The story of Jeff Tremaine is sort of similar to that of Cinderella, that haggard little wench come celebrated toast of the town, but not really.

Born a poor white military brat, Jeff was hustled from state to state until finally settling in the area of Rockville, Maryland. There he defied his parents on a regular basis and got into all sorts of ne’er-do-well activities such as skateboarding, BMX, reggae music, and art. Perhaps most key to this fairy tale is that in high school Tremaine made the acquaintance of Adam Spiegel, a hyperactive little pipsqueak that puberty had somehow kipped over and left with an extremely high voice for an extremely long time. In 1985, Jeff was booted from the parental nest and landed in St. Louis. There he attended Washington University and committed the most egregious act of his life—joining a fraternity—although he still contends it was a “cool fraternity,” whatever the fuck that means. Anyway, he did the fine art thing and graduated in 1989 with a penchant for funk-metal music and cross-eyed fashion, the combination of which may or may not have provided the inspiration for Funk Pelts, his garage op T-shirt line.

Diploma in hand, Tremaine headed out west to join back up with his childhood friend Adam, now more popularly known as Spike, who was working as a photographer for the BMX magazine Freestylin’ along with art director Andy Jenkins and editor Mark Lewman. Soon after Jenkins quit in ’89, Tremaine slid into the layout jockey position on Go, the soon to be dead end result of a collision between Freestylin’ and BMX Action.

When the BMX industry took a shit akin to something that might’ve fallen out of King Kong’s ass, Tremaine briefly waffled over to a snowboard magazine in 1992 before hired on as the art/editorial director for Big Brother, a fledgling skateboard rag that had gotten off on the altogether wrong foot with its first issue. In time, however, his leadership took Big Brother to new and exciting levels of distribution, notoriety, and an all-encompassing sense of stupidity not normally tolerated in any industry (excepting Hollywood now).

It’s no big secret what happened past this point in the life of Jeffrey James Tremaine, but here are a few random things not so well known:

• Tremaine actually put all those fine art skills he learned in college to good use. Throughout the ’90s, prior to a debilitating cell phone condition, he was quite adept with the brush, creating rather large and unwieldy works of art. In short, he would spackle a sheet of plywood with papier-mâchéd beer labels, birdseed, sand, moss, or whatever other material he could get his hands on, and then paint a pretty picture on top of the whole textured mess. Many of these paintings wound up on snowboards and skateboards.

• In 1989/90, Tremaine fronted the short-lived band Milk along with Lewman (guitar), Jenkins (bass), and BMX rider R.L. Osborn (drums). Milk achieved worldwide cult status among skateboarders when “The Knife Song” was used on Jason Lee’s skate section in the landmark Blind video, Video Days (the song was later reused as a snippet in jackass the movie during the “Rental Car-Crash Derby”).

• Referred to as the “General” by Manny Puig, Tremaine isn’t afraid to lead his troops straight into the bloody heart of battle. Besides being the reigning champ of the “I’m Not Leaving” game (a fun practice of late night civil disobedience that once resulted in his getting choked-out by one muscle-bound bouncer), Jeff will jump into the very same fire he asks the cast to get into, be it the worst mullet ever or accompanying Manny on an unconventional swim through the alligator-infested canals of the Black Swamp.

• Tremaine plays Fantasy Football, the modern day Dungeons & Dragons for aging or failed jocks, minus all the cool multi-sided dice and lead figurines. How obsessed is he with this make-believe shit? Well, at the tail end of production on jackass number two he skipped town to participate in a weekend-long draft, leaving everyone else to bat clean up on the finishing touches to the film (well, just the titling and credits, but still…).

In addition to helming the jackass franchise, Tremaine has served as Executive Producer and Co-Creator of Wildboyz; Executive Producer and Co-Creator on Rob and Big; and director on music videos for Turbonegro, Andrew WK, and The Sahara Hot Nights.