The last time we saw Cole up there, he was showing off that handsome chest piece, and understandably so! This time around, however, his clothes have tragically disappeared somehow, though this calamity at least allows us a convenient vantage point of the cephalopodic addition to his side by Jay at Trigger Happy in Vancouver, British Columbia. After the jump, we get a better look at a few things that are mildly obscured in the above photo.

You folks are swell sometimes, you know that? After Twyla Sue showed up earlier in the week with his veritable cabinet of curiosities, Parker checks in with another jackalope tattoo? Two jackalope tattoos in one week, for reals? Is it our birthday? (It is not our birthday.) Except, of course, because Parker is not so much a human with flaws as she is a perfect being from somewhere among the cosmos, this is not just a jackalope, but a jackalope crossed with a goddamned owl, which, hey. In fact, this jaunty fellow is Fairfax, the jackalope owl, just hanging out and having a cup of peppermint tea. He likes long walks on the beach and arts and crafts involving nature.

And just like that, it’s Friday, ModBloggers, and there’s a knife on the floor.

If there is one thing to which we have held fast and true during our tenure here, it has been our unabashed love of bizarre animal tattoos. We can’t explain it. There is no rationale we can provide. These absurd creations just tickle us in a way we can not entirely comprehend, but we are forever grateful to the people who tattoo them, who get them tattooed and who send them in—TwylaSue among them. It was he who submitted this glorious narwhal chestpiece many moons ago, and he has just checked in again (from deep within the confines of an actual mustard bottle, apparently) with some shots of his legs, this one featuring what appears to be some sort of, hmm, jackalope, maybe? It is, at any rate, something that most definitely should not be. After the jump, a five-eyed wolf (in progress) and some other goodies.

Hey, look, we make the occasional good-natured joke about the Angry Owl God, but it is never, ever with any malice. You know why? This. This is why. Do you have any idea the damage that can be done, the havoc that can be wreaked with just that umbrella? It is a vengeful creature, this god, in whose image we were not created, and for that, we are resented. Tread lightly. Hopefully, it will be appeased by being represented in such an excellent tattoo, complete with what could perhaps be a reference to Tool’s best song right above.

(Spotted owl tattoo done by Anji Marth of High Priestess in Eugene, Oregon, while at the Seattle Tattoo Convention.)

BME Shop is having a huge sale — everything in the store (except anesthetics) is 25% off! Go stock up at shop.BMEzine.com before this deal ends!

Oh, hello! Sincere apologies for yesterday’s radio silence, folks—your editor was cruelly ripped from the safe confines of his desk and, among other things, was tasked with various duties related to setting things up for Tattoo Hollywood, which is about to get underway! We, along with esteemed colleague Phil Barbosa, spent Thursday morning working with the East German rigging team, hanging various gigantic vinyl banners and bearing witness to the delightful casual racism that is synonymous with unionized physical labor.

The convention space, as forthcoming pictures will illustrate, is lovely. The festivities are being held in the Hollywood Renaissance hotel’s Grand Ballroom, which is complete with great and looming chandeliers made from rare space diamonds (probably), curtain flourishes that would not be out of place on a Broadway stage (or at least some eccentric billionaire’s pansexual orgy gazebo), an outdoor smoking deck overlooking the Hollywood hills and, the component about which your editor is arguably most excited, catering courtesy of Wolfgang Puck. (It’s true that the only touristy activities about which we typically get excited are food-related. Don’t judge us.)

Later in the evening, the BME crew (including the aforementioned Mr. Barbosa, Senior Shouting Officer Jen and ol’ whatshername, Rachel something) headed over to Canvas LA for the grand opening of Alive: The Chosen Views of Bob Roberts, a solo exhibition of the artist’s paintings spanning over 20 years of work. Roberts, the owner of the seminal L.A. tattoo shop Spotlight Tattoo, has been in this line of work for nearly 40 years, and his contributions to tattooing as a craft and an industry have been as numerous as they’ve been vital. Many of the paintings in the exhibition draw heavily on themes common to old-school tattooing—dragons, eagles, skulls, naked ladies—and because of this, it may be easy to overlook the skill actually involved in producing work of his caliber. At first blush, it can almost feel like you’re looking at a wall of flash—a wall of top-tier flash, sure, but flash nonetheless. A closer look, however, reveals that this is anything but stencil-based tracing work. One painting in particular, a massive piece from 1988 featuring a phoenix-like creature surrounded by a glorious wall of flames, serves as a perfect indication of this: every flame, every flourish, every layer of the wing spanning the perimeter of the canvas was its own project, when Roberts could have just as easily copied sections along the way. “It’s the hardest way to go about a piece like this,” noted one attendee, “but in the end, it means it’s all him. Every fragment is like a fingerprint.” And then there are pieces for which the flash comparison is ludicrous—pieces that almost look like they’ve been digitally rendered, that are such inexplicable examples of color and shape and design that their very existence is somewhat puzzling, kind of like they’ve just been here all along.

It was, indeed, a fitting way to kick off the weekend to come, and now, the activities of said weekend beckon your editor. As you have likely already noticed, we’ve been working on a bit of a modified schedule this week due to travel and other atypical responsibilities, so in keeping with these temporary changes, we’re going to forgo the usual This Week in BME wrap-up/whatever, and instead, we implore you to keep checking back frequently throughout the weekend for columns, interviews, photos and whatever other goodies we can wrangle up from the convention. Until then? We leave you in the very capable hands of Party Shark up there, courtesy of Jordan Lutz at Lagniappe Tattoo in Slidell, Louisiana. Oh, Party Shark.

Oh, hello! Let’s begin our day with some work by the fabulously goat-throated Adam Burdine, currently spending some quality time at Simon’s Tattoo and Piercing in Baden, Germany. Here we have two lupine-humans, locked in the love that dare not howl its name. However, with the pre-existing skull/barbed wire band at the top, does it not sort of look like twin Wolf Jesuses just going at it? We, of course, approve of and wholeheartedly endorse such sacrilicious iconography, be it intended or not.

As we all know, honey bees are some of the most vicious, cold-blooded, calculating killers in the insect kingdom. It’s true. They attack indiscriminately, all hopped up on The Devil’s Gold, engaging in wild, deadly kamikaze missions. Well, now, it seems, these audacious super-villains have expanded into the sex trade, which makes sense, we guess. While we would not wish this fate on anybody, if anybody does find him- or herself in a bee’s stable, please be careful—beyond that winsome smile is a deceptively powerful and merciless pimp hand.

(Tattoo by Timmo at Wicked Ink in Penrith, Australia.)

And here we have a, shall we say, rather unwilling resident of the Palmetto state. This young lady recently packed up and moved to South Carolina, and was not exactly thrilled about her new locale. One thing that’s helped her adjust? That little bluebird tattoo.

I moved to South Carolina from New Haven, Connecticut. I never liked living in S.C.—actually, quite frankly I hated it. One morning, though, I woke up and saw a different kind of bird in a tree in my back yard. It had a blue back and a bright reddish/orange breast; my dad told me that it was a bluebird. For some reason this one little bird was like a ray of positivity over my heart, and I eventually learned that bluebirds were a sign of good luck. I connected blue birds as my good luck charm and that I will survive living in the bible-belt. I’ll always carry that good luck with me wherever I go.

(Tattoo by Tim Brewer at Body Graphics Tattoo in South Windsor, Connecticut.)