"Pee-wee's Playhouse."

Set your TiVo. The Cartoon Network will be running the show late at night, which is a way of saying this is a cult show or a nostalgia show, not a kids show anymore. I remember when the show originally came out. It was great fun for kids. Why can't we see it that way again?

But although some do find the "Playhouse" itself creepy — and so rife with hidden meaning that they write articles with titles like "The Playhouse of the Signifier," "Pee-wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Pee-wee: Consumerism and Sexual Terror" — the show itself is a thing of pure celebration.

"I've been really careful to try to not dissect what I do, what I did, too much," Paul Reubens said one afternoon in his publicist's West Hollywood office....

"There are college dissertations on 'Pee-wee's Playhouse,' Miss Yvonne and her raincoat, and what does it all mean, and reading things in that I really didn't feel like I meant or was trying to do," he said. "People writing about the underlying whatever in both the 'Playhouse' and the movies, and some of it, I go, 'Well, that's not hidden, it's all right out on the table.' "

Aw, the college kids need something to keep them busy. Better to contemplate Miss Yvonne's raincoat than to how the government blew up the World Trade Center. And please ignore the Mecca in mekka-lekka hi mekka hiney ho.

The music is by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh, and Cyndi Lauper sings the theme song -- quite brilliantly.

Will Paul Reubens ever play Pee-wee again?

It is widely believed that Reubens' 1991 arrest killed Pee-wee forever, but Reubens is not done with him. He has two Pee-wee scripts finished: One is a revised version of an unproduced screenplay he wrote with Panter, a "Playhouse" adventure featuring the usual suspects. The other is "dark," a "Valley of the Dolls" story that seems from reports to obliquely refer to some of his own personal trials.

"I never said it was over or I didn't want to do it anymore," Reubens said about the possibility of putting on the suit and bow tie again. "That's something that's been said by other people."

Do it, Paul!