Everything I know about decorating I learned from Pee Wee's Playhouse

So many of my style quirks make sense after watching the Max documentary "Pee Wee Herman As Himself."

If you’re lucky, someday, you’ll be at the age where you can draw connections between childhood influences and the ideas that have embedded themselves at your core.

I’m there now.

Last weekend, I felt a big circle close while watching the new Paul Reubens/Pee Wee Herman doc Pee Wee Herman As Himself on Max.

Taking in this clever and maddening, silly, salty, and salient 3-hr. filtering of Paul Reubens’ life cracked me open, revealing Pee Wee’s Playhouse to be a continuing artistic influence in my world.

I don’t even remember loving Pee Wee’s Playhouse as much as I actually did and do. Back then, it seemed normal on Saturday mornings to see a weirdo in a grey suit and bow tie flail around a street art and Memphis Style-inspired wonder box to the tune of words-of-the-day, a bodiless Genie’s propheteering, creepy animatrons, and dancing flower boxes.

Animatronics — normal. Being friends with your postal person — normal. Collecting used aluminum foil in a big ball — normal.

Pee Wee was such an important counterpoint to most of the rest of what I watched on TV — sitcoms where nuclear families solve big problems in 30 minutes on a living room stage.

Now, I can recognize Pee Wee’s Playhouse for what it was in my life — seminal.

Everything.

At the very least, influential.

Here are a few Pee Wee’s Playhouse ideas that have crept into my life.

Talking chairs

I didn’t come up with the idea that furniture talks, or that objects speak. But chairs especially — there we talk about statements. My WTF 70s chair is a perfect example. Also, that’s Sherwin Williams Tidewater on the walls, eerily similar to Chairy.

Red vinyl

You’re just going to have to believe me on this one since I don’t have a good pic. We used my grandparents’ red vinyl chairs and Formica table for about a decade before passing them on. Was the influence Pee Wee’s Playhouse, or the diner from Saved by the Bell?

Random living area aquariums

Meet Daniel, our kitchen frog, named after James Franco’s character from Freaks and Geeks.

Jambi’s color palette

I’ve always thought I borrowed my first color palette (red and turquoise) from my grandparents when really, the whole time it was giving “Jambi from Pee Wee’s Playhouse.”

Globes as sculptural objects

For a while, I had a collection of eight Cold War-era globes that I used as decor and comfort objects (from a time when I learned how to spell Czechoslovakia!). I only kept this one, but it doesn’t have much of a face.

3-D U.S. maps

Love a relief or a 3-D map you can touch!

Marionettes

No clue where I got the idea that it is okay to leave random marionettes throughout our house for someone to pick up and play with. Maybe it’s because of Randy?

Word of the Day

Why not pick a word every day? We’re picking words of the year, right? Our family just does the Miriam Webster WOTD to learn new words — not quite as fun and silly as Pee Wee but perhaps still inspired? We put it on our chalkboard wall.

I have about a dozen additional “inspired-by-Pee-Wee” moments in my home, but I don’t think I need to document any more to convince myself that the Playhouse lodged itself in my psyche in ways that are only now clear to me.

I’m glad.

My favorite questions after all, are imaginative: “What if?” and “Why not?” These are questions that always apply to design.

“I know you are but what am I?” - Pee Wee Herman, and every memoirist, ever.

Beyond personal style excavation, I’ve been loving all of the design stories coming out about the Pee Wee’s set, especially this take from Archictural Digest. And this one about a home in San Antonio with shapes and colors that looks like the world of Pee Wee.

Anyway, did you watch the doc and will you please talk to me about it and what did you take from it?

Everyone is reading this Substack essay on the true terror of ChatGPT

Show this one to your kids who are learning how to write and think.

Questions no one has asked me

🎓What did you and your husband fight about this week?

Not really a fight, but we argued over graduation and sympathy cards and whether it makes sense to pay $5 for a card that is going to get thrown out. In the future, we might develop lino prints for cards for major events like death and graduation and number them like an art print. At least maybe they will stay on the fridge for a bit. Just how we like to do things — the hard way!

🎥 Are you far enough from birthing humans to stomach things like The Last of Us?

No.

🏠Is that exterior house paint job finally done?!

NO IT IS NOT. I’m trying to be okay with this. The painters are taking a deliriously long time—we are in our fourth week—to spray a 2,000 sq. ft. house. To be sure, they are doing a great job. It looks amazing. The time frame still seems unreasonable. Pics soon!

😦What have you been doing differently?

Trying to get organized for Summer, so I’m printing lists. Maybe you are the kind of parent who had their act together years ago, but mine are 12 and 15 and I am just starting the process of finding a better routine and training these boys to participate more than they have during the school year. I am spending like 45 minutes a day picking up after them. This will not do! I bought this Master the Mundane program that comes with scores of pdfs from an ADHD mom. Wish me luck!