Pee-Wee Herman’s been enjoying a resurgence this year – his live LA stage show this past winter was consistently sold out – thanks to Generation X who, as we approach middle age, view the characters from our childhood through a lens of nostalgia thick enough to filter out just how Goddamned annoying they were. (See also Hasselhoff, David and ALF, Gofuckyourself).
For those blessed enough to be unfamiliar, Pee-Wee Herman was a character designed by actor Paul Reubens as an androgynous man-child, whose juvenile catchphrases and broad physical comedy was enthusiastically embraced and constantly imitated by every person in high school who I suspected to be a homosexual.
During the 80’s, Pee-Wee became hugely popular as he fronted two major motion pictures, a weekly children’s television program, and untold merchandising targeted at kids until he decided to eschew stardom for personal reasons… and by “eschew stardom” I mean “get arrested” and by “personal reasons” I mean “getting caught jacking off in a public movie theater in 1991.”
I realize that this might seem like a minor infraction to you damn Millennials, but it was a big deal in 1991, particularly for a performer with a Saturday morning kid’s show. For some time-appropriate context, imagine, say, police kicking a door down to find Dora the Explorer spreading Jif on her crotch and shrieking, “Swiper, start swiping!”
Anyway, after the arrest, Pee-Wee dropped out of sight for a short time – y’know nineteen years – before returning earlier this year with an successful L.A. stage version of his old Pee-Wee’s Playhouse TV show. Emboldened by probably realizing that an entire generation had passed since anyone had said, “Didja hear they dropped the charges against Pee-Wee? The evidence wouldn’t STAND UP in court! Get it?”, Pee-Wee has scheduled another run of his show on Broadway in November, where he will be disappointed to discover that Times Square ain’t the way it was in the 80’s.
So, older, wiser and grateful for a second chance, Pee-Wee Herman’s living quietly and allowing the past, painful as it might be, to remain the past. Right?
Had we gone to trial, we had ready an expert from the Masters and Johnson Institute who was going to testify that in 30 years of research on masturbation, the institute had never found one person who masturbated with his or her nondominant hand… I’m right-handed, and the police report said I was (masturbating) with my left hand. That would have been the end of the case right there, proof it couldn’t have been me.
That sounds great, Pee-Wee, and it might play for your average 1991 Pee-Wee’s Playhouse audience who were too young to recognize that Chairry was nothing more than a horrifying de-anthropomorphized fecephiliac.
But it’s 2010 now, and you’re talking to an audience who is reading Playboy. In the Internet age, they actually PAID for pictures of naked women. Which means that not only do they know masturbation, they are urgently committed to it as a LIFESTYLE CHOICE.
And God knows I am not one of them, because I feel that any masturbation plan that includes a visit to the local convenience store will eventually end in 72 hours of psychiatric observation and having to introduce myself to my fucking neighbors.
So while I can’t vouch for Playboy readers, or indeed, for any other man, I can vouch for the the fact that while I don’t consider myself particularly ambidextrously talented, I have been known to crank it with my non-dominant hand. And my dominant hand. And sometimes with both hands clenched together. And once with a roll of duct tape.
A judge overturned California’s 