The best film I never saw*.
I have never seen Jackass: The Movie. Most likely I never will. I do own a copy that was given to me as a present, but it remains encased in the shiny cellophane and I would have to be really, really bored before I would ever consider actually watching it, because I am certain it will be shit. But I love the film dearly anyway, because of the tangential amusement it has brought me.

My brother is five years younger than I am. In 2002, when Jackass came out, he was 17. And our parents were away. There was really no choice in the matter, he had to throw a party, and as a mature, responsible adult of 22, it would be my job to supervise**. In due course his friends began to arrive, bearing with them skateboards, a camcorder and a plan: they would create their own Jackass movie.

I swiftly declared indoors out of bounds for this sort of activity, and settled back in the garden with a cold beer.

I am hard-pressed to choose a highlight from that evening. The repeated falling out of trees was funny, certainly, but lacked flair. The drunken climbing frame adventures held my attention for a few minutes, but I don't feel that all the possibilities were explored. Falling through patio furniture is rightly considered a classic, but lacks innovation, and flinging oneself into a thorn bush is frankly rather old hat. Attempting to ride a skateboard down a child's plastic slide to get up enough speed to use an upturned galvanised steel wheelbarrow as a jump? Absolutely, if briefly, superb***. Never before or since have I seen someone fall of a skateboard in such a way as to fling it so far straight up that it landed upright and quivering, one end embedded in the turf.

The thing that will stay with me from that evening, though, is the vodka. Simply drinking the stuff was not considered sufficiently EXTREME, so rather than witness a vodka bong (and the inevitable ambulance ride to follow) I suggested that they might like to snort it. This, they decided, was a stroke of genius.

Picture, if you will, a succession of plastered 17-year-old skaters hurtling around my garden, a spoonful of vodka in one hand, a plastic drinking straw in the other. Periodically one would stop, snort the vodka through the straw, choke, cough, scream, collapse, cry and finally stagger back to their feet, eyes bloodshot and watering, nose bleeding, and announce "That was BRILLIANT!" before running off to get some more.

This went on for nearly an hour before the vodka ran out, and at no point did I stop sniggering. So thank you, Jackass: The Movie, for one of the most entertaining evenings of my life.

* It's tenuous, I know, but rather than posting another dull list I thought I'd try and shoehorn a story in somehow.

** Purchase beer for them, with a frankly excessive "I have ID and you don't" surcharge.

*** It actually looked like someone was going to break a leg doing this, so I felt obliged to stop them. I'm not a monster.
(wellgroomedwookiee is a filthy-minded hobgoblin, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 14:28, 3 replies)

lol
Good story :) and liked the fact it was a story and not a list *clicks*
(Miggyman, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 15:16, closed)

you should watch the film though
and the second one.

there are some gross bits, but some of the proper stunts are pretty good, and hilariously funny.

for the bulls and see-saws in jackass 2, jackass team I salute you
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 16:32, closed)

^^Vipros
I enjoyed both; it's worth watching the first just to see Weeman kicking himself in the head.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 16:56, closed)