 with Kevin Fallon Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
This week:
Jackass Forever Is a Masterpiece. Really. It is a penis that wields mass destruction. And it is a penis that saves us all.
Inspired by one of the first things you see in the new film Jackass Forever, this is referring to the greater universe of Jackass—a playground of raunch, violence, and the beautiful buffoonery of masculinity. But what is Jackass, really, if not an exaggerated funhouse mirror to the reality of society: a group of idiots goof around doing dangerous and crass stunts, the world inexplicably laughs at them and rewards them for this behavior with success and fortune, and years later, at a pivotal inflection point of culture, we wonder if maybe these guys were geniuses all along.  As Jackass Forever, the latest film inspired by the MTV series of 22 years ago, hits theaters in the middle of a lingering pandemic and at a doomsday point for the theatrical box office, we wonder if we actually need them, too. Well, kick me in the groin and then let's lose our breath laughing about it, because, you know what? We do. We really do.
It probably was always going to take a man's penis to heal us as a nation. This is America, after all. But it's almost poetic that the dongs in question belong to these guys, in the context of these stunts.
If we're harping on the penis of it all, it's because the film does. There are so many of them. (Bare asses, nipples, taints, and actual buttholes boast robust representation as well.) Not that any of this is arousing. It is, however, unabashed. One could write a thesis on how the most aggro manifestations of heteronormative male behavior and machismo almost reliably overlap with the most flagrant displays of homoeroticism. But that's neither here nor there in Jackass Forever, where the more pressing matter is that someone has to grab Preston Lacy's testicles and pull them through the hole in the plywood so that they may be turned into a punching bag for tiny boxing gloves, the battering of which will then be played back in slow motion and projected onto a massive movie screen.
Jackass had humble beginnings. Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and Wee-Man, as well as several legacy cast members who return—albeit a bit grayer, with more wrinkles, and certainly wearier—for Jackass Forever, started this whole thing by orchestrating body-bruising and repulsive vignettes with no seeming higher purpose than to make each other squeal with laughter.
Sometimes they'd test how much force a person's balls could withstand. Sometimes they'd get in a ring and face-off with a bull. Once, one of them dressed as a mouse and crawled across a floor littered with mousetraps to get to a hunk of cheese. Later, this evolved into dressing up one of their scrotums as a mouse to tempt a live snake. Frequently, there would be poo involved. Often, the joke boils down simply to "here is a penis."
The original videos from the series were so lo-fi, telegraphing a vibe that anybody could pull this off, that MTV had to start warning viewers not to attempt their own stunts, and certainly not to film them and send them into the network. But now there's a Hollywood budget. Jackass Forever is bigger than ever. We're getting production value. We're getting storyline. We're not just getting a penis. We're getting a penis that is painted to look like Godzilla, terrorizing a city teeming with extras until a standoff ends with them all getting sprayed with its version of fire: a blast of neverending cum. (The aforementioned opening scene.)
It is among the most thrilling cinematic experiences I've had in my lifetime.
I'm not being wry or snarky about this. When Jackass debuted, I was of the perfect age to think it was the absolute funniest thing in the world—which, well, it was. There's no high-mindedness or overthinking here. This is entertainment at the basest level: Make the human body do ridiculous things and point a camera at it. I'm of the generation that lionized these men as heroes.
What that means 22 years later is intrinsic to the Jackass Forever experience. So much of it is the same, and the watching of it is the same, too. You want to hide under your chair in second-hand fear as a new cast member named Poopies attempts to kiss a snake. You can't watch as a UFC heavyweight champ tests the fortitude of Ehren McGhehey's cup. (A top softball pitcher and professional hockey player also get goes at it.) You will laugh until it hurts as Steve-O strips naked and clips a queen bee to his shaft and wriggles with discomfort as her hive begins to cover his penis like living underwear.  But what it means to get older, confront your mortality, and maybe regress—or at least laugh—in the face of it is a driving point to the film. Within seconds of frontman Johnny Knoxville's appearance in the film's first stunt, there's a fart that makes everyone howl with laughter, until Knoxville interrupts with a cautious, "Are you filming my bald spot?" He giggles while introducing an updated version of one of the first-ever Jackass stunts—essentially, people getting hit in the balls—quipping, "Twenty years later, doing the same old shit." Pontius sings a song about how the original cast paid their dues, so now it's the new guard's turn to abuse their bodies.
Not that there's anyone who escapes the brutality. Jackass Forever is more transparent about the physical toll and danger of this phenomenon. You'll see someone with their arm in a sling in the background of a shot, or being tended to by a medic after blacking out. By the end, bodies are all shades of black, blue, and purple. At one point, Knoxville is carried away from production in a stretcher.
Embrace the fun of life. Even make it for yourself, sure, as Jackass does. But there's no escaping the toll. Reality is reality. Mortality is mortality.
I genuinely think Jackass Forever is going to be a hit, as much as a hit as there is in a pandemic. The four earlier films have made nearly half a billion dollars at the box office. But commercial appeal notwithstanding, there's a spiritual draw. We're a frustrated people. Because of the pandemic, we're a caged people. We're starved for the opportunity to feel and to let loose. We want to howl with laughter. Everything is so stressful and so serious. We want to be stupid. That's what Jackass is all about.
Now more than ever, I've recognized in it and in these guys the desire to just be unleashed into the world. To be wanton. To be careless. To goof around with your friends and not have concerns about petty things like safety or repercussions or the social mores surrounding homophobia and homoeroticism. (Not to keep harping on it, but the straight men in this movie touched more dick in the span of 85 minutes—each other's dicks—than I have in… well, let's say some time.) What a blissful lack of insecurity, to relish and be so comfortable with exhibitionism.
It must be so invigorating to skip through the world with your penis out, be launched 40 feet into the air and crash land in a lake, to good-naturedly prank people, or to charge at a bull. The fantasy of reckless abandon and no rules has only grown more powerful in the time that Jackass has been in the world, with the franchise essentially in competition with itself to escalate its antics over the last 20 years. And in that regard, Jackass Forever is a crowning achievement.
Long Live Wordle. Wordle Must Be Stopped. In the very first minutes of February 2, 2022, I announced myself to the world as a genius.
I had solved the new daily Wordle puzzle in just two guesses. If you're unfamiliar with the game/phenomenon, Wordle is a simple game in which a player has six tries to guess a five-letter word, receiving clues about which letters might be in the final answer after each attempt. A great or strategic player is lucky to solve in three or four guesses. I, the new braintrust of the universe, had done it in two.
Over the next 24 hours—only one Wordle puzzle is released a day, and everyone shares their results—I scrolled through Twitter and realized, in horror, that many people had proudly accomplished the same feat. It turns out I wasn't the prodigy whose intelligence might save the human race. I was just another idiot gay who made the obvious second guess of "MOIST."  We've talked a lot as a culture these last few weeks about the Wordle phenomenon. Like a slew of other pandemic fads—jigsaw puzzles, sourdough starters, Jackbox games over Zoom—it has fleetingly bonded us.
Its creator made headlines this week for selling the game to The New York Times for a seven-figure deal. On the one hand, we're all skeptical that the purity of the daily puzzle will remain intact under the supervision of corporate overlords. On the other, this guy made this game for him and his partner to enjoy. It's an act of love that, as writer/producer Caissie St. Onge observed on Twitter, unexpectedly turned into a cash grab. All I'm asking in life is for someone to love me, and also for that love to turn into a few million for us to enjoy.
I would like to offer another take on this Wordle craze, which is that it has ruined my life.
For roughly two-and-half minutes a day, I switch my phone's internet browser over to the Wordle website. I do my little puzzle, and I smile. I have convinced myself in those 150 seconds that I have a hobby. That I have done something for pleasure in my day. That it's OK to work around the clock, have no social life, and exist in an otherwise constant state of stress because, whoo-ee, do I love to make my Wordle guesses each day. What fun! What satisfaction! What frivolity in this hellscape of life!
And then it happened. One day last week I didn't guess the word.
My will to live plummeted. It was non-existent. I was Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Cut to me putting playdough on my nose, sticking rocks in my pockets, and stoically walking into the Hudson. I have never reached such a nadir of self-worth and such electric, unsettling awareness of the bleakness of my existence—that this dipshit game gives me such joy, and my only joy—as I did when I didn't get the Wordle answer. (The irony that the word that day was "PERKY" is not lost on me.)
Anyway, Wordle sucks. Long live Wordle. Also I obviously wrote this rant after getting the word wrong for the second time. But congrats to everyone who guessed SHARD and not SHARP like me, a bloomin' fool.
Joe Rogan Unites Us All I don't love the fact that I have to have an opinion on Joe Rogan. This is not something I ever wanted for myself. But apparently centuries ago, our Founding Fathers betrayed a witch and now, as her prophecy foretold, the societal apocalypse is upon us and thy name is Rogan.
It's not so much that I entirely reject the idea that the closest thing we have to a cultural thought leader is the guy who hosted the show that forced people to eat bull testicles for money. It's that it's almost too on-the-nose for where we are as a society.  In any case, while the rest of the world is debating whether or not they should boycott Spotify, which paid $100 million for exclusive rights to Rogan's controversial podcast (more information on that here) and say things like "oh but the interface is so much better!" as a reason not to listen to Adele songs literally anywhere else, I would like to focus on the good that has come from this. As writer Mike Ryan says, it took Joe Rogan's buffoonery to do it, but Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young have finally come together again.
It Was Always Going to Come to This I have spent my entire career rejecting the idea that reality television represented any sort of cultural decline and rebuffing the argument that, even at its basest and trashiest form, the medium was regressive or devoid of value.
I now retract everything I have ever said. 
I Manifested This in My Dreams I choose to believe that Dolly Parton, as is her superhuman power, sensed that a travesty on the scale that might threaten our faith in humanity was nigh, and thus responded with this: Not only a forthcoming documentary on the making of and significance of her film with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, 9 to 5, but a new duet version of the title musical track with none other than Kelly Clarkson. God (Dolly) is good. 
What to watch this week: Jackass Forever: Sometimes all you need in life are some penises and fart jokes. (Fri. in theaters) The Worst Person in the World: What I would vote for Best Picture if I got to do such things for the Oscars. (Fri. in theaters) Raised By Wolves: This was one of those "there are 5 million shows on TV so you can't watch everything good" situations. Now that season two is here, you can try! (Now on HBO Max)
What to skip this week: Moonfall: I can't actually recommend Moonfall. But do know that I will be seeing Moonfall 5-7 times in theaters. (Fri. in theaters)
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‘Jackass Forever’ Is the Masterpiece That Will Unite America
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