FRUITCAKE!?

December 23

Baking cookies makes Pooh grin. Soon the eating will begin!

Pee-Wee Herman: Christmas in the Playhouse
Charo: Feliz Navidad

And bringing us to number two on our "Greatest Christmas Specials" list: Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special (now available on DVD)! Just listen to that first track--Christmas in the Playhouse--and you'll understand the excitement that could be found. In the special's brief fifty minutes, there are appearances by Magic Johnson, Oprah Winfrey, Frankie Avalon, kd lang, Grace Jones, the Del Rubio Triplets, and many, many, MANY more!

One of those "many more"s is Charo, everybody's favorite Latina sparkplug. Viewers of VH1's The Surreal Life will find solace in the fact that Charo was batshit insane a decade before she moved into a house with Flava Flav.

Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special is responsible for the only prize I've ever won. Over the holidays when I was eight years old, some prime-time radio DJ was holding a random Christmas trivia contest. He asked about the holiday gift that was deemed "the worst Christmas gift." Somehow I got to be the tenth caller, and I answered "FRUITCAKE!" The DJ didn't ask, but I could have regaled him with tales of the time Pee-Wee Herman built an entire movie theater out of fruitcakes and subsequently masturbated inside of it. I won a case of Pepsi and a tee-shirt. Jealous?