I was born in 1984. I was a little too young to actually appreciate the 80s while I was living in them. Of course we had ALF, and Spuds MacKenzie but I didn’t really have a firm grasp on much else that was happening at the time. It required being a hairy alien or alcoholic dog that has sex for me to have kept up.

One of the few humans that broke through that barrier and lived in my brain was Pee-wee Herman. I didn’t 100% understand what “his thing” was at the time and I’m still not positive I do, but he dressed like a cartoon, had a funny voice and told jokes that I didn’t quite understand. He was an adult but a boy and he lived like a maniac, often screaming, sometimes being a weird perv. What a miracle that we got that on TV.

A huge element to this whole package was the aesthetic. Cheap, but not trashy. DIY but not really punk. It lives in a fuzzy place in my brain, like a half remembered B-52’s video. It’s hard to pin down, but there were lots of textured surfaces and beehive hairdos. 1950s space age furnishings mixed with late 80s color and noise. The impact was huge. Just zoning out in front of Pee-wee’s Playhouse made me question why all doors aren’t asymmetrical red patent leather. We have the technology, clearly. 

Looking back I can at least recognize that this was the aesthetic of different times. Before HD, before comedy all kind of flattened out, back when if a wrestler was in something the joke was that a wrestler was in it. It was what it was partially because people were winging it, the rules hadn’t been established yet. Partially because they didn’t have the money to do it better. But mostly it seems like it was just the best version of what was in their heads. Movies and TV like Pee-wee or Elvira were the flag bearers of this style and one constant factor that keeps popping up throughout those projects is John Paragon, who passed away this spring.

Perhaps John was destined to be the ultimate side man. When you come up through the Groundlings in the 80s with the likes of Paul Reubens, Cassandra Peterson, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Edie McClurg, and Jan Hooks it can be hard to stand out. He was always game to play a sleaze or smarmy asshole though.

Paragon is most famously remembered as Jambi, the floating genie head that grants Pee-wee Herman wishes. And because his most famous role was him with paint on his face, under a turban with absolutely no body, it’s not surprising I didn’t really recognize him when he showed up in some of my other favorite things.

I grew up watching a tape of UHF on repeat and had no idea Richard Fletcher, the scene stealing dingus son of the movie’s villain, was my favorite head in a box. 

Or later as a teenager I’d stay up all night long watching Night Stand, the Jerry Springer/late night talk show parody. Lord knows how many times I tuned in to see him do some creepy character there without a clue who it was. Maybe three or four times, I’d guess!

He was a utility player. Maybe one of those guys where his best stuff never even made it to tape. Just lost in the ether of improv back in the 80s. We’re lucky though. We still can throw on something like Eating Raoul where he plays the easily irritated owner of a dildo store. Or catch him in a blink and you’ll miss it bit part in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. And of course his second most remembered role is probably Pterri Pterodactyl, a puppet whose voice I embarrassingly do around the house.

I honestly don’t know much about John outside of these roles, and it seems insufficient to try and pin someone down to their IMDB credits after they’re gone, but he was one of those actors that even if you didn’t know his name, he defined a time and place. An era where you can be selfless enough to be a painted head on the children’s TV show that you were also writing and directing.

John clearly did things his own way, and the fact that the bulk of his credits were tied to Pee-wee or Elvira projects feels like he kept doing it his way because it’s what he liked. I can’t say I knew his artistic motivation, but when you make things as left of center as he did, you’re putting the burden on the audience to get it, and if they don’t, it’s their loss. His work lives in it’s own world, existing because it needs to. I’m tempted to say, “They don’t make ’em like that any more,” but I won’t because who knows, maybe they do! They definitely don’t put ’em on TV like that any more though. Luckily John and his characters will always live on in that weird fuzzy spot in your brain.

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