Thanks to Pee-wee Herman, Gen X Got to Grow Up Weird and His New Documentary Is a Reminder of That
There are a million memes about how Gen X is a tough, often forgotten 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.
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New York Times
38 minutes ago
- New York Times
How fanzine culture gave a voice to supporters and changed English football
The titles were often gloriously creative and diverse, some paying homage to terrace anthems, others making a clever play on words. Sales were decent, too, with more than one million copies shifted per year at the height of what quickly became a phenomenon. We're talking about the rise of football fanzines in the 1980s. Those purveyors of insight and irreverence who arrived on the scene when the game was on its knees in a troubled decade and helped spark a revival. Advertisement Not just through fan activism, though there was plenty of that as fanzines joined the fight against compulsory ID cards, club mergers, and even proposals for a new European Super League featuring England's biggest names more than three decades before the more recent incarnation reared its ugly head in 2021. But, by giving supporters a long overdue voice at a time when they were considered pariahs by wider society, fanzines revealed those on the terraces to be intelligent, passionate people who had something to say beyond the cliched ''Ere We Go!' battle cry so beloved of the tabloid newspapers when generalising fans as hooligans. 'What fanzines did was offer an alternative voice that represented a much broader variety of perspectives on footballing culture,' says Kenn Taylor, part of the team behind Voice of the Fans, a new exhibition at Leeds Central Library exploring how fanzines helped change football. 'They critiqued clubs and critiqued aspects of footballing culture. But they also celebrated it and brought a really different kind of perspective. They allowed different groups of fans, some of whom experienced prejudice, to express themselves to show that they exist, too.' There had been earlier versions of fan magazines. Foul, a deliberate parody of magazines such as Shoot! and Goal, was produced by a group of Cambridge Students and ran for four years from 1972, while The End first landed on Merseyside in 1981 with an intoxicating mix of music, football and biting wit that ran for 20 issues and was edited by Peter Hooton, future lead singer of The Farm. But, really, the start of what would quickly become a truly national movement started with the arrival of club-oriented publications, such as Terrace Talk (York City), City Gent (Bradford City) and Fingerpost (West Bromwich Albion). Advertisement There was no single issue bonding together these early trailblazers other than a desire to offer an alternative view on clubs whose media coverage was largely restricted to the back page of the local newspaper and a rather staid, flimsy matchday programme. Soon, though, this early trickle of new titles had turned into a flood, with When Saturday Comes, surely the wise old grandfather of them all these days, first hitting the streets in 1986. Before long, every professional club in the UK had at least one publication chronicling their failings or otherwise and Sportspages, an independent book shop just off the Charing Cross Road in London piled high with fanzines from across the UK, became a tourist destination in itself as fans clamoured to buy the latest copy of Hit The Bar, The Gooner or Elm Park Disease. Visitors to Sportspages at the height of this publishing boom may also have enjoyed the artistic debut of future big names such as Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh and Libertines singer Pete Doherty, who wrote for Hibs Monthly (Hibernian) and All Quiet On The Western Avenue (Queens Park Rangers) respectively in their formative years. The Voice of the Fans exhibition claims that by 1992, more than 600 fanzines had appeared. Some proved short-lived, lasting just a few issues. But others, including hardy perennials United We Stand (Manchester United) and The Square Ball (Leeds United), are still going strong today in printed form despite so many of their peers having been swallowed up online. 'Heritage and tradition are perhaps the main reason there is still an appetite for the printed fanzine in our case,' says Mike Harrison, editor of City Gent, the longest-running fanzine in the country, which passed its 40th anniversary in October. 'Plus, as there is no longer a printed (matchday) programme produced by the club, City Gent is documenting what it is like to be a supporter of Bradford City from the fans' perspective.' Football and music have long been natural bedfellows, so it is perhaps not surprising that the roots of the fanzine movement that spawned such classics as There's Only One F in Fulham and Sing When We're Fishing lay in the record industry. In the late 1970s, punk briefly ruled the roost and the genre's DIY ethic struck a chord with fans who had grown tired of the music press and fancied having a go themselves. Advertisement Soon, Sniffin' Glue and Anarchy in the UK were required reading for gig-goers. In the main, these rough and ready fanzines — literally a blend of 'fan' and 'magazine' — looked to have been run off on the office photocopier when the boss wasn't looking. Crucially, though, they carried an authentic voice. Football followed suit just as the sport was hitting rock bottom. The Bradford City fire on May 11, 1985, which claimed 56 lives, came less than three weeks before another 39 supporters were killed at Heysel during a fatal charge by Liverpool fans before the European Cup final. Attendances had already slumped to less than 16.5 million across all four divisions of English football in the season that culminated in those two disasters. To put this 1984-85 figure into context, a combined 36.2 million people came through the turnstiles of the 92 Premier League and EFL clubs in 2023-24. Hooliganism, fuelled by often lurid coverage in the tabloids, helps partly explain why the public had become so turned off by a game that, in the years immediately after the Second World War, had regularly attracted a combined annual audience of 40 million fans. But there was also a lack of care from those in charge that allowed depressing episode after depressing episode to fester. These included a plan to merge Oxford United and Reading to form the Thames Valley Royals — as well as squeeze Fulham and Queen's Park Rangers into Fulham Park Rangers — around the same time Charlton Athletic abandoned The Valley. All three sagas had a happy ending eventually, thanks in no small part to the campaigning efforts of supporters. Into this mid-1980s maelstrom stepped the fanzines and a wonderful array of titles. Some drew on popular terrace chants such as Fortune's Always Hiding (West Ham United), Tired and Weary (Birmingham City) and the aforementioned Grimsby Town ditty about fishing. Then there were the clever puns, such as A Kick Up The R's (QPR), the Leyton Orientear and The Exe-Directory (Exeter City). Others required a tad more explanation, with War of the Monster Trucks a dig at Yorkshire Television from Sheffield Wednesday fans after the regional channel had cut short live coverage of their team's 1991 League Cup celebrations at Wembley to broadcast a repeat of a show first aired five years earlier. Advertisement Popular music also proved to be a breeding ground, with 4,000 Holes (Blackburn Rovers) paying homage to A Day in the Life by The Beatles, which features a line about how the Lancashire town's streets had 4,000 potholes requiring repair that John Lennon lifted straight from a newspaper report. Similarly, Gillingham's Brian Moore's Head Looks Uncannily Like The London Planetarium owed its rather left-field title to a Half Man Half Biscuit song about Moore, the ITV commentator and Gillingham director. 'One of the charms of football 'zines is they have that irreverence,' adds Taylor, lead culture producer (North) at the British Library. 'Really smart humour, full of wit. Everything from the headlines to the writing. 'It was a unique style at the time. This wasn't how things were conveyed, certainly before the advent of digital media.' Humour was, indeed, a big part of the fanzine movement from the start. This included poking fun at local rivals, such as when Bradford's City Gent produced a one-off booklet titled, 'Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Super Leeds'. All 100 pages were blank and it sold out within days, prompting a second print run to be ordered with the tagline, 'Painstakingly updated'. Around the same time, the front covers of When Saturday Comes — complete with photograph, headline and a provocative speech bubble — started to rival those of Private Eye, the satirical magazine that, for generations, had poked fun at royals, politicians and celebrities. Most were designed to amuse, but some WSC covers spoke better than a thousand words ever could, including arguably their finest effort in response to the Hillsborough disaster that saw 97 lives lost at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. As the blame game began in earnest over what had caused the biggest disaster in British football history, the June issue ran four photos under the headline, 'Hillsborough: Unanimous Verdict'. Advertisement 'It's not our fault,' read the speech bubbles accompanying the images of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Football Association chief executive Graham Kelly and Peter Wright, the chief constable of South Yorkshire Police. The final photo, featuring a massed bank of supporters, carried the message, 'Oh well, it must be our fault again.' As highlighted in the Voice of the Fans exhibition, When Saturday Comes also railed against plans for a domestic 'Super League' in their second issue, a full 35 years before similar arguments were made in opposition to a proposed European Super League that was eventually quashed by supporters able to mobilise through social media. Smartphones or message boards may not have been available when Charlton fanzine Voice of the Valley was first published in 1988. But that didn't stop it from helping to bring about real change. Having vacated The Valley in September 1985 due to being unable to afford the necessary safety work, the London club moved in, first, with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park and then West Ham at Upton Park. The team was successful on the pitch, even spending four years in the top flight alongside the likes of Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal after winning promotion in 1986, but supporters clamoured for a return to their spiritual home. Voice of the Valley, alongside the supporters club, helped turn that dream into reality by being at the forefront of a campaign that culminated in the Valley Party being formed to contest the 1990 local election after Greenwich Council had rejected the club's plans to rebuild their old stadium. Charlton's most important victory in decades came at the ballot box, as the Valley Party claimed 11 per cent of the votes cast with 14,838 — an unprecedented performance by a single-issue party. That the chair of the planning committee, who had rejected Charlton's application, lost his seat on a memorable night only added to the sense of achievement, and a little over two years later, football had returned to The Valley. Advertisement ''Zines were a hugely important medium,' says Taylor. 'They allowed fans to share opinions in a way that could connect right across a fanbase. Today, that fan voice is more important than ever. 'Multi-media has changed so much since the period when there were hundreds of printed publications coming out. But one of the things we try to capture in the exhibition is how print remains very much alive. 'We found at least 60 print football 'zines still being published. Regular ones, too, not just a one-off issue. That's got to be a big positive.' Voice of the Fans runs until August 10, 2025, at Leeds Central Library. Further details are available here. Admission is free.
Associated Press
39 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Key moments from the fourth week of Sean 'Diddy' Combs' sex trafficking trial
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Eddy Garcia, 33, recounted how the deal came to be, saying he first heard from a fast talking, stuttering and 'very nervous' Combs on a phone call seeking to obtain the video of him kicking and dragging Cassie from the hotel's elevator bank into a hallway because 'if this got out it could ruin him.' Days later, Garcia said, he was the nervous one when he was greeted in an office building by a smiling Combs who called him 'Eddy, my angel' before Garcia turned over a USB drive containing the security footage. Combs then made him sign a nondisclosure agreement promising it was the only copy of the video and that Garcia would never speak of it, he said. Then, Combs, with a bodyguard at his side, fed stacks of cash from a brown bag into a rectangular money counter machine until it reached $100,000, Garcia said. He said he pocketed $30,000 and gave $50,000 to his boss and $20,000 to another hotel security guard. Garcia testified under immunity. A recording of the hotel attack on Cassie aired on CNN last year and security footage along with clips of the security tape recorded by a guard on his personal phone so he could show it to his wife have been shown repeatedly during the trial. Judge threatens Combs with trial expulsion Minutes after a prosecutor complained that Combs was seen 'nodding furiously' as his lawyer cross examined a witness on Thursday, Judge Arun Subramanian took a look himself and said he saw Combs 'nodding vigorously and looking at the jury' and doing the same later when the lawyers and the judge were having a sidebar discussion. Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey said prosecutors were concerned because the gestures amounted to 'testifying by nodding affirmatively' while his lawyer asked questions. During a lunch break, defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo promised to speak with Combs and ensure it wouldn't happen again after the judge told him it was 'absolutely unacceptable.' The judge sternly responded: 'If it happens again, if it happens even once, I will hear an application from the government to give a curative instruction to the jury, which you do not want. Or I will consider taking further measures, which could result in the exclusion of your client from the courtroom.' Mia says she was 'brainwashed' to send Combs loving texts after rape A former Combs personal assistant who testified under the pseudonym 'Mia' told jurors that Combs had sexually assaulted her multiple times over her eight-year career, though the attacks were 'random, sporadic, so oddly spaced out' so that she thought each was the last. She said he first molested her and forcibly kissed her at his 40th birthday party before raping her months later in a guest room at his Los Angeles home. On cross examination, defense lawyer Brian Steel's suggested that she fabricated her claims to cash in on 'the #MeToo money grab against Sean Combs.' Steel confronted her with loving texts she sent Combs long after her employment ended and asked how she could tell him, as she did in a 2019 text, that she had imagined Combs rescuing her from a nightmare in which she was trapped in an elevator with R. Kelly, the singer who has since been convicted of sex trafficking. 'I was still brainwashed,' Mia explained. Defense has success with questioning of Cassie's friend The defense had one of its most successful moments of the trial when attorney Nicole Westmoreland cast doubt on the credibility of a graphic designer who says Combs once dangled her from the balcony of a 17th-floor apartment in Los Angeles. Bryana 'Bana' Bongolan, a friend of Cassie who is suing Combs, had taken a cellphone image of a softball-size welt on her leg that she said occurred when Combs held her over the balcony for 10 to 15 seconds and then threw her into furniture. After it was shown to the jury, Westmoreland showed the jury cellphone metadata revealing that the photograph was taken while Combs was on tour in September 2016, staying at a Manhattan hotel. 'You agree that one person can't be in two places at the same time?' Westmoreland asked. 'In, like, theory, yeah,' Bongolan responded. 'You're not sure?' Westmoreland asked. 'Hard to answer that one,' she said. Later, Bongolan said she did not recall the exact date, but she had no doubt the balcony episode happened. Woman recalls sex performances during three years as a Combs' girlfriend A woman testifying under the pseudonym 'Jane' fought through tears and sobs to recount frequent sexual performances she participated in with male sex workers to please Combs and keep their three-year relationship alive until his September arrest. Jane's testimony, which is likely to continue deep into next week, is identical in many ways to the four-day testimony in the trial's first week by Cassie. Jane said she never wanted to have sex with other men but did it to please Combs because she loved him. Cassie described having hundreds of drug-fueled sexual performances known as 'freak-offs' in which she had sex with male sex workers for days at a time while Combs watched, sometimes directed the activity, and pleasured himself. Jane described having nearly the same experiences from 2021 until last August, though she called them 'hotel nights.' She said her relationship with Combs began with romance but later became reliant upon the sexual performances, especially after Combs began paying rent for her apartment. Defense attorneys have insisted that Jane and Combs only engaged in consensual sex and that Jane's protests to Combs in text messages were fueled by jealousy.
Associated Press
39 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Why a Minneapolis neighborhood sharpens a giant pencil every year
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Residents will gather Saturday in a scenic Minneapolis neighborhood for an annual ritual — the sharpening of a gigantic No. 2 pencil. The 20-foot-tall (6-meter-tall) pencil was sculpted out of a mammoth oak tree at the home of John and Amy Higgins. The beloved tree was damaged in a storm a few years ago when fierce winds twisted the crown off. Neighbors mourned. A couple even wept. But the Higginses saw it not so much as a loss, but as a chance to give the tree new life. The sharpening ceremony on their front lawn has evolved into a community spectacle that draws hundreds of people to the leafy neighborhood on Lake of the Isles, complete with music and pageantry. Some people dress as pencils or erasers. Two Swiss alphorn players will provide part of this year's entertainment. The hosts will commemorate a Minneapolis icon, the late music superstar Prince, by handing out purple pencils on what would have been his 67th birthday. In the wake of the storm, the Higginses knew they wanted to create a sculpture out of their tree. They envisioned a whimsical piece of pop art that people could recognize, but not a stereotypical chainsaw-carved, north-woods bear. Given the shape and circumference of the log, they came up with the idea of an oversized pencil standing tall in their yard. 'Why a pencil? Everybody uses a pencil,' Amy Higgins said. 'Everybody knows a pencil. You see it in school, you see it in people's work, or drawings, everything. So, it's just so accessible to everybody, I think, and can easily mean something, and everyone can make what they want of it.' So they enlisted wood sculptor Curtis Ingvoldstad to transform it into a replica of a classic Trusty brand No. 2 pencil. 'People interpret this however they want to. They should. They should come to this and find whatever they want out of it,' Ingvoldstad said. That's true even if their reaction is negative, he added. 'Whatever you want to bring, you know, it's you at the end of the day. And it's a good place. It's good to have pieces that do that for people.' John Higgins said they wanted the celebration to pull the community together. 'We tell a story about the dull tip, and we're gonna get sharp,' he said. 'There's a renewal. We can write a new love letter, a thank you note. We can write a math problem, a to-do list. And that chance for renewal, that promise, people really seem to buy into and understand.' To keep the point pointy, they haul a giant, custom-made pencil sharpener up the scaffolding that's erected for the event. Like a real pencil, this one is ephemeral. Every year they sharpen it, it gets a bit shorter. They've taken anywhere from 3 to 10 inches (8 to 25 centimeters) off a year. They haven't decided how much to shave off this year. They're OK knowing that they could reduce it to a stub one day. The artist said they'll let time and life dictate its form — that's part of the magic. 'Like any ritual, you've got to sacrifice something,' Ingvoldstad said. 'So we're sacrificing part of the monumentality of the pencil, so that we can give that to the audience that comes, and say, 'This is our offering to you, and in goodwill to all the things that you've done this year.''
