Tuesday, September 05, 2006

I was reading a wikipedia piece on Gary Coleman (don't ask). Whoo hoo, to my delight, his life's even more bizarre than I imagined. Some facts—I already knew some of them and so do you, but some things just bear repeating:

-he lives in Utah now.

-in 2001, he was employed as a shopping mall security guard in the Los Angeles area.

-he made an appearance on E's short-lived celebrity dating show where washed up celebrities went on blind dates with regular people

-In 2006, Coleman appeared in a commercial for a cash-advance loan company called CashCall. He ends the commercial by saying, "Pay your bills on time and everyone will love you."

-Coleman appeared in court on November 2, 2000, charged with assault. He was ordered to pay bus driver Tracy Fields $1,665 for hospital bills resulting from a fight. Fields had attempted to get Coleman's autograph while he was shopping for a bulletproof vest in a California mall.[1] Coleman said he felt "threatened by her insistence" and punched her in the head. Coleman was working as a security guard at the time

-Coleman was a candidate for governor in the 2003 California recall election. After Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy, Coleman stated that he would be voting for Schwarzenegger. Coleman placed 8th in a field of 135 candidates, receiving 14,242 votes.

-In 1993, Coleman opened the Gary Coleman Game Parlor, a video game entertainment center, in Fisherman's Village in Marina del Rey, California. The motto of the GCGP was "Our games are easier, so you can play longer". It went out of business in 1994.

-In late 2005 Coleman opened an ice cream shop in Cheyenne, Wyoming, called Short Stuff's frozen treats. He is already making plans to expand his business and hopes that he will be taken seriously in the business world.

-Gary Coleman is a character (not an actor) in the hit 2003 Broadway musical, Avenue Q, which won the 2004 Tony Award for best musical. In the American version of the musical, Coleman is portrayed by actress Natalie Venetia Belcon. (WTF?)

"As with Day-Glo, Rubik's Cube, Valley girls, Care Bears, Mr. T, the Smurfs and other artifacts from the early 1980s, Coleman's popularity coincided with the childhood of a particularly productive generation of internet users, and he is, as of 2005, a minor cult figure."

I think I've found my life's purpose—to be a minor cult figure. Have a nice day. <3<3<3