Friendship means collateral damage
"Jackass 3D" star Bam Margera has helped his best friend, Brandon Novak, stay off of heroin for years. But Novak just went on an insane odyssey, beginning by wrecking Bam's Mercedes.
"He took the car without asking," Bam tells me. "He smashed into a parked car, $80,000 worth of damage. He knew I was gonna kill him after that, so he OD'd on some kind of pills and was in two days of life support at the hospital."
The pills were opiates.
"And then, as soon as he got out, he found out there was an electrical fire in his apartment, and it burned down to a crisp.
"He has nowhere to go," Bam says, "so now he's living at my house!"
In Bam style, he is serious but laughing at this lunacy.
"I kind of like the entertainment, but I am bummed" about repairing the Mercedes and the other car Novak, a one-time skateboarding star, hit.
At least Bam, 31, can afford the bills. He co-created "Jackass"; he is promoting the book "Jackass: 10 Years of Stupid"; he had MTV's "Viva La Bam"; owns his own CKY video series; and "Bam's World Domination" is in reruns on Spike.
"It is fun having (expletive) money because you can pretty much walk into a Lamborghini dealership with no shoes and pajamas, looking like a total (expletive), and you walk in, and they want to kick you out because they think you are just window shopping. But you really are going to walk in and buy it in cash.
"Pretty much every time I've bought a car," he says, "I walk in looking as bad as I can, just so they can get fed up with me, until they ask me to leave, and then I'm like, 'Give me that one.' "
Anyway, Bam walks a
10 p.m. red carpet at club Lavo on Saturday night to meet fans. And?
"I'm actually bringing (Novak) with me."
Ladies are encouraged to approach.
"Everybody I'm bringing is completely single, so the more girls the merrier!"
Bam has fond memories of Vegas.
"We had a big cake fight in one of the suites. I forget which hotel or casino it was. But there was so much cake everywhere, it was a $50,000 bill.
"There was cake on the (ceiling), there was cake on the bed, there was cake in the bathroom. There was cake everywhere!"
Doug Elfman's column appears Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. E-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
