[Illustration by nastynoser]
NEW YORK TIMES: THE Pied Piper was nowhere to be heard, and Santa Claus wouldn’t be coming to town for a few more weeks, but something irresistible had drawn a small crowd to the West Fourth Street basketball courts in Greenwich Village on a recent Thursday morning. Huddled in groups of two and three, a few dozen men and women in their 20s and 30s glanced at one another and at their smartphones, rereading the Twitter and Foursquare messages that directed them here, waiting for something to happen. Without fanfare a white van sailed up to the curb, and from it emerged a thin, 58-year-old man — wearing a gray suit, a tiny red bow tie and white loafers — who seemed as uncertain to meet his fans as they were excited to receive him. The gathering parted as he stepped onto the blacktop, picked up a basketball and made a few graceless attempts at hurling it at a hoop. “Yeah, match that,” he said snidely, to laughter. As he returned to the van to be shuttled to his next mystery destination, one bystander after another — not just the supporters who had responded to his electronic siren song, but those who did not expect to see a long-forgotten figure from their childhoods suddenly materialize on a Manhattan street — felt compelled to shout at him some variation of these words, if not this exact message: Pee-wee Herman, I love you! MORE
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