Think of me when there is pee

My friend LB and I are juvenile.
One of our favorite ways to pass time together is screaming in laughter.
Typically at things that would similarly amuse preteen boys.

Don't get me wrong- we are highly educated, sophisticated, well-read women. Our times together have included museum visits, book discussion groups, and important, award-winning films. But inevitably, we go back to Jackass.

I think we stumbled upon it just channel-surfing. Something about a grown man putting a toy car up his bum just cracked us the hell up.

On vacation in Vermont, we watched Jackass 2.5, and in between groaning and hiding behind our hands, we screamed with laughter like goddamn lunatics.

I went to see Jackass 3D with some friends last night and LB and I had the following conversations before and after viewing. I think you can see that we are essentially 14-year-old boys at heart.

Me: Dammit, there was something I was going to tell you today that would've made you very proud of me but I forget what it was. Oh! I know! I watched my first episode of A Bit of Fry & Laurie last night! I hearted it to death.  And I'm going to see Jackass 3D tonight!


LB: You can't see me, but I just put my hands up to my mouth and welled up a bit with tears. I AM SO PROUD!!! yayay!! I love that show, tooooo! <3


Are you going alone to see jackass? I don't know why I will go see most things alone, but I don't want to go see that alone. weird.

Me: I am going with dan & polly, brett & our friend eric, who you would like quite a much.


LB: oh! i want to talk with eric. you are going to have fun. lucky duck. ;) i will be working tonight. wish me luck with the crazy folks!


Me: I will be thinking of you as Bam Margera pees out into the audience in 3D. Did you see the Buffalo Roller Skating clip on the Daily show last week? I'll try to find it and send it to you. HILARIOUS.


LB: i did not see this clip!! send it to me!!  yes, think of me when there is pee!


Me: Is that like you being proud of my #2?
(Note: sometime this past summer, I had three good things happen to me at once. I listed them numerically in a note to LB. She wrote back: "I am so proud of your #2!" Giggles ensued.)


LB: hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. let us not get started on that again... i can go for hours. (that did not come out right. ... d'oh! i said "come out"!!). it's hard not to accidentally talk about poo.

And then this morning:

LB: I MUST KNOW HOW THE MOVIE WAS!!!

Me: OH MY GOD, IT WAS ABSOLUTELY PRECIOUS!
No, seriously, it was AWESOME. I laughed till I cried.
We must do a jackass marathon next time we hang out.
It had a giant pig eating an apple out of a fat guy's ass. Does it get any better than that???

LB: I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me: Also, they played weiner baseball. Yup. Used it as a bat for a ping pong ball. did you hear that they had the premiere at MOMA in NYC???

LB: OMG. i thought you meant like a hot dog. oh my. ahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa. crack.

i did hear that. i am proud of them boys.


Yeah, we have a problem. But I don't care. It makes me laugh, and that's good enough for me. But I think there's more to it than just a bunch of guys goofing around.  For one thing, they take a great deal of care planning their pranks & stunts.  One scene in the movie has Johnny Knoxville being Mr. Invisible. He's wearing a suit painted like a tree in front of a rainbow to blend into a backdrop. And then he tries to become 'invisible' to hide from a charging bull, but that's beside the point.

And they actually took the time to create an enormous hand on a spring that would snap out of nowhere and "high five" people right over on their butts. If the only point was to knock people over, you could've done it with a simple board. But they went farther and created a giant, powerful high-five. That's dedication. Yeah, some of it is pretty disgusting and definitely dangerous, but there's such a goodnatured gleefulness about it. It reminds me of when I was a fearless kid and only thought about how cool something would be, not whether I might break my neck or get bruises that I couldn't show up to work with on Monday. There's a slapstick element to it that dates back to Buster Keaton.

There have been numerous articles recently comparing Jackass to performance art, therefore the premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. It's the extra elements around the prank/stunt itself that impress me- like Johnny Knoxville doing a ridiculous dance wearing a pink cardigan and old-school rollerskates in a muddy pen before getting knocked to the ground by a buffalo. In fact, THOSE ARE THE BEST PARTS. The buffalo hit is just the punctuation to the joke. You don't need elaborate costumes and backdrops to launch a dude on a teeny motorbike over a creek, but it adds so much, and hey- who doesn't like dressing up?

But MOMA-deserving or not, me & LB just like to laugh at fart jokes and people getting knocked down.
We're ahead of our time, that's all.