Skip to main content

The Pee-wee Herman Show!

What a break! It's been so long kids.  Let's do this!


I flew to New York over the break to see the Pee-wee Herman Show and it was amazing!  The show ended January 2nd but not to worry (if you missed it) because HBO is taping it later this week and will be airing it soon!

The show was great, he took his original stage show from the 80's and added all characters from Pee-wee's playhouse (well most of them, sorry Floory fans).  The show was at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, half a block away from Times Square.


I went to the theater early to take some pictures and to find the stage door so I could wait after the show to meet Pee-wee.  I had my girlfriend ask the box office if they had any sort of "meet and greet" opportunities available.  The guy looked at us like we asked if we could kill his dog.  He snootily told us he did not even know what a meet and greet was (obviously the name implies nothing). I decided to take my chance at the stage door after the show.  

After the show we ran to the door where a barricade was already set up.  After a couple minutes he came out.


He spoke for a few minutes thanking everyone for coming to the show and for waiting to see him after.  Then he started taking questions from the crowd.  The first was a girl in her 20's with a Pee-wee doll.  She asked if he would sign it.  Pee-wee told her he could not because it would not be fair for everyone else who wanted a signature because he could not stay out all night signing everything.  He broke this rule though for a 7 year old girl who kept screaming "PEE-WEE!!!!"  When he invited her inside to take a picture and get his autograph you could feel hatred from all the late 20's and early 30's kids crowd who had grown up with Pee-wee.  Watching this kid get an autograph she would probably lose in the next few days was a little hard, luckily she was a really cute kid.



When Pee-wee left so did most of the crowd.  It went from over a hundred to about 15 of us.  As we waited the cast started coming out and I had them sign my Pee-wee Herman Show poster.  After over an hour of waiting (in 30 degree weather) security came and took down the barricade, it was not looking good.  Then a few minutes later Miss Yvonne (from the original stage show and play house TV show) came out.  She was nice enough to sign stuff for the 8 of us still waiting even though there was a car waiting to pick her up.  The group dropped down to four, I couldn't even feel my toes anymore when a woman came out of the stage door.  "Who are you waiting for?" she asked.  One of the guys told her Pee-wee.  She told us he had left half an hour ago.  He must have left through a different exit.

It had been almost 2 hours and I did not meet Pee-wee.  This was the scene at the stage door when myself and the other 3 finally left.


We left New York and headed to my girlfriends parents house in New Hampshire.  There I wrote a letter to Pee-wee and sent along my playbill from the show.  I asked him to sign it, I'll keep you posted on how that turns out.

Even though I did not get to meet him it was a great experience and I cannot wait for the HBO special!  And if your one of those Pee-wee haters out there you might be interested to know that Prince was in the audience the night I was there.  How awesome is that!?  he played at Madison Square Garden the night before and stuck around to see Pee-wee.


WELCOME BACK PEE-WEE!!!!




Comments

  1. I would love to see his show. Back in 1999, I was Paul Rubens VIP tour guide at Walt Disney World and we had a blast. I was in heaven even though this was still at the time when no one would touch him with a 10 foot pole (I never felt that way about him).

    It's great to see the wave of popularity flow back in his favor. It's time for him to ride the wave.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Blank Check House

After the success of Home Alone movie studios did not waste anytime copying the formula (kid outsmarts bad guys).  While the worst offender was probably Three Ninjas, Disney was also guilty with Blank Check.  They even used it as a selling point! I saw Blank Check in the theater, I remember because it was the only time in my movie going life that the theater manager came out and talked to us about how the movie was filmed in Texas (which is where I live).  So, on a recent trip to Austin, I stopped by the Blank Check house. Here is how it appeared in the film: And today: As you can see, they've done quite a bit of remodeling. Not to mention the heavy plant growth which makes it almost unrecognizable. The old garage door is now a window The original entry way has been completely removed. This is the front door now: I drove around to the side and found the back gate open.  In the film, the back yard had a pool, go cart t

Jumanji Film Locations

While I was in New Hampshire last week, I stopped in Keene to take some Jumanji comparison shots. Let's start at the beginning of the film. In the opening scene Alan Parrish rides his bike past a statue of his ancestor, Angus Parrish.  I had been to Keene once before and knew there was a statue in this square, so I assumed they just attached a fake plaque to it, I was wrong. They  built the prop statue on top of this rock fountain.  Why not just use the existing one? Here's another statue screen shot. It almost looks like they tried to brush out the actual statue in the opening shot from the film. . This Parrish shoes ad can be seen briefly in the film and appears in the back ground of the second statue picture I posted.  Here it is today. Moving onto the stampede scenes. Turns out Frank's Barber Shop is still there too. So is this old coke mural Run Kirsten! Stampede!

Look What You Did You Little Jerk: The Macaulay Culkin Incident

Last night I saw Macaulay Culkin's band "The Pizza Underground" at the Hi Ho Lounge in New Orleans.  If you aren't familiar with them, they sing Velvet Underground songs, but change the lyrics to be about pizza.  You can listen to their demo here. Like everyone else on the planet, I love Home Alone.  I saw it in the theater when I was 8 and have been a fan of Macaulay Culkin ever since. I live in Houston, so New Orleans is a 6 hour drive, but this was not something I was going to miss. The Show: The Pizza Underground demo is 9 minutes long.  If they would have come out, handed out pizza and played for 15 minutes I really think the crowd would have been satisfied.  Instead they would leave the stage between songs and have someone else come out.  First it was one of the members from Carte Blanche (one of their opening acts) who came out and rapped.  Macaulay's girlfriend came out and sang a poem that he had written for her.  One of the female members of Pizza