This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
It’s been quite a month for daredevil wacko and part time rapper Steve-O.
Arrested on March 3 and booked for vandalizing his own apartment and possession of a controlled substance (cocaine apparently), the “Jackass” star found himself facing eviction when he returned home. That’s when, according to his own MySpace blog, things began to spiral out of control. Or at least, more out of control than usual.
The cyberspace saga commences harmlessly enough with a posting on March 8, in which the 33-year-old announces that he’d been evicted and requests that his “Jackass” costars and friends help him move out the following morning. But the video clips in the following post from March 9 couldn’t be more terrifying. The second, “Eviction Party Begins,” shows Steve-O hosting a kind of bizzaro MTV Cribs: Half-naked and visibly intoxicated, he wanders around his trashed apartment carrying a hefty revolver, which at one point he uses to play Russian Roulette.
In the following entry, posted March 13, Steve-O announces that he’s in “the looney bin” because, the morning after his “Eviction Party Begins” was shot, his “Jackass” costars forced him into a hospital on a “5150,” a three-day psychiatric hold, later extended to a “5250,” 14-day hold.
That’s where things get really interesting.
The entries continue, posted by his assistant Jen Moore, but written by Steve-O from inside the undisclosed treatment center, where he may well have been completely sober for the first time in years. In their own way, these entries are as shocking as the infamous stunt in which Steve-O stapled his scrotum to his leg, because they reveal an intelligent, articulate, well-read and deeply philosophical individual coming to terms with a lifetime of substance abuse and related bipolar issues.
Spiked with moments of epiphany and apology, Steve-O’s confessional journey from drug-induced rock-bottom to something approaching health may be a cliche–of course, it’s one of the oldest in the Hollywood playbook–but it’s still remarkable.
Lots of questions remain: Will Steve-O stay sober or will he fall back into his bad habits? Will he be able to continue his inane stunt career after acknowledging that “the nature of my work almost embraced my addictions,” or will he retire? And what exactly are the ramifications of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius he discusses in his March 21 entry?
Time will tell.
