I was not a particularly avid "Jackass" fan.
I watched the television show intermittently, and didn’t really "get" what it was about until I
saw the first film in theaters. In retrospect it’s a wonder it took me so long.
There wasn’t much to "get." It says it all pretty much right there on the box.
"Jackass."
For those reader unfamiliar, the show followed, and I use that word loosely, the high jinks of a band of
professional skaters, BMX riders and castoffs as they did dumb, dangerous things. It was awesome.
It was everything cool about your seventh, eighth and ninth grade summers writ epic and slapped on
screen. It was every time you and your friends went "wouldn’t it be cool if…" except they
never bothered with the "if."
Most of the "stunts," again using that word loosely, can’t actually be described in this family
publication. Suffice it to say it’s anarchic, vulgar and brutal in its simplicity. To deride it as such
was to miss the point completely.
There was no narrative, just title screens and then, bam, a boxing match in the middle of a sporting
goods store. These guys were jackasses, and proud of it. I mean they were professionals, it said so
right on the disclaimer, but only, it seemed in the sense that professionals get paid.
And now Ryan Dunn is dead. In a fiery car crash.
Early Monday, according to the AP: "Dunn, … was driving his 2007 Porsche in suburban Philadelphia
when it careened off the road, flipped over a guardrail and crashed into the woods before bursting into
flames. A passenger, Zachary Hartwell, 30, of West Chester, Pa., was also killed… The force of impact
shattered the vehicle into several twisted and blackened pieces."
Dunn always seemed the loyal, somewhat incredulous sidekick to Johnny Knoxville’s manic all the time
out-of-control id.
One of the more well known of the Jackass crew (he was a competitive BMX rider) Dunn’s role always seemed
to be the guy that’d end up doing the craziest stuff, all the while muttering under his breath about
this maybe not being such a good idea.
But he did it, they all did, crotch kicks and wasabi snorts and rubber bullets and tree catapults and
other things you definitely should not try at home.
And it was funny and good and brought us back to when we were young enough to do truly, truly stupid
things for no other reason than we could and we were invincible.
But we’re not, and we know that now, but let’s not take this opportunity to turn Dunn’s death into a
teachable moment about risk and peril. Let’s not make his story some after school special PSA.
Instead let’s remember that you never know where the limits are till you’ve tested them, that the best
scars are those with stories and that, years from now you’ll still remember that one time you convinced
Mike from down the street to jump out of a tree onto a trampoline.
Let’s remember the Jackass.
