My Arms Did It

On Pee-wee Herman, Hulk Hogan, and the thing nobody's willing to say out loud. Paul Reubens died in the summer of 2023 and the obituary writers panicked. Not about the usual things. They panicked about something simpler. They didn't know what name to put first. The New York Times went with "Paul Reubens, Madcap Comedian Who Created Pee-wee Herman." CNN hedged differently. A few outlets just said Pee-wee, like Paul was a footnote in his own death. Here's what none of them could say: Paul Reubens didn't play Pee-wee Herman the way an actor plays Hamlet and goes home afterward. Pee-wee was the voice Paul thought in. The lens through which he saw a world more absurd than the one the rest of us inhabited. You can watch a hundred hours of Pee-wee's Playhouse and try to find the seam. You can't. Two names. One person. Not a metaphor. A fact the obituary format has exactly one field for. Terry Bollea had the same problem, except his came with a $140 million verdict. You know him as Hulk Hogan.