Don't bother to point and click. Just when technology threatened to turn shock and gross-out humor into a private affair, MTV throws Jackass in our faces. The cable network's top-rated show entrances adolescents and enrages parents the old-fashioned way, with idiotic stunts, inane pranks and hidden-camera segments. The Jackass recipe is concocted from effluvia and entrails, plus the occasional barbecue featuring unfilleted human sprawled across the grill. OK--there's a fire-retardant suit between him and the meat and the charcoal.

Jackass, obviously not fare for the faint of heart or stomach, is presided over by Johnny Knoxville (his driver's license identifies him as P.J. Clapp), who swears, "This is my attempt to emulate my father." The senior Clapp motivated employees of his Tennessee tire business with mock gunfights and taught his toddler son to welcome customers with a slug to the crotch.

Clapp fils is not sure he lives up to the old man's expectations. Not that he isn't trying. Knoxville was born to the prank, but his detour from a career selling radials took a few turns. He recalls an uncompleted novel, a checkered stint in journalism (he filed reports from the road that were actually written on his back porch), an acting course marked incomplete and hanging out with skateboarding pals. Lucky for him, Knoxville let his inner Dad blossom: He tested self-defense equipment on himself, he sat in a portable toilet that was then overturned by a forklift. He strapped on an artificial penis for a day, and so forth. Friends with video cameras faithfully recorded these antics, which caught the attention of director Spike Jonze. Jonze shaped the tapes into a cassette that duly impressed the suits at MTV. The corporate decision to augment tame fare such as Total Request Live and The Real World with Jackass was a no-brainer--in the virtual sense of the term. Knoxville and his highly skilled troupe of jackasses premiered on the network last fall and the show has been enthusiastically renewed.

Contributing Editor Warren Kalbacker caught up with Knoxville in the lush farm country of southeastern Pennsylvania. "I had been warned that he'd tried his hand at bovine gynecology that afternoon," Kalbacker reports. "And I know what a barnyard smells like. So I was delighted to meet a fastidiously groomed man."

Q 1

PLAYBOY: Your real name is P.J. Clapp. The Johnny Knoxville moniker suggests that you come from Tennessee.

Johnny Knoxville: South Knoxville. West Knoxville is the affluent area, and I definitely wasn't from there. East Knoxville is a little more ghetto. South Knoxville is very working class. I was going to use Johnny Newark, but it doesn't roll off the tongue as well. Knoxville has a better ring to it. I'm a huge fan of all the Johnnies: Johnny Cash, Johnny Thunders, Johnny Rotten. Everyone in my family has a host of names. It's a Southern thing. My nieces' names are Cissy, Billie and Flipper, and we have Little Ronnie, who's also Pork Chop. Then there's Dusty. There's also Crusty and the Dust Man.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Did you take to performing weird stunts as compensation for not being able to pick up girls?

Johnny Knoxville: I never had that problem. I grew up with two sisters--eight and 10 years older--and they and their friends were constantly around me. I always had a wonderful relationship with women. I'm not compensating for anything. I really have no excuse for the things I do. I'm married, and my wife is supportive, but I once made the mistake of telling her that I was testing self-defense equipment. I was going to pepper spray, stun gun and Taser myself, and our kid was two at the time. I went to the desert in a bulletproof vest and shot myself. It was really tense around the house for the couple of weeks leading up to it, so I never again made the mistake of telling her what I do. Now when I leave for work in the morning, I don't say anything about what's going to happen that day. She will watch footage after the fact and think it's funny, but she'll be happy when--if--I ever stop doing this.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Now that you've tested body armor, can you make recommendations for those of us who may have to go into harm's way?

Johnny Knoxville: Save up for a good vest. At the time I didn't have a lot of money, so I had to buy the cheapest vest made, which was like $300, and it only takes a certain type of gun and bullet--up to a nine millimeter. You want to go to the $500 or $600 range for a proper vest. For that price you can get one that will take a .44. And, yes, you can get an armor codpiece. It's actually great eveningwear for going out on the town, frolicking with your friends.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: Are your performances a cry for help or is your serotonin level higher or lower than normal?

Johnny Knoxville: Oddly enough, I enjoy it all. I created a show with two friends and we hired all our other friends, and it's a nerve-racking business. There is probably some chemical reaction that causes me to act in this manner, but maybe it's the adrenaline rush or the rush of eliciting laughter when we actually complete something. I would think it's more the latter. I would always watch my old man, how he would command a room and how everyone would laugh. This is my poor attempt to emulate my father.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: As the son of a tire salesman, can you offer tips on how to negotiate a good deal on our next set of radials?

Johnny Knoxville: We'll call Fat Phil and see what we can wrench out of him. He sells new and used tires. Dad's nickname is Fat Phil from Knoxville, the Round Man with the Square Deal. He owns the tire company, and it has also served as his stage, where he would prank his employees constantly and wreak havoc on most who entered there. Boxcar--Woodrow Wilson Johnson Jr.--would regroove the used tires, and when I was five or six, Dad would let me reblack the tires to make them look new. I would make a big mess, but it was a lot of fun hanging out with all those characters, the people who worked for my father: Big Sam, Ass-Kicking Robert, Big George and a guy named Superdick. They called him SD. He was harelipped, but he apparently more than made up for it with his endowment. It seems I've surrounded myself with those characters in my own life now.