jackassworld

I first met Dave England somewhere around 1996, back when the original Dickhouse corporation picked up Blunt snowboard magazine from Ken Block. But to know Dave is to one day meet his drunken alter-ego Darf. On paper the name “Darf” looks like something fun to hang out with, kind of like a Muppet you would be happy to sit down alongside and share a drink with at a bar in the alleyway just off Sesame Street, but I can assure you he’s really not anything of the sort.

My earliest Darf memory is from around 1997, following some random event at the El Rey theater on Wilshire Boulevard, I think. Jeff Tremaine and I lived in an apartment a block or two away, and Dave England was supposed to crash on our floor for the night. However, somewhere between the El Rey bar and our home base, Dave had undergone the inebriated transformation into Darf and we happened upon him standing on the corner of 6th and Cochrane with a shopping cart and a twin-size bed mattress. Don’t ask me how or where he found either of these items, but he was yelling incoherently and whenever a car would approach he would wait until it was about 50-feet away before running out into the street pushing this cart and mattress combo. Inevitably the oncoming cars would have to either hit their brakes or swerve into another lane to miss this idiot in the road. We did what any friends would do and simply went upstairs to our apartment and left him in the street to his own Darwinian devices. You see, there is no reasoning with Darf, and to attempt to do so only results in setting his malevolent, criss-crossed sights on you.

The next morning, the rightful Dave had returned to his England body, but Darf had seen fit to leave him with the souvenir of a tweaked ankle from his shopping cart antics the night before. (Apparently, one of the drivers didn’t take kindly to his near brush with vehicular homicide and screeched to a stop to give chase. Darf, in turn, somehow managed to scale the large cinder block wall surrounding Park La Brea, but wasn’t quite so agile on his way back down the other side.)

We all have our stories of Darf—just ask Rick Kosick about the time he mashed Darf’s nose into the ground at a trade show—and chances are that if Dave comes into contact with alcohol on his birthday, Darf will surely emerge to add one more chapter to his infernal legacy. But before Darf takes hold and Dave leaves his senses, we’d first like to toss a happy birthday his way—from a safe distance, of course.