{"id":35247,"date":"2026-05-27T07:51:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=35247"},"modified":"2026-05-26T18:14:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T23:14:46","slug":"thinking-about-gary-coleman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/thinking-about-gary-coleman\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking About Gary Coleman"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know why I was thinking of Gary Coleman, specifically his movies<\/em>, recently. Perhaps it was one of those things that came to mind in the middle of the night, when I tried to enumerate them in the darkness in the hours between sleep.<\/p>\n

I mean, we know him from Diff’rent Strokes<\/em> mostly. I remember those days, when I was a kid and thinking I was just like Arnold Jackson except I was white, the older brother, and I didn’t get adopted into a high rise apartment in New York. But otherwise I was the same kid.<\/p>\n

The crossover events with other television shows, where Arnold Jackson showed up. Heck, I probably saw him most recently in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century<\/em> when I watched the DVD series…. Gott in Himmel<\/em>, I was watching it in 2004<\/a> and I recounted my progress in a series of blog posts 22 years ago. Heck’s pecs, he has run for governor of California in the interim. And died.<\/p>\n

But, no, I was thinking about the movies and how I saw them on television in the day. On the Right Track<\/em> (1981), a movie theater film. The Kid With The Broken Halo<\/em> (1982) which was the basis for a brief cartoon when I was watching cartoons on Saturday mornings. The Kid with the 200 IQ<\/em> (1983). The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins<\/em> (1984). The dramatic turn as the firebug in Playing with Fire<\/em> (1985). I can still see scenes from these films or their promos in my mind; shining shoes and crawling in a bus station locker in On the Right Track<\/em> and flickering firelight on his face for Playing with Fire<\/em>. I know I’ve seen these films; I’m less sure of The Kid from Left Field<\/em> (1979), Scout’s Honor<\/em> (1980), and Jimmy the Kid<\/em> (1982), but…. Maybe? I mean, he was relatively everywhere in those years.<\/p>\n

Maybe the films weren’t on heavy rotation on television in those days–I seem to recall them being on television as the movie of the week in prime time and a major event, such as things were when we had only three networks, PBS, two UHF stations, no cable to speak of. But I don’t remember seeing them available on home video, which was fairly new at the time. I guess some things are available–Ebay indicates you can find some of them on VHS and Betamax (man, I wish I’d kept the one I’d come across in my Ebay peddling days), but, day-um<\/em> are they expensive. I will keep my eyes open specifically for them when I’m out and about.<\/p>\n

And should I find one and pop it into a player, I do not doubt that 40+ years will fall off of me like autumn leaves for a little under two hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know why I was thinking of Gary Coleman, specifically his movies, recently. Perhaps it was one of those things that came to mind in the middle of the night, when I tried to enumerate them in the darkness in the hours between sleep. I mean, we know him from Diff’rent Strokes mostly. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35248,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35247\/revisions\/35248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}