A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I've Learned from a Lifetime of Terrible Decisions

by Stephen Steve-O Glover, David Peisner (With)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Life is tough. Steve-O’s stint on Jackass never made it easy. Remember, Steve-O took the kicks for us. We think there’s a thing or two we can learn from his choices.

Stephen "Steve-O" Glover—social media icon, comedy-touring stalwart, and star of Jackass—delivers a hilarious and practical guide to recovery, relationships, career, and how to keep thriving long after you should be dead.

Steve-O is best known for his wildly dangerous, foolish, painful, embarrassing, and sometimes death-defying stunts. At age 48, however, he faces his greatest challenge yet: getting older. A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Terrible Decisions is a captivating exploration of life and how to live it by an individual who has already lived way more than a lifetime’s worth of extreme experiences. Steve-O grapples with the right balance between maturity and staying true to yourself, not repeating your “greatest hits,” maintaining sobriety and a healthy regimen, avoiding selfishness, and finding the right partner for life.
 
Having built a gargantuan and loyal social media following while establishing a successful stand-up career—all after a couple of decades of dubious behavior—Steve-O is proof that anyone can find meaning and fulfillment in life, no matter what path they choose. Packed with self-deprecating wit and gruelingly earned wisdom, A Hard Kick in the Nuts will reverberate with readers everywhere who have lived a lot (sometimes too much) and are now wondering how to approach the years to come. Or maybe just need some good motivation to get out of bed tomorrow. One of many tips: Be your own harshest critic, then cut yourself a break, and enjoy this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306826757
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	09/27/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	375,127
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Stephen "Steve-O" Glover is a comedian, entrepreneur, and a longtime star of the legendary Jackass franchise. He regularly performs stand-up for packed theaters throughout the country and owns a veritable empire of small businesses. Steve-O also hosts the weekly podcast Steve-O’s Wild Ride! He lives in Los Angeles.
 
David Peisner is a freelance journalist based in Decatur, Georgia. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Bloomberg Businessweek,Fast Company, Esquire, BuzzFeed, and Playboy. He is also the author of Homey Don’t Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution.

Table of Contents

Introduction Age Is Way More Than Just a Fucking Number ix

1 Don't Be Afraid of Dying. Be Afraid of Getting Old. 1

2 Don't Let Fucking Fuck You Up 21

3 Find Someone Who Will Be with You When the Shit Hits the Fan 39

4 Whatever You Have Never Feels Like Enough (But That's Okay) 65

5 Fuck the Greatest Hits 83

6 Be Your Own Harshest Critic. Then Cut Yourself a Break. 109

7 Health 101: You Only Get One Body So Don't Fuck It Up (Too Badly) 121

8 Stand Up for What You Believe In. Just Don't Expect Anyone to Thank You for It. 149

9 Everyone Needs Someone Who Will Call Them an Asshole 161

10 Your Legacy Is Bullshit 185

11 When the World Is Going to Hell. It Helps if You've Already Been There 197

12 Don't Be a Selfish Dick 215

Acknowledgments 237

Editorial Reviews

07/04/2022

Renowned Jackass stuntman and comedian Glover outlines the secrets to a fulfilling life in this surprisingly introspective follow-up to his debut memoir Professional Idiot. Drawing on his personal experiences—including, but not limited to, death-defying stunts like hitting a ramp on a horse-pulled wakeboard, and making snow angels in flaming rocket fuel—Glover explores the creation of meaning in life and how to nourish it. Alongside the perilous feats of his past, Glover dives into more intimate anecdotes from his life, detailing his past relationships, poor financial investments, awkward romantic escapades, and, most notably, his winding—at times vicious—path into stand-up comedy, plus many more challenges. From reckoning with aging and learning the benefits of discipline to taking up Vedic meditation and finding joy in color-coded calendars, Glover uses the wisdom he’s gained from his freewheeling life to urge readers to embrace a “willingness to zig and zag” and to accept that occasional failures are part and parcel with finding happiness. While one might not expect to find wisdom in a hilarious tale about belly-flopping into a urine-filled kiddie pool, Glover is a veritable expert at learning “some valuable shit from lifetime of terrible decisions.” Dick jokes aside, this is full of heart and hard-won insight. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

I read this book all in one sitting. I am first of all blown away by Steve-O’s continued sobriety and also his honesty and complete transparency in writing this wonderful book. Eternally proud of my brother.”—Johnny Knoxville

“Dude, this book is wildly engrossing. I finished it in almost three hours, and I literally hate books. Just when I thought I couldn’t have seen more of Steve's private parts, he managed to bare even more stuff that most people would deny 'til their dying day. The results are riveting, hilarious, and shockingly educational.”—Whitney Cummings

“The way Steve-O has turned his life around is just incredible. It’s all in this book!”—Dana White, President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship

“Thoughtful and revealing, but on-brand….The new book is filled with profound observations and frank revelations. If the first [book] goes to the bone, this one goes to the marrow."—CBS Saturday Morning

“A disarmingly direct memoir of mistakes and course corrections studded with some useful advice.”—Kirkus Reviews

“While one might not expect to find wisdom in a hilarious tale about belly-flopping into a urine-filled kiddie pool, Glover is a veritable expert at learning 'some valuable shit from [a] lifetime of terrible decisions.' Dick jokes aside, this is full of heart and hard-won insight.”
 —Publishers Weekly

Praise for Professional Idiot

"A great book to read before you get on the roller coaster to hell, if you plan on surviving to tell about it like Steve-O did."—Nikki Sixx, author of The Heroin Diaries

"This is the perfect book for people who hate reading."—Tommy Lee, author of Tommyland

"It's mind-blowing to me how utterly far gone Steve-O was, and how he looks back on it in this book with such intelligence, humor, and searing honesty. What a truly unbelievable life."—Johnny Knoxville

From the Publisher

09/01/2022

Like his infamous stunts on the Jackass TV show and films, Steve-O is back to share more outrageous stories. His second book focuses on his journey from a path of willful self-destruction to sobriety and leaves no sordid experience unexamined. In between all of the "unnecessary, inappropriately personal and graphic things" Steve-O shares throughout the book, he does manage to include some surprisingly common-sense advice. It's nothing groundbreaking or particularly insightful, but most readers will probably feel better about their own lives knowing that they didn't have to get pelted with baseballs while duct taped to the side of a truck—or worse—to learn the same lessons. It's a surprisingly relatable read and proves that Steve-O's success has been as much a result of his balls-to-the-wall work ethic as it has been sheer luck. VERDICT It's doubtful that anyone had "Steve-O self-help book" on their pop culture bingo card. But (although he's certainly no Brené Brown) Steve-O's ability to be both vulnerable and funny works surprisingly well in this format.—Claire Sewell

Library Journal

2022-07-26
The Jackass star and author of Professional Idiot returns with a healthy dose of self-help advice.

“The very idea that I would be writing a book to impart my wisdom to others, that people would be coming to me—a recovering alcoholic drug addict who once willingly tried to cross a pit full of alligators on a tightrope while wearing a jockstrap—for advice about anything is clearly absurd,” writes Glover at the beginning. “Surely, if you’re looking to Steve-O for help with your life, you are well and truly fucked, right.” The guy who became famous for setting himself on fire and stapling parts of his body to other parts is remarkably blunt about his addictive personality, fear of growing older, professional jealousy, and being an “attention whore.” Glover also discusses how he has tried to balance these issues, engaging in meditation, veganism, celibacy, philanthropy, and surfing, with varying results. He also has an unorthodox love of calendars and scheduling that, like pretty much everything else in the book, he reveals in meticulous detail and with self-deprecating humor—and plenty of profanity. “My calendar is one way I manage that existential anxiety,” he writes, as he explains his color-coding system and how he wishes he could create a physical manifestation of the calendar app on his iPhone. The author’s worldview is singular and weird, but it has certainly resonated with millions of Jackass fans as well as those who made his previous book a bestseller. For them, his ideas on political polarization and economic inequality—or advice like, “Controlling how you’re feeling on a day-to-day basis is impossible, but what is actually doable is to control the way you act”—may actually connect in a way that wouldn’t work from a more conventional source.

A disarmingly direct memoir of mistakes and course corrections studded with some useful advice.

Kirkus Reviews