before you get too excited and get up to grab popcorn and a coke in anticipation of finally learning all the words to that classic hit by cameo (and, more importantly, learning the secret to making your voice sound all funky like that), let me let you down easy-
we're not here to discuss cameo today. we're here to talk about something far more important than a song designed to make you shake your groove thang.
we're here to discuss withdrawal. this is dead serious, and i'm way too cheap to pay for therapy.....which would cut into my vacation time anyway.
i miss pee wee's playhouse.
more specifically, i miss jambi. i miss mekka-lekka-hi-mekka-hiney-hoing around the living room, dining room, backyard, and bedroom. (which is not to say i don't miss mekka-lekka-hi-mekka-jambi-hoing. i just hineyed before i jambied, since that's the way jambi did it, and what was good enough for a blue head in a box was certainly good enough for me.)
even at a young age (the show ran from 1986 until the "incident" in 1991, which means i was 8 when the show started its run and 13 when it ended), i harbored a crush on jambi.....sort of like the one i had on jareth, the goblin king (david bowie, of course) at roughly the same time.
perhaps it was because he was blue.
perhaps it was because he was highly portable. (i mean, come on, the guy lived in a box, for goodness sake)
perhaps it was because he was one of pee wee's least annoying friends.
surely, mama was thrilled when sibling and i discovered pee wee's playhouse. i mean, what was not to love? the squeals of her daughters each time the word of the day was mentioned? the aforementioned mekka-lekka-hi-mekka-hiney-hoing all over the place? not to mention our attempts to dance to "tequila"- though it must be mentioned that we knew better than to jump up on any of her tables to dance.......at least while our parents were around, that is.
we were heartbroken when pee wee was pulled off the air. no more words of the day. no more cowboy curtis. no more mail lady (so that's why that chick on law & order looked familiar.....) most importantly, no more jambi.
it seems i'm not the only one feeling nostalgic. after an hour and a half of digging around on youtube (i really should cut down....maybe not go cold turkey, but i gotta stop getting sucked into that website.), i found these:
how could i possibly have forgotten the balloon thing? that never gets old.
sort of like pee wee himself.
4 comments:
Not that long ago some TV station was playing re-runs of Pee Wee's Playhouse. I don't know if they still are, but it was probably either cartoon network or spike. I'd have to ask my husband....
according to the videos i found, they're rerunning pee wee on adult swim on the cartoon network. i also found something on imdb about a new pee wee movie coming out in 2007. i'm not holding my breath, but if it happens, i'll be the first in line.
I remember Pee Wee. Not because I watched it, but because the guy I was kinda dating did. He lived with some of his friends, and they would do the word of the day to DEATH. And by death, I mean the death of the relationship.
And yes - Pee Wee is shown on Adult Swim.
I think the episode that did him was, "Pee Wee Blows His Big Top at the Movies".
I'll actually always remember him as the hotel attendant from that Cheech and Chong movie...was it up in smoke, or nice dreams? I don't remember,but he was funny as hell.
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