Rant #3,186: Real Thing

Did you ever get into the “fake” meat fad?

I did for a short while, but I don’t even bother anymore.

While some of those plant-based meats really don’t taste that bad—with the Beyond Meat label featuring the best taste of the bunch, in my opinion—this was nothing but a fad, not a long-term thing.

We know that the constant eating of red meat is not that good for you, but if you don’t eat the real thing seven days a week, some actual beef once or twice a week isn’t going to kill you—and we do know that most people do need some real meat in their systems to have a balanced diet.

But ever cautious about what real meat can potentially do to you, companies seemingly sprang out of nowhere a few years ago touting their plant-based offerings—everything from hot dogs and hamburgers and sausage—and stating that this was the healthier way to go.

Even fast food restaurants started to offer non-beef-based offerings, and it looked like the plant-based option was not only here to stay but here to take a giant cut out of the sales of real meat-based foods.

Then for whatever reason, sales started to drop off about a year or so ago, and I think the reason was that people jumped on the bandwagon—as I did for a short while—sampled what was out there, and figured that if they could not have the real thing—or as close to it, with chicken and turkey knockoffs having been around for ages—then what was the sense of having the plant-based offerings?

I personally tried a number of plant-based company’s burgers, and some of them were pretty decent—the aforementioned Beyond Meat and, believe it or not, Wal-Mart’s own version of a plant-based burger—but most of the ones that I tried tasted like, well, plants.

The Beyond Meat version of a burger was actually pretty good, but I did wonder how they got the taste to where it replicated that of a regular red meat burger … and I think that I wasn’t the only one to have that question.

Sure, we were eating “healthier” with the plant-based burger—or at least we were told that by the companies producing them—but with all the chemicals in these offerings which were used to duplicate the taste of a real burger, were we really eating healthier, or was this just a ruse?

I think it was a ruse … and again it is not like we don’t have viable alternatives to red meat in our burger options such as those made with chicken and turkey.

Thus, why eat the plant-based burger, which was full of things we don’t really need to ingest, when we had other more traditional and viable alternatives to red meat?

Look, not everyone eats red meat.

There are vegetarians, there are vegans, and there are people—like my wife—who do not fit into either of those categories, but pretty much stays away from real meat and gravitates toward the turkey knockoffs.

Anyway, I guess the plant-based offerings simply give shoppers another option when they buy “meat” items, but I do think the fad is over.

In my house, I buy both red meat and turkey meat options in burgers, franks and chop meat, so my wife really mixes things up with the weekly dinner menu.

In fact, last night, we had fish, and we also eat pasta, too.

I happen to think that most families are like that now, and a company that puts out the plant-based offerings—like Beyond Meat—is going to have to recognize that it is simply a niche option—

And its ledger books—the real determinant of success—will tell them that too, as their stock price is down and thus, they don’t have the profits that they had for a short time when people were trying out their products.

I know that I, personally, gave them a real shot to be a regular part of my diet, but every time I bit into one of their burgers,, well, it was OK, but not the same experience I had with the real meat version of the burger—and I simply did not believe the hype that I was eating “healthier” with all the obvious processing done with these non-red meat offerings.

I liken what the plant-based industry is going through now with what the electric vehicle industry is currently going through.

Sure, you can drive an electric car, but why would you?

You are not saving the environment as the some would have you believe, you are inconveniencing yourself when you are running low on power, and there simply is nothing like riding a gas-powered car on the roads of America as opposed to the heavier and electricity-inefficient EVs.

So again, the plant-based offerings—as the EV offerings are—are simply another option, a fad, and really, nothing more.

So if you want partake of them, go right ahead.

Me, give me an All-American Hebrew National hot dog any time, and I will be happy as can be.

Rant #3,185: Dreaming

Since I lost my job nearly four years ago, I periodically have work-related dreams, that are kind of like nightmares, that haunt me at night.

I had another one yesterday night, but this time, it reflected as much on my wife as it did on me.

My wife retired some time ago--she had just had enough of what she was going through as a teller in a popular bank, which shall go nameless.

The bank has an anti-older-worker youth kick, and an anti-white manifesto that they actually had the guts to publish a few years ago so anyone could read it, so I will let you figure out what bank I am talking about.

Anyway, she was able to get a job in a restaurant, and regular readers of this column know what happened there—she had a workplace accident and hasn’t worked since that day, three months ago. The case is in workman’s compensation, so who knows when it will be completed.

Anyway, while my wife is not yet 100 percent, she is beginning to get a little antsy, in particular with no money coming in other than Social Security, so she has applied for a couple of cashier jobs at local retailers—

And she has found out, as I did, that the proof is in the pudding, because she has had very few call backs, most probably because of her age—but go prove it.

Anyway, she applied to a retailer around the corner from where we live—who also shall remain nameless—and she actually has a job interview coming up tomorrow.

So I went to bed last night, and I had a dream/nightmare that reflects on my wife’s situation as much as it does mine.

I am in a big room, along with dozens of other job seekers, looking for a cashier job with, of all companies, JCPenney.

I am sitting there dutifully, and I have my resume in hand plus a ticket that they gave me with a number on it, and when my number is called, I [presumably will be called up for an interview, as the numbers are going in order, and I think in the dream I had number 125.

As I wait for my number to be called, I looked through a glass end table where I had rested my arm while waiting, and lo and behold, I see that there are a couple of coins—dimes and nickels, no quarters or pennies (yes, I do see the connection to the name of the retailer there)—on the floor underneath the table.

I go down to the ground, and reach for the coins, of which there must have been at least a half dozen, and I put the retrieved coins in my pants pocket.

But as I get up,, I notice that I don’t have the ticket that they gave me with the number on it, the one with number 125 on it, the one I need to get called for an interview.

I look all around, but I can’t find it, as they call up the person ahead of me, number 124—I don’t remember if it was a man or a woman—to be interviewed.

So I am in panic because I waited so long to be interviewed—125 was my number, so I presume that 124 people were called before me—and I don’t have that ticket.

It has vanished into thin air.

But for some reason, they never call number 125, skipping over me for 126, 127, 128 and so on.

I run up to the front desk of the room, and I question the ticket caller, but the caller does not reply to me, keeping on his brisk pace of calling numbers way beyond 125—but he never called 125, skipping over me whether I had the ticket or not.

When I see that the ticket caller was ignoring me, I turn to the crowd and tell them the following (or something very much like it):

“This is a phony job recruitment,” I yelled out. “They don’t really have any cashier jobs available. They just post these jobs to see what is out there as far as the talent pool is concerned. They don’t really have the jobs … they are phony, and no one here is going to get a cashier job.”

I yelled this as people pressed past me as their number was called—and then I woke up in something of a sweat.

Look, I know for a fact that companies do post supposedly open jobs that don’t really exist, just to see what is out there as far as talent is concerned.

They have no intention of hiring, but want to collect resumes just in case they do have a job opening in a particular area. They pick and choose from the resumes they already have, making the talent search, and the eventual hiring of that talent, that much easier for them.

And some of the major job search engines—including the one whose name starts with an “I”—do post phony job entries to entice the company which is mentioned in the phony ad to take out a paid job ad with then.

This happened with my old place of business where I brought up one morning to the COO that as I was searching for jobs—it was kind of accepted at this point in time that all the six employees we still had were looking for work elsewhere—that I found a job ad for an editor’s position on this search engine listing my employer as the business having this job opening, and the COO explained it all to me, so I know that this type of action does exist.

(We went out of business about a month later.)

None of these actions are illegal, by the way, and looking back, of the more than 1,000 jobs that I applied for from mid-October 2019 to when I was about to fall off of the unemployment roles about a year later, I would estimate that 75 percent of the jobs that I applied for actually did not exist; most of my job searching took place when the pandemic was in full force, companies were not hiring, but they could see what was out there by putting up fake job ads, and the information they gathered could be used when the pandemic was over and they were actually hiring again.

So there is some sanity in my insanity, and I guess that it all adds up to the fact that I am worried that my wife is going to fall into the same work abyss as I have been in for nearly four years—if she isn’t in it already.

I wish my wife well on her interview, but I know all too well that there is a lot of monkey business that goes on with advertising for jobs, and I just hope that everything goes well and she actually gets this job.

She needs this job mentally, emotionally, physically and financially, and maybe she will have more luck than I have had.

I have run into brick walls; maybe she will be able to run right through those same walls!

We can only dream … .

Rant #3,184: Hope and Deliverance

The completely despicable episode that happened in New York City’s sacred Union Square Park firmly demonstrated what is wrong with this country and what is wrong with the world right now.

If you didn’t see the ruckus that happened there his past Friday afternoon, then the best way I can describe it is by using the word “mayhem,” because that’s what it was.

Some YouTube influencer proclaimed to his flock that he would be handing out 300 PlayStations, gift cards and other such useless prizes at the location at about 3 p.m. on that date, and not hundreds, but thousands of kids—most of them around 14 to 18 years of age—gravitated to Union Square, expecting to snag one of these prizes.

When few did, a riot ensued, with kids beating up kids, attacking police, and generally behaving so badly that a Code 4 situation was put in place by the cops, which is the highest level of riot security that the NYPD has—which means that the police were mobilized from across the five boroughs to quell the situation.

They were attacked with thrown bottles, construction objects like paint cans that came from a nearby contraction site, and not only were they attacked, but many in the crowd took out their frustrations on their fellow crowd members, pummeling them because they did not get what they wanted to get.

Kids climbed onto public structures, others destroyed local businesses and businessmen—one pushcart operator not only saw his business destroyed but he was physically attacked too—and if not for the work of the police, it all could have been much worse.

This co-called YouTube influencer did not have a permit for the assembly of a crowd, and the police were kind of taken by surprise by the sheer mass of people who showed up with anticipation of getting something that really wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things.

This imbecile did show up at the site, but he—along with a few dozen other rioters—were arrested, and the YouTuber eventually was charged with incitement to riot.

The police handled this perfectly, even though they were being hit left and right with the same force that they were hit left and right with a few years ago during the George Floyd riot … err … protests.

At least way back when, the participants in that lawlessness were supposedly fighting for a cause—yes, looting and destruction and attacks to police were characterized as fighting for a “cause” by the media—

But this time, there was clearly no cause, unless you characterize personal greed and lack of responsibility a “cause,” which the media didn’t do this time, and it was so obvious why they didn’t take that low road—because it would lessen the “dynamic” of what happened during the George Floyd situation, linking the Union Square riot with a situation that the media considered “justified.”

Anyway, Mayor Adams—who in his cockiness, has been so overwhelmed by being mayor of New York City, but he cloaks it with an attitude—was, for once, so right in his appraisal of the situation.

He stated that (paraphrase) “you cannot let the Internet and social media parent your kids” and that he, himself, called his son to make sure exactly where he was at the time of the riot to make sure that his son was not part of the melee--it was not made clear if he was there or not, of course--and said that parents should regularly call and text their children to find out where they are at any given time.

Although I am not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, the Bible warns us against false prophets and false gods, and with the Internet and social media sculpting our lives, the young are most vulnerable, because they know no other way of life than with a phone in their hands.

They do not know how to socialize in a normal pattern, they do not know how to literally do anything without a phone in their hands, and we, as parents, have used the phone as an electronic babysitter for our own kids, in particular this generation of young parents, who also know no other life without the phone.

Kids have no common sense, they cannot discern right from wrong, and they are ultra-sensitive to any pushback from anyone about their sensibilities.

Parents must seriously examine who they are to their children—parents and role models—and they must also be held responsible if their underage children get into situations like what happened on Friday afternoon in Union Squire Park.

This ”hear no evil, see no evil” attitude has got to stop, if for nothing else than for the sake of this younger generation, which right now I find to be the dumbest, weakest generation of people we have ever developed, because they have absolutely no common sense, no regard for authori8ty, and live in some netherworld where they dimply don’t know right from wrong.

And for a generation that is supposedly so in tune with their planet, so in force in slowing climate change, if you saw the aftermath of this riot, you saw more garbage strewn around the area, more than you would have if a ticker-tape parade was held there.

This helps our planet?

Ultimately I hope this YouTuber—a false prophet if there ever was one—gets the book thrown at him and that these kids somehow develop a moral compass that has nothing to do with the Internet or social media, so something like this never happens again.

And we can also hope that the media gets off their righteous plane and calls a riot a riot when it is one, no matter what the supposed “cause” is.

We can only hope.

Rant #3,183: Check It Out

Here is a completely innocuous question I have for you on this Friday morning:

Do you use the self-checkout lanes in your supermarket?

I certainly do, and I use them for a variety of reasons, including speed of exit, meaning that since I do all the scanning and bagging myself, it is simply quicker for me to do it all than wait for a cashier to do it.

That is, if a self-checkout register is open, but if I have to wait on a line to check out my groceries, I would rather wait for a self-checkout to be open than wait for a regular register to be open.

Look, I know I am buying into the philosophy that the supermarket chains have, that if people use the self-checkout lanes, why have as many cashiers on your staff if fewer people are using the traditional checkout lanes?

It is anti-employee, anti-union, anti-human being to use the self-checkout lanes, but honestly, I don’t think about the poor guy or gal sitting home without a job—or with less hours—because he or she is not needed as a cashier because of the existence of this mechanism.

I just want to get out of the store as quick as possible, and that is why I use them.

It almost makes the checkout situation a more “fun” one, because I am not only scanning the items, but placing them in the proper bags as I check out … I personally like to put all the heavier stuff—the soda, the juice and the milk—in one bag, boxes—like for cereal—in another, etc.

I can do that on the regular checkout line, but it is harder to do when the cashier is simply doing his or her job and scanning the groceries and passing them to you in no particular order.

And in New York, we have to use our own bags, so it makes it easier for me to have a plan at checkout, getting me out of the store as quickly as possible.

I write about military stores, and these stores are usually several years behind their outside-the-gate counterparts when it comes to grocery innovations.

Military stores—commissaries, which are supermarkets, and exchanges, which are department stores—have for just the past few years integrated self-checkout lanes into their stores, and hundreds of stores around the world still don’t have them, or will be getting them over the next several months.

I assume that the supermarket chains consider these lanes a success, because it helps them manage and cut payroll while they claim that they are providing a convenience to shoppers by offering them to their customers.

Certainly, if all you want to do is to buy a piece of gum, then the self-checkout lanes are the way to go—unless you have someone like me with a full grocery haul on the conveyor belt, which, obviously, is going to hold up the gum buyer for a considerable time.

(I often let people with just a few items go ahead of me, although I do remember that one time I got burned, and the one item the guy was holding ended up being many times, as he waved his family to come to the checkout, and he had numerous items to scan—and he did it without an apology yet!)

The store that I regularly do my food shopping in has about eight self-checkout lanes, so it is easier for me to make my choice about what lane I am going to.

Each one takes either cash or credit/debit cards, so I can pay however I like.

And with the eight self-checkout lanes are about six regular checkout lanes, only one of which is usually open, and sometimes two at best … again proving my point about the self-checkout lanes saving supermarkets money in personnel costs.

However, there are definitely frauds—both on purpose and not on purpose—at the self checkouts, where people do not scan items either purposely or absentmindedly, so when you add everything up, what are the self checkouts actually saving the stores when people purposely, or not on purpose, forget to scan certain items?

Anyway, do you prefer the self-checkouts or do you prefer to go to the traditional checkout lines with a human being helping you check out your groceries?

I did my food shopping yesterday morning, I went right onto a self-checkout lane, and everything was hunky dory, but the innocuous question of whether these things are worthy or not just crept into my already overloaded brain.

I like them, but do you?

Something to ponder as we go into the weekend.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #3,182: Honesty

OK, say what you want to say about professional wrestling, but it is a global phenomenon that isn’t going away anytime soon.

There are three major pro wrestling organizations: World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which dwarfs the others in scope and worldwide appeal; All-Elite Wrestling (AEW),which at only four years old, has hedged into WWE’s territory and appeal using a mix of former WWE wrestlers and its own homegrown stars, sprinkled with a lot of money and TV exposure; and Impact Wrestling a distant third, but a nice alternative to the bombastic nature of the other two with some excellent performers.

Today, I would like to talk about AEW, the young upstart, and a guy that I have spoken about before, Maxwell Jacob Friedman, better known as MJF.

The one thing that all three of these organizations share is that they work real-life experiences of their stable of wrestlers into the storylines presented on these telecasts, and build upon those storylines during the lucrative pay per views that they offer fans—AEW’s are $49.99 a pop, so these PPVs are a lucrative business.

Anyway, MJF—a young 20-something from Plainview, Long Island, New York—is not only an impressive wrestler, but he has terrific microphone skills, which is almost as important as having great wrestling skills when you are trying to spin yourself to the crowd and to the home audience.

MJF has turned himself into the top villain in AEW shaping his narrative as “The Devil,” and wearing his Jewishness on his sleeve like no other Jewish wrestler has in the history of pro wrestling.

In the past, he has spoken about how it went growing up Jewish and with various learning disabilities in Plainview, a middle to upper middle class area with a large Jewish population, and MJF has told viewers time and time again that it wasn’t an easy ride for him, even when he became a coveted high school football player for JFK High School, the same high school my daughter graduated from a few years earlier.

He has done other things to highlight his Jewishness and his character as “The Devil,” including wearing a scarf around his neck that acts as kind of a stand-in for a religious “Talis” that bar mitzvah youngsters earn on the day that, at least religiously, a boy turns into a man after he reads his Haftorah.

He has had a re-bar mitzvah event right in the middle of the ring, and again, being AEW’s top villain, he portrays himself as “The Devil,” which is a Jewish stereotype that goes back generations.

But he weaves this so perfectly into his villain persona that there isn’t really a bit of anti-Semitism thrown at him; the crowd clearly gets it to the max,and he is such a “good” bad guy that he is one of the most popular of AEW’s stable of wrestlers, the guy you love to hate.

Anyway, last night—in the midst of a reboot as a good guy—he laid bare more episodes of his past, and even if you aren’t a fan, the way he handled what he said made you sit up and listen.

On yesterday’s broadcast, MJF shared that he lives with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and a related syndrome called Rejection Sensitive Disorder.

According to Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/friendship-20/201907/what-is-rejection-sensitive-dysphoria), that people with this disorder, or as it describes it as a dysphoria, have an emotional reaction to negative judgments, exclusion, or criticism that goes far beyond the norm.

Other people may see those with RSD as overly perfectionist, overly-sensitive, or overly reactive to even the mildest criticism.

I had never heard of this ailment, but he helped to further define his ADD and RSD by recalling a childhood incident, where other kids threw quarters at him and forced him to pick up each coin while deriding his Jewishness, an incident that he said further heightened these ailments, and a story that has remained with him for his entire life.

As he spoke, one thing led to the other, and not only did he play out his “devil” persona but in a good way, he led the crowd in chanting a negative moniker which I will not repeat here, doing it as if they were cheering for their favorite wrestler, which MJF has become because he is so good at being a bad guy.

Adam Cole, another terrific wrestler who has had his moments as one of the top heels in pro wrestling but is now a good guy, was given kudos by MJF for reforming him, and all of this led up to the two of them fighting for the AEW championship at the upcoming All-In PPV event at Wembley Stadium in London, England on August 27.

Sure, it is pure show business, pure sports entertainment, but MJF’s candor about real events in his personal life is really refreshing, and while there have been many Jewish wrestlers through the years—everyone from Goldberg to Kane—no one wears his Jewishness on his sleeve better than MJF.

To me, he IS the reason to watch AEW Wrestling each week on TNT and TBS, whether you are a pro wrestling fan or not.

With his candor, Maxwell Jacob Friedman has truly made himself into a “real” person, and that is an anomaly in pro wresting, where fake feuds and scripted storylines usually rule the roost.

Rant #3,181: Another Day

It is Wednesday, August 2, and it is the 214th day of the year.

So what do I write about in today’s column, where we are in the midst of the real dog days of summer?

I don’t know, really, but let’s go back to some other August 2 entries in years’ past to see what I wrote about.

In Rant #2,193, I pretty much said the exact same thing as I am saying today:

“Today is August 2, the 214th day of the year, and for me, it is just another day at the salt mine, another day where I wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to work, work a very long day, eat lunch sometime in between, come home, eat dinner, watch a little TV, and go to sleep.

Yes, August 2 is just another day for me, and it does not stand out among the 365 days of the year.

At least it isn't a leap year this year, because then, I would have to say the same for a 366-day year.”

Well, at least I had work to go to back then, something to take my mind off of the very little that was going on at the time.

In Rant #783, in 2012, I wrote about the 59th birthday of actor Butch Patrick, best known for playing Eddie on the classic TV series "The Munsters."

So, happy birthday, Eddie … err … Butch, but can you explain to me how a vampire mother and a Frankenstein monster father produce a werewolf son?

(I already know how, but for the sake of conversation… .)

In 2017, in Rant #1,951, I wrote about the strange case of baseball's two Lee May's, one a slugger mainly for the Reds who had just passed away, and Lee Maye, with the extra 'e," who also had a solid career but also scored as a singer on a number of 45 RPM singles in the early to mid 1960s.

I don’t see any duplicate Aaron Judges or Shohei Otamis out there, not even another Ronald Acuna Jr. … although Acuna’s younger brother is a minor leaguer that the New York Mets just received in a trade.

And it all came full circle in Rant #1,724, from 2016, in "Shooting Blanks," where I spoke about sometimes having a brain cramp while writing this column five days a week.

And no, as I have said numerous times, I make absolutely no money from this blog, I do it strictly to keep my writing skills top-notch and mainly for fun.

Whatever the case, it is tough putting together these daily Rants, but honestly, it isn’t brain surgery.

Writing down my thoughts usually comes easy to me, and sometimes you will agree with me, sometimes you won’t, which is all fine and good.

But yes, sometimes I have a brain cramp, and nothing catches my fancy to write about.

I could scour my Yahoo News feed for inspiration … that news feed, on a daily basis, brings me the top news of the day, including today’s entries, like the following:

“Influencer Who Promoted Virtues of Fruit-Only Diet Dies Age 39 'Of Malnutrition'”

“Teresa Guidance and Husband Luis Ruelas Show Off Their Matching Tattoos While on the Beach”

“’We Went There To Have a Whale of a Time – a Sex Holiday, Really. But It Got Out of Hand’: Billy Idol on the Thailand Vacation That Ended With a Visit From the Army”

Heck, I know those are the major news items of the day, but I just cannot bring myself to talk about them here.

So today is just going to be one of those meandering Rants, simply because there is nothing top of mind that I feel I need to talk about.

My mother was pretty much up all night for one thing or another, I tried to sleep in between everything and kind of did, it is going to be a hot one today once again, and I expect some work to come my way over the next few hours, and I will be driving my son back and forth to work, too …

So the major part of my day is all lined up for me, and I guess that this column I just cobbled together is part of what I have lined up for myself today.

My mother’s aide just arrived, and I hope my mom has a better day today, because her night was not too good.

I guess we all have our days lined up for us, whether we realize it or not, and hopefully, everything will all work out in a positive fashion.

Rant #3,180: I'm Your Puppet

Happy August!

We are finally here into the last full month of summer.

July was a bit nicer to myself and my family than June was, but we still have a long way to go to put everything on the right track.

Maybe August will be the month.

This is a good month for my family anyway, as it is the month my son turns the ripe old age of 28, so it is a really good month to begin with.

So let’s see how the month pans out for us, and for all of us, you guys included.

Anyway, what can I talk about today?

How about the death of “Pee Wee Herman” yesterday.

Very sad indeed.

“Pee Wee Herman” was actually the alter ego of comic Paul Reubens, a nerdish character, with a dark underside, that he created in the 1970s and rode to fame in the 1980s.

The only way I can describe “Pee Wee Herman” is that he resembled a ventriloquist dummy who had come to life, with his ultra-skinny features, short-cropped hair, pink lips, and never-saw-the-sun complexion.

Hew also had that tight suit, the bow tie, and the ever-present smile and quick wit delivered in a high-pitched whine that rounded out his character.

You would have thought by looking at him that he was a real life Pinocchio—Reubens was obviously influenced by Paul Winchell’s “Jerry Mahoney” ventriloquist dummy character--but he wasn’t made of wood, he was all flesh and bones, and nobody’s hand was up his back as he made us laugh.

I remember that the first time I saw “Pee Wee Herman” was on, of all things, “The Dating Game.”

That classic game show often cast young, on-the-rise male actors and similarly on-the-rise starlets to compete for dates on the show, and Reubens was cast on an episode of the show, pitting himself against two clueless hunks.

I don’t remember if he won or lost, but he was “Pee Wee Herman” to the max on that show, and really,, the rest is history.

Later came “Pee Wee’s Playhouse,” a successful Saturday morning kids’ show that really wasn’t for kids, and it propelled him to stardom.

Adults were as eager to watch the show as kids were, but for different reasons, as Reubens injected a lot of adult humor—and attractive female supporting characters—into the show underneath and in between all of the kids-oriented material.

He went on to make a few movies as star and as a supporting actor as
“Pee Wee Herman,” but Reubens’ world blew up around him when he was arrested for lewd acts in a pornographic movie theater.

He laid low for a while, and Hollywood eventually gave him a second chance as both “Pee Wee Herman,” the character, and Paul Reubens, the actor.

He appeared as the actor in a couple of movies, including one of the Batman films, and he turned up here and there as the character, as nebbishly as ever.

But Reubens never reached his previous heights, a nd now we learned yesterday that in real life, he lost a battle to cancer at age 70.

So even the character “Pee Wee Herman” could not avoid a sad, real-life end.

R.I.P.