Stunt World 1.com

By Nate Nichols

Evel Knievel is truly one of a kind. Yet he's no different from all great mystics, charismatics, miracle-makers and popular heroes. His motorized ministry has crossed many lands and he has converted many disciples.

That runs the spectrum from beer-guzzling, Howard Cosell-assisted couch jockeys to some of the greatest Daredevil Stuntmen of the Next Generation. Even guys who riff on Evel's legend as comedians have a place in the Legion of Evel.

Hollywood Five-O is proud to cover Evel's 2003 Comeback Quest and Ultimate Event every step of the way, from the grand opening this year of his all-new gaming and recreation center at State Line, NV to the not-yet-announced forum where one night in the near future, the incomparable 64 year-old King of the Daredevils will return to the skies aboard a big-ass, screaming mean, V-Twin mega-cycle to test the limits of Danger & Destiny once and for all.

Evel is one of a kind - yet he's by no means alone. So as we cover the Big E's journey this year, whether his charted course converges on Death or Glory, we pay tribute also to those who travel in the footsteps of the King - profiles of American Men and Women of Action, inspired to lay their bodies on the line at high speeds and high risk in the challenge that forges champions and often destroys them.

So strap yourself inside a boss leather superhero suit, activate your nitrous burners, make your peace with the On High and get ready to rocket over the wall of ordinary human endurance. This is Daredevil Alley.

Super Joe Reed
"Proving Doubters Wrong - That's What Every Daredevil Loves To Do."

First thing you should know is that Super Joe is a Super Nice Guy. Super Tough, Super Dedicated, Super Experienced and maybe, just maybe, a little Super Crazy - but that's no surprise when it comes to a battle-tested veteran of Daredevil Alley.

I met Joe Reed, 44, last June at Galpin Ford in North Hills, CA during Evel Knievel's comeback announcement event. Evel's return to active duty was a whirlwind of activity - he signed autographs for some 3500 fans, introduced his new custom Galpinized Ford F-150 Gladiator Truck, told the story of how a last minute liver transplant saved his life, recommended the President A-bomb Afghanistan, and danced the Evel Boogie with three hot showgirls. It was a big day, but after the dust cleared I took a look at the publicity packet I'd received demonstrating what Joe Reed and Super Stunts International had to offer.

I learned that Joe Reed took up the banner of "Super" to honor his mentor, Super Joe Einhorn, a lesser known yet significant contemporary and rival of Evel's who jumped Triumph cycles out of San Jose. For years he set records and threw down challenges to his Montana rival, until he suffered massive injuries in a 1977 crash that resulted in severe head injuries and the end of active duty.

In the wake of defeat rose an avenger: Super Joe Reed was called to action (Reed and Einhorn continue their long friendship to this day). Reed then produced and performed many stunt shows and spectacles. His specialty? Screaming over whirling helicopter blades on dirtbikes in teams - "The Vortex" 'copter shot. He hit the national airwaves in 1983 on "That's Incredible!" - launching with partner Rick Schuster and successfully avoiding being served up as daredevil daquiris for families across the USA.

Through the '80s Reed took Evel's game and played the same basic concept, but with power in numbers. For one promotion he broke 24 jumping records in 24 hours, a record in itself. No warm ups, no practices.

When I talked to Joe Reed late last year he was in post as writer, producer and editor on a six-hour TV miniseries on the History of Stunts. For his research, Joe was aided by several all-stars in the field, including Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, who referred him to racetracks, managers and key players from his own 35-year career. So in addition to being a daredevil, you can call Super Joe a bona fide stunt scholar.

Besides the Bionic Man from Montana and Super Joe Einhorn ("Unicorn," perfect appellation for a Daredevil), Reed had a third major mentor: Bob Gill, The Florida Flyer, the third point on the Bermuda Triangle of '70s Cyclejumpers, and the other key rival trying to steal back Evel Knievel's popular crown. Gill was the first guy to jump a dirt bike and land it without a ramp. Literally just drop the bike out of the sky and nail the landing like an 80-mph gym vault on wheels.

A paragon of his no-ramp style, Gill's legendary 1972 natural canyon jump record measured 152 feet. This record stood for over ten years until Super Joe, with the blessing of his mentor, went 153 feet. That's the record standing right now (it doesn't count when you fall off, but I loved Robbie Knievel's "Grand Canyon Jump" all the same - more on the Super Joe/Robbie rivalry shortly).

Still, showmanship is more than counting feet and inches. It's character. On this count too, Super Joe proves himself to be True Daredevil material. He's a character - not of Evel Knievel's mega-gravity, which I consider on par with Rooster Cogburn-era John Wayne, but it adds up this way: Reed is a guy with heroic ideals driven to inspire people even at the risk of his life. Considering he is a good father and family man, this is serious business.

Super Joe is also a vocal advocate of Equal Daredevil Rights. He speaks with conviction about the few female daredevils in the game, whether the ones he's worked with, like Jumpin' Jamie Pamintuan and Heidi Henry (who jumped 87 feet over a canyon in January 2001), or others he admires, like Debbie Lawler (who sometimes paired up with Evel Knievel for shows in the 1970s) and Texas-bred Janet Ward (aka Janet Lee).

In a mostly macho-man industry, Reed stands out when he says, "There's no other form of sport or entertainment in the world that is as level a playing field - I invited these ladies to dare the devil and they accepted the challenge."

But there's more. In 1988, Reed invented the building-to-building jump, also known as "The One-Way Jump." Sounds good and dramatic, right? It should. Because it means there's no way out. There's no veering harmlessly off to the side before you hit the ramp, in case of trouble on the approach. There's no practice runs past the ramp to get the feel before you pull the trigger. It was as fatalistic a scenario as any warrior of the fantastic could ever dream up. Super Joe opened a new chapter in the Daredevil Bible when he launched over Ogden Street, nailing a famous jump on the Original Strip near Binion's Horsheshoe.

In July '98 Super Joe did it again. He pulled the trigger atop downtown L.A., a 100-foot jump over 5th Street at a height of 14 floors. His partner Jumpin' Jamie successfully followed him over the top 25 minutes later. The previous year she and Super Joe successfully performed the first "team" jump (male and female) where both rider and driver were blindfolded (not sure if they had cigarettes - probably not).

You may remember in 1999 on Fox TV, Joe Reed's natural rival, Robbie Knievel, nailed a very sharp 11-story building-to-building jump, but Joe makes sure to point out that his own 100-foot record still stands. And I couldn't help but notice that Super Joe's publicity material was full of challenges promising better stunts than a certain Kaptain Robbie Knievel.

I figure it's sort of like the league rivalry (Cowboys/Redskins, Raiders/Jets) - both men disciples of Evel, one the blood-heir to greatness, a champion jumper in his own right facing all the complications of a volatile paternal relationship; the other a committed competitor who has to do a little more, make a little more noise, try that much harder to win his hero's blessing.

Like everyone who's stone serious about his business, Reed knows the risk. In February 2000, Super Joe was producing and performing a stunt show in Las Vegas. During a warm up, he took a standard 30-foot jump that failed. He got caught short. His front wheel smashed the ramp and drove the front fender into Joe Reed's face. He shattered 18 bones in his face instantly.

Today he is in the later stages of rehab, with much of the damage repaired. At Galpin, he just looked like a guy who'd been fitted with braces, which of course happens to non-daredevils all the time. After I learned the braces were part of reconstructive surgery, I told him no one who hadn't known would know any better. "I'm a perfectionist," he answered. "I see everything that's different from what it used to be." It reminded me of motorcycle crasher Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker, whose scars were written into the script for "Return of the Jedi" (he was smacked by a razor-clawed yeti on Ice Planet Hoth).

"No one would want to walk a day in my shoes," Super Joe says of the catastrophic aftermath. Sixty m.p.h. of motorcycle wheel impacting his head caused several teeth to grind to dust. He now shelters four titanium plates and 28 screws in his head.

This was the end of the invincible period.

What was the invincible period? I learned quickly as Super Joe began to confide to me his childhood mandate for daredevil supremacy. A mystical experience convinced him that his family's ultra-tough genetics made him invulnerable. Reed's dad was a USAF flyer who did two tours and 100 missions over 'Nam. His mom was an athlete and the kind of indomitable figure who could survive a catastrophe like the one that shaped Joe Reed's life and destiny as Super Joe.

Boise City, Lousiana, the late 1960s. Mrs. Reed was cruising down the road in the family station wagon when two kids on bikes broke out of the bayou on a collision course that would have meant two dead kids. Mrs. Reed, who was 7 months pregnant, swerved so hard she flipped the station wagon onto its side at the mouth of a bridge, whereupon the bridge railing started harpooning through the car's interior, striking Joe Reed and his brother in the head and injuring both - they were in the back seat with the family German shepherd.

As the wheels spun to a stop on the upside-down car, Mrs. Reed woke up, helped her kids out of the wreck and two months later successfully gave birth tied to a machine with steel rods anchoring the fused joints in her back.

Says Joe: "After that event, there was nothing on this earth that scared me. My whole life until then I had nightmares. I never had another nightmare again."

But something was left in the nightmare's place, episodes of lucid dreaming that he believed held the key to powers of a kind of sorcery. To invincibility.

As I envisioned this uncanny superhero origin story, it brought to mind Evel and his plan for an ultra-high speed jump. Namely that he wanted to fly 65 feet farther than the Caesar's Palace crash that would have killed any ordinary man. I was a little taken aback. Somehow Evel's assurances that "At Caesar's Palace I didn't have enough speed" didn't completely pacify my analytic mind. I ask Joe Reed.

His response: "First of all, you have to remember, Evel used to do his daredevil show 2-4 times a week. He only missed 1% of his jumps. That's 14 crashes in over 1400 flights."

Still, "I'm a little concerned about what he's planning to do. I'd like to talk to him about it. He's talking about a low-arc jump at 220 feet. The trouble is, as you go faster and further, the target gets smaller and smaller. Even with a digital speedometer, any variation can mean missing the target by 15 feet."

"As a fan, as a friend I would prefer him not to do that. He could do a wheelie show and a shorter jump over a 'copter."

At that moment, Joe Reed seems like a grounded realist, taking an analytic, physics-driven approach to the proposed jump, not depending purely on mystic visualization. That's what has me worried about Evel's Big Jump. You can't be a daredevil without mystic visualization, but then again it didn't go so well with, say, the rocket ride over Snake River Canyon.

Then, on the subject of that infamous flight, Reed relays that when he was 16, in 1974, he made himself a promise in response to Evel's close call: to build a 6-solid rocket booster craft with a nested cycle inside - and to launch it in "The Revenge of Snake Canyon."

All of a sudden in a flash the physics-driven realist is M.I.A., and the Mystic Visualizer is working the room. Reed describes his motto for the project: "Help A Legend Across The Canyon, Become An Instant Legend."

Super Joe says he's got backing for a six million dollar prototype of the Snake River Revenge Rocket to test at State Line, near Evel's new casino. "I will build a rocket bike that will cross Snake Canyon and I'm going to invite Evel to go along and hit the big red button. It will be with Jet Propulsion Lab and NASA engineering, an F-15 Rocketbike built for two."

Suddenly I have questions. Has Evel ever done a "shared stunt" like that before? Would he ever? And Snake Canyon? Evel only settled for it because his dream of rocketing over the Grand Canyon he couldn't get clearance on.

Meanwhile, there's Robbie, who as son you'd expect to be doing the avenging. He made a deal with a tribe in Arizona and in 1999 took a good long jump over a Wile E. Coyote-size canyon plenty Grand enough to get him killed. The Kaptain hit too deep on the landing ramp, got bucked off and walked away (assisted by Dan Haggerty, TV's "Grizzly Adams") with some relatively minor daredevil damage, the hero for avenging his dad's dream of Jumping the Grand Canyon.

And of course in 1989, Robbie successfully jumped the fountains, erasing the Curse of Caesar's Palace, the site where Evel crashed so violently he was in a coma for a month. That's the same distance Evel wants to outperform later this year by 65 feet!

So yes, I had questions. But I decided not to get into it. Just like I've made peace with Evel doing his Ultimate Jump: if he's got a feeling about this, about making it, considering everything he knows and everything he's done, then that's good enough for me. I'm backing him up all the way down the line.

I'll be there when it happens and I'll get the story to the people. Same thing with Super Joe, who is getting together a stunt show for pay-per-view this year, complete with his trademarks: multiple jumpers, new ideas (including cyclejumping up off of skateboard half-pipes onto elevated platforms), and multiple broken records. Super Joe's one of the top daredevils in the world - he has a plan, and I know he is the kind of guy who isn't just talking. He's like his hero, a man of action, on a quest to test his limits. I wish each of them (or possibly both together) nothing but success as they tangle with the devil on two wheels.

Jan Lee
"I wasn't scared. I was psyched."

I want you to meet another friend I made at Evel's Comeback Announcement last year at Galpin. Janet Lee is having an anniversary. Thirty years ago this summer she volunteered for active duty as a girl daredevil.

What did it take to qualify? Nothing big, just an interest in stunts and a willingness to get inside the demolition box with "Mr. TNT." She volunteered, yet they wouldn't actually let her do the dynamite act - what are they, chicken???

Still, Jan's confidence got the attention of stuntman Billy Ward. The Deathriders show was in town and Janet, daughter of Texas cop Bob Harris, seemed like the kind of person who could deliver what Billy Ward wanted: women stunt drivers, something new and inspiring for the American people. Then there was the love connection - Billy and Jan were married from June of '73 to June of '77.

On June 22, 1973 Jan officially joined Billy Ward's Champion Auto Daredevils, performing a precision driving act. Over the next few months she ran the gamut: precision driving, crashing cars, driving through dynamite, reaching ramming speed as Human Battering Ram, crashing through sheets of ice and even performing a head-on crash with another driver. You know, the kind of stuff we do everyday in L.A. to get parking.

Jan was a dangernaut, a regular "Girl Evel," as the paper called her. Others in her age group were getting into drugs and alcohol, but Jan had no interest in that stuff. She wanted to get high, all right - in a stunt car! She had a wild streak, this cop's daughter, but it was all honest work. Besides, says Jan, "There weren't enough women role models and I always got a great reaction from little kids." I'm guessing 1973 was the year "Don't try this at home" officially entered the national vocabulary.

Jan spent 1974 specializing mostly on the Human Bomb Act, working racetrack shows sometimes six nights a week, though Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. After giving birth to Billy Ward, Jr. in August 1975, Jan traded a Ford Pinto for a CR 250 dirtbike. She trained herself on it in the desert near Phoenix. In the bicentennial year 1976, Jan became one of America's only active duty female cyclejumpers.

Her inaugural jump came May 1st, down in old Mexicali, a benefit show for - but of course - the local blood bank. You see, the show's male jumper crashed when he failed to stop short on a practice ascent up the ramp (you know: zoom up there, stop just short, gaze off at the target, get the tension up - standard daredevil ritual, but you've GOT to nail the stopping short part). So now they needed Jan. It was her first big, public jump, and they needed her to do it on a scrub bike with no speedometer.

Were you scared?

"I was naïve then," says Jan. "I wasn't scared. I was psyched."

She hit it - barely. Her back wheel clipped the top of the catch ramp, denting it, and she cruised to victory unharmed. And then she did the Leap of Death, a Suicide Twist and the Miss Dinamita act as well. A stunt woman's work is never done. The rest of the season found her in the great states of Texas and Arizona, inaugurating new Kawasaki dealerships by jumping over 60 bikes.

Here's the best part: Who the hell insured these things?

"No one. You just said you were or no one asked."

Daredevil Alley, baby! Your private insurance information is between you, your mechanic and your God.

In Las Cruces in 1977, Jan got the blessing of Southwest cycle-jumping champ Bob Duffey. Duffey used to wear the slogan "Fear No Evil" on his leathers as a cut on his Montana rival.

By now Jan had worked enough where she'd seen most variations: she'd made scores of perfect jumps, had plenty of near misses, and one official crash that required stitches. Then came San Angelo, Texas. Caesar had his Rubicon. Evel had the Snake River. For Jan it was the Concho River, her biggest jump ever.

It went like this. Thousands gather for the Fiesta del Concho, starring girl daredevil Jan Ward. During practice runs something doesn't feel right with the speed. But hundreds and hundreds on both sides of the river are there to see her jump, so she signals she's ready.

She races toward the ramp and when she hits it she feels the throttle fail ever so slightly. She sails over the Concho but falls short of the catch ramp and plows into the riverbank instead. A little more elevation would have killed her, throwing her into the hard lumber of the catch ramp. Still, it's not exactly a soft landing. She hits with her head and right elbow. The medics are there on the spot. One of Jan's brothers removes her helmet and another pulls her bike out of the river, still running. Her next stop is the ambulance and the ICU, unconscious, with a major concussion, and a dislocated elbow broken in three places. Jan remembers waking up to reporters at her bedside waiting for the finish on the story.

It was a bad crash. Jan retired from stunt work at age 22. She still got her fair share of high altitude by painting flagpoles. She was a martial arts instructor for 20 years. She's revisiting her daredevil career this year, researching, recollecting and trading information, and invites you to email her at janetlee1954@aol.com.

As for Evel's comeback? It's been cool.

"I finally got to meet him at the Galpin event and he signed my book! Evel Knievel is the ultimate daredevil," says Jan. "I remember most other jumpers, the men, were jealous."

Evel BowEvel

First thing you gotta know about Evel BowEvel is that he is a stuntman in his MIND.

BowEvel (his friends call him Hans) is very clear on this - inside his own brain he has routinely risked certain death and emerged victorious. This is his gig: a stuntman in his mind, and singer, songwriter and bandleader for San Diego's BowEvel Brothers, complete with his brother Fritz BowEvel and guitar-picking good buddy Ed BowEvel.

Last June, these were the guys who strummed "I Will Survive" inside the Galpin Ford Showroom during the comeback announcement of Hans's personal hero for over
thirty years - the indestructable dangernaut named Evel Knievel.

"I've got all my life to live, I've got all my love to give, I will survive, I WILL SURVIVE - HEY, HEY!" The BowEvel Brothers' vocalizing fills the showroom where Evel and Galpin customs man Beau Boeckmann are debuting the Evel Knievel Galpinized Ford F-150 "Gladiator" tribute truck. As Hans and the boys play, the guest of honor breaks into the now-notorious dance moves known as "The Evel Boogie."

Even Evel's oldest friends are shaking their heads in amazement. We've all seen him do some crazy things before, but dancing?

Evel is back, all right, BIG TIME.

BowEvel was also at Evel's right hand when the legend announced AN ALL-NEW ULTIMATE JUMP, RAMPING UP FOR 2003. It was a red-letter day in daredevil history.

As soon as I filed my story from Galpin, I dialed up Hans to get his story. Here's a guy whose Aunt Lillian made him his first Knievel costume in 6th grade, and Uncle Jack painted the helmet to match. He first meets his hero in person in April of 1989, when a bunch of Knievel fans fly out to Vegas to see Evel's son Robbie jump the fountains at Caesar's Palace - and vindicate his father's disastrous wipe-out of December 31st, 1967.

Picture Hans on the strip in costume, the jumpsuit, the V on his chest, the helmet, the cane, the shoot from the hip and take no lip attitude. Somebody sees him strutting his stuff in the land of the electric lotus and says, hey buddy, come on over to the bar at Caesar's. Sure enough, Hans is led to the court of Caesar and a genuine Caesar is who he meets. Evel looks up from his booth with private phone, sees Evel BowEvel and says, "I'm taking a picture with you." It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Hans is sitting there going, "I can't believe I'm having a drink with Evel Knievel."

Since then their paths have crossed many times. There was Robbie's jump in Lake Elsinore, CA in '96. Then in 1999 when Robbie Knievel prepared to jump a Wile E. Coyote-class ravine near the Grand Canyon, the BowEvels were there by the campfire, invited by the Kaptain himself, singing up a storm in praise of the greatest bloodline in cycle-jumping history.

But the coolest thing about Hans is he's not just an ultra-fan, he's also a brinksman. If somebody gives him any shit, he's ready to throw down - and as the Romans knew, those Germanic barbarians, even the skinny ones, can give you hell. Let's put it this way, Hans completely digs Evel's amigos like the Castines, and guys like daredevil Doug Klang and cycle-jumping champ Louis Re, who are cool to him, but expresses disgust at those sorry offenders inside the Knievel crew he recalls tried to sabotage him.

Despite - or maybe because of - semi-official sanctioning for BowEvel pride from father and son Knievel, a couple of haters inside Robbie's tech team even tried to have Hans kicked off the Arizona landing site.

"I'll tell Gary he's an asshole man to man. I will take him outside and punch him in the face. Billy is also an asshole. I'll say it to their face." He's gone from happy-go-lucky to serious - he will fight them if they try to stop him from doing his thing. BowEvel, a man of elemental passions and stone-carved grudges, just like the original player himself, code name EK-1.

And oh yeah, Hans also hates Fox TV and their "Death Jump Goons," an aversion shared at Five-O and by everyone who remembers the legacy of Evel's primetime point man, the great Howard Cosell.

I'm telling you, Evel Central Command, what about Jason Priestley??? He'd be perfect to help call your big jump - especially after eating the wall in a racecar and graduating from actor to bona fide Man of Action! And Mr. T! He whipped cancer and he would bring a whole new dimension to calling the jump. Only please, please, no standard bone-heads from Fox!

Anyway, in 2000, the BowEvels play their hero new songs commemorating his "Wild Turkey and wild romance." That's at the Del Mar Mile, where Evel is master of ceremonies. It was scarcely a year after the liver transplant that saved the all-time great's life. Suddenly being Mini-Me to the Master of Disaster isn't a dead end street at all. Now being the daredevil-king's court jester and traveling minstrel is a promising vocation, as wide open as Big Sky Country under the stars.

It all comes together in mid-May of 2002, when Hans joins the rally ride from Vegas to Primm, NV, for the groundbreaking at The Evel Knievel Experience gaming and entertainment center. That's where Evel, age 63, busts out the unthinkable announcement: "I am going to jump again."

Nobody knew, says Hans. The first time Evel's closest friends hear anything about this is right there at the ground-breaking. I'm tripping, says Hans - flabbergasted at the lack of communication in the crew. He's asking Evel's old guard, you guys seriously didn't know?

Talk about a man apart. Evel dropped his bombshell on the audience and his own inner circle at the same time.

That sets the stage for the Galpin event two weeks later. This time, Evel BowEvel has his idol's back when the big man announces, "I'm going to have a long, long runway where ever I choose to jump, and I'm going to jump the fastest, safest, best manufactured motorcycle in the world that right now I am testing. These young guys jump these little ring ding Hondas or Yamahas or whatever that is, they have great suspension, but I am going to jump a big V-Twin just like I used to jump. And when I get ready to go I hope you're all there. Stay on the take off side and when I take off, blow like hell — you'll get me clear across."

Super Dave Osborne
"You don't want to see how my last stunt went."
Comedy/Stuntman
Cross-over Report
Special to Five-O
by John Wareham

Evel Knievel, the King of the Daredevils, made many tremendous jumps on his motorcycle. But he also crashed and was hospitalized on many occasions. "Super Dave" Osborne also does death-defying stunts. Unlike Evel, he crashes every single time. Yet he has never been injured. How can that happen?

It's because "Super Dave" Osborne is comedian Bob Einstein, who has made a career out of crashing and burning on TV. Einstein, brother of filmmaker Albert Brooks (born Albert Einstein), has played the self-absorbed, bumbling, incompetent, deadpan daredevil since he first appeared on the short-lived series "Van Dyke and Company" with Dick Van Dyke in 1976. He then appeared semi-regularly on the John Byner hosted cable show "Bizarre" in 1980.

Einstein's act goes like this. "Super Dave" comes out, dressed in a leather jumpsuit directly ripped off from Evel Knievel, complete with a cap with "SD" printed on it, and sets up his latest stunt, which he says didn't quite go as planned. The stunt usually has "Super Dave" participating in some outrageous maneuver, sometimes involving trucks, cars, cycles - maybe he's standing on top of a moving semi-truck traveling at a high rate of speed, or something equally dangerous, like high voltage.

That's the set-up, but then they edit a "Super Dave" dummy into the shot, which violently crashes, sending limbs and body parts in ridiculous directions they don't usually go, for a semi-humorous result which looks completely fake.

After the laugh-track asisted pay-off, "Super Dave" is embarrassed by the mishap and, in a deadpan fashion, comments on how he does so many stunts that do work well and here the host had to show the one that didn't.

As Evel's career gave way to retirement, "Super Dave" parlayed his frequent "Bizarre" appearances into many guest appearances on Late Night with David Letterman; the Showtime animated television series "Super Dave" from 1987 to 1992; the television specials "Super Dave All-Stars" (1997) and "Super Dave Osborne's Vegas Spectacular" (1998), feature film "Be The Man" (1998) and the straight-to-video feature film "The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave" in 2000. Einstein has appeared on television as someone other than "Super Dave" only twice since 1980.

Right now he's the TV pitchman for Cerritos Auto Square, with a pretty cool gag: he pretends to be their inept competition. For example, the Cerritos Auto Square is filled with beautiful cars. Cut to SDO, who's sitting alone in an empty lot. "It's going to be great, all the cars are on their way," he promises. Then of course, sub in the dummy, who is mashed underneath a huge, rolling car-carrier.

UPDATE
Hey Nate,
Super Dave Osborne was on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Friday. He was run over by a bus while in his "prayer tent" during a taped rehearsal for a motorcycle jump over several buses.