Apparently he'd been battling cancer for the past six years, and you never woulda known it.
Pee-Wee's Playhouse especially was a childhood favorite of mine. He was that rare soul that told kids that it was okay to be weird. In the words of a tweet I saw earlier today: "If it weren't for you, I'd be normal."
The Christmas Special is weird aplenty, and it's a must see no matter what time of year it is.
The man was the very definition of a One Scene Wonder. If he wasn't a lead in something, he'd be in a single scene or two in a show or movie and you'd say "hey, isn't that Pee-Wee Herman?"
Be it Bat-Mite
or as The Spleen in Mystery Men
Or in a Cheech & Chong movie
Or in Flight of The Navigator
Or in Nightmare Before Christmas
Or as REX in Star Tours
Or in Chowder
Or in the Reno 911 movie
Or as a moon in Tim & Eric
As so on. The answer was always "Yes, it was." And his moment was always the best part.
I'm glad I got to meet him a few times at cons.
Here's when me and my friend Danny met him at Monster Mania back in 2018. We only got this photo op because his autograph line was three hours long.
That was a most of the line, as seen from my spot on Cassandra Peterson's line. Her line was only 2 1/2 hours.
And here's a candid shot of him at NYCC in 2019. That time I didn't make the same mistake and got on his line the moment I could. I think I was the seventh person on it? Either way, he was just as cool as you thought he'd be.
And I got this beauty signed by him. You know, I was flipping a coin whether to get this one signed,
Or this great piece by Dave Perillo. The first piece obviously won, and I planned to get this one signed eventually. But, alas.
I also have this rad prayer candle. Seems appropriate for today, you know?
I just know that somewhere, Pee-Wee is in that Playhouse in the sky, partying with John Paragon, Phil Hartman, and both Kings of Cartoons. Puppetland won't be the same without you.
Hey, let's check the weather outside, and get a whiff of that good summer air.
You know what? Nevermind.
But it wasn't as bad as a few weeks ago.
Yeah, that wasn't safe.
These were pictures taken at my job. This is how it looks normally.
And when the smoke was at its worst, taken at roughly 3pm:
Yeah, that's ORANGE. The sky isn't supposed to look like that. First, everything was hazy. Then it started smelling like someone lit up a pipe.
And then came the burning. It smelled like burning leaves for hours. At one point the sun was completely red as a tomato. It's not supposed to do that, people.
But let's talk about something that's a different color. Let's say...purple?
Yes, last week I got to try the Grimace Birthday Shake. You know, the fast food sensation that's been killing everyone on the internet lately?
Well, it was more purple and vanilla mixed together, and that reflected in the taste. The purple was some kind of unidentifiable berry flavor, but overall I really liked it. But I'm good if it's the only time I'll ever have it.
Oh, and then we all made fun of a tiny submarine that got lost trying to look at the Titanic. Until we found out that everyone on board died instantly while everyone was memeing it for days. And then everyone got over it once we realized it meant four less billionaires in the world.
There's lots of things I want to be remembered for. Dying in an incredibly stupid way is both near the bottom of that list, and yet one of the most realistic outcomes.
That'll do it for June. If you are or were in the path of all that smoke, please stay safe.
But in any case, summer is on its way, and it's time for a new post.
But honestly, not really feeling it this time around. I'll just post some random videos and pics I liked this month.
This Steamed Hams/Gorillaz mashup's been around for a few years, but I finally stumbled upon it a few days ago and can't stop listening to it. Everything is so synced up incredibly well.
Speaking of memes, a cel of He-Man in THAT pose went for over $2000. That video is over a decade old and has yet to get old.
Baby ducks are here!
And baby geese!
And a rabbit! They've been getting braver lately.
Tears of The Kingdom finally came out!
...But I haven't bought it. Because I want to do stuff with my life right now. I'm not much a of a Zelda guy, but I'll admit I got interested in watching streams of it. Maybe I'll get it for Christmas.
It was Flea Market time once again! Only of the first treasures I found was a stack of uncut Garbage Pail Kids cards. But they've seen better days, so I left them be.
A pay phone has been one of the odder things I've found at one of these.
This was cool, but where would I put it?
Mood.
Something in the "shoulda bought" pile was this box of old Playbills, dating back to the sixties. They had at least three versions of Hello, Dolly. You have the original Carol Channing one above, and I also saw the version with Pearl Bailey. You can smell the Old Broadway in these. Or maybe it was the mustiness of being in a box for sixty years.
Plus the original Odd Couple. Yes, before Thomas Lennon and Matthew Perry, er, I mean Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, there was Art Carney and Walter Matthau as Felix and Oscar.
And finally, what I picked up there. These four pins only set me back ten bucks. There was a table that had a bunch of pins from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and these were the ones that stood out to me. That, and I'm not made of money. Around here I mostly see stuff from the 1964 NY World's Fair, so merch from any other big event in the country is pretty rare and I had to grab something from it.
I figured that other Atlanta icons made the cut for merch, like the Cabbage Patch Kids and Coca Cola, but there were quite a few pins of characters from Izzy's Quest For Olympic Gold. (I go into more detail about it in this entry). I left the Alice Ghostly voiced character pin for someone else.
It's the end of April, so that means it's time for an update!
Well, Easter came and went with little fanfare. I had ham, it was good, the end.
I DID see The Super Mario Movie. It was a solid 7/10. Story was a bit basic, there were too many licensed songs for my liking, there wasn't enough Luigi, but the animation was fantastic. Most of the voices were pretty good, too. The highlights were clearly Jack Black as Bowser and Charlie Day as Luigi, but everyone gives a good performance. And Chris Pratt actually put some effort into it.
If you wanted a Mario Movie that actually looked and felt like a Mario Movie, Illumination certainly succeeded at it.
And this leads us to the one big highlight of the month:
I preordered this back in December. It's a signed picture of KITT from William Daniels. BUT I had him inscribe a line from the Knightboat scene from The Simpsons.
"Each week there's a canal."
"Or an inlet."
"Or a fjord."
That's always stuck with me in the 25+ years since that episode aired. I don't want to tell you how much I spent on it, but it was worth every penny. I crossed my fingers that William Daniels was gonna make it to C2E2 this year and he did. 90-something year old character actors haven't had a good track record lately, and as of this writing he's still with us. I hope I get to meet him in person one day.
But that also means that last week was my 36th birthday!
While I'm more fond of multiples of five, 36 is a good, even number. I don't like the idea of being in my MID-Thirties, but so far so good. My hair is starting to grow gray.
And like I said last month, birthdays means presents!
I pre-ordered this Masterpiece Skyfire months ago, and it just so happened to arrive as a late birthday gift to myself.
I don't usually splurge for Masterpiece, and this one wasn't cheap. But a show-accurate, well-articulated figure of Skyfire is something I've wanted to exist since I was six years old, and it's finally a reality.
My first impression? Holy Moses, is this thing big. They say this is the biggest Masterpiece figure so far, and I believe it.
Here he is posed with a minifig of Optimus that came with him. He also came with tiny figures of Jazz and Wheeljack to pose in his open compartments. You see, in the show, he was big enough to fit the regular characters in his cockpit, and I love that they included that here.
He also comes with removable chest plates. You see, in his first episode, he switches allegiances from Decepticon to Autobot by switching out the insignia on his chest.
And as you can see,
It's pretty inconsistent.
And just for fun, here he is posed with my G1 Jetfire.
He also comes with three alternate faces. Two different expressions besides the neutral one, plus a mask that evokes the original figure. The new version is definitely not a repainted Macross figure, but all in all, a great addition to the collection.
And in an impulse eBay buy on my birthday, I got in this signed picture of Dabney Coleman. Blame the Daily Simpsons Thursday Simpsons stream for that one. He was streaming an episode of Drexell's Class (his sitcom from 1991) after the episode and I wondered how much a signed picture of him went for these days.
Well, this one was pretty cheap, compared to the rest of the stuff I found. No Drexell's Class stuff. Hell, not even anything from 9 to 5. It was either stuff from Cloak & Dagger or some other movies I'd never heard of.
I found out that he voiced Principal Prickley from Recess, if there was any other reason to love him.
Last week, I also went back to NYC to try Ichiran again. Turns out the best time to go was on a Tuesday afternoon. I don't think I waited more than ten minutes to get in.
Just look at that beautiful bowl! They brought back their classic round bowls this time. When I went almost a year ago, they served their ramen in square bowls.
Even sprang for the fancy pork this time. It was all really good.
I managed to up the spicy sauce this time. I barely felt a level 3, this was level 6. I definitely felt that one, my eyes couldn't stop watering. It definitely cleaned out the sinuses.
After that, I stopped by the NY Public Library to catch their exhibit on rare books.
Most notably, a Gutenberg Bible.
Charles Dickens's writing desk
and of course, the original Winnie The Pooh dolls. They were moved from their home in the Children's Library, which I sadly discovered had been converted into a coat check.
Then I stopped by Nintendo NY and saw big Mario shoes.
And then stopped at the Times Square Disney Store and found Oswald merch! It was all thanks to that Disney 100 promotion they're doing.
There was a bunch more stuff, but people were in the way of the pictures and I didn't want to be awkward.
That about covers the month of March, folks. See you in April!
