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Nothing Personal
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"What's that? Is it Japanimation?" Harley asked me when I brought the tape home.

"No, it's 'Goonies.'"

"What's 'Goonies'?"

"It's an adventure movie. A bunch of kids, without their parents, go on a wild adventure and end up saving the town from the greedy old bad guy. You're gonna love it."

"We want to watch Pok ... "

"Shut your pie hole, sit down and watch 'Goonies' and enjoy it. Or you're going straight to bed!"

"But it's only 7:15 ..."

"What did I say about your pie hole?"

Needless to say, momma knows best. The kids were totally enthralled with the story, identified with the characters, laughed their asses off at the funny parts. They loved "Goonies," as I had when I was their age. But watching it again as an adult was a whole 'nother experience for me. The relationship between Chunk and Sloth made me weep. The line that my sister Liz and I had adopted as our mantra in our preteen years still resonated: "I'm gonna take care of ya ... Because I love ya."

Simple enough, but coming from Chunk's face, anything but ordinary. Right, good, cryptic, revealing, tender, true. I said to myself, Now that's acting. Where is this guy? Does he live in New York? Does he drink? If so, maybe I'll run into him at a bar or something.

After rewatching my favorite Chunk scenes (ice cream on the spoon, tied to the chair screaming and jumping, telling the Fratellis about the time he fake-puked in the movie theater, to name a few) obsessively for the next four days, I was ready to proclaim: I am a born-again Chunk fan!

Liz and I were in the midst of thinking about procrastinating about the possibility of maybe throwing a New Year's Eve-Armageddon party. We were drinking beer and talking about who we would want at the party, our wish list. Chunk came up. Yes. That would be major. Chunk at our party on what may or may not be the last moment of Earth's existence: the stroke of midnight, Jan. 1, 2000.

That sealed the deal. We were having a fucking party. Mission: Get Chunk there. But first, Where is he? What's his name, first of all? And is he still with us? He may have gone the way of River Phoenix or, worse still, Corey Feldman or Haim. I didn't know what to expect. The first thing I did was log onto a bunch of "Goonies" sites. I e-mailed the sites' webmasters inquiring as to the whereabouts of Chunk. Several of the kind dweebs got back to me promptly with limited information:

"Jeff B. Cohen, the actor who played Chunk in 'Goonies,' may be working in computers in Silicon Valley."

" ... may be getting back in the movie business."

" ... word has it he was the president of his class at UC-Berkeley a couple years back."

Then I sat back and waited.

During the waiting, Liz and I made invitations, rented out New Jeannie's OK bar on Mulberry Street, the proprietor of which promised all-you-can-eat steamy buns; we booked the Alphabet City Idols to play on the karaoke stage; bought cases of champagne and many pairs of those plastic glasses where your eyeballs pop through the first two zeros of the figure 2000.

Dec. 28: Still no word from Jeff B. Cohen.

Liz said, "He's dissing us, Norah."

He probably never got the invite. Maybe he never really went to UC-Berkeley. Or the alumni whore decided I was a psycho and never forwarded it to him. Or maybe, maybe, he's making the mistake of fancying himself too cool to respond to the likes of a troll such as I. Hubris. That could be it. All these thoughts milling about in my very spacious brainal area, while I checked my voice mail every four minutes.

Dec. 29: Voice mail; I enter my password. "You have one new message. To listen to your message, press ..."

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

"Hi, Norah and Elizabeth, this is Jeff Cohen."

No fucking way! Holy Christ on a crutch! Jesus tits! Remember when you were a kid, did anyone ever tell you that if you were to burp, fart, cough and sneeze at the same time, you'd die? Well that's what I felt like. Like that.

I screamed: "Chunk called me!! Chunk called me!!"

I called Liz at work.

"Hello?"

"Chunk just fucking left a message on the fucking voice mail!"

"What?"

Next page | I dressed as Hooker Spice. My sister plunged her tongue down the throat of Joseph Dangerhausen