When I was 12, the antics of Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and co were an invitation to jump out of trees. These days, I see something deeper in their refusal of filtered perfection
My name is Tom, and I am an idiot. I’ve been an idiot almost my entire life, ever since I was old enough to think it was funny and interesting to be one. So there was something sentimental for me in watching Jackass: Best and Last. It’s a final swansong for a 26-year project that is the finest document of idiocy and the Freudian death drive the modern world has seen.
Jackass debuted in 2000, when I was 12 years old. I was already obsessed with professional wrestling. I’d watch grainy VHS-quality videos of Mick Foley matches in awe, as he would jump headfirst into barbed wire, get repeatedly hit in the head with steel chairs or, famously, be thrown off a five-metre steel cage and through a table.
Tom Usher is a freelance writer
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When I was 12, the antics of Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and co were an invitation to jump out of trees. These days, I see something deeper in their refusal of filtered perfectionMy name is Tom, and I am an idiot. I’ve...
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