Funding Burials Through eBay

In case you haven't heard, Corey Haim is dead. In case you were like me and already thought that he was dead, he wasn't. He is now, but it's new dead, not old dead. But dead is dead. And drug addicts are drug addicts. A lot of them end up in that dead is dead category. What are you going to do? (Uhhh....stop doing drugs? Now there's an idea!)

Apparently, Mr. Haim's situation was that, because he was a difficult drug addict to work with (hard to do good work when you're not there, so I've heard) he didn't have a lot of offers pouring in. And without offers, you're without work. And when you're without work, you're without money. Now, when you die, as crazy as this may seem, folks want you to pay money to them in order to bury you. That's hard to do when you don't have any money. And it's really hard to do when you're dead. That's why the whole 'paying for your funeral thing' is left up to those who didn't ruin their lives by ingesting so many drugs that it eventually and likely played a part in their demise in a downtown LA apartment building when they were 38. (By the way, a bit of useless trivia for you: Singer and woman kidnapper Rick James died in the same apartment building whenever it was that he met his predictable demise.)

Turns out, however, that Corey Haim's mother didn't have any money either. She has apparently been battling cancer. Cancer makes it hard to work. I don't have a problem with that. (Nice job, Corey. Couldn't curtail your drug usage to the point where you wouldn't have croaked and where your cancer riddled mother wouldn't have had to deal with the death of her son. Man, Corey Feldman was right. You were just a stand up guy.) What I have a problem with is how she was raising money for her son's funeral. I mean, maybe there's something that is not weird about selling your son's belongings on eBay for funeral change, but I don't know what that something would be.

That's right. She was selling his belongings on eBay. According to the folks over there at Associated Content (they're "The people's media company" doncha know?) "...most of Haim's personal belongings are being sold on eBay in order to raise money for the funeral." Now, I don't know if I was just late to the party or what, but I while there were plenty of Corey Haim items for sale on eBay (mostly autographed photos and the odd, odd memorial T-shirts that you can whip up 45 seconds after someone dies), I didn't find a lot that were his personal belongings. I did find this lovely dress shirt which sold for $99. Behold!

And I also found this Corey Haim toothbrush with a certificate of authenticity! So that's something! Behold!

Huh. The toothbrush, to my surprise, actually has one bid in on it and the bid is for $250! Who buys Corey Haim's toothbrush for $250? What are you going to do with that? See, I get buying memorabilia, but I prefer it to be relevant to the person that owned it. I mean, I would totally buy Elvis Presley's empty prescription drug bottles. Now THAT is memorabilia. I wouldn't go as seedy as to buy Bill Clinton's cigar box or anything like that. But I'd buy Whitney Houston's crack pipe. That'd be somethin'! David Carradine's belt? Sold! What can I say? I like a good conversation piece.

Side note: The personal items like the shirt are being auctioned off by a one Scott Schwartz. Apparently, the family gave the items to him to put on eBay, so it's not like he's doing it just to make money off of Corey Haim's boxer shorts or anything like that. He was a friend of Corey's. And if the name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps when I mention that he was the kid in the movie A Christmas Story who got his tongue frozen stuck on the flagpole. There's a claim to fame for you! You're known as "Tongue on the Flagpole" guy AND the merchant auctioning off Corey's Haim's dress pants on eBay. That's a job title if I've ever heard of one.

I have two points with all of this. The first point goes back to the absolutely reprehensible Corey Feldman. Dude, if you knew that your friend died broke, what say you kick in a bit and make it so that it doesn't go public, all right? If he was "your friend" and you want him to be remembered as "a legend" (he wasn't a legend, by the way, so that was never going to happen, I was just saying), what say you see if you can scrounge up some cash for his funeral and his burial? What say you ask the addle brained Larry King (whose show you're always on when one of your past cohorts kicks it)? Why don't you ask him to pony up some cash for this guy's funeral? Why don't you do anything besides shoving your face behind every microphone out there and saying how much you loved him, while at the same time, someone is auctioning his tube socks on eBay? What is wrong with you?

And my second point is more of just a point of contention. I understand that caskets and burials are expensive. I know that very well. But you know, there is an option. There is cremation. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper. Don't get me wrong. If you are planning on just burying someone in a casket and then you find out you're going to be going to cremation route, it's a bit tough to swallow at first. I don't know why. They're just as dead either way. What I'm saying is that it's not like there aren't any options if you don't have the cash for a casket. When my Dad died, I had no idea he wanted to be cremated. And learning of that desire was not exactly the easiest thing I've ever had to swallow. But the cremation by the Neptune Society was about a thousand dollars (and I'm in the heart of ridiculously expensive Silicon Valley, so don't be giving me any crap about my location or anything like that). We put him in a beautiful cherry wood container with a coastal scene engraved on it along with his name and everything for another three hundred bucks. (There was no way I was going with the stock, flimsy, fake brass container for $35!) We bought a plot for cremains (yes, that's what they're called and it oogs me out, too) in an awesome little cemetery in a tiny coastal town with massive pine trees everywhere and a view of a small ravine for $750. AND you're allowed to stack FOUR cremains in that thing! So technically, his portion of the plot was only $187.50! My Dad loved a good deal. I'm sure he was happy with it all.

So there are options. For a little over two grand, my Dad got the best burial I could have wanted for him. But beforehand, I wouldn't have known that I would have wanted that. In the end, it's all the same. He's exactly where he would have been no matter how we did it. And now he's where he is at a fraction of the cost of a full on casketed burial. I guess I'm just a little irritated that Corey Haim being penniless at death means that there needs to be thousands and thousands (the family is estimating twenty grand, by the way) of dollars raised for his burial. That's not what needs to happen. People need to stop acting like it does.

I just got done looking at a bunch of photos on Corey Haim's website. (Yes! He had a website!) Most of them were of him looking gaunt and strung out. You know, like a drug addict. But there were a bunch of them from when he was younger and before the drugs either had grabbed hold of him or before they had taken their toll. And I realize that the guy in those photos is the son that his mother lost. I'm sarcastic, I'm not heartless. My sincere condolences go out to his mom. Outliving your child does not sound like anything that anyone should have to go through. If you have a problem with whatever substance you choose, do everyone a favor and get off your drugs, try thinking about someone other than yourself for a change and edge yourself closer to making sure that you don't put your parents in the position that Corey Haim put his parents.

Another "Celebrity" Drug Death

Look, I've never in my life formed an opinion about Corey Feldman. Ever. But I think that I kind of knew that I was going to form one when I saw him at Michael Jackson's memorial service...dressed like Michael Jackson. Who does that? I've been to plenty of funerals in my time and never once have I gone to one where the attendees were dressed as the deceased. Never! Not once! You know why? Because it's weird. That is correct.

When Michael Jackson died, suddenly everything turned into the "Corey Feldman Media Tour". He did interviews with everyone that would listen to him, and given the state of the media these days, that pretty much included all of the media. He seems pretty fond of going on Larry King Live for some reason. Maybe it's because Larry isn't exactly at what I would call the top of his game anymore. (I'm assuming Larry knows that he's IN a studio and that it's the year 2010, but other than that, it's really hard to say.) And now that his buddy Corey Haim has met a sad, but fairly predictable, early demise, I'm expecting the Corey Feldman Media Tour to pick up steam and start moving full speed ahead.

I'll get back to Larry King in a moment. First, I'd like to present to you the slightly strange public statement that Corey Feldman issued in the wake of his friend's death. Now, Feldman and Haim had been best friends at various points in their lives. It was due to Haim's constant/frequent drug use and the sort of behavior that results from constant/frequent drug use which produced a strain on the relationship of these two former child stars. It's unclear exactly how close the two were at the time of Haim's death yesterday morning. But Feldman isn't going to let a little distance between friends come between him and a little bit of free publicity for himself. Here's his statement that he released after learned of Mr. Haim's death (which drugs likely played a part in).

"I was awakened at 8:30 this morning by my brother and sister knocking on my bedroom door. They informed me of the loss of my brother Corey Haim. My eyes weren't even open all the way when the tears started streaming down my face. I am so sorry for Corey, his mother Judy, his family, my family, all of our fans, and of course my son who I will have to find a way to explain this to when he gets home from school. This is a tragic loss of a wonderful, beautiful, tormented soul, who will always be my brother, family, and best friend. We must all take this as a lesson in how we treat the people we share this world with while they are still here to make a difference. Please respect our families as we struggle and grieve through this difficult time. I hope the art Corey has left behind will be remembered as the passion of that for which he truly lived."

OK, I don't know about you, but I found that a rather odd statement to make. And there was actually a part of it that made me a little mad. the part about "We must all take this as a lesson in how we treat the people we share this world with while they are still here to make a difference." Um, is he implying that Mr. Haim was mistreated during his time on this earth? Look, when you're a drug addict and you act like a drug addict, it's really not the people who are not drug addicts who need the lecture on how they're treating the drug addict, you know? It's not like the drug addicts are treating the non-drug addicts with the utmost respect all of the time. In case you were unaware, Mr. Feldman, drug addicts are rarely concerned about the lives of others. No, they're a little self-centered. But I digress. (Whoops. Gee, do you think a little bit of reality seeped in there, folks? I think it might have. Carry on.)

So, Mr. Feldman was on Larry King Live where he made some interesting statements. One of the things that he said which stood out to me was "Where were all these people to lend a handout, to reach out ot him and say, you're a legend, you're an amazingly talented wonderful person who's never really gone out of his way to hurt anyone, other than himself." Um, OK, first things first. "A legend"? Dude, Corey Haim might have been a lot of things, but he certainly wasn't a legend. I don't know that I can give you the exact formula for what makes a legend, but it doesn't include Corey Haim. He's not a legend.

Now let me go after the rest of that statement. He asks where everyone was. Does he not know? I wasn't around, but I can tell him. They were there. They were right there. They offered all of their support. They offered all of their love. They offered all of their time. And Corey Haim chose drugs instead, time after time after time. It gets old after a while. It gets really old. And just because people don't come around anymore, it doesn't mean that they don't care about you any more. A lot of the time it just means that they can't take you anymore. Try coming around them when you're all cleaned up and not high on whatever it is that you prefer to get high on. They'll be there for you. They'll do more than that. They'll welcome you in and they'll ask you back. But not when you're a disaster waiting to happen. No one wants to stick around to see that.

Mr. Feldman also remarked, "In this entertainment industry, in Hollywood, we build people up as children, we put them on pedestals, and then, when we decide they're not marketable anymore, we walk away from them." While I won't disagree with the meat of that statement, I don't see anything in there about how the industry walks away from them with a bag of drugs in their hands. You know, there are plenty of child stars who did not end up as tormented adults. I haven't done a study, nor have I even attempted to count and/or quantify that statement. But since when did all of this guy's problems become everyone else's fault?

While on his self-publicity stunt via a friend's death on Larry King, Feldman, in continuing to enable the late Mr. Haim, said, "Speaking from personal experience, Feldman said that, while he got himself cleaned up after struggling with drugs, his Two Coreys counterpart had a harder time, and by the time he was ready to face life sober again, "there was no one there to pull him up." Well, that explains it. Look, if you're on drugs and you want to get off of drugs, you know who you have to have help you? No one but yourself. You have to find that thing, that reason, that drive that is only deep within you that will motivate you to do what you have to do. You can't expect other people to be there for you. You can't expect other people to help you. There are some things in this life, no matter how much we might not like it, that we have to do on our own and without any help from anyone else. Don't get me wrong. Having people support you is a huge help whenever you're trying to overcome any obstacle. But you can't make your success contingent upon who is or who isn't waiting for you at the finish line.

In closing with Larry King, Feldman said that "...funeral plans haven't been made yet but that he and Haim's family "want to plan a sizable memorial. I would like to see Hollywood pay their respects." Define "Hollywood", Corey. There will be folks there, but I don't know if "Hollywood", in its entirety, is going to show up. But even if "Hollywood" did show up, I doubt that they're going to be there in the capacity that Mr. Feldman expressed that they be, which was him saying "Hopefully he's going to be remembered as a beautiful, funny, enigmatic character who brought nothing but life and lights and entertainment and art to all of our lives." Yeah, that's not going to happen. He's going to be remembered as a good guy who couldn't pull himself away from the drugs long enough to save his own life. He'll be remembered as yet another Hollywood actor who died way too young from drugs. You can't glorify someone's life when it ends with an early death which was likely caused by drug use. You just can't.

Hopefully, this will be the last that we see of Mr. Feldman for a while. And really, it seems that all it will take for that to happen is for people that he knows to not die. Hang in there, guys! You can do it!