jackassworld

Y’all have heard that hooey about a picture being worth a thousand words, but some can be summed up in far less, I believe. This particular stunt of Dave England’s was only worth a couple hundred bucks in the first place, so why expend any further amount of energy than necessary? So one conjoined word will descriptively suffice: Shitmouth.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Louisiana; 2006)

I’d originally planned on following up the round of Big Brother covers with a few nice old photos of us enjoying the perks of LFP employment, but then my body went and succumbed to a cold of sorts and now I just can’t be bothered to leave the comforts of my bed to go dig through my print archives in the living room. So lethargy wins, you lose, and your consolation prize is this third degree shot of Bam’s freshly branded dicks (and partial pieces thereof) from jackass number two.

Soon after signing onto the film in late 2005, Bam supplied us with a grip of ideas that he’d scribbled onto some notepad paper. One involved a surprise branding on the unknowing ass of a two-man cow, but certain legal parties vetoed the idea of an all-out surprise, what with it being a lifelong scar of a dick and all. So what Bam had originally intended to befall Ryan Dunn ultimately came around to burn him on his own ass. And what was supposed to be a single dick magically became a kaleidoscopic array of dicks and balls.

Here’s where it gets weird, though. For whatever reason, Jeff Tremaine and Johnny Knoxville couldn’t get beyond the original concept of a clean and distinct dick branded in their collective brain, and a quandary descended immediately after Dunn stutter-branded Bam. Debates ensued, tensions flared, opinions were dismissed, and the set was ultimately cleared with an uneasy air once Bam adamantly refused to submit his already ridiculously scarred butt to a second round of branding. Many knew full well, however, that the inherent idiocy of the situation would later become apparent in the editing room.

Sure enough, what could have come off as a potentially dark and sadistic piece was actually a humorous spectacle of ineptitude, which in the end really is the heart and soul of jackass.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Florida; 2006)

Despite appearances—not to mention all the other naughty crap we’d committed to print 43 issues prior—this may just have been the most publicly controversial issue of Big Brother ever. Touted as the “Kids” issue, the bulk of the magazine was dedicated to pint-size prodigies that were up and coming skateboarders at the time—kids like Ryan Sheckler, for instance, who is shown here on the cover at the popping young age of eight-years-old.

What happened is that Dr. Laura Schlessinger stopped into a skate shop one day in late 1998 to buy some fresh clothes for her brat. While doing so, she picked up this particular issue of Big Brother, apparently enchanted by the idea that it was all about kids. Well, most of our interviews with the little bastards consisted of questions like, “What’s your favorite cuss word?”, “Have you ever seen a girl naked?”, “Do you have pubic hair?”, and “How do you want to die: a) hanging; b) shark attack; c) drown in chocolate; or d) I don’t care, as long as I’m in the arms of a fireman?” Long story short: Dr. Laura looked at the publisher, realized it was Larry Flynt, tried to connect a few random dots in her frenzied brain, and came to the conclusion that he was insidiously attempting to indoctrinate kids to porn at a young age (never mind the fact she also had a XXX chip on her shoulder regarding the nude photos of her that Flynt had previously bought from an allegedly jilted former lover). In truth, Larry had no real clue what we were doing down there on the third floor…but he soon found out.

When Dr. Laura went on a public tirade about Big Brother, Larry Flynt just so happened to be doing a public appearance at his new Hustler store on Sunset Blvd. Fox News jumped on the story and then proceeded to ambush Flynt at the event on camera and point-blanked him on the issue. Larry’s an old pro at dealing with the press and handled it like a champ, but the next day we did get our collective pee-pee whacked by the tenth floor executive hammer. Oops!

The upside, though, was that the next several issues of Big Brother sold through the roof, upping our circulation numbers, advertisers, and page count, once again proving that the only good press is bad press. (We later thanked her on the cover of Big Brother #54 with the headline “Bigger Than Ever, Thanks Dr. Laura!” Okay, so we were a year late in doing so, but hey, better late than never.)