Steve-O continues to up the ante with The Super Dummy Tour and we are better for it

Courtesy Photo

“Steve-O“—Even the sound of the name fascinates. It conjures the near-mythological gen x/millennial cultural-comedic zeitgeist. For those of us lucky enough to have come of age with Steve-O and the Jackass fellas, Steve-O’s persona and antics bring to the fore a reminder of the necessity of the edifying elixir of humor—perhaps when the world has needed it most in the upending decades of recent times.

And, as a multifaceted entertainer and multimedia presence, with a beautiful rise out of a near demise is where the true magic of jackassery and maturity have converged to epitomize an unlikely, albeit cool new kind of role model for younger generations in an era where so few exist.

Steve-O has proven one can get older and certainly be better for it while still not compromising one’s original artistic vision or pathos. Decades on, Steve-O is still hilariously funny and has yet to forget where he came from and how he’s arrived.

Steve-O is currently on his Super Dummy Tour—the follow-up to The Bucketlist Tour, which saw him traverse the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. He just turned 50 this year, and in a recent interview, Steve-O stated, “Thematically, I think this show is me doing battle with Father Time.”

Always a stalwart even among the Jackass alum, he prides himself on consistently upping the ante in his work as well as being “unbelievably naughty.” He describes Super Dummy as being a bit different than Bucket List, noting that this variation of the ongoing Steve-O saga is a kind of synthesis between a Jackass movie and a stand-up comedy show, saying “… It’s a lot more rapid-fire…There are far more video assets involved in this show than there were in the bucket list.”

Still, he notes that “Between the ridiculous height that the bar for my stunts lives at coupled with the fact of now being a 50-year-old Steve-O, made this show particularly challenging, but I’m such a persistent son of a bitch that there was no way of not going up… I knew how drastic my ideas were going to have to be to raise the bar from the Bucket List, and, admittedly, not all of them were good ones.”

Steve-O has always been a bit sui generis in his approach to comedy and his ever-evolving multimedia endeavors. Over the years, he’s branched out into other areas, ranging from business ventures to animal rights activism, philanthropy, stand-up comedy, podcasting, YouTubing, Jackass spin-off shows, touring work, an extremely active social media presence, and even becoming a New York Times bestselling author.

But, even if his approach has always seemed to be a bit random and naughty, there’s still something of an arc to his creative anarchy, often blending causes he cares about with pranks and stunts. He cites the emergence of street skating and ’80s skate culture, NCAA platform divers, who he says taught him “fundamental acrobatics,” and the circus as relatively loose reference points that have informed his trajectory and approach, however indirectly.

Even though he made his first skate video in 1990, it wasn’t until 1993 that Steve-O turned his attention to making stunt videos, and the rest has been a wild ride, to say the least.

Perhaps, all joking aside, over thirty years post-first stunt tape, Steve-O mused sentimentally and curiously at the end of our discussion, “[Super Dummy] may be the very last show of its kind that I have in me… as far as involving physical stunts… when I say it’s a comedy of errors, I really had to dig deep for this one, and I would not stop digging until I got there… It’s me versus father time in a comedy of errors, and I triumphed.”

More information on Steve-O’s Nov. 16 show at 7 p.m. at The Midland can be found here.