KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE
From The Village Voice:
Butterflies . . . turtles. Perhaps a pleasant walk in the woods comes to mind. But say those words to the average MTV-watching, Spin-reading, skateboard-wielding teenager or twentysomething, and he or she may envision a thin, wasted, 28-year-old guy—cigarette in one hand, can of Bud in the other—removing his leopard-print bikini bottoms, grabbing a staple-gun, stretching the skin of his scrotum so that it’s flat against his upper thigh, and firing away. There’s screaming and blood (and plenty of laughter in the background), but the man in the picture repeats this “move” on the other side, thus creating the beautiful image of—yup, you guessed it—a “butterfly.” If that makes you squeamish, you probably wouldn’t want to see a “turtle”—a scrotum stretched upward and stapled to a stomach.
The logical question is: Who the fuck would do something like this? And the logical answer is: Only a jackass. Unless you’re one of the many who have purchased Steve-O’s videos, Don’t Try This At Home: The Steve-O Video or Don’t Try This At Home: The Career Ender, you’ve probably only seen him on MTV’s Jackass—jumping into a vat of raw sewage, getting his ass cheeks pierced together, or snorting goldfish and earthworms... (continue reading)