Book Club Mondays: "Professional Idiot"

I have always been totally and completely enamored by the stories of others (as I've said). Though it seems like every celebrity and their mother, father, sister in law, and third cousin twice removed are putting out memoirs these days, I decided to try Steve O's Professional Idiot on for size a couple weeks back.

Unsure of what I was expecting, I was a bit surprised by the content. Not by ridiculous stories of getting drunk, high, huffing nitrous and jumping off of stuff, but finding out that the funnyman was born overseas and was a bit of a brat growing up. Brat more meaning that he moved around a lot (his father worked for Pepsi), not that he was basically ADD and got in trouble for fun (which was also true). I loved reading the story of how he found Doc McGhee's hotel room when he was 13 and got to meet Motley Crue, as well as other stories of his youth.

While I was entertained by the brunt of the book, a portion just made me sad. Addiction changes people, never for the better. It is blatantly obvious after reading Professional Idiot that Steve realizes that. I can imagine that writing the book was part of his healing process.

Though most of us know him as a real 'Jackass', the book was (in my mind) a good representation of an underestimated man. While he's made a fortune doing stunts nobody would ever dream of doing and run around like a crazy person for the past ten years, Professional Idiot shows a new side of the 'Jackass' we never knew.