Steven Glover is an ambitious man. Also known as Steve-o, this 28-year-old has co-starred in the MTV television phenomenon “Jackass,” has a movie out that has already grossed over $42 million and operates a successful live tour of his stunts called “Don’t Try This at Home” which will stop in Columbus tonight at Club Chaos on Bethel Road.
All of these outlets are just a part of his vision to change the world.
“I want to make the world a dumber place,” he said.
“My whole goal in life is to have some sort of historical significance … I think there’s room in my work to inspire a new generation of entertainers.”
Performing stunts like wearing a jellyfish on his head as a hat, stapling his scrotum to his thigh and snorting a live earthworm up his nose and pulling it out of his mouth may not sound like the best way to become historically significant, but it works surprisingly well.
“I never doubted the entertainment value of what I did, but I never really expected anyone to care,” he said. “It has surprised me how it caught the attention of the mainstream media.”
Though the popularity of Steve-o’s stunts has exploded on the national level in the past few years, he has been shocking audiences his whole life.
“Overall, I’m just a major attention-seeker,” he said.
“When I was in fifth grade I tried to impress this girl in my class. I told her I could leave class whenever I wanted. She didn’t really care, so then I pulled out a baby tooth that was loose. It wasn’t really ready to come out yet, so it gushed blood everywhere. I stood up and gargled to the teacher that I wanted to leave class. She got all freaked out and told me I could do whatever. I looked at the girl and said, ‘I told you.'”
Steve-o attributes his need for attention to the many times he and his family moved when he was growing up, which included cities all over Europe.
“I never knew if I was going to be living in the same place the next year, so it didn’t matter how I acted,” he said.
Before meeting the rest of the “Jackass crew,” Steve-o attended college – clown college.
“I decided to become a legitimate stuntman. I thought the Barnum and Bailey’s thing would look good on a resume. I was having trouble getting jobs, so eventually I decided I wasn’t going to wait for someone to tell me I was a stuntman, I was just going to do it on my own,” he said.
He met the rest of the “Jackass” crew through a job he had in a small flea-market circus. The first stunt he performed with them was setting his face on fire.
Now he is famous across the United States and the rest of the world for the stunts he has performed since childhood.
However, Steve-o is aware of the potential for his fame to be short-lived. Following the success of the “Jackass” movie, he hopes his career hasn’t peaked.
“I wonder sometimes if the rest of my life is going to be a downhill slide. I think it just puts a fire under me to keep going. The bar is getting so high now, but I like a challenge,” he said.
This thought is what prompts him to produce his own DVDs and perform live in the “Don’t Try This at Home” tour.
Steve-o will be joined by fellow “Jackass” cast members Preston Lacy and Ryan Dunn at tonight’s show.
“We do comedy and some stunts. The comedy is mostly observational, Steve-o provides plenty of material for me to make jokes about while he’s doing his act,” Lacy said.
Lacy got his start with “Jackass” when Johnny Knoxville approached him at a party, asking Lacy if he could eat fifty hard boiled eggs. The stunt appeared on an episode of MTV’s “Jackass.”
Lacy said his toughest endeavor with “Jackass” was “The Oklahoma Skit.”
“They got two dominatrixes to basically beat the crap out of me. That was worse than any man has ever beaten me up,” he said.
The live tour enables Steve-o and the “Jackass” crew more freedom in their performances than the televised show.
“There’s really no saying that something can’t go,” he said.
The doors open for tonight’s show at 9 p.m. at Club Chaos (formerly Shooters), 1530 Bethel Rd. Pre-sale tickets are available for $12 at Club Chaos.
