Long before Stephen Glover, a.k.a. Steve-O, made a name for himself swimming with sharks on MTV’s Wildboyz and having his butt cheeks stapled together on Jackass, he was a regular in the pages of the legendary Big Brother skateboarding magazine. Even back in the ’90s, he was regarded as the class clown of skating for his circus-

like tricks in which he’d set himself on fire and do backflips onto his board. But when Jackass took off, he took his antics to new levels, entertaining people and getting arrested the world over.
Unfortunately, some of those arrests were drug-related, and it’s no secret that the entertainer has long struggled with addiction. In 2008, his friends forced him to check into a mental health facility to deal with his drug abuse, and after pleading guilty to felony possession of cocaine, he finally went to rehab. Fast-forward to 2010, Steve-O has two years of sobriety under his belt, he’s working on Jackass 3-D, which will be released this fall, and is doing his best to be less annoying.

It’s Monday. So how many times have you stapled your balls to your leg this week so far? None this week.

Slow week for you? I did that so much in the past but I haven’t done that in a while.

Did it scar your balls? No. But sometimes it does get infected. You get these infected staple holes in your ball sack.

Have you ever gotten arrested for doing it?

Yeah. I was charged with felony obscenity, which was the same thing that happened to Lenny Bruce and Jim Morrison. Basically, I feel like it put me in the ranks of the real American heroes like Larry Flynt. Of course that’s my way of looking at it.

Did you serve any time for it?

I got arrested with $1.12 million bail. There were two felony charges. There was a $120,000 warrant for second-degree battery because the bouncers beat up a kid, and they charged me with it. For the felony obscenity, which was strictly for stapling my nuts, I got a full million-dollar bail. I got picked up on a fugitive warrant in Los Angeles and went to L.A. County Jail for five days waiting for the bail reduction hearing. They knocked it down to $150,000, which I borrowed from my shady accountant and had to pay back with interest.

When you’re in jail for five days, are you doing penis tricks to try to entertain the prisoners and the guards?

No. They had me in protective custody, and that doesn’t make the time go by any quicker. The correctional officers would pull me out of my cell and take pictures with me. I had just gotten my back tattooed [with a picture] of my face, and our first movie hadn’t come out yet, so I got kind of special treatment—but not like Vince Neil shit where they would bring him hookers and everything.