jackassworld

Part 1 of the jackassworld road trip, in which our intrepid travelers—Wee Man, Chris Pontius, Danger Ehren, Preston Lacy, Mike Kassak, Loomis Fall, JxPx Blackmon, Scott Manning, Dimitry Elyashkevich, Mike G., Rick Kosick, and Sean Cliver—assemble at the office by dawn’s early light, all aside from one—Dave England—who arrives substantially later only to more or less willingly consume his own urine with minimal prodding. Special guest appearances by Johnny Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine, and Dave Carnie, all of whom bid fond farewell and good fucking riddance to the caravan.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Hollywood, CA; 2008)

So with all this jawing going back and forth—and that really is quite the formidable jaw on the Great Khali—let’s take a look back at one of Johnny Knoxville’s former fighting moments from jackass the movie with Butterbean. Knoxville wasn’t kidding around when he mentioned not being so hot in the ring, but, come to think of it, he wasn’t so hot outside of it either—particularly on this little department store bout. One look at this photo tells you that Knoxville’s bell was rung so goddamn hard that it might still be ringing to this very day…which, come to think of it, just may actually explain a lot.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Van Nuys, CA; 2002)

After an exciting week with way more ups than downs, I wanted to write a little bit about our adventure and the people who went on it. (more…)

So we’ve had this age old problem on our production trips where MTV doesn’t pick up any extraneous alcohol tabs or costs. The easiest way around this, we’ve discovered, is to build your “creative” around alcohol. Hence, our desire to stop at a winery and “learn” all about the vinting process. Thanks to the local efforts of Chris Pontius’s brother Matt, we hooked up with Joe at Grey Wolf Cellars in Paso Robles, the heart of Central Coast wine country (Greg Wolf, unfortunately, was unable to meet us at the Grey Wolf winery). Following a quick tour of the machinations behind the conversion of grapes to wine, Joe set us up at a table with a number of bottles, two of which were classily chugged in full by Loomis Fall—whom we all expected to literally fall soon thereafter. While learning the finer tips and tricks of wine tasting, Pontius somehow managed to segue into sexual positions—how I have no idea—starting with the “Jade Gate,” a back-to-back technique for the more well-endowed, I believe. This of course lead to the introduction of Scott Manning, another famously large “member” of the San Luis Obispo region, more specifically Atascadero. With Chris playing the female role, Scott displayed a more involved position in which the girl is upended on her head against a wall (happily portrayed by Loomis) and entered from behind. Since Scotty didn’t have a name for this maneuver, we dubbed it the “Scream For Me,” seeing as all three members of the band were involved and it seemed somewhat appropriate, especially with Scott on the giving end.

(photos by Sean Cliver; Paso Robles, CA; 2008)

Dimitry Elyashkevich pretty much left his career as a skateboard photographer in the dust soon after he picked up the video camera for jackass in late 2000, but for old time’s sake he’d packed up his flashes for this road trip. Despite the years taken off behind the lens he still hasn’t lost his touch, and were Big Brother magazine still around in print format this surely would’ve been the cover shot. But where did the tree come from, you ask? A little backyard ramp artistry saw fit to leave the tree in place and simply build the ramp around it for an unconventional yet shady obstacle.

(photo by Dimitry Elyashkevich; San Jose, CA; 2008)

Following our previous night out in San Jose at the Blank Club, a bar owned by former professional skateboarder Corey O’Brien, the guys motivation to get up and do much of anything was greatly diminished. Plus, no one was really looking forward to the prospect of hitting up the new Lake Cunningham skate park first thing out of the gate. So with the help of our San Jose “fixer” Reeps and Santa Cruz music mogul Sneaky Greg, we hooked up a backyard mini-ramp session to ease into the day. Wee Man made workable use of the ramp’s awkward extension, while Chris Pontius finally felt like getting back onboard following his extreme hamster ball experience at Moñtana de Oro.

Mid-afternoon we followed Reep’s over to the new multi-million dollar Lake Cunningham park, which is basically the equivalent to an Olympic training facility for skateboarders. Some real architectural masturbation went into this shapely pile of concrete, the vast majority of which was lost on us. Or maybe we were just being babies because the park required full pads and the people operating it refused to sign the paperwork we needed for filming purposes. Anyway, the park is scary big and I guess it took out three people the previous day, one of which included legendary professional Steve Caballero, who was practicing for the upcoming World Cup/Tim Brauch memorial contest on Sunday, September 28. I’d brashly assumed the place was going to be too big and daunting for the average kid, but there was a 12-year-old girl doing frontside grinds in the big bowl, while a 4-year-old boy was rolling into shit that I wouldn’t even consider doing in full Road Warrior pads. So at this rate, who knows, maybe a whole new breed of X-Gaymes skater will emerge. Hopefully the little bastards will have the foresight not to do any reality TV shows about their dramatic lives. We left Lake Cunningham without ever pulling our boards out of the van and instead grabbed some 12-packs and went over to another backyard mini-ramp construction for an infinitely more fun and relaxing time.

The night eventually ended for us back at the Blank Club, where we learned, once again, that alcohol, Morrissey cover bands, and live webcasts don’t always mix. Dave England committed a few online no-nos that will probably result in our Ustream account being banned, but oh well! Enjoy this shit while it lasts. Thanks again to Corey and Reeps for showing us some good old fashioned hospitality while we were in town!

(photo by Sean Cliver; San Jose, CA; 2008)

While paused at the train trestle to watch a naturally occurring Lost Boy, a/k/a gutterpunk, pick out a Norwegian-themed song of his own creation on an old acoustic guitar, Loomis Fall disappeared from our pack only to reappear on top of the trestle in true vampiric fashion. However, while he did make a very conscious effort to make sure his smokes were in a secure pocket, Loomis’s iPod slipped out while he was hanging from the rung of a ladder. Down it plummeted, 45-feet or so to its watery demise below the trestle where we could still see it faintly glinting in the sunlight. Loomis was, understandably, quite devastated by the lost pod. Not only because he loves music like none other I know, but he now no longer had the comfort of subtly tuning out Ehren in the van.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Santa Cruz, CA; 2008)

Back in the days of Big Brother, Jeff Tremaine and I would usually detour the magazine’s “skateboard” road trips through some form of viewable nature setting (my favorite still being the Shark Valley Everglades stop we made on the Tamiami Trail with Clyde Singleton in 1999). Keeping this tradition alive and well, we hugged the coastline up to San Simeon, after skating an age-old ditch in Cambria, to observe its now famous farting elephant seal population. Unfortunately all the fat fucking bull males were out to sea dodging Pacific great whites, while the females and “teenage” males occupied the beachfront waters (I say unfortunately because the bulls can measure up to 16-feet in length and frequently throw down with each other in these Sumo-like fights to establish dominance in the mating game). Trekking out to an outcropping, Chris Pontius toed the Wildboyz line but never entirely crossed it (plus it’s just not the same without Steve-O), as some curious males bobbed in the background. Losing light and visibility with a massive fog bank that had engulfed the Big Sur coastline, we opted to err on the side of caution and double back down Highway 1 to take the 101N up to Santa Cruz instead. Hence, the live show we continually pushed throughout the day did not really take place until 1:00am PST after Mike G. attempted to check us into two wrong hotels before finding the right one.

(photos by Sean Cliver; San Simeon, CA; 2008)

So here we are on the “cutting edge of technology,” as Rick Kosick just said. I’m sitting shotgun in a mini-van headed up the 101N and I’m online and working. What the fuck. So much for the good old days. Anyway, here we are on the first (and hopefully not last) jackassworld road trip. The idea for this first originated with Wee Man and Rick Kosick as a simple skateboard park tour a month or so back, but it swiftly ballooned from there to include triple the amount of people with Chris Pontius, Dave England, Ehren McGhehey, Preston Lacy, Mike Kassak, Loomis Fall, Scott Manning and JxPx Blackmon.

Everyone met at the office this morning bright and early at 9:00am with hopes of getting out and on the road to Steve-O’s place in Pasadena (even Johnny Knoxville rolled his ass out of bed to see the troops off to battle), but we all wound up having to wait for England to show up in his creepy conversion van, which ultimately set us back a good hour from the originally scheduled departure time. He more than made up for the delay though, by skating up with a nearly full bottle of pale yellow liquid, which could, of course, be only one thing. With but a little prodding from Knoxville and the promise of becoming a Navy SEAL, Dave soon chugged the entire bottle in cradle-to-cradle fashion, thereby christening the trip in a wholly befitting manner.

Look for daily photos and updates from this trip to post throughout the week, as Josh is supposed to set up a stand-by marquee on the site for semi-spontaneous streamings—provided he can set down the bananas for a minute, that is.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Hollywood, CA; 2008)

Since we just started getting all the Gumball Rally footage into the editing box earlier this week, the chances of you web potatoes actually seeing any footage any time soon is low. Lower than Wolfie winning a medal in Beijing, unless it’s going to be at the paralympics. But here is a slideshow of some of our trip. All these photos were shot on film and then cross-processed. It’s a gimmicky technique, but still looks better than digital. Expect some moving pictures soon…but not too soon, so suck it.