A guy trying to jump a dumpster stars in your moment of Schadenfreude

It's hard to laugh at people who wipe out performing actual stunts -- the skater whose board slips out from under him on the rail, or the parkour traceur who miscalibrates a backflip and lands on his head. There aren't any lulz in those situations; only boring empathy. But when...

By Jef Otte

August 16, 2010

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It's hard to laugh at people who wipe out performing actual stunts -- the skater whose board slips out from under him on the rail, or the parkour traceur who miscalibrates a backflip and lands on his head. There aren't any lulz in those situations; only boring empathy. But when the stuntman in question clearly hasn't the faintest idea what he's trying to do and rails himself trying to jump from one dumpster to the next, then, my friends, then we will laugh. Oh, will we laugh.

It comes directly from EpicFail.com, and it's certainly nothing short of epic. Funny enough is when this stooge is awkwardly scaling the first dumpster and lumbering across it, but his hasty attempt to get across to the next one ends in a scene straight out of our favorite villain-gets-his-just-desserts moments of '80s cinema: in the dumpster. If only the video allowed time for him to pop out with a banana peel on his head, the illusion would be complete.

There's no way to know what possessed this kid to attempt such a lame-assed stunt on film in the first place, but if there's any lesson we can take from this, it's that, until you don't suck, you should probably keep away from the cameras. Only the good ones can fail gracefully.

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