passes. For a time, Corey Haim in a film meant something. Something special.

I guess you had to be there.

The Orange was where a direct-to-video Corey Haim movie went to die, but Psychedelic Kimchi is where memories last forever, and in the case of Corey Haim, we will always remember.

Fondly.


* -- and Dolph Lundgren, and Steven Seagal, and Jean-Claude Van Damme before he starred in the superlative JCVD --

** I hope this culture of cynical hatred-jealousy is a thing of the past when I become a bestselling author in 2031. Because, if I read an Internet comment comparing my magnum opus to the gum stuck in a Ford Taurus's front tire track, I just might go on a knifing spree in the name of literature. Call it a Harper Leehad. Arise, infidels, so that I may stabeth thee!