[My Fox Philly] Well here’s a charming story about people fulfilling their civic duties! The good folks at Dreamline Ink in South Jersey were just minding their own business when a clean-cut, well-dressed young man named Robert Champion strolled in and confessed to a bank robbery. He probably told them, of all people, because tattoo parlors are known hang-outs for criminals of all stripes, and he thought they’d get a kick out of it.

When Anthony McElhinney asked why, the 19-year-old told him he’d just robbed a couple banks.

“He told me one bank, $2500, and the other bank, $500. I asked him ‘What’s the point? and he goes, ‘Well, I don’t know. Just something to do,’” recalls Anthony McElhinney of Dreamline Ink.

But it hadn’t turned out the way Robert Champion had expected, because surveillance cameras captured him in the act.

“He just told me he wrote it on a bank slip and he walked up to the teller and said ‘Give me this money, I’m robbing your bank,’” tells McElhinney.

Following one of his million-dollar heists, Champion went to the tattoo studio to get some work done, made an appointment for a later date and left a deposit. But! After catching himself on television (because of the surveillance cameras, you see), he went back to the tattoo shop, asked for his deposit back and confessed. McElhinney jotted down his license plate number and phoned the police, who promptly arrested the thief. The best part of the story, though, by far, is this:

What’s ironic, the tattoo was to say: “Champion.”

“I guess he didn’t live up to his name, you know,” says [tattoo artist Vinnie] Ferragame.

Immediately following this joke, Vinnie Ferragame was cast in a brand new Fox sitcom, beginning this fall.

[Philadelphia Inquirer] Today’s irony report comes from Tim Johnson, who writes about a fun new trend developing all over China: Chinese people getting tattoos of words! English words. This is funny because ever since tattoos were invented in the 1970s, Westerners have been known to get Chinese characters tattooed all over them, sometimes with very wrong interpretations of the actual words or phrases they wanted, and now, because of globalization, the shoe is on the other foot.

“It’s better looking and simpler than Chinese,” said Zhang Hui, as he pulled his shirt off to display his former girlfriend’s name tattooed in Roman letters between his shoulder blades.

His new girlfriend slunk to the back of the room.

“The English looks better,” agreed Rocky Feng, a 24-year-old teacher shopping for a tattoo in a backroom parlor in north Beijing.

While tattooing isn’t quite illegal in China, it occupies something of a grey area, according to the article. Many shops, however, have been opening lately in the country (and flourishing), albeit in back alleys and people’s homes.

Zhang’s cousin, who said her name was Ting Ting, showed off part of a vertical tattoo that dropped down her back – in Greek.

“I think it says ‘I’ll love you forever,’ ” she said. “I didn’t have any particular reason. I just liked the way the Greek letters looked.”

It was actually a recipe for spanakopita. The cycle continues!

[Augusta Free Press] Hoo boy, now here is some ridiculous jabbering. Bruce Sallan, a former television producer, has written this brilliant op-ed column for the Augusta Free Press, which I swear to God reads like a parody of every crotchety old man article ever written. Can you believe he was a free spirited rock and roller when he was a young man? It’s true!

My parents’ tastes in music, fashion, and politics, my Mom’s helmet-style hair-do, which required weekly visits to the hair salon, were all stupid, old-fashioned, and ugly. It was inconceivable to me that they didn’t dig or see how groovy The Doors, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, or The Stones were. The fact that most of them died of drug overdoses escaped me at the time (e.g. Brian Jones of The Stones in case you think I’ve missed something).

[…]

So, when I became a parent, I was sure I’d appreciate and respect my children’s tastes because they’d probably just be the same as mine. I’d enjoy their music, their hairstyles, their fashions, etc.

But I bet that’s not what happened, is it!

First, there was rap.

Shit!

Then, tattoos and piercings. And, my favorite, wearing pants that fall down to the bottom of their butts.

Ha ha, Bruce Sallan’s “children” are really just composites of every early-2000s “rebellious” stereotype. I BLAME GANGSTER RAPPER MARILYN MANSON.

While my teen is not allowed to have tattoos, or piercings, he makes up for it by coming home with tattoo sleeves penned at school, in class, by various of his friends. (Bet you don’t know what that term means. OK, I won’t make you search on Google, as it won’t be in your dictionary…hmmm, when’s the last time your kid looked up a word in a dictionary or you did, for that matter? A tattoo sleeve, as the word sleeve implies, is a tattoo that covers the entire arm, up to the shoulder).

Yeah, what’s up with kids not using dictionaries anymore? OR YOU, THE READER OF THIS ERUDITE PROSE, FOR THAT MATTER? Luckily, master explorer Bruce Sallan is here to do the dirty work for you, explaining what the fuck a “tattoo” “sleeve” might be. He clearly thought it was some sort of raunchy sex position when he first heard it.

Now, as a parent we all know that we have to pick our battles and my teen son knows that tattoos and piercings are not going to happen in our house. In spite of it being against our religion, he’d love to have a tongue piercing, a death skull tattoo or, at the very least huge pierced earrings, as many of his teen friends have at ages as young as 14.

Luckily, those kids are going to hell for exposing their underpants to the good people of Agoura, California.