If you want to know the meaning of life, just ask Steve-O. “People act like it’s some kind of riddle of the Sphinx, when the answer is so goddamn obvious,” says the 49-year-old sage of self-abuse; the guru of gnarly stunts. A lifetime of unwise decisions – swimming with sharks, setting himself on fire, repeatedly stapling his nuts to his leg – has gifted the Jackass star a rare kind of wisdom.
“The meaning of life is: ‘Pick one!’” he tells NME emphatically. “Life has the meaning that you give it: whatever it is you choose to make your life meaningful, fuckin’ go after it with enthusiasm. If you break the word ‘enthusiasm’ down to the root language you have ‘en-theos’, which means ‘with God’. When you’re pursuing something you’re deeply passionate about, you are, by definition, doing God’s work. For me, shoving shit up my ass is God’s work.”
His wheezing laugh is so loud it wakes his dogs Wendy and Lucy, who have been snoozing on the couch beside him. We’re in the living room of Steve-O’s picturesque home in the Hollywood Hills, the house that “shoving shit up my ass” bought. Along with the dogs, he also shares this secluded slice of heaven with his fiancée Lux, three cats and a mean-looking trio of goats named Drake, Sam and Phil. “We wanted to give them all evil names,” Steve-O explains with a mischievous grin. “So those are short for Dracula, Samhain and Mephistopheles. Me-phil-stopheles.”
Downstairs, there’s an edit suite piled high with personalised skateboards, assorted merch and a video archive documenting Steve-O’s long history of on-camera idiocy. It’s there that he and his crew cut together videos for his thriving YouTube channel (6.3 million subscribers) and plot his outrageous live shows, which have become infamous for causing audience members to pass out with shock. Soon he’ll be on his way to Britain to perform and record what might just be his wildest creation yet: The Bucket List Tour.
“It’s like attending a screening of footage that was too extreme for Jackass, which I personally host and walk you through, with all of the behind-the-scenes, juicy, fucked-up shit,” he explains with evident pride. “It’s hilarious.”
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