With cameras rolling, Jon ‘2B’ Verducci lacked the usual excitement and uncertainty as he launched himself toward a damp tarp in his friend’s backyard. This was no typical slip and slide, because instead of water, the tarp was soaked with his best friends’ semi-digested, stomach acid-infused breakfasts.
Dubbed the ‘Puke and Slide,’ this vulgar take on a popular pastime is the first of many such gags in Toss Our Salad, the second video produced by The Over Show, a group of young Bay Area natives led by Verducci and College of Communication senior Brendan Kelley. The video is dedicated to hijinx, mayhem and progressive extreme sports.
The group consistently pushes the gross-out envelope and devises routines that would make even Steve-O cringe, but The Over Show is more than vomit, pain and skateboard lines. It is a sort of family that has continued to expand its membership and fan base for more than a decade.
Their latest full-length video, Worthless, premiers at midnight on Friday at The Coolidge Corner Theater. It is the largest East Coast venue for the group, in branching across to the other side of the country.
As home of the California Symphony, Lesher Center for the Arts has been a Northern California cultural hub for decades. But while the city has embraced and promoted the arts for years, it never experienced anything like The Over Show.
In 1998, as a sixth grader in a local private school, Verducci and his older friend began filming short pieces modeled off Tom Green’s bizarre humor. Soon, he brought Kelley, his best friend, into the fold. The two, along with friends, expanded the videos to include wacky encounters with strangers, self-injuring stunts, and skateboarding, scootering and BMX bike tricks. Around this time, similar content was entering the mainstream on channels like MTV, validating the videos he and his friends were making in high school.
‘Jackass was at its peak, and it’s also when CKY was at its peak,’ Kelley said. ‘We watched all those and everyone was getting good at skating . . . so we decided to make a movie freshman year.’
Though their first video attempt Fecal Matters never made it to the screen, Kelley said it provided a sturdy foundation for later work. Cut because it was raw, the segments were not filmed professionally enough, although the group hopes to rerelease it in the future.
Two years later, The Over Show had expanded from the first few forefathers of the movement ‘-‘- including directors Kelley and Verducci ‘-‘- to on-screen talent. Addison McNaughton ‘-‘- a member of the Razor Scooter professional team ‘-‘- Andrew DeYoung and Mark Smallhoover and dozens of Walnut Creek-area teens took part and brought something different to the group.
By 2003, the youth movie brigade had achieved a significant following and that fall premiered its first video, What a Waste of Tape, to a crowd in Walnut Creek consisting of 270 classmates, family members and curious townspeople, further increasing their local notoriety, Kelley said.
‘By senior year, we basically owned the school,’ he said. ‘We had people from every grade, senior to freshman and even younger, hanging out and riding with us.’

Critics at Home

Despite their popularity among Walnut Creek students and young people, The Over Show did not appeal to everyone in their hometown.
‘In [Walnut Creek] there’s a file in the police department labeled ‘The Over Show’ because they think we’re a gang,’ Kelley said. ‘Multiple times during high school [the police] said stuff to us. Once, the principal called ‘2B’ to the office and the cops were in there with the principal. They said if you’re going to be a gang lord, you have to keep your crew in check.’
Verducci got his infamous nickname ‘2B’ when he was filming a segment and impaled himself falling from a tree ‘-‘- 2B stands for two butt holes.
After the premiere of Toss Our Salad in June 2005, Kelley said a handful of BMX riders heckled group members outside a pizza place, causing a small scuffle that ended in the riders fleeing from a mob of angry Over Show supporters.’
While local police and jealous peers are mere annoyances, Kelley said parents sometimes posed the most opposition. Prior to Worthless, Kelley, more concerned with directing, editing and choosing the music, said he had been on camera for less than a minute in the previous videos. In this film, however, he has his own segment involving boogey board hijinx, which he said did not meet his dad’s initial approval.
He said that he could not disclose exactly what the boogey board hijinx entails, and that viewers should check it out on Friday.
‘My parents thought it would be fun, [so they] invited my brother’s fianc’eacute;’s mother, my aunt [and] my uncle and his partner,’ he said. ‘After the show, my dad walks up to me and says, ‘This is not what I’ve been paying $40,000 a year for. Don’t expect your tuition to be paid for.’
‘He basically told me he was cutting me off ‘-‘- no food, no housing. But the next morning he apologized. His initial reaction to watching was, ‘I liked it until I saw you, and then I hated it.”

Mass. Appeal

After hundreds of hours of film, two successful video releases, countless memories and a commemorative tattoo in honor of the group on his shoulder, Kelley traveled across the country in September 2005 to begin his freshman year at Boston University. Though this was the first time he had been away from his familiar crew, Kelley was determined to spread The Over Show gospel to floormates, friends and fellow extreme sport enthusiasts.
‘I met Brendan and noticed a T-shirt he was wearing [in September 2005],’ COM senior Michael DiSalvo, Kelley’s roommate and co-host of the Great American Ego Trip on WTBU, said. ‘The Overshow is a very professional group who puts out a consistently entertaining and fun product. With the comedy sketches, the top-notch skating and great production value, you really get a well-put-together and awesome show.’
Michael Deal, a College of Fine Arts senior and Kelley’s freshman and sophomore year roommate, said soon after beginning their college careers, The Over Show had permeated his new group of friends and has remained a popular topic of conversation and entertainment.
‘[Brendan] was watching some clips from the first Over Show movies soon after we moved in, which sparked my curiosity,’ Deal said. ‘At some point, he put the first two movies on for our new little circle of friends and we loved it. It wasn’t long before all of our friends were wearing Over Show shirts and putting stickers in random places.’
Another friend, College of Arts and Sciences senior Gustavo Fajardo said he is proud of Kelley’s efforts and thinks the premiere could be an important step toward further expansion.
‘BK is finally bringing his skateboarding, havoc-causing crew to the East Coast for all to see,’ Fajardo said. ‘The kid has been on his grind since freshman year. He went from screenings on the 12th floor of Sleeper [Hall] for a handful of friends to a premiere at Coolidge Corner. It’s the culmination of all his work and the work of his friends spreading The Over Show.’

The Immature Maturing

Containing three years of carefully chosen footage, including faster-paced skits, new claymation segments and improved skating, Worthless stands apart from the previous two releases.
In addition, the video spans the country, from headquarters in Walnut Creek to McNaughton’s new home at the University of Arizona, the snowy mountains of Tahoe and, of course, Kelley’s home in Boston.
‘The other movies are just us growing up, and they’re fun to watch,’ Verducci said. ‘[But] this time, we show everything from snowboarding to scootering, and that’s why we sat on it for so long. It’s a step in a new direction . . . Everything just worked out more toward this video than in the past videos.’
Kelley said he and Verducci’s maturation as filmmakers also makes for a much better final product.
‘Worthless is different because now we know what we’re dong, we have much better cameras, editing equipment [and] software,’ he said. ‘The last video we made right before we graduated high school, but since then I’ve been taking film classes and learning better lighting, shot composition and other things.’
With complex skating and scootering sequences and segments like ‘Puke and Fan’ and ‘Sac Trap,’ the theme of The Over Show has not changed. Nor has the family dynamic that has made it durable for more than a decade.
The group embraces new members of all stripes and sports ‘-‘- so long as they do not mind the occasional injury or group vomiting session ‘-‘- and protects their own. For instance, Kelley said people often hassle McNaughton for scootering before he proves to them why he is recognized at one of the world’s best.
‘One of the goals of The Over Show is that whether you’re pushing a board or scooter or pedaling a bike, it’s all the same,’ Kelley said. ‘For some reason people get defensive about their own sports.’
‘We’re very family oriented,’ Verducci added. ‘If someone says something derogatory to Addie [because he scooters], I’ll get in their face,’ Verducci said.’We’re doing our own thing. We’re self-motivated and independent, but we have each other’s back and we’re doing it together.
‘We have a group mentality. Too many people are all about themselves, but if you have a great group of minds all putting them together for one huge thing it will come out 10 times better.’