Wee Man’s Chronic adventure
Wee Jackass
Big Brother, a magazine published by Steve Rocco, did a feature on Wee Man, unofficially launching his journey to stardom. He became a regular contributor the magazine – he was a staple in its skate photo spreads, and he started picking up sponsors. He was now a professional skateboarder.
Wee Man was a key figure in popularizing street skateboarding and bringing its subculture to a larger audience. In a short documentary done around this time by Laban Pheidias (who later did the show American Misfits), Wee Man explained what he loved about street skateboarding.
“Going out and seeing what the world has put out there, and what I can do with it,” he said. “…Looking at a handrail later on when I’m older and I might have to use it to hold on to, I am going to hold on to it and look at it for what I used to do with it. I’ll always see everything differently now. I think skateboarders are on a different level of thinking, and a different level of being, than just any regular person out there.”
In the mid to late 1990s, Big Brother started making skate videos that attracted a cult following. Wee Man, covered in blue body paint, was on the cover of one of those videos. In 1999, a struggling actor-turned-writer named Johnny Knoxville started doing bits in the videos. He’d use implements of self-defense against himself – he was filmed being tasered, maced, and shot while wearing a bulletproof vest.
Thus was born Jackass.
“We started doing skateboard videos with Jackass stuff in it and next thing you know, Knox was like, ‘Let’s do a TV show,’” Wee Man said. “I’m like, ‘Alright, if you want to, let’s do it.’ I mean, why hold back? You know, we have always moved forward. I thought it was going to be like my 15 minutes of fame and I’d be back working at ET and just skating down the beach.”
The show started airing on MTV in 2000 and immediately became a big hit. Wee Man was on a skate tour in Japan with the Dogtown skateboard team when he first glimpsed how much Jackass was about the change everything for him.
“It was two months after the show had been released and I was just with my skate buddies, nobody from Jackass, and we were walking down the street in Tokyo and people were running out of the shops yelling ‘Wee Man! Wee Man!’ and my skate buddies were like, ‘Dude, this is insane,’” Wee Man recalled. “And that is when it hit me. I was like, ‘Whoa, I am worldwide now!’ So it was crazy.”
Over the course of the next decade, on the wings of Jackass, Wee Man blew up big. The show ran from 2000 to 2002 and was followed by two enormously popular movies. He was suddenly a genuine movie star. But though he may have made it in Hollywood – complete with a paparazzi following now and again – he never really left Hermosa.
“I grew up in Torrance and my first job was in Hermosa at ET Surf and I worked at Von’s right on Pier Avenue, so everybody knows me,” Wee Man said. “The only time I left the South Bay was for nine months when I lived in San Jose, and then I came back because I missed it so much. So yeah, when all the other Jackass guys who lived around here started getting big and moved up to Hollywood, I said, ‘Naw, I’m not leaving. I’m staying.’”
Last year, he bought his first house, in Hermosa, and he’s still a regular fixture, popping into ET Surf to keep up with the crew in an enduring scene that Eddie Talbot describes as “different characters but the cartoon goes on.” Talbot says it’s no cliché to say that Wee Man is utterly unchanged by his fame.
“He’s the same kid,” Talbot said. “Jason Acuña is as far from a jackass, as a person, as you could possibly be – that is all I can tell you. But as a character, he is as much of a jackass as is possible.”
Something else that is unchanged is the rare phenomenon that has always accompanied Wee Man. Wherever he goes, laughter follows. It’s a gift only a few people in this world possess. It’s damned near a spiritual quality, a happy peacefulness – the Dalai Lama, perhaps most famously, is likewise surrounded by giggles.
“The big difference is the Dalai Lama doesn’t skateboard,” Talbot said. “That is a big difference. Put that guy on a skateboard and see how mellow he is.”
Wee Man professes no particular wisdom, but he’ll tell you this much: it’s not about pursuing riches or fame or anything but a good time.
“That is it,” he said. “Some people are chasing something that you really can’t chase, and you shouldn’t even be chasing. You should just wake up and be happy. That’s it. That is all that matters.”