Melena Ryzik

2 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Melena Ryzik

Paul Reubens's performance as Pee-wee Herman gave fans "license to be weird." At an underground cabaret, he cheered on his community of renegades. Paul Reubens, as seen in the documentary "Pee-wee as Himself." Before creating Pee-wee Herman, he got his start in the performing arts underground of Los Angeles in the 1970s. Credit... HBO Paul Reubens's performance as Pee-wee Herman gave fans "license to be weird." At an underground cabaret, he cheered on his community of renegades.

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Melena Ryzik

1 day agoMoments into the illuminating, two-part HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself, what emerges pretty quickly is a struggle for control. Paul Reubens, the performer who invented the Pee-wee Herman character and turned him into a worldwide pop culture icon, faces the camera in the documentary's opening …

4 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Melena Ryzik

A new Netflix series adapts Judy Blume's 1970s novel with a contemporary Black cast, flipping the gender roles but preserving its emotional innocence. In Judy Blume's taboo-busting 1975 novel "Forever ...," a teenage girl has sex for the first time. It does not destroy her life. (That's the plot twist.) But she is still surrounded by cautionary tales: unwanted pregnancies, untimely marriages and dreams deferred.

1 month ago | seattletimes.com | Melena Ryzik

Comedians have always wanted to be pop and rock stars — or at least, enough of them have gotten comfortable with a guitar and a drum track to make it seem so. It’s a long and eclectic tradition, including Steve Martin, Weird Al, Bo Burnham, Rachel Bloom, Donald Glover, Randy Rainbow and John Early. Now there’s a new crop of albums from entertainers across the comic spectrum. Some of them regularly use music as part of their act, like Cat Cohen, whose repertoire is all cabaret style.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Melena Ryzik

The stand-up and actor Mae Martin has carved an unusually sincere path as a comic, plumbing their life, sexuality and addictions with a lot of charm, and little sarcasm. Their album "I'm a TV" is also a departure - no punchlines, no bits, just dreamy indie rock that explores longings, identity and friendships on the verge of something else. With Martin on guitar, piano, bass and harmonica, the album was produced by Jason Couse and Wes Marskell of the Canadian art-rock duo the Darcys.