Latest news with #Pee-wee'sPlayhouse
Eater
25-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- Eater
Our Fave Cult Italian Kitchenware Brand Is On Sale on... Amazon?
I like to think that some of the coolest stuff in my kitchen could star in Fantasia — specifically, this anthropomorphic corkscrew lad and this utterly unique Bauhaus coffee pot by Alessi, the Italian design house that has been steadily populating my home over the years with all kinds of joyous tablewares, serving spoons, and moka pots. They're the kinds of personality-forward, gift-ready items that I typically hunt down in MoMA's gift shop or a slightly intimidating conceptual boutique in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Lo and behold, imagine my surprise when I found a treasure trove of Alessi goods on sale at… Amazon? In case you have been living in a forested hovel (good for you, honestly), Amazon is gearing up to unleash thousands of deals for Prime Day, its annual blowout savings event that will take place from July 8–11 this year with huge markdowns on everything from home tech to pantry items. Your humble Eater shopping stewards (me) have already started sifting through the best early Amazon Prime Day deals, but Alessi's abundance of 20-percent-off-and-above savings on postmodern sugar bowls and pepper mills dreamt up by Ettore Sottsass, founder of the Memphis design group, made me blast off a flurry of group chat texts to my fellow design-obsessed friends about the deals. As a passionate home cook who has been collecting designer trinkets and tools for decades, I know a little Alessi can go a long way in bringing life into a kitchen. The 104-year-old design house was founded by Giovanni Alessi in northern Italy, and was dedicated from the get-go to creating relatively affordable everyday pieces that reconciled whimsical design with functionality; today, it is still a family-operated company with the designer's grandson, Alberto Alessi, serving as president since the 1970s. In a design landscape that is surging with rapid-fire trend cycles, Alessi relies on a stable of hundreds of postmodern designers and points of inspiration that, to paraphrase Alessi, include architecture, playfulness, and a commitment to designing only what you love. All of this is great news for me, because I live for a design house that makes me feel like I live in an elevated version of the Pee-wee's Playhouse set. Let's tuck into the best early Prime Day deals from the brand.
Chicago Tribune
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: You know him as Pee-wee Herman — a new documentary dives into the life of Paul Reubens
Of the very many famous people who admired the late comic actor Paul Reubens' singular creation named Pee-wee Herman — among them Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, film director John Waters, Lily Tomlin, Beverly D'Angelo, Jason Alexander and others — one of the most surprising might be Mike Royko. 'At first, when 'Pee-wee's Playhouse' was brand new, the character annoyed me,' says Royko's eldest son, clinical psychologist, writer and critic David Royko. 'Somehow, he came up when Dad and I were talking, and it shocked me when it turned out that he was a huge fan. Right then, he started imitating Pee-wee, his facial expressions, and, especially, his voice. Pee-wee cracked him up, big time. Dad was the first rabid Pee-wee Herman fan I knew.' Mike Royko knew talent and he knew funny and he was one among millions who were drawn to the bow-tied, suit-wearing, toy-loving man-child with a distinctively high-pitched way of talking, a wild laugh and unbridled enthusiasm that Reubens developed over years before exploding into the national consciousness with an HBO special in 1981 and in films (the hit 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure,' director Tim Burton's first feature film in 1985, and the less successful 'Big Top Pee-wee' in 1987) and on frequent appearances on David Letterman's late night shows and in the TV series 'Pee-wee's Playhouse,' which ran Saturday mornings on CBS from 1986 to 1990. We hear from some of his fans and from others who knew Reubens intimately, but mostly from Reubens himself in a compelling, two-part, three-hour-long HBO documentary, 'Pee-wee as Himself.' The film is the work of Matt Wolf, who spent many years wooing Reubens and four years making the movie. As Wolf has written, 'For years, my dream documentary subject was Paul Reubens. Throughout my childhood, a Pee-wee pull-string doll dangled above my bed, and I'd stare at it every night before falling asleep.' What he wanted to create was a portrait of an artist, and that is what we get, but we also meet a complicated man who hid parts of himself behind the playful Pee-wee. We go to Sarasota, Florida, where Reubens was born and raised, and influenced by the characters of the Ringling Bros. circus that made the town its home base. His parents, Judy and Milton, seem to be fine and supportive folks, if the dad was a bit rough around the edges. A modestly successful child actor in regional theater Reubens earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clara, becoming that rare breed of conceptual artist who also craves fame. Naturally it was off to Los Angeles and his years with the Groundlings, the noted Los Angeles-based improv group, where he became friends, for a time, with future star 'Saturday Night Live' star Phil Hartman, and where Pee-wee came to life. His first paying performance as Pee-wee came, of all odd places, on 'The Dating Game.' He was picked and stardom came fast over the next decade. But it also came crashing down in the wake of his 1991 arrest in an adult movie theater in Florida and a charge of indecent exposure. He said the charge was false but pleaded no contest. Still, the headlines were so garish, the late night jokes so intense that CBS felt compelled to pull episodes of 'Playhouse.' Though he did manage to work as a voice-over artist and sometime TV guest, in 2002 he was arrested on charges of child pornography, stemming from his vast collection of vintage erotica. The charges were later dropped, but still remained tied to his fame as a kids' TV star. He does not talk about either of these incidents at any length in the film, but there is enough in the more than 1,000 hours of archival film and interviews with his family and friends to provide ample evidence that he was unfairly victimized. Much of the film's 40-hour interview segments with Ruebens were filmed in his sprawling mid-century Los Angeles house jammed with archives and collectibles. There are indeed some awkward moments between Reubens and Wolf, though one surely senses the filmmaker's affection and admiration for his subject. During these sessions, often tense, Reubens talked publicly for the first time about his sexuality — he was gay — and detailed lovingly his college boyfriend, an artist named Guy. Reubens was a man of many secrets, and the last one is chilling. As Wolf was preparing for one final interview, he, along with the rest of the world, learned on July 30, 2023, that Reubens was dead at 70, the victim of cancer that he had privately battled for six years. He had, however, the day before he died, made a tape recording on which he talked of that 2002 arrest. You will hear him, near the film's end, his voice weak, saying, 'More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was to let people see who I really am and how painful and difficult it was to be labelled something I wasn't. The moment I heard somebody label me as, I'm just going to say it, a pedophile, I knew it was going to change everything moving forward and backwards.' David Royko and his wife Karen loved this documentary. So did I. It is a bit long but worth your time. It punctuates what a grand and influential talent Reubens was and how his greatest creation captured hearts and minds. The movie, the life of a complicated genius, will stay with you for keeps.
Buzz Feed
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Natasha Lyonne On Aging In Hollywood, Cosmetic Work
Natasha Lyonne has been in the public eye for almost all of her life, having bagged her first role at age 6 in the children's TV series Pee-wee's Playhouse. After starring in movies like American Pie and But I'm A Cheerleader, Natasha reached a new level of success when she played Nicky Nichols in the 2013 Netflix series Orange Is The New Black. But it wasn't until fairly recently that Natasha's career really took off. She played the leading character in Netflix's Russian Doll from 2019 to 2022, which earned her three Emmy Award nominations, and she currently stars in the Peacock series Poker Face. This week, Natasha, 46, sat down with Marie Claire for a wide-ranging interview, during which she was asked about her growing opportunities in Hollywood. The journalist noted that despite the 'popular misconceptions about women, aging, and showbiz,' Natasha made it clear that she's gaining more and more recognition as she gets older. 'It's not actually [true] that a woman has less opportunities at a certain age,' she said. 'As someone fully entrenched on that other side of that Maxim magazine I never did, now I have more opportunities than I ever did.' Elsewhere during the interview, Natasha briefly touched on the subject of cosmetic work. Though she didn't explicitly clarify what she has had done, the actor pointedly said, 'Listen, I don't think you're going to find any woman in this town who hasn't had a dermatologist put a laser on their face,' before adding, 'But I've never had anything that made me not be able to go to dinner right after.' She then continued, 'If I could, I would get one of those really poufy upper lips. That's why I'm always overdrawing my upper lip line. I'd probably also get really big boobs and a really big BBL.' You can find Natasha's full Marie Claire interview here.
CNET
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
Pee-wee Herman's Documentary Lets Gen X Reflect on Our Quirky Childhood
Countless memes exist about how Gen X is a tough, often overlooked generation, and a million more about how we're also an apathetic generation (say whatever you want about us, I don't care). The whole "we drank from the hose and biked alone till dark" thing absolutely shaped many kids who grew up fiercely independent and resilient in the 1980s. But we were also one of the first generations to truly be babysat by TV and that also played a huge role in the lives of millions of lawless latchkey kids. It wasn't until I watched Pee-wee as Himself, the new two-part documentary on Max about the life and career of Paul Reubens, (aka Pee-wee Herman), that it hit me just how lucky we were to grow up at a time where a character like Pee-wee existed in the mainstream and the idea that something could be weird -- and embraced for that. Pee-wee's weirdness was obvious and evident in his films and on TV in Pee-wee's Playhouse. Here was this ageless man-child in a gray suit who lived alone, whose prized possession was his bike, who screamed every time a secret word was spoken. My household routinely ran out of Scotch tape as a result of my using it to stretch my face into some grotesque skin mask with an upturned nose, thanks to Pee-wee. The character seemed like someone who got to live out every kid's fantasy life, and that was the initial draw. He was aspirational in his silliness. But what the documentary makes clear is how deliberate Pee-wee's choices were, especially in the creation of his CBS Saturday morning TV show Pee-wee's Playhouse. This was a show that went out of its way to cast actors of color in prominent roles (including Law & Order star S. Epatha Merkerson and Laurence Fishburne, who both appear in the doc), and created an inclusive environment that embraced the unusual and eccentric. Nothing about any of that was by accident. Natasha Lyonne, who appeared on the show as a child, said being on the show "felt like permission to be myself." I'd like to think this permission to embrace what others might not consider "normal" is one reason why our generation identified so much with genres whose names speak volumes: alternative music, indie film, underground comedy. These things already existed, but ours was the generation that labeled them. How many other children's television shows cast androgynous disco star Grace Jones in their Christmas special? (The special also featured appearances from Charo, Joan Rivers, k.d. lang, Cher, Oprah Winfrey and Little Richard, an attempt to create multiple levels of entertainment for several generations. The Muppets did this too in a more vaudevillian-inspired way; Pee-wee took it to a much campier level.) Reubens says in the film, "I wanted kids to learn about being a non-conformist and what non-conformity was ... you can do the opposite of things, you can do whatever you want." Warner Bros. Discovery "I just put a lot of stuff in Pee-wee's Playhouse that I thought, 'Why not?'" he adds. This includes things like Pee-wee dancing in high heels and holding a marriage ceremony between himself and a bowl of fruit salad. (What's more fascinating is that while this stuff was considered offbeat at the time, it wasn't censored and didn't spark backlash the way that it potentially might today.) Pee-wee Herman was a performance art creation by an actor who chose not to ever appear as himself in public until much later in his career. It's because Paul Reubens never allowed anyone to get to know him and his creative process (a fact he expresses regret about in the film), and we didn't know at the time just how intentional and subversive he was being with his work. Reubens died in 2023 while still in the process of finishing interviews for the film and he struggled to relinquish creative control of the doc -- it's bittersweet to see him express his triumphs and regrets in these interviews and not get to see the completed product. I was a Pee-wee-loving kid, but after watching the documentary, I'm grateful that it was finished even in the wake of Reubens' death. It's a necessary bookend to Reubens' career; without it, I don't even know if I would have realized the impact he had on so many of us little weirdos.
Time Out
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Katy Perry's viral, quirky 'Lifetimes' tour has hits—and misses
I saw astronaut Katy Perry kiss the sky… and I liked it? Sorta. Actually, I'm kind of torn on my thoughts after seeing Perry's 'Lifetimes' tour in Las Vegas. That's because I was both equally amused and entertained as I was bewildered and frustrated by it. For a lot of reasons. Now granted, I'm comparing it to her Resorts World residency a few years ago, 'Play,' a production she referred to as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Pee-wee's Playhouse. Yes, it was as odd as that sentence reads. Perry's performance found her singing out of an oversized toilet and dancing in a field of monster mushrooms with a lipsticked frog in a bikini. So that's why, when tickets for 'Lifetime' landed in my lap from a friend, I was intrigued by the opportunity. The night started when a wicked windstorm launched a plastic bag into the air near the Luxor light beam as I walked to the show and, of course, fittingly ended with Perry closing her show with that opening lyric from 'Firework.' Between those moments there was a lot going on. Perry was engaging and spoke to the audience quite a bit. Early on, she poked fun at herself in reference to the backlash from her recent Blue Origin spaceflight, saying she's the 'world's most hated icon.' Later on, Perry thanked the crowd 'for loving me despite all of my flaws.' Her 'Lifetimes' tour, which is crisscrossing the globe through the end of the year in promotion of her album 143, has received a lukewarm reception, with some observers calling Perry a copycat. They note that her opening monologue mimics the one from Taylor Swift's 'Eras' tour and how the portion of Perry's show calling on the audience to scan a QR code and pick a song for her to sing is oh-too-similar to what Sabrina Carpenter has done. But comparisons aside, Perry makes it her own with a five-act video game concept that involves her battling an AI robot. That's… not necessarily a good thing. The storyline is confusing but apparently Perry is half-human, half-machine (which explains the metallic costumes, cone bras and furry moon boots) and in a fight with a cyborg to save butterflies and spread love. It's The Matrix meets Star Wars. At one point, Perry even swings a red lightsaber to destroy her enemies. The stage for 'Lifetimes' is designed in a figure eight pattern allowing her to get closer to the crowd. There is a lot of airtime as well with artists performing Cirque du Soleil-like acrobatics and Perry suspended by wires flying and flipping above the audience on four separate occasions, including when riding on the back of a butterfly while performing 'Roar.' My history with Perry starts at the very beginning. I first heard her in 2008 performing songs off Teenage Dream at the New York-New York's long-closed Rok Vegas nightclub. Then, while working for Us Weekly, I covered the 'Waking Up in Vegas' singer whenever she hit town—including her bachelorette party with Rihanna and numerous appearances and award shows. I even witnessed one of her first flights (albeit above a stage, not into outer space) at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards. And while the voice is different and some song arrangements have changed, the one constant from quirky Perry are the campy costumes and hit songs. At T-Mobile Arena, she performed 24 songs and judging from the devoted fans singing along, 'Lifetimes' works.
