Happy Anniversary, Jackass

My parents recently celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary. To commemorate the event, I thought I'd share a story I wrote about them three years ago with the blogosphere...

The lovebirds began their 39th wedding anniversary like many other couples do. It's how they ended it that left me scratching my head.

Dad started off the day by leaving a dozen roses for Mom to find in the refrigerator. Later that evening, they shared a romantic candlelit dinner at a nice restaurant, exchanged cards and gifts. They were well on their way to a perfect evening.

Then they went to see the movie Jackass.

"We didn't even know it was a TV show," Dad said. "We'd never heard of Jackass."

Added Mom: "I thought it might be a heart-warming movie about a mule, kind of like Walt Disney's Gus. But I should have known it was trouble when the ticket seller laughed that a 58-year-old woman said 'Two for Jackass, please.'"

For others who don't know, or live in a Footloose-esque town that doesn't allow dancing, Jackass started out and still is a half-hour stunt comedy show on MTV. The movie featured stuff that was too gross to show on regular TV.

The craziest stunts performed by Johnny Knoxville and the rest of the creative yet demented Jackass cast included:

1. A guy going into a hardware store and taking a dump in one of the floor model display toilets.

2. A guy who shoved a matchbox car up his colon, then went to the doctor for X-rays (a T-shirt of the X-ray is one of the many movie collectibles available).

3. Countless stunts that involved trauma to the testicles.

Not the type of movie people with senior citizen discount privileges tend to go see in general, let alone on their anniversary. But leave it to my Mom and Dad to mistake Jackass for a romantic comedy.

They were fish out of water in the theatre and wanted to bail, but Mom didn't want to be impolite and leave while others were trying to enjoy the flick. So she spent most of the 87 minutes with her eyes covered like a kid in a horror movie, occasionally asking Dad "Is it OK to look yet?"

"We had no idea it was going to be that kind of movie," Mom said. "We just heard some critic on the radio give it a really good review."

Apparently it was some local jackass critic from Fargo, not Roger Ebert. Mom didn't know the critic's name, but chances are he wouldn't like Citizen Kane or Casablanca because no one got kicked in the nuts, threw up, or drove toy cars up their asshole.

"What made it so awful was the fact they weren't acting," Mom said, trembling. "It was real. They did such terrible things to their bodies, I couldn't stand to watch. I spent most of the time with my coat over my head."

Dad said the anti-chick flick probably wouldn't receive any Oscar consideration with the exception of maybe a best supporting actor nod to the guy who pinched a loaf in the plumbing section.

"Guys crapping, barfing and kicking each other in the balls - they call that a movie?" Dad asked. "When's the last time you saw Paul Newman take a shit in public or Robert Redford try to stick a Tonka truck up his ass, then try to make a movie out of it?"

I'd never seen it, but chances are Mom would want to see it if the macabre movie actually starred those two actors. She still thinks they're hotties. Knoxville, Steve O and the rest of the Jackass gang were a different story.

"Did you at least like Wee Man?" I asked, thinking the cast's little person might have been a tiny bright spot to the ordeal.

"Wee Man?" Dad wondered. "I don't remember him. Why do they call him that? He must have pissed on someone and I missed it."

Mom was particularly horrified when the Jackass cast stuffed fireworks up their rear ends and detonated them. Equally disturbing to her were the guys who tied "bottle rockets to their dongs."

"They call those things bottle rockets for a reason," Mom said. "The ass isn't meant to be a launching pad, and a dong can't head into space without the rest of the astronaut!"

Dad summed up the whole event nicely: "We've seen a lot of shit in 39 years together. Jackass ranked right up there. But if we can make it through that movie, we can make it through anything."