jackassworld

Le Petomane

I love farting. As they say, “That joke never gets old.” I love farting so much that I’ve made three tapes filled with my farts. The first one I made in fifth grade with my friend Adam Abreu on a camping trip with his family. For an entire weekend we’d press our asses up against his old ghetto blaster’s microphone and blast our own noises onto the cassette inside. We became very adept at engineering the recording of our farts. The goal was to create a tape of farts, recorded end to end, with as little dead air (no pun intended) in between. I don’t remember how successful we were, and the tape is long gone, but I do remember laughing my ass off for hours on end.
A few years ago, then Black Label team manager, “Brown” Tom Miyao did exactly the same thing: he made a fart tape. Same thing: just a bunch of farts recorded end to end.

“The making of the tape was a little bit of a task,” Brown Tom said when I asked him about it. “Not the farting part, but the part where I had to convince Tami [his wife] not to leave me because of my tortured ‘art.’ She stayed, but she had to endure me consuming quarts of milk to produce huge (and smelly) farts. I’m lactose intolerant. The tape recorder came to bed, went to work, was in the bathroom…every place I went the recorder was with me. Caught on one particular spot on the tape was a rare ‘wet threat’ where I shit a little. It sounded great, but what a mess. Worth it…”

“If memory serves correctly,” Tami said regarding her husband’s fart tape, “it took ‘Stinky’ approximately one month to make that tape. The nights were the most torturous. Peaceful slumber was constantly interrupted by the clicking of the pause button followed by the record/play buttons. Then the release of the pause button was perfectly synchronized with the sound (and smell) of Tom’s gas. I dreaded that clicking.”

I eventually used the tape as an element in my hit song, “I Have Gas (That Will Blow Your Mind Tonight)”. My recording skills are about as primitive now as they were back in fifth grade and I couldn’t figure out how to get the fart tape onto the tape with the song, so I somehow just played the fart tape onto an open track, unedited. It’s uncanny how some of the farts line up with the breaks in the song.

I Have Gas (That Will Blow Your Mind Tonight)

Shortly thereafter, and inspired by Brown Tom’s success, I began making my second fart tape. That tape is also lost, but the song it generated still remains.

I gave my fart tape to Rick Kosick’s roommate, Dave Rouen. Dave was at the time known only as “My Roommate,” because Rick incessantly referred to him only as “My Roommate.” “What’s up, My Roommate?” I’d say when I saw Dave. My Roommate happens to be a musician and an engineer and he had volunteered to try mixing some music for the fifth Big Brother video. “Can you do something with this?” I asked, handing him my fart tape.
“I’ll see what I can do,” My Roommate said.

I had forgotten about the fart song My Roommate created until we moved into these offices and Dimitry was going through a box of old stuff. “Remember this?” he said handing me a disc that simply read, “Fart Song” on it.
This might be the best song ever and I can’t believe we never did anything with it. Well, actually, that has a lot to do with Flynt killing the magazine before we had a chance to finish the last Big Brother video, for which this song was slated. I’m sure we’ll find a use for it somewhere, but in the meantime, click here to hear “The Fart Song.”

I love the music of farts so much that I wish I had been alive in Paris in 1892. Being French would have sucked of course, but being able to see the greatest farter of all time, Le Petomane, would be an incomparable delight.

This book surfaced in my life around the time of the first fart tape in fifth grade. My friend’s father, who was one of those fathers that was more of a friend to his son than a father, bought Le Petomane for his son, my friend. I don’t remember reading the book so much as hearing my friend’s father telling us the incredible story of Le Petomane’s ass. And the pictures, oh the pictures. To this day when I feel a fart rumbling down the pipes I will strike Le Petomane’s pose with the weird little bow, the butt out, and a little finger wag that seems to say, “Ah! Ah! Ah! Shhhh! I is has someseen funny to saaaaay!”
I have told the story of Le Petomane from memory ever since. But it didn’t occur to me until just a couple years ago that, “Hey, I wonder if I can order that book off the internet?” You can. So I did.

(I, incidentally, always try to buy my books from local independent booksellers. When that’s not possible, I go first to Powell’s books, online at www.powells.com, the best bookstore in the USA. If Powell’s isn’t holding, I might go to that other place.)

At a very young age, long before Joseph Pujol would become the biggest sensation the Moulin Rouge in Paris had ever seen, he learned that his body had a very special gift: when he entered water, it would go up his butt. When he evacuated the water from his ass, a vacuum was created that would allow him to fart for hours. He would get up on stage, open a trap door in the back of his pants, and dip his butt into a tub of water. He’d suck up the water, fill the bucket back up and begin his act. He’d blow out candles, imitate animal noises, play a flute with his ass, smoke a cigarette, and, of course, sing fart songs.

“From the beginning of the ‘audition’ mad laughter had come,” his son writes in a passage in the book. “This soon built up into general applause. The public and especially women fell about laughing. They would cry from laughing. Many fainted and fell down and had to be resuscitated.”

Oh how I wish I had seen Le Petomane’s act, but unfortunately this book is the closest I’ll get. Although, I understand there are a couple of documentaries floating around. When I get a hold of them, I’ll share them with you. In the meantime, pick up a copy of this book. It’s a great addition to your toilet library.