Nothing about the world of Pee-wee Herman should have worked. Not the oversize furniture or talking window, and certainly not the character itself. In less dedicated hands, the iconic, beloved, middle-aged brat would have come across as creepy rather than zany, especially now that Paul Reubens -- the actor whose career has been based almost entirely upon this one piece of performance art -- is 57 years old. But Reubens is picking up where he left off in 1990 with a new live stage show at Club Nokia in Los Angeles anyway. Be sure to download our free iPhone app if you're heading to the show to check out bars for your post-Pee-Wee after party.. The show opened last night to a standing ovation. Like Michael Jackson and his tireless Peter Pan complex, Pee-wee is a perfect example of how grown men shouldn't act. He thumbs his nose at the binary between childhood and manhood, choosing the former, and entirely ignores masculine conventions. His success says a lot about his audience, people who, from the '80s until now, have embraced a weird character, who only got weirder when he was arrested for indecent exposure in 1991 and charged with possession of child pornography in 2001 (those charges were eventually dropped). We probably wouldn't allow Pee-wee to babysit our kids, but we love him nonetheless. Why come?
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