Bursitis In My Ear

I watched Jackass: The Movie over the weekend. I saw it in theaters when it came out a few years ago and laughed my ass off. But I wasn't sure if I would find it as funny on a second viewing.

Here's what I found - certain skits, especially ones that involved lots of falling down, were as funny, if not more so. Pretty much anything with Steve-O was less funny on a second viewing. "Night Pandas," where the guys dress up in panda suits and run around Tokyo, was funnier on a second viewing. And of course, still the piece de resistance, "Butt X-Ray" in which Ryan Dunn shoves a toy car up his arse and gets an x-ray. The reaction of the doctor and the nurse is just priceless. Oh, and lest I forget, my favorite might still be the skit where Johnny Knoxville sounds an air horn on unsuspecting golfers' backswings. When confronted, he chocks it up to bursitis in his ear. Awesome.

Jackass also reminds me of this week's This American Life. They did a piece on the tricks people's minds can play. They specifically focused on an improv group called Improv Everywhere, which aims to bring a sort of gorilla theater to New York. As the founder of the group put it, he wants to live in a world where absolutely anything can happen, and so, he sets about making that world. Some of the stuff they do is arguably hurtful, although the fact that it's done with a desire to involve people and strip away the mundane makes even the offensive stuff less so.