GREENSBORO, N.C. — Local 39-year-old Perry Lawson is one of the many millennials across the globe honoring the death of comedy legend Paul Reubens by watching “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” for the 200th time, multiple sources confirmed.
“I had just rewatched the movie on Friday night out of boredom, but now I’m watching it on a Monday afternoon as a tribute to the man that livened up my childhood and made me the weirdo I am today,” said Lawson while openly weeping during the opening credits. “Sometimes I don’t even realize that most of the jokes I make are directly lifted from this movie. Anytime I drive by someone getting pulled over by the police I tell my kid ‘That guy probably has a real bad temper and cut one of the tags off a mattress.’ She never laughs, she just rolls her eyes and then I’ll say something about Large Marge before we go back to sitting in silence.”
Lawsons’ 14-year-old daughter Dottie says Pee-wee has always been front and center in their house.
“I’ve never seen my dad this upset. It’s like a family member died, but not really, because earlier this year my grandfather died after falling down some stairs at the mall and my dad barely shed a tear. But now that Pee-wee is gone he’s inconsolable,” said the teenager while trying to avoid having to sit and watch the movie again. “I wish I was in school right now. The scene with the clowns and the bike still scares the crap out of me. It’s the main reason I hate hospitals and bike shops. I just hope this isn’t what finally pushes him over the edge to start working on his Rube Goldberg breakfast machine, the house will probably burn down.”
Amazon Prime engineer Izzie Patel has been tasked with keeping the platform up and running as hundreds of thousands of people stream the movie simultaneously.
“As soon as I heard the news of Mr. Reubens passing I immediately got to work to make sure our platform stayed online,” said Patel. “We have certain safeguards in place for when a celebrity dies to make sure we have the bandwidth, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. I grew up with Pee-wee so I get it, this isn’t just the death of a performer, part of my childhood died today. The part of me that actually had dreams died today.”
Spotify is also reporting their servers are at maximum capacity as “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” from “Nightmare Before Christmas’ which features Paul Reubens has skyrocketed to the top of the charts.