Bam Margera – Serious As Dog Dirt

By now, pretty much everyone knows who Bam Margera is for one reason or another.  He’s a professional skateboarder. He’s a movie director. He was one of the stars of Jackass and CKY and has been the focused of countless MTV reality shows.

However, I don’t like – and have never liked – Bam Margera. Not for any particular reason, there was just nothing there for me to like. Jackass was stupid (as are all of MTV’s reality shows), his movies he directed looked bad and I never watched CKY or cared about skateboarding. So while I always knew who he was, I never followed him or paid attention to what he was doing; and that’s too bad, because maybe if I did, I wouldn’t be so lost as I read his picture book, Serious As Dog Dirt.

The hardcover book is a collection of pictures and handwritten memories collected by Margera showcasing almost a decade of his exploits.  Margera set up the book in a scrapbook format, with hundreds of images taken by himself and a variety of friends scattered over top of one another and hand written comments explaining them.

It gives a more personal look into the life and many exploits of Margera but also works to create more questions and leave the reader scratching their heads. Even though the images are unique and interesting, there’s very little explanation about what’s going on; so unless you’re a hardcore Margera follower, chances are you’ll be lost as you flip through the images.  It’s set up more as a personal scrapbook, a piece of art to rekindle memories and to share with friends who all experienced the event. If you weren’t there though, you’ll have very little idea of what’s going on.

Margera does attempt to explain the images but does so in a way that fails to properly convey the message. His handwritten notes are messy – quite often indecipherable – and more than half of them are cut of by either the edge of the page, another photo or just a bad scan job. This forces the reader to guess at half the words and ultimate give up trying to read them all together.

Serious As Dog Dirt is a coffee table book for serious Bam Margera fans who already know most of his misadventures; but as a whole, the book fails to be worth  the $45 sticker price.