The Brief

Updated July 31, 2023, at 4:09 P.M. ET

Pee-wee Herman, the comic creation of actor/writer Paul Reubens, would often toss taunts of the schoolyard into his casual conversation. It was one of the character's go-to bits.

"Why don't you take a picture? It'll last longer!"

"That's my name! Don't wear it out!"

And, most iconically,

"I know you are, but what am I?"

Of course, when it came to Pee-wee himself, with his tight gray suit, red bow tie, crew cut, rouged cheekbones and ruby-red lips, "What am I?" was the real question – it was the one he posed merely by existing.

Reubens died Sunday of cancer at the age of 70. He was an actor — but for a long time, he tried to convince the public that Pee-wee was a real person, not a character.

Folks didn't know what to make of Reubens' petulant man-child at first. Created in 1977, while Reubens was a member of the Los Angeles sketch troupe The Groundlings, Pee-wee was part prop comic, part brat and part trickster spirit. There was something fearless in Pee-wee, something unapologetic and brash that took you a second to process. The character was very obviously and intentionally what folks used to call a sissy — but how could a sissy own the stage like he did? Bask in the spotlight like he did? How could a sissy so confidently and explicitly dictate the terms for his audience on how to experience him?

The Pee-wee Herman Show at The Groundlings Theatre soon had LA hipsters lining up around the block for a midnight show that mixed puppets and parody with archival educational films — the precise fuel mixture that powered Reubens' later CBS Saturday morning show, Pee-wee's Playhouse.

It was never Peter Pan, what he was doing. Yes, Pee-wee was a boy who never grew up, but he was more than that — he was one singular adult's remembrance of what it was like being a kid. Specifically, of those parts of childhood we pretend not to see in our own children — the narcissism, the selfishness, the utter lack of basic human empathy. The monstrous bits.

In Pee-wee's Big Adventure, it manifested in his hilariously obsessive drive to recover his stolen bike — a quest which would cause him to trample on the feelings of friends like Amazing Larry (Lou Cutell) and Dottie (E.G. Daily).

On Pee-wee's Playhouse, it took the form of gleeful admonitions to his viewers to "scream real loud" whenever anyone said the week's secret word. (Spare a thought for the long-suffering parents who'd hoped that sitting their kids in front of the TV would allow them a moment's peace to finish their coffee.)

On 1988's magnificent holiday staple Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, Reubens zeroed in kids' ravenous greed for presents, turning Pee-wee into a monster who only reluctantly sees the light once guilted into it. (Like Scrooge, he's a lot more fun to hang around with before his last-minute epiphany.)

In 1991, Reubens pleaded no contest to indecent exposure in an adult movie theater; about a decade later, he was charged with possession of obscene material of a child under the age of 18, but later he pleaded guilty to a reduced, misdemeanor obscenity charge. He's pictured above onstage at Universal Studios in Universal City, Calif., in October 2011.

(

Kevin Winter

/

Getty Images

)

To watch Pee-wee was to re-experience childhood the way we'd forgotten it actually was — pure, concentrated, distilled to its essence, when riding your bike and playing with your toys and screaming real loud was all it took to fill a day. Pee-wee was a creature of impulse, anarchy and id — which is probably why Reubens' frequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman helped launch him to stardom.

Reubens' silliness worked on a different frequency than Letterman's – Pee-wee was wilder and far less inhibited than Letterman could ever hope to be, and Letterman knew to play up his own tetchy, aggrieved discomfort at Pee-wee's hijinks for comedic effect. The two men vibrated at opposite ends of the comedic spectrum, but they worked together brilliantly.

In those interview segments, which quickly devolved into Pee-wee's signature giggles, you laughed at Reubens' ability to take complete control of the experience, and at Letterman's entirely uncharacteristic willingness to give over the reins.

In the coming days, our social media feeds will fill up with a lot of Pee-wee's greatest hits — Large Marge; "Tequila!"; Jambi the Genie; Chairy; Reubens' extended and entirely improvised death scene in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie; "I'm a loner, Dot. A rebel."; and, of course, "Come on, Simone. Let's talk about your big 'but.'"

Me, though, I'll be putting on the aforementioned Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, because it will remind me of one of Reubens' most overlooked talents – his ability to sneak an artisanal blend of fey subversiveness into the mainstream. That special injected a defiantly, yet matter-of-fact, queer sensibility into the CBS primetime airwaves of Reagan's America: The Del Rubio Triplets! Zsa Zsa Gabor! Little Richard! Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon! KD Lang! Charo! The LA Men's Chorus dressed up as a Marine choir! And, most indelibly, Grace Jones as green Gumby, drag singing a club mix of "The Little Drummer Boy."

Keep your "I meant to do that." Keep your dancing on the biker bar to "Tequila." The image of Reubens that I'll be holding closest to my heart over the next few days is of him rocking out in the background as Jones sings in the glare of the spotlight.

Because I swear you can see, in just the way he holds his body, the mischievous delight he's taking in what he's unleashing on an unsuspecting public: Grace Jones, ladies and gentlemen, delivered unto your living rooms, pulling up to the bumper of your cozy family holiday special, an entirely singular brand of weirdness served up to you hot and fresh, with a high, unselfconscious giggle.

Jennifer Vanasco contributed to earlier versions of this story.

The Los Angeles Dodgers clinched their fifth consecutive NL West division title and 13th in the 14 seasons, sparked by four hits from Kyle Tucker that included a first-inning home run in an 8-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday.

The two-time World Series champions already were assured of their 14th straight postseason appearance, trying the record Atlanta set from 1991 to 2005. Los Angeles (93-60) had clinched no worse than a wild-card berth on Monday.

Los Angeles opened a 9 1/2-game lead over second-place San Diego and has the second-best record in the NL as they try to overtake Milwaukee (95-57 entering Thursday) for the top NL seed. The division clinching was the fourth earliest for the Dodgers after Sept. 10 in 2019, Sept. 13 in 2022 and Sept. 16 in 2023.

Tucker fell a triple short of the cycle and had three RBIs, hitting a single and a pair of doubles. He hit his 16th homer, a two-run drive in the first off Brady Singer, who allowed seven runs, nine hits and four walks in 3 1/3 innings.

Freddie Freeman’s sacrifice fly and Tucker’s RBI double boosted the lead in the second, and the Dodgers opened a 7-0 lead in the fourth on Max Muncy’s two-run double and Josue De Paula’s RBI single.

Dodger left-hander Justin Wrobleski, making his 22nd start this season and first since Sept. 6, did not allow a baserunner in three innings while striking out three.

Wrobleski and Blake Treinen combined to retire their first 11 batters before Sal Stewart’s 32nd homer.

Landon Knack (1-0) allowed four hits over four scoreless innings for his first big league win since May 31 last year.

Miguel Rojas homered off Brandon Williamson in the ninth.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said reliever Edwin Díaz (neck inflammation) finished his minor league injury rehabilitation assignment and will be activated this weekend.

While the name Keizo Shimamoto may not ring a bell, his most famous creation likely does — the ramen burger. In 2013, while slinging bowls at Smorgasburg in Brooklyn, Shimamoto swapped a bun for two ramen cakes, added a beef patty — and, almost overnight, became a viral sensation.

Now, more than a decade later, shaped by hard lessons from a shuttered Queens restaurant, a failed Orange County shop and a stint in the fintech industry, Shimamoto is back, quietly running a ramen operation out of a shared ghost kitchen in Irvine. It's deliberately low-key: there's barely a sign to let you know he's there, just the occasional social media post directing customers to an online order form.

A quiet return

Shimamoto Noodle opened in early August, and word of his return spread through word of mouth and social media before Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Bill Addison covered him in his Tasting Notes newsletter a few weeks later. Since then, business has kicked into a higher gear — Shimamoto said he's now averaging close to 50 bowls of ramen a day, plus another 20 to 25 burgers.

"I definitely wanted to do it at my own pace," said Shimamoto, who grew up in Orange County. "I knew eventually I would be found."

Keizo Shimamoto, creator of the viral ramen burger, stands in the kitchen at Shimamoto Noodle in Irvine.

(

Courtesy Keizo Shimamoto

)

The menu

His offerings are compact by design: five bowls of ramen and two versions of his famous burger, ranging from $16 to $20. You can choose from the Signature Shoyu, the spiced Negi Shoyu, the Quiet Storm (a 13-ingredient gyokai-tonkotsu broth), Ganja-style tsukemen and a Taishoken-style dipping ramen called Shoyu Tsukesoba.

"I'm not so obsessed with making the best ramen in the world," Shimamoto said. "I'm just obsessed with being able to eat a great bowl every single day."

The signature shoyu is a clear, savory broth built on chintan, a light chicken stock blended with traditional dashi, niboshi-aroma oil infused with dried sardines, and a soy-based tare — the seasoning base that gives the broth its flavor. It arrives with thin house-made noodles, pork belly chashu, marinated bamboo shoots, spinach and scallions.

Shimamoto's Signature Shoyu ramen, topped with pork belly chashu, nori, spinach and a narutomaki fish cake.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

It looks simple. But the fat bubbles pooled on top of that first slurp say otherwise — the tare sits for days before a bowl is even assembled.

"I let it rest for two weeks to mature," Shimamoto said.

Sitting on the opposite end of the spectrum is the Quiet Storm, a thicker, more opaque 13-ingredient gyokai-tonkotsu broth. Shimamoto builds much of his ramen from memory, drawing on a 2009 research trip through 21 Japanese cities, where he ate 55 bowls of ramen in 28 days — a journey he documented on his blog, discovering how much the dish varies by region.

The Quiet Storm itself came from tweaking a tonkotsu-gyokai dipping soup he'd made in New York until it triggered a memory of a bowl he'd once had in Tokyo. "I just ran with that," he said.

He named it during his years running the original Ramen Shack in Queensbridge — home turf of the '90s hip-hop duo Mobb Deep, whose 1999 song "Quiet Storm" lent the bowl its name.

Customers eat outside Smart Kitchens, the shared commissary space in Irvine's Sky Park Business Center at the Smart Kitchen facility where Shimamoto Noodle operates.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

The Ramen Burger

The dish that put Shimamoto on the map was entirely his own: a beef patty in shoyu glaze, sandwiched between two house-made, seared noodle buns engineered to hold together when you bite in.

Its 2013 virality overshadowed Shimamoto's actual training as a ramen chef, and being known as "the ramen burger guy" used to bother him. He's since made peace with it — and used his added years of experience to improve the dish itself.

"I think right now the ramen burger is probably the best ramen burger that I've ever made, only because everything is controlled by me," he said. "I made the sauce from scratch, I make the noodles from scratch, I form the buns from scratch."

The sense of control and peace of mind Shimamoto describes extends beyond the food itself.

Eight minutes from his house, close to his parents and brothers, Shimamoto said it simply feels right.

"It feels good," he said. "It feels pretty right, right now."

Unlike her friends, when Izel Casillas, 19, a sophomore at the University of California, Davis, moved into her first apartment, she did it without the support of her immediate family. She and her older sister had been in the foster care system since being removed from their home at ages 14 and 15.

This summer, however, Casillas learned she had been awarded $3,000 as part of a recently launched state program that provides money for longtime foster youth and low-income children who lost a parent due to the coronavirus.

For Casillas, the money came at a time when she needed it, she said, giving her a sense of control and financial support she hadn’t quite experienced before. “It does make you feel seen — makes you not feel as alone,” she said.

In May, four years after the program was first created by the state Legislature, California launched the Hope, Opportunity, Perseverance and Empowerment, or HOPE, for Children program. More than 56,000 young Californians are eligible for $3,000 in a trust account to use however they choose. The program was created to provide a safety net for two groups of young people who may enter adulthood without parental support.

For young people without parents or financial support, the first steps into adulthood often look different than they do for their peers, said AJ Johnson with the John Burton Advocates for Youth, an advocacy organization for foster and homeless youth.

“It looks like debt. It looks like homelessness,” Johnson said. “It looks like pausing school to take on work to get by. It looks like living in unsafe situations. And what this money means is that you can use it to get to safety [and] use it to be relieved of the burden of debt.”

Program provides $3,000 in seed money that can grow over time 

The state Legislature created the accounts in 2022, during a budget-surplus year amid the pandemic. At the time, thousands of children were losing their parents to COVID-19, while California was also seeing high rates of foster youth aging out of the system and facing homelessness, advocates say.

Run by the state treasurer’s office, the program provides $3,000 in interest-bearing accounts to eligible young people. Foster youth qualify if they spend over 1 1/2 years in foster care, whether consecutive or not, or if their family reunification services are terminated. Low-income youth who lost a parent to COVID-19 contracted during the pandemic also qualify. They can access the funds between ages 18 and 26.

“So, the idea behind the HOPE account was to create a way for these youth, who are some of our most vulnerable in society, to be able to have some seed funding to start their life,” said Cassandra DiBenedetto, the acting executive director for HOPE.

Going deeper

HOPE recipients also have access to financial education and free confidential financial planning services with the accounts.

Youth under 18 on Sept. 27, 2022, when the law was enacted, who are longtime foster youth or low-income, COVID-19-bereaved youth are eligible.

Those not yet 18 who already qualify can apply for and open the account.

Click here to find out if you’re eligible.

The money is not restricted to spending on college, career training, starting a business or buying a house, said Shimica Gaskins, president and CEO of the policy advocacy organization End Child Poverty California, which worked with the Legislature on creating the program. Young people can decide for themselves how to use the money based on what they most need, she said.

“There’s something very powerful about telling a child that this money is set aside for your future, and it belongs to you,” Gaskins said. “That’s more than money. It’s a message about their potential, about their opportunity. And that future doesn’t have to be tied to just four things.”

Although the program was signed into law in 2022, it took four years to launch. Some of that time was spent working to set up the program, since data on foster youth is private. Advocates and state officials also consulted national experts and young people about how the program should work. There were unforeseen delays as well.

Last year, the governor reallocated $40 million of $100 million originally designated for the program to help close the state’s budget gap, for example.

Youth must apply

The money is not automatically distributed to those who are eligible, and getting the word out is one of the program’s greatest challenges. Members of the HOPE team have promoted the accounts at foster youth resource fairs, through webinars with trained volunteers and court-appointed advocates and in conversations with dependency attorneys and probation officers.

HOPE has also partnered with community groups and schools, including the Youth Law Center, John Burton Advocates for Youth, organizations that conduct outreach to families affected by COVID-19, and youth programs at colleges and universities. The state Department of Social Services sent out an informational notice to counties so social workers and others would know about the program and how it works.

That’s how 20-year-old Nevaeh Williams, who recently aged out of foster care, learned of HOPE. Entering the foster care system at age 10, Williams was eligible because she remained in foster care, living with family members, until age 18.

For Williams, the application process was straightforward. She applied in June and got her approval email in August, within the 90-day window. She requested her disbursement in early September and is now waiting for the money to arrive, which should take about 30 days.

She’s had her own apartment since shortly after turning 18. By that time, she’d become a teen parent of two. She works as a certified nursing assistant in Los Angeles County while participating in a bridge program to become a registered nurse.

She plans to use the HOPE money to redecorate her 4-year-old daughter’s room and buy her 2-year-old son toys, blocks and flash cards.

“It’s like a relief because, day to day, for most people, it doesn’t just happen in a lump sum like that,” she said. “I pay basically $2,000 in rent, and I still have all these other side bills. I don’t just have a big lump sum at once to do stuff like that.”

‘Freedom’

Similar to other programs that provide free money to help young people, HOPE can be underutilized if there’s a lack of awareness or a new process to navigate.

So far, 2,243 applications have been submitted, and there have been over 650 approvals with more than $200,000 distributed. One young woman used the money as a down payment on a car, said HOPE’s DiBenedetto. Another used it to put a security deposit on an apartment.

Casillas at UC Davis plans to leave her $3,000 untouched and let it grow in the trust account — until she needs it.

“I’m not going to touch that money,” she said.

“It feels like a lot of freedom, but also with that, it helps you so much, especially with emergencies and anything you need — an apartment, rent, transportation, all of that. I think it’s an amazing feeling to know that I’m supported in that way.”

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.

It was March when a group of California lawmakers decided they’d broach a sticky topic: child marriage.

Over the next three months, Democrats would devise a plan to persuade reluctant colleagues to finally outlaw the practice and contend with special interest groups that might work against them.

In what might come as a surprise, it’s legal for anyone younger than 18 to get married in California, so long as a parent and judge approve. Perhaps even more surprising, two influential groups in Democratic politics — the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood — have historically staunchly supported the law.

Children have a right to marry, the ACLU argues, and stripping them of that right would take away a pathway to their emancipation and independent healthcare decisions. For Planned Parenthood, the freedom for children to marry is about allowing people reproductive choice and bodily autonomy.

Just two other states — New Mexico and Mississippi — have no minimum age to wed. And while minors can marry at any age in California, advocates say it’s hard to hire a divorce attorney before 18.

About 9,000 children are married each year in California, the vast majority of them girls marrying adult men, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Unchained at Last. Because the age of consent for sexual activity is 18, advocates say marriages between children under 18 and adults implicitly legalize a sexual relationship that would otherwise be considered statutory rape under state law.

The organization has worked for the past decade to push for bans in New York, Oklahoma, Washington and a dozen other states.

But their efforts have repeatedly failed in California, where Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have lobbied hard against restricting child marriage, although those groups have largely stayed silent on the issue in other Democratic-controlled states.

That can partially be explained by their outsize influence in California politics. Planned Parenthood advocates on behalf of some of the most cherished liberal causes and has donated at least $2.7 million to Democratic lawmakers since 2002, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

This year, Democrats faced different circumstances with the organization, prompting Democratic lawmakers in June to introduce Assembly Bill 1267 to finally bar children from marrying.

Assemblymember Gail Pellerin authored the bill through what’s called a “gut-and-amend” when lawmakers strip the language of an unrelated bill to fast-track a new one after the deadline to introduce bills the typical way had passed. Democrats missed the deadline because they wanted to make sure Planned Parenthood wouldn’t get in the way, according to advocates.

While the ACLU again opposed the legislation this year, there were no lobbyists to be found advocating for minors’ right to marry in committee hearings this summer, and Planned Parenthood stayed “neutral” on the bill, declining to take a position.

And even as some Democrats expressed hesitation about not allowing two teenagers in love to tie the knot, the ban passed the Legislature with near-unanimous support in August.

“We need to make it clear that girls, despite their perceived maturity, are children,” Pellerin said in an interview. “Children don’t have unprotected freedom.”

After nearly a decade of failed attempts to outlaw child marriage, the bill now awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature or veto. He has until Sept. 30.

ACLU spokesperson Carmen King declined to respond to questions about why the group opposes the bill and did not make anyone available for an interview with CalMatters for this story.

In a June opposition letter, the organization wrote, “Prohibiting minors from marrying in every case is a departure from California’s longstanding commitment to honoring minors’ ability to make important personal decisions for themselves, particularly in the realm of reproductive autonomy.”

Planned Parenthood did not say anything official about the bill and spokesperson Shelby McMichael declined to make anyone available for an interview with CalMatters.

In an emailed statement, McMichael said the group “takes positions on a bill-by-bill basis each session. Given the ‘defund’ of Planned Parenthood health centers this past year, we made the decision to prioritize issues related to the Trump administration and congressional Republicans’ ongoing attacks on health care.”

‘Planned Parenthood’s voice matters’

Its abortion care services at more than 100 clinics across the state have made Planned Parenthood a symbol of reproductive freedom in California for decades, though the group notes that abortion services make up only a fraction of its services. Its enmeshment with Democrats politics has only accelerated during the first and second Trump administrations as party leaders worked overtime to stave off federal defunding efforts.

In February, California lawmakers approved $140 million in emergency funding for the group to offset federal cuts. And on its website, Planned Parenthood keeps a scorecard of how often legislators vote in agreement with it.

On its 2025 scorecard, all but one Democrat had a score of 100%.

Two years ago, Irvine Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat, introduced Assembly Bill 2924 to ban minors from marrying.

Assemblymember Ash Kalra told advocates that Planned Parenthood had to drop its opposition before lawmakers could consider voting on the legislation.

The San Jose Democrat, who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, said banning minors from marriage would threaten their right to an abortion, which he said California hadn’t yet codified into law. Voters enshrined the right to an abortion in 2022, two years before the 2024 bill was introduced.

Some lawmakers were also skeptical about whether the data on child marriages was accurate, Kalra said.

He never gave the bill a hearing.

“I think that absolutely was one of the factors, certainly," Kalra said of Planned Parenthood’s opposition and his decision to kill the legislation. “Planned Parenthood’s voice matters in that, and in other issues that come before us in the Capitol.”

This reasoning harkened to earlier failed attempts, including in 2017 when Democrats killed another bill to change the state’s child marriage laws over similar reasons.

Then-Sen. Jerry Hill said he sought an outright ban on the practice after he learned of a 13-year-old girl in his district who was engaged to a 38-year-old man from another country.

“I thought, ‘Who could oppose that? Who could say that it was wrong?’” Hill said of the bill he introduced to ban child marriage. But he was left perplexed that what he thought was a commonsense policy proposal evolved into a larger debate about cultural differences, childhood freedom and bodily autonomy.

In some cultures it’s acceptable for girls to be wedded to older men or be placed into arranged marriages, according to a United Nations report.

Lawmakers in recent years have proposed measures to clamp down on forced marriages, which are already a crime. Kalra is among them, this year authoring Assembly Bill 2534 which would allow victims to file a restraining order against anyone coercing them into a marriage. Kalra and women’s rights groups say it would be the first policy of its kind in the country if enacted into law. Planned Parenthood supports it.

On the 2017 child marriage legislation, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood were staunch opponents, and then-Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, a Democratic labor leader who chaired the Assembly Appropriations Committee at the time, told Hill she wouldn’t let a ban move forward unless it was amended to lower the minimum age to 16- or 17-year-olds instead of 18.

That bill was eventually weakened to become current law: Any young person can get married if a parent and the courts sign off.

Hill said his attempt and others were killed by special interest groups.

“They’re so powerful, these interest groups in Sacramento. They have a lot of say and sway over what comes out of the Legislature,” said Hill, who represented Silicon Valley for 12 years. “Politics trumps policy about 80% of the time.”

Gonzalez recalled it differently. While it’s true she refused to let an outright ban pass, she said, she doesn’t remember Planned Parenthood opposing the bill or considering it in her decision-making.

She said when older teenage girls in her district got pregnant, it was common for some Latino families to encourage them to marry the father if he was the same or of similar age.

“I had girls where they were telling me this is the best choice,” Gonzalez told CalMatters. She said the difference in age between partners seemed to matter more than the marriage itself. “At the time, it seemed very classist” to impose an outright ban, she said.

‘At least we’re here now’

President Donald Trump’s push to defund Planned Parenthood clinics put more political pressure on the group than usual in recent years and made the organization more reliant on state funding.

Things were made worse last November, when a New York Times opinion piece criticized the ACLU and Planned Parenthood for their roles in blocking legislation against child marriage while Republican-controlled states such as Arkansas and Louisiana imposed tighter restrictions.

For survivor and advocate Sara Tasneem, California’s failure to act for several decades allowed her to be forcibly married at 15 to a 28-year-old man by her father, who she said was part of a Northern California “Sufi cult” that orchestrated it. When her father learned Tasneem was dating a high school classmate, he found someone for her to marry, she said.

“I was handed over to this complete stranger who I just met,” she said. She dropped out of school and was repeatedly raped, feeling trapped and unable to leave before she turned 18 because she couldn’t hire an attorney as a minor. Tasneem said she had two kids with her rapist, who she left in 2003, at age 23, taking her children.

Looking back and realizing she “didn’t grow up with a lot of power,” Tasneem turned to advocacy more than a decade later.

Most advocates are hopeful Newsom will sign the bill.

“Should it have happened a decade earlier? Yes, it should have,” said Unchained at Last executive director Fraidy Reiss, who at 19 was forced to marry an older man in her New York Orthodox Jewish community. “But at least we’re here now.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.