Stephen Steve-O Glover - Professional Idiot: A Memoir

STEPHEN STEVE-O GLOVER has made a career of doing crazy, dangerous, unhealthy, ill-advised stunts for the amusement, delight, and occasional disgust of audiences around the world. Besides being one of the breakout stars of Jackass s three-season run on MTV, Steve-O starred alongside fellow Jackass alum Chris Pontius in the extreme travel show Wildboyz , which ran on MTV for four seasons, and his own Dr. Steve-O series on the USA Network. In 2009, the newly sober Steve-O lasted six weeks on the ABC reality series Dancing with the Stars despite the fact that he couldnt dance to save his life. He has figured prominently in all three Jackass feature films, all of which debuted at #1 at the box office. Hes also been a frequent guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Howard Stern Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! , and Loveline. Professional Idiot is his first book.

Writing this book was more than a little bit scary for me, and I couldnt have done it without plenty of help, love, and support from numerous people. First and foremost, Id like to thank David Peisner, whose calm and soothing approach to talking me into including controversial information that I wasnt comfortable with won out about 99 percent of the time. David is an incredible writer, and working with him has been both an honor and a pleasure.

I also want to thank Dad, Cindy, Sophie, Jeff Bernstein, Laura Nolan, Beth W., Nick L., Jeff H., Ian Rosenberg, and Cynthia Colonna; Jill Schwartzman, Colin Fox, and everyone at Hyperion; P J Clapp, Jeff Tremaine, and everyone at Dickhouse; and everyone else who offered their recollections, opinions, and support.

CHAPTER 1
I SWEAR, I WAS BORN LIKE THIS

It was March 1996, and I was in jail. The Orange County Correctional Facility in Orlando, to be exact. A couple months earlier, Id gotten my second DUI in less than a year. I was pulled over for swerving badly while making an illegal U-turn through a red light. I tried to tell the officer I wasnt drunk, just tired. The arrest report actually reads: Defendant declined roadside sobriety tests stating hed prefer to take a nap. Upon my arraignment, I pled guilty and asked the judge if I could just start my ten-day sentence immediately, since I couldnt really afford round-trip bus fare home to South Florida and back.

Actually, home is a generous way of describing my living situation at that point. Mom had kicked me out of the house, and not without good cause: I was an irresponsible slob who seemed completely incapable of keeping any sort of job. I was mostly crashing on friends couches in those days or, when things got really desperate, sleeping in my car, which Id been driving around with a suspended license and expired tags. I liked to tell people that I was a stuntman, but except for some free T-shirts from a very fledgling Florida-based clothing company called Bizo, I had nothing really to show for six years of videotaping myself skateboarding, jumping from rooftops into shallow pools, and doing whatever else I thought might get peoples attention. Also, my front teeth were all busted up from a drunken face-plant I took off a second-story balcony trying to impress some girl at a party more than a year earlier. I hadnt quite gotten around to getting them fixed.

Anyone with any sense wouldve looked at my life at that point and seen nothing but a grand fucking disaster. But sitting there on my bottom bunk in jailan unemployed, homeless college dropout with some gnarly-looking front teethI was absolutely stoked. I was so sure that it was just a matter of time before the world found out how totally rad I was that I decided what I really needed to do was get a jump start on my memoir.

They call me Steve-O, I wrote. Im thinking about switching back to Steve Glover because now Ive kind of begun a career and I dont know if I want a nickname when Im famous.

When Im famous. I love that. As I was writing those opening lines, there was no question in my mind if I was going to be famous; it was just a matter of when . My life at that point may have been an unholy mess that was destined to get much, much messier, but a part of me is envious of that twenty-one-year-old daydreamer. That kid may have had very little going for him, but he knew what he wanted and was absolutely certain he was going to get it. Its still baffling to me how I was capable of such unbelievable enthusiasm and optimism when I had seemingly so little to be enthusiastic or optimistic about, yet years later, once my dreams had basically come true, I could be such a miserable prick.

As I wrote my prison memoir, Id pass each one of the pages around to some of the other inmates, whoapparently overcome by the stifling boredom in that placeactually read them. It wasnt enough for me to be completely jazzed on how great I thought my life was going to beI needed other people to know too. Everyone always says that if you have to go to jail, you should just keep your head down and not draw attention to yourself, but I was totally incapable of following that advice. I needed an audience.

Its kind of been that way since the beginning.

I was born in London, England, on June 13, 1974. At the time, my dad was the marketing director for Pepsi Europe, and Im told he was in the delivery room dressed in a business suit as my mom was pushing me out. He took some pretty gruesome photos of the delivery and its immediate aftermath, then, right after I was born and the doctors determined that all was well with Mom and me, he rushed off to a meeting. A few days later, when it was time for us to come home from the hospital, Moms friend had to drive us because Dad was tied up in more meetings. That kind of set the pattern for my younger years: Dad running around as a rising corporate executive, while Mom, my sister, Cindy, who is three years older than me, and I stayed at home.

My parents were an odd couple. Dad comes from a family of strivers and achievers. His father, Richard, was born and raised in England, graduated from Oxford, and then went on to get a Ph.D. in history from Harvard. He served in the Canadian army during World War II and then spent many years as a university professor in Winnipeg. He died when I was eleven, and I remember him mostly as a hard-ass who seemed to disapprove of my antics. When he was around, he made it clear that whatever I was doing, saying, or wearing was unacceptable. In his defense, it probably was, and all the things that rubbed me the wrong way about him back then are things Im sure would make me respect him now.

Dads mom, Constance, graduated from Vassar and then got a masters degree in English from Mount Holyoke Collegethis at a time when very few women even went to college. Her family had some moneythey were in the paper businessbut she and my grandfather lived very frugally.

I got to know Grandma Constance pretty well as I grew up. She was an incredibly sweet woman whose kindnessand failing memoryI totally took advantage of. I dont think she had Alzheimers, but after my grandfather died, her mind definitely started to go, so it was pretty easy for me to coerce her into doing what I wanted. When I would visit her in British Columbia, I was constantly taking her to go buy me shit. Among other things, I convinced her to get me a stereo with a dual tape deck and my first decent skateboard, a Powell-Peralta. She was as good a person as Ive ever known, and in retrospect, I feel crappy that when she was suffering from dementia, my main priority was what I could get out of it.

Dads brother and sister both got advanced degrees as well. His sister became the director of two leading art galleries in Canada; his brother was a career naval officer and later a historian. Dads extended family is also full of academics, and going into the business world made him kind of the black sheep.

My moms family is a whole other story. She came from a long line of alcoholics, addicts, and depressives. Her parents were both born in Canada and Mom grew up in Ontario. I never knew Moms father, Ed, because he blew his brains out when I was a year old, but what Ive heard about him doesnt paint a pretty picture. He was a tall, charismatic guy who liked to walk around with a big wad of cash and show off a lot. He had inherited quite a bit of money and owned some car dealerships, but he spent a lot of time hanging out at the horse track, gambling, and getting drunk. Its my understanding that he pissed away whatever money he had.