Have you ever wondered how Pee Wee’s Playhouse came about?
No, seriously. How do you explain a cowboy living in the same neighborhood as a member of some sort of cow aristocracy? How can furniture talk? How can early ‘90s technology produce a sentient robot? Why would the King of Cartoons deign to visit a backwoods playhouse on a weekly basis? What kind of sea captain can trek inland on such a regular schedule, leaving his ship idle at port? How can “the most beautiful woman in Puppetland” be a human being who, due merely to her species, must be a hideous abomination to most of the locals? How can fish speak while underwater? Why does a playhouse with one occasional resident need a full time lifeguard? Who the hell would be brave enough to sit in Chairy? How could such an aerodynamically compromised pterodactyl manage to fly? How could a person, even a person as shallow as Pee-Wee, waste magic wishes on such petty desires? How can a kite predict any element of the weather apart from the wind direction? Why does Pee Wee let tiny little Randy intimidate him? Why is Randy even allowed to stay in the playhouse, if he’s so abusive? Why are the ants the most typically human characters we ever see? How could someone bring themselves to eat talking food?
So many unanswered questions. It seems that it would require a vast and complex theory to explain it all.
Or perhaps not. In science, we look for simple answers. But what single factor can explain all of these strange and diverse mysteries?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have your answer. The single factor that can explain everything is Jambi.
Jambi is the only character on Pee Wee’s playhouse with the incredible power necessary to cause these paradoxes. Jambi is the only one who could create such terrible, sentient monstrosities, and at once rob them of all self-awareness of the bleak horror of their existence.
But wait, there's a problem with our theory. Jambi can’t execute his will by himself. He needs a person, a host if you will, to make wishes so that he may grant them.
But who would be sick enough to wish for such things as these?
You may be tempted to say Pee Wee, and in a way you’re right, but it isn’t as simple as that. Pee Wee may be clinically insane, but he isn’t hurtful. He would never wish a human being into furniture. In fact, he would never do harm to any living thing, except by accident.
Except by accident.
An accident such as… a misguided wish? A misguided wish, fulfilled by a genie—a mystical creature who, according to myth, is capable of evils even greater than humanity’s.
And so the picture becomes clear. Pee Wee discovered Jambi’s box, perhaps on an archeological dig. We don’t know what Pee Wee did for a living, after all. He could have been anything. Perhaps his history is less glamorous. Perhaps he was merely a janitor, cleaning the archives at a museum, when he found The Djinn’s Box.
Whatever the story, however Jambi caught hold of Pee Wee, the djinn offered him the customary wish. And Pee Wee, because he is such a kind soul, wished for something selfless, something pure, something good.
He wished for an end to world hunger. The evil djinn Jambi grinned and chanted those chilling, fateful words: “Mekka lekka high, mekka hiney ho!”
Pee Wee stared into the eyes of the powerful creature and, too late, saw the evil lurking within. “No!” he cried. “I take it back!” But it was too late.
For the only one left was Pee Wee. He ran out into the street to find that he alone was left alive in a world of the dead. A world without life, but a world that would never, ever go hungry.
“You seem like a nice boy,” Jambi the Worldkiller said to Pee Wee. “I’ll grant you another wish, so you can fix things.”
Pee Wee fell to his knees and begged, “Take back my wish! Please take it back, Jambi!”
“I can’t take back your wish, Pee Wee. But I can grant you another.”
“Then bring them back! Bring everyone back!” Pee Wee was weeping now. “Please bring them back.”
“If I bring them back,” said the evil spirit, “there will be hunger. That would be taking back your first wish.”
Pee Wee sobbed into his hands. “Then bring them back without hunger! Find a way, I beg you!”
“Granted.” This time, the magical words chilled Pee Wee to the bone, as the djinn said again, “Mekka lekka high, mekka hiney ho!”
And the dead rose. Not as living flesh, but as horrible abominations. Furniture. Windows. Clocks. Each took the form of some object, and became an animate creature of felt and stuffing.
Awaking to this nightmare and seeing what they had become, their horrible screams tore through windows and echoed through the streets. All humankind woke to find themselves transformed into creatures more ghastly and terrible than Kafka’s worst imaginings.
For they were puppets. But puppets do not feel hunger.
“Don’t despair,” said Jambi. “Not everyone’s a puppet. A few humans remain. Just enough so that there will always be enough food for them. Of course, I don’t know how they’re going to react to what’s happened. Perhaps you should find them and gather them together. I think we’ll all have lots of fun together.”
Pee Wee blinked through his tears and leveled a hateful gaze upon the djinn. He steeled himself and said, “I wish I were dead.”
Jambi smiled. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said. “Why don’t you take a walk through this new world you’ve created? Have some fun. Then, if that’s what you really want, I’ll grand you another wish in, say, one week?”
Pee Wee did not respond. He rose silently and walked through the streets. All around him, the puppet people wailed and cried out in their lamentations.
All because of him.
And Pee Wee laughed—a mad little giggle on the cusp of sanity. “Ha ha!”
