| On
March 26, 2004, performers from the Jackass spinoff "Don't Try This At
Home" tour appeared on Toronto radio station CFNY FM (aka 102.1 The
Edge), hosted by the tediously unfunny Dean Blundell, a cheap Howard Stern
wannabe. During the
interview, held in the radio station's studio before a live audience, one
of the performers, Stephen Glover (aka Steve-O), stripped naked, urinated
on the floor and did a "trick" involving his genitals.
Blundell ignored demands from the station's management to pull the plug on
the interview, for which he received a one-day suspension.
I filed a complaint with the
Toronto Police about the performance, alleging that it contravened the
Criminal Code. Normally, I wouldn't waste time on Stupid Boy Tricks
like this, but several people have been injured and killed imitating the
dangerous, life-threatening stunts performed by the Jackass crew.
Also, it's important to test the legal and regulatory framework
that exists in Canada to supposedly regulate broadcasters. It has
been my experience that broadcasters can do pretty much whatever they want
because neither the CRTC nor the justice system will take them to
task. (I did not receive a response from the Toronto Police Service
to the complaint, so I assume this went nowhere.)
Complaint
to to Toronto Police Service
Edge's Blundell back on air today
Tue, March 30, 2021
By JOHN KRYK, TORONTO SUN
After a one-day suspension, The
Dean Blundell Show returns to 102.1 The Edge this morning. Program
director Alan Cross yesterday reinstated Blundell, Jason Barr and Todd
Shapiro shortly after meeting with them late yesterday afternoon.
Cross had indefinitely suspended
the trio without pay on Friday when they refused to stop a lewd and
profanity-laced interview with wildman Steve-O of Jackass and two
sidekicks.
"We've reached an
understanding," Cross said yesterday.
The FM station asked its Web site
visitors to voice their opinions, and Cross said half of the more than
1,000 respondents supported the suspension, while the other half lobbied
for reinstatement.
When asked if he had fined the
trio, as he said Friday he'd do, Cross would only say "they have been
reprimanded."
Last night Blundell told The
Toronto Sun he understood management's concerns, but only to a point.
"I still think (the
suspension) is a little ridiculous," he said. "They didn't trust
us to go on the air today, but they reinstate us for the next day?
"You know what's happened?
Because of Janet Jackson's floppy milkbag, we can't broach any areas that
these small groups of society think are inappropriate. And these small
groups of people are ruining it for everybody else."
So will Blundell and company tone
down their own act?
"Nope. Still balls out,"
Blundell said. "You ride the horse that gotcha there ... We've got to
do what we feel makes us successful -- and that's freewheeling."
Hint: don't try Steve-O at home
Dude's day off has usual excess, mayhem - Ex-Jackass bringing his antics to
Toronto
Toronto Star
Mar. 24, 2004. 01:00 AM
MURRAY WHYTE
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
Twenty one countries in the past 12
months. Twenty nine shows in 40 nights. Endless beatings, bloodlettings,
scaldings and maulings. But like a true professional, Steve-O, until
lately of the disturbingly successful Jackass franchise, knows how to best
prepare for the trials of international stardom.
"Aw, I'm wasted, man," he
says, lolling contentedly in a Florida condominium on a rare day off from
his fast-moving world tour, Don't Try This At Home, which stops in at the
Guvernment in Toronto on Friday.
It would likely be a grand
disappointment to his legions of fans if he wasn't. Since Steve-O's first
appearance on Jackass, MTV's bonanza of self-inflicted pain, in 2000, he
hasn't exactly made a name for himself as a demure teetotaler.
From a dip with the seals in South
Africa's Shark Alley to repeatedly lighting himself on fire, snorting
wasabi and getting tattooed in the back of a lurching 4 x 4 pounding an
offroad trail, Steve-O � or Stephen Glover, to his long-suffering mother
� has maintained a rigorous training regimen.
"Really, dude, all I ever
cared about was partying like Motley Crue," he said, citing the
drink-and-drug-addled '80s glam rock outfit with an admiring slur. "I
just want to live ridiculously enough to make them proud."
So far, he's not letting them down.
Since the demise of Jackass a year and a half ago, Glover has toured the
world more or less non-stop, shooting segments for his new MTV show
Wildboyz. Segments deemed too much even for MTV have been collected into a
three-volume strong set of DVDs, where such limits need not be respected
� and Steve-O doesn't. The first DVD sold 140,000 copies.
"I'm selling hundreds of
thousands of copies of blatant drug abuse videos," he says on the
phone, his words a boozy mush of slurs. "In every single one of them,
there's illegal drug abuse that I'm blatantly allowed to film. I don't
know how I get away with it."
Occasionally he hasn't. Along the
way, he's managed to get arrested nine times, including a memorable stint
in a Swedish jail after ingesting a condom packed full of hashish.
The day after being released,
Glover and his crew found themselves in custody again, this time for a
drunken rampage outside a Helsinki night club.
No big deal, Glover says. "I
am yet to be arrested for doing anything that I feel is wrong. I love
getting arrested for shit that I'm proud to do."
And this is what happens outside
the confines of the Don't Try This At Home tour, a forum that provides
Glover and friends some immunity as performing artists.
So what can we expect on stage?
"I don't want to make any promises, dude," he says. And to be
sure, some of his more memorable stunts, like skittering around the
Serengeti in a two-man zebra suit and fending off lions, are hard to
recreate on stage.
But there are at least a few
guarantees. "The show is definitely a variable. But it's good, man.
Basically, it's `How wasted can I possibly get and do the stunts I'm not
allowed to do on TV while I'm so drunk and under the supervision of no
one,'" he says matter-of-factly. "I can tell you right now, the
stage is going to be covered in blood, piss, puke, broken glass � and
all kinds of shit is going to happen after that."
Such as? Well, you could go by
precedent. At a mid-winter tour stop in Saskatoon earlier this year,
"we froze a kid's ball sack to a pole. Then this girl got jealous of
him, so we froze her boobs to a pole," Glover recounts.
On his off day in Florida, Glover
was passing his time relaxing, and grinding Xanax into a production
assistant's drink. While the p.a. was unconscious, Glover executed the
innocent prank of shaving off one his eyebrows.
"It's the funniest question in
the world: What do you do when you only have one eyebrow? Do you swallow
your pride and shave the other one off, too? Or do you let the other one
catch up?" he said, giggling.
But lest you think he's gone soft,
Glover reveals other day-off plans. "I just bought a stun gun for
wake-ups. I got a ruthless stun-gun, dude," he said. "Some will
leave you twitching and frothing at the mouth."
Knowing full well such implements
are verboten in Canada, Glover has made other plans. "Stun guns are
illegal, but car batteries are not. I'm actually working on a car battery
plan � like jumper cables attached to my butt cheeks is fine."
According to Canadian law, he's
right. But some elements of Glover's on-stage performance might not pass
this test � for one, the infamous Butterfly, which involves a staple-gun
and the creative arrangement of Glover's scrotum. "It depends on how
the venue feels about full frontal male nudity. I'm not going to do it
half-assed," he said.
At the moment, Glover intends to do
his best to keep this Canadian sojourn arrest-free, though some run-ins
with the law would be welcome. "If I could get some goofy-looking
Canadian cops on horses to whip out a breathalyzer and tell me I'm legally
dead, I'll be happy," he said.
And besides, "illegal" is
in the eye of the beholder, right? "Aw, dude, exactly, man. All I'm
guilty of is living my art." |