“City of Toronto Covering Corey’s Funeral” read the online story posted by Access Hollywood on Saturday night, picked up Sunday afternoon by People, then quickly followed by a terse non-denial by Kevin Sack of the city’s Strategic Communications office. What could possibly compel those seeking help for funeral costs from the Employment and Social Services department to blab about how destitute they are? Perhaps one too many inquiries from show business media, reaching Corey Haim’s mother Judy at a time when she was trying to figure out what to do — time was ticking away to give her former child star son a proper Jewish burial when it involved flying his body from the Los Angeles coroner’s office back to Toronto. It’s also entirely plausible that Haim, who spent the past decade or so renting a pad at Yonge and Eglinton, telling any stranger who’d listen about how broke he was, and even reportedly applying for retail jobs — before recently returning to Hollywood, not necessarily forever — was a beneficiary of the Ontario Disability Support Program, which entitles him to this benefit with minimal hassle, save for telling the funeral home that social assistance was being received by the deceased. (The assets of surviving family members are not audited in any such situation.) Concurrently, however, Startifacts.com, the tacky-looking memorabilia eBay broker that helped Haim generate a few bucks in the past, publicly pledged to pitch in $20,000. Continue Reading

In the 2001 episode of E! True Hollywood Story where the depth of his substance abuses, dating back to when he left Toronto as a teen to star in movies like Lucas, came to light when his drug-addled incoherence was captured during one infamous interview session. Corey Haim’s father reinforced the reason why he was willing to back his son returning to the movie business that enabled him after his initial teenage success: when your main goal in life is to win an Academy Award, there was no other way he was going to get it. Getting a part in a film capable of being nominated might have helped, of course, but by then the kind of big-screen comedy where his cameo services were in demand was Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star — and then the A&E train wreck reality show The Two Coreys, centered on a real-life reunion with similarly troubled Corey Feldman, co-stars of four theatrical releases culminating in a threesome with Nicole Eggert in 1992’s Blown Away, then 1995’s straight-to-video sequel Dream a Little Dream 2. These are the choices that lead, not to winning an Oscar, but selling one’s extracted molar on eBay. But the kid kept on trying, right up until his death today of an accidental overdose. Haim’s attempt to ride a comeback trail actually started over 10 years ago, though: Universal Groove, a Montreal indie film set in the rave scene of 1999, touted as Haim’s first grown-up breakthrough, was left unreleased until 2007 — when it was issued to cash in on The Two Coreys, with the wacky claim that its stolen footage had to be reconstructed from clips found on the internet. So, maybe he just needed a better agent? Continue Reading

“If Justin Bieber is Coming To Rosedale, Then Let’s See Him Play ‘Giant Steps’“ is the name of a Facebook group started over the weekend — not referring to Rosedale the high-class neighbourhood, where the 16-year-old pop star and his 35-year-old mom can afford real estate until his belated puberty kicks in, but Rosedale Heights School of the Arts. Suggesting that their potential celebrity classmate needs to show off his John Coltrane chops as part of a hazing ritual to prove he can transcend Auto-Tune sounds like a script ready to be written by a 21st century John Hughes. But those writing on the group’s wall are generally put off by the snobbery, like this recent graduate: “The fact that not only is it believed he must meet a standard, but that the standard set by this group is one of the most difficult jazz standards ever written is an act of such snobbery that I have to consciously restrain myself from pressing capslock and virtually screaming for a page and a half. If this is how you believe Rosedale students SHOULD be judged, then let’s see you play ‘Giant Steps’.” Continue Reading

Sarah Palin stormed into Canada Saturday, speaking to 1,200 people who paid between $150 and $200 each to fill the Palomino Room of the BMO Centre in Calgary, another coup for tinePublic — the somewhat mysterious company that has repeatedly brought the likes of Bill Clinton to Toronto, just by being persistent. Now questions are being raised about the decision of taxpayer-funded public utility Enmax to co-sponsor the event, although Palin did touch on the topics of clean and renewable energy, they guess? “The problem was that Palin clued into the audience’s unconditional agreement with her worldview pretty quickly,” surmised Colby Cosh of Maclean’s, “and grew impatient; as fast as she was speeding through the statistics and the chuck-on-the-shoulder good-for-yous for Canada, many of us probably would have preferred it ten times faster.” Alberta is just Alaska without the igloos, after all. A blogger who paid to be there deemed it “uneventful” — the sycophantic Senator Pamela Wallin appeared to ask a few questions, only to give the former Republican vice-presidential candidate more opportunities to cite “the common sense values” of Ronald Reagan. Reagan, of course, was never caught writing notes on his hand, something Wallin teased Palin about. Her response was a quotation from Isaiah 49:16: “Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.” But, as Kevin Libin notes in the National Post, an act calling global warming “snake oil” wouldn’t likely play in any other Canadian city. Ann Coulter, however, has the guts to first visit London and Ottawa later this month — all the better to tell Calgarians how cowardly those Ontario towns are.