No Superfluous Flummery: An Interview With Bob Roberts

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

Last month, while in Los Angeles for BME’s Tattoo Hollywood convention, I was given, above all else, one specific task: to interview Bob Roberts, the owner of L.A.’s Spotlight Tattoo, whose art gallery opening that week I wrote about here. There was, of course, an element of danger. “He can be very intimidating,” people cautioned me. “Be careful what you say around him.” Though ostensibly well-meaning, these warnings were unnecessary. When we sat down to talk on Sunday afternoon as the convention was winding down, Bob struck me as a cross between Jeff Bridges’s The Dude from The Big Lebowski and John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski: an old hippie, content with his status and the life he’s lived…who occasionally gets very, very fired up about things. (Voice-wise, though? He’s The Dude.) Drawing from his nearly 40 years of experience, we talked about his humble beginnings, shitty artists he’s known, blow job etiquette in 1970s New York, various people who deserve to have their thumbs cut off and much more. Here’s our entire conversation, edited in parts only for clarity.

BME: OK, let’s start with some procedural questions and then once we’re warmed up I’ll try to make you cry.

Bob Roberts: Alright. Can you hear me? Test, test. Is the needle going on there?

BME: We’re ready to go. So where are you from originally?

BR: Los Angeles, California.

BME: And what brought you to tattooing in the first place?

BR: Well, it’s a long story. My dad had a store at Eighth and Broadway, and he used to take me with him to work on the weekends. When I got old enough to run around, first I would go by this pawn shop that had switchblade knives that would start at one inch and would go until they were maybe over six feet. Then, they had a lot of tattoo shops, so I used to go into all of them until I’d get thrown out, and I just always loved it, man. I saw all these people getting tattooed and from a young age it just nailed me to the wall.

Later on, I was in rock and roll bands for a long time—I played the saxophone—and I was painting a lot of flash and I wanted to find a job, and I thought I could be good at [tattooing]; I loved drawing the designs. So I went to a few shops and went, “Hey! Where can I get some ink and some guns?” And they just told me to get the fuck outta there.

So, I was living in Laurel Canyon, and I was driving down the hill one day and I saw a friend of mine hitchhiking, and he had this girl with him named Truly, and she had a fringed leather jacket on with a really nice Japanese dragon done in Indian beads on there. So I inquired! I said, “Man, that’s a nice dragon, it looks like a tattoo design.” She said it was, so I asked if she did it herself. She said, “Yeah, and I’m a tattoo artist too.” This is 1973, by the way. I told her I was looking into getting some equipment and machine, and she told me she had a whole outfit she could sell me. So, I bought some machines and some flash (that I still have) and a power-pack, and that’s really how I got started.

Shortly after that, I started going down to The Pike and got my first three tattoos—my first shop tattoos—by Bob Shaw, and I told him I was interested in working there. I’d bring him stuff that I’d drawn and I’d get tattooed by him, so he gave me the ultimate challenge: bring some people in that’ll let you put a tattoo on them. Well, I was in a rock and roll band at the time and these guys knew I could draw, so I told them to come to The Pike with me to get some free tattoos—I was bringing two carloads of guys a week down there. And I did alright, you know? I guess they figured, “Well, I guess this means we have to give this asshole a job.” And they did!

BME: At what point did you branch out on your own?

BR: Well, after working for [Bob] Shaw and [Colonel] Todd, I first worked at a shop in Santa Ana where I had the honor of taking over the great Bert Grimm‘s chair, and me and Bobby Shaw worked there. I worked at The Pike for close to four years, and eventually, for the only time in 37 years, I quit tattooing for four months before going back to it after I got a job with Cliff Raven. From there, I went to work with Ed Hardy for three-and-a-half years, and then I went to New York City and opened my first shop there. It was a fifth floor walkup, where I tattooed in one half and lived in the other; that was the first Spotlight Tattoo. Then I moved back here after I got kicked out of New York.

BME: You got kicked out of New York?

BR: You know, in New York City they sell buildings like they sell houses out here [in Los Angeles]. I never knew that. I was living in a place there, and the next thing I knew my lease was up and I was going, “What the fuck, man?” I was paying $550 a month for a loft, but the guy who owned that building sold the building I was in and nine other buildings to someone else.

So, tattooing was still illegal at that time in New York City, and I wasn’t gonna live and work in the same place again, and I couldn’t afford to open a shop on the street and then get a separate place to live—plus, I was burned out on New York, so I came back here, and I went out every day for six fuckin’ months trying to find a store. On Melrose, you couldn’t rent an outhouse for less than $8,000. It’s a little different now, but back then it was in its heyday. Finally, I found a little garage next to where I am now and stayed there for nine-and-a-half years, and then I moved next door into the shop I’ve got now.

BME: So when you started tattooing, did you consciously decide what your style was going to be?

BR: No! I did what I had to do wherever I was. I broke in on biker stuff at The Pike—you’d do Harley wings every night, you’d do reapers, you’d do eagles, you’d do roses, marijuana leaves, you’d do at least one to four Hot Stuffs [devil designs] every night. All that kinda stuff, man. You work at The Pike, you’d tattoo 15 people every night, five nights a week. We had three people on the night shift and three people on the day shift, and everybody tattooed 15 people—at least 75 people a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I still don’t know how I did it.

So then I went on and started seeing some of Ed Hardy’s work and some Japanese work and I wanted to learn how to do that. I tried to do whatever I could—this was 1976—and I could already do the other stuff pretty well. Then I came up to work for Ed and things started changing. All of a sudden, people thought all the old American traditionalism was no good because the line was too big, you know what I mean? All the old-timers thought, “Well, that shit ain’t gonna last.” We joked and said, “Oh, this is the new thing that’s gonna replace everything?” And we were all wrong. We got on a big high horse about it, and I tried New School-style for a bit until I realized, American-style? You can’t do that way, man. It doesn’t hold up—it’s only good for certain things. But when I opened my own shop, I had to do everything that walked in the door to pay the rent. One day it’s a reaper, one day it’s a portrait, tribal, Celtic, portrait, all this different crap—I had to make a living. Some of it I was good at, some of it I wasn’t, but I did the best job I could.

But I was always best at American traditional, the stuff I did at The Pike, and I got into a comfort zone where I could take that stuff and do my own thing with it, which was really hard for me to do with the Japanese-style stuff. I worked on Japanese stuff up until a couple years ago and I just stopped doing it, it was getting too far out of my reach.

BME: How long did it take you before you realized you wanted to make a career out of this?

BR: I knew right away, I just didn’t know if I could do it. Back then, working with these old timers, you didn’t know what went into mixing ink, you didn’t know anything. Eventually, they had me in there whenever I had a day off making needles, and all the other younger artists would get mad. “Well, how come they’re showing this fuckin’ guy this stuff?” They didn’t want to teach everybody that. If they saw you painting flash? They’d look at you like, “What the fuck are you doing this for? We’ve got all the designs you need. What, are you thinking about opening a shop down the street?” Oh, they were serious! You’d ask them about mixing colors and they’d tell you, “You don’t need to know that. What, you planning on opening up? What do you need to know that for? We’ve got everything for you right here.” That’s how it was.

Somebody comes in and goes, “Oh, I want this custom—” and they’d stop them right there. They didn’t draw nothin’! If it wasn’t on the wall, they didn’t get it. They’d fire you if they saw you doing it, because they didn’t give a fuck about anything like that. If you sat there and drew for half an hour, all they saw was $200 walking out the door. If you wanted to put something custom in, you went and drew it at home, and then you had the client come back. You didn’t fuck around. Names, that’s the only thing you drew on, and you just picked up a pen and went, “Jane. J-A-N-E.” Twenty seconds. Five bucks. There was none of this fancy stuff The cheapest thing was a name, and then you’d have Hot Stuff for $12.50, eagles would start at $17.50—see, Todd said if you put the 50 cents on there, you’d get tips, he worked it all out—and go up to $36.50. I think the biggest thing they had was a peacock with grapes, and that was the most expensive tattoo, which was $101.50. We shaved their arms with straightedge razors—that’s how you could tell the men from the boys. The boys would all use their fuckin’ safety razors. If you used a safety razor at The Pike, they’d fuckin’ throw you out of there! You couldn’t fuck around with that. That took too long. Then you’d put Vaseline on their arm, and then you had an Acetate stencil that you’d use black charcoal powder on. You’d smooth it out and touch that onto their arm, and the powder would stick to the Vaseline. You had to work your way from the bottom up so you didn’t wipe the stencil off.

BME: So when you’re looking at a tattoo, whether it’s one that you’ve done or one by someone else, what makes you think, “Now that’s a good tattoo”?

BR: If it’s done right, man. First I look at the design, then I look at application, then I look at if the artist has overdone it or underdone it or done just enough. You don’t have to fuckin’ add 50 million extra rows of rosettes—no superfluous flummery, no extra bullshit. It just takes away from it.

BME: Do you feel like a lot of people overdo it these days?

BR: Yeah. The New School got all fucked up, man. They make it all limp and add all that extra shit in there—who needs it? I don’t like it. It just takes away. You’re working by the hour so you just go, “Hey, let’s add another two hours on there.” For what? For nothing. Doesn’t look good, doesn’t work.

BME: Do you think artists’ approaches have changed from when you started?

BR: People ask me stuff like that about “then and now” and where stuff is going and what do I think the new thing is going to be, but there’s something people don’t realize. If you’re a photographer, the important thing is what you’re taking a picture of, not you—if I want to be an artist, I can go buy brushes and I can go buy paper and make art. But, if I want to be a tattoo artist and nobody’s coming to get a tattoo from me, I’m not a tattoo artist. So, the future and where things are going and the approach, it’s not up to us, man. We’re secondary. The important thing is the person getting the tattoo, not me. Where’s it going? It’s going where they want it to go!

If we draw all the traditional stuff that we like and we think, “Hey, this is the shit, man!” and nobody wants it, it’s worthless. It’s taken this amount of time for people to realize that that stuff [traditional tattoos] is really what it’s all about. It’s gone all the way around with all this other garbage, and now it’s come back to where people starting to recognize that stuff again. But still, the bottom line is, somebody wants Celtic on their arm, somebody wants tribal, they should have it. They want some fucked up New School thing with 80 million colors, they should have it. I can’t tell somebody what they should get and what they shouldn’t get. I can tell them what I’m gonna do and what my capabilities are, and if you want to fuck your arm up you’ve got every right to fuck it up, but it ain’t gonna get fucked up in my place.

BME: When have you refused to do a tattoo?

BR: When I didn’t like the drawing, if I thought it was boring. I’ve had a lot of people who’ve stayed up for three days on speed and did this fuckin’ drawing they want to use to cover up five tattoos, some big fucked up treble clef, and they come in and say, “OK, here’s what I want,” like I’m a fuckin’ secretary and I’m taking dictation over here. And I go, “OK, why don’t you let me redraw this, I’ll fix it up so it looks right,” and I get, “Oh no no no, I want it just like this.” And I go, “You know what, you should have it just like you want it, and I’ll tell you what, there are five more shops down the street and you should go down there.” “Oh no,” they say, “but I want you to do it.” I say, “Well, I’m not gonna do it like this.” And I’ve had a lot of people walk out really mad at me. I’ve gotten in fights and all kinds of shit about it, but usually they come back and they thank me a couple of years later.

You’ve gotta know what to say to people, man. You can go up on Hollywood Boulevard where they’re all “experts” on every style under the sun—they’re “experts”! And once you pay them, they don’t give a flat fuck what you’ve got on your arm. They’ll sit you down, take your money and just fuck you up.

BME: So you think it should be the artist’s job to talk someone out of a design?

BR: Well, sure it should. Half these artists don’t give a fuck. Everybody’s getting tattooed now, and half of these people, they don’t give a fuck, so they go to artists that don’t give a fuck. Then, eight years later, they walk into a shop and they see what a good tattoo looks like, and they didn’t even realize they had a bunch of garbage on them. It’s sad, man, the way these people think. You go to the gas station and you get gas, you go to any liquor store and you get a pack of Camels—well, here’s a tattoo shop, you should be able to get a tattoo here! And all they’re doing is gettin’ fucked up. They got all these health department regulations and this kinda regulation and that kinda regulation—you have to be more than 150 yards away from a school and all this stuff—but on the other hand, they let some fuckin’ horrible artists just sit there and make money. That’s the sad part: so many people innocently walk in, and it ain’t rocket science, but I’ve seen just horrible stuff.

BME: What do you make of more and more young people are getting their hands and necks and faces tattooed without having substantial work done on the rest of their bodies first?

BR: Well, that’s the way it was a long time ago, but now you can’t control it. You’re an idiot if you try to, because they’re gonna get it. But on the positive side, you look around now and, Jesus, there are just so many really good artists. The degree of workmanship has just exploded in the last 10 years. There are guys who’ve been tattooing for three years and their stuff is just absolutely beautiful—a whole lot better than I probably will ever be.

BME: Do you like the convention atmosphere?

BR: Yeah, I like conventions…as long as I don’t have to work them, I like them. [Laughs] I just bring my prints and sell those. I worked at conventions for years and years and years, and then I wouldn’t do it for a while and then I’d go work at one and I’d get home and think, “Christ, what the fuck am I doing this for?” I’d work at all these conventions and I didn’t even have the money to go to them, so I had to go there and work the whole fuckin’ time. Plus, they wanna set me up in a phone booth, shine some real bright lights in my face and go, “Alright, Bob, now play us some hot jazz.” Or, “I got a spot left for Bob Roberts, I’ve been saving it just for you, right on my ass here,” the worst skin in the fuckin’ world, about the size of a postage stamp, so I’m gonna stand on my head at ten-thirty in the fuckin’ morning with a hangover and tattoo this guy on his ass because I promised him I would do it and I forgot to ask where he wanted it.

BME: Does it bother you when people want a tattoo from you just because you’re “Bob Roberts”? They’ve never seen your portfolio, they don’t know your work, but they know you’re Bob Roberts and they want a Bob Roberts tattoo.

BR: Nah, that doesn’t bother me. If they’ve got nice legs especially, it doesn’t bother me. [Laughs] I’m just like anybody else. I have to make a living. Some of these guys get so opinionated, smelling their own fuckin’ shit and backing themselves so far into a corner they can’t see their own asses—”I don’t like this” and “That’s no good,” “No blood and guts,” you censor yourself so much that you can’t swing your own fuckin’ ax. Like I said, I used to have to do everything. Now? I’ve got six other guys in there. If I think somebody can do it better than me, I’ll give it to them. People will come out of my shop with the best tattoo they can get, I don’t give a fuck who does it. Spotlight’s full of good people, and some of the worst work I ever did was when I was working by myself. Now? I’ve got hell-hounds on my chairs. I got these young fucks in there like Norm and Grant and Bryan Burke, and these guys are fuckin’ fantastic. I feel like I’m dying out over here! Throw me a fuckin’ lifesaver, you know? But it’s great, because this way I don’t have to do the stuff I don’t want to.

BME: How often do you tattoo these days?

BR: I’m down to three days a week now—down from six days a week, 14 hours a day. Now I do three days, and I can do one or two tattoos a day.

BME: And when you bring a new artist into Spotlight, what do you look for?

BR: Well, first thing, I look at their photo book, and if the guy’s got a pretty good selection, he’s good at a lot of different styles, I’ll give the guy a job. But then I’ll tell him, “You’ve gotta be more than good to be here. You can’t be a shithead, either.” The work may look good, but if he doesn’t fit in, he’s not gonna stay here. I don’t like firing anybody, but I tell them, “If you’ve got a problem with it now, there’s the door. Leave, pack your stuff and we’ll still be friends, because if I have to fire you…”

BME: Have you had many unceremonious firings over the years?

BR: Yeah. I just had to get rid of a really good artist who I found out was stealing from me. I treat my guys pretty good, man. I give them a good percentage and all that, and this guy was really a fuck. He’s lucky he just got fired. Fifteen years ago I’d have cut his fuckin’ thumbs off.

BME: What do you think of the nostalgia for the era when tattooing still seemed more “dangerous,” when it was still underground and illegal in New York and other places?

BR: I’ll tell you what, man, of all the things in New York City when I was there…you’d have a 24-hour Go Put Your Money Through A Hole And Take Your Dope spot with lines down the street and they didn’t do anything about that, but with tattooing, the minute it became illegal, nobody wanted to do it there. When I was there, there was me, there was Bruce Martin (who didn’t really do much tattooing), there was a guy named Don Singer who maybe put one on occasionally, there was Tom Devita…and that’s about all I can think of. There might have been some others—there was Mike Perfetto in Brooklyn, but he wasn’t right in Manhattan. In Brooklyn, I can’t remember if it was legal or illegal. But I mean, nobody ever bothered me. Of all the things that were illegal that went on in New York City, I mean, you could get your dick sucked down around the block for five bucks every day. You could get six girls if you wanted to spend $30 and pay five bucks a blow job, one right after the other. I’m not kiddin’, man. Nobody bothered these people, this stuff just went on. Whatever you did in your loft in New York City, if nobody complained, they didn’t bother you. And even if somebody did complain, if you weren’t chopping people’s arms off and grinding ‘em up into little bits—if there were no blood stains or torsos, the police just left you alone. I don’t know how it is now, but that’s the way it was then. So as far as any nostalgia, I don’t think there was enough of it going on then [for there to be real nostalgia].

BME: So it’s a kind of manufactured nostalgia?

BR: I think so, man. But hey, over the years, I got to be an opinionated kinda fuck, you know? And that sort of thing doesn’t matter. Like I say, the bottom line is, people put importance in tattoo artists and guys that have been around a long time, and now there are more good artists than there have ever been—they’re state of the art, they’re flying out of the roof—but still, it comes down to what people are gonna get. That’s the most important thing. Without them, we ain’t tattoo artists. You see these lovely young girls who don’t even look like they’re old enough to get in the shop and they’ve got a neck tattoo, they’ve got the back of their hand, they’ve got a dagger down the front of their chest and a skull that’s eroded and burned and spider webs—the girl’s 19 years old, for Christ’s sake. I take my hat off to them. If anybody came to me when I was 18 or 19 and said, “Hey, come on Bob, we’re gonna go to the tattoo shop and get great big fuckin’ daggers from our necks to our belly buttons,” that sort of thing was nonexistent.

BME: It’s funny, because it’s not uncommon to hear people take that as a sign of younger people being too impetuous and not thinking things through.

BR: No, listen, they’ve thought it through. It’s a saving grace. It dictates what you’re gonna be able to do in your life. God, if you get a bunch of fuckin’ tattoos like that, you’ll never be able to work in a bank, you’ll never be able to work for the FBI, and maybe people think, “Well, good, maybe that’s what I should do, then. It might save me from destroying myself.” And it does. It changes the way you look at yourself and it changes the way everybody else looks at you and reacts to you for the rest of your life.

BME: For better or worse.

BR: But see, for you guys it’s commonplace now. I remember when I got this tattoo on my forearm, what, 39 years ago? After, I went to see some friends of mine, and they were scared to fuckin’ look at me. I’m not kidding. They were genuinely fuckin’ scared of it. It wasn’t like it is now—it wasn’t popular. People didn’t do that, not the crowd of people I hung around with. They didn’t get tattoos, especially not big fuckin’ skulls on their arms.

BME: What kind of people were you friends with back then?

BR: Well, I was a hippie, and this was sort of when I was making the transition from hippie to being a musician and thinking about doing tattoos. Actually, I’d been a musician for a while and I couldn’t support myself. I always wanted tattoos and I was thinking about learning how to be a tattoo artist, toying with that idea, but also, I was just getting into getting tattooed back then. I had to think about it for a long time. The first tattoo I got was in downtown L.A., and I was working for my dad and there was a tattoo shop around there, and I just drove by the place every day for two weeks, say to myself, “There’s the tattoo shop, gonna go in?” And I’d just keep driving. It got to where I’d go to bed at night and I couldn’t sleep because I wanted a tattoo so bad, but I was afraid to get it. So finally I snuck over there when my dad couldn’t see me and I got three dots on my leg—75 cents. I never knew I’d have this many tattoos or that it’d be my profession for life or any of it. I think it came after me more than I went after trying to be a tattoo artist. I put forth all that energy trying to get machines and all that, but I didn’t really think of it as a learning experience. I was cocky. I’d go into shops and go, “Well, I can draw better than that.” And I could. Just give me a machine, you know? Just give me some guns and some ink.

Every day though, I thank my lucky stars that I broke in with Bob Shaw, Col. Todd—that foundation has helped me through it all. People who don’t get to break in at a shop like that, where they don’t get to learn how to shade a panther, they don’t learn how to do a pair of Harley wings, they don’t have that foundation, I can see it in their work that they don’t know how to do that stuff. Or they fuckin’ New School it all up, just make it a bunch of limp fuckin’ crap and I look at it and say, “Oh, I see…can you do a real one?” [Laughs]

BME: Who are some of your favorite artists right now?

BR: Well, my son Charlie for one. All the guys at Spotlight, Bryan and Steve and Norm, I love Bert Krak and Steve Boltz, Richard Stell, Tim Hendricks, Jack Rudy…

BME: And with how popular tattooing has gotten, do you think it’s going to stay or come and go in waves?

BR: I thought it was gonna be done 15 fuckin’ years ago. “Look at this, it’s gotta go downhill, it’s peaked out.”

BME: Could you have ever imagined there’d be a time with television shows about tattooing?

BR: No. Hey, listen, when I started out, I couldn’t even imagine that there’d be tattoo magazines. Now you can go to the newsstand and pick up five magazines and you’ve got a global view of what’s going on at this very moment. Me, if I wanted to find a fuckin’ dragon, I went to the library for eight hours and then went to the 25-cent Xerox machine, copied a dragon and traced it and made sure nobody was looking at me.

I remember I used to ride my motorcycle cross-country every year and I used to like to stop in the small towns where they had that good old country home cookin’, and I’d ride up on my bike and everyone would be scared of me—within 10 minutes I’d see the local sheriff—and they didn’t bother me, but they just wanted to make sure I was just getting something to eat and getting gas and was going to keep going. [Laughs] Now, I haven’t done it in a while, but the last few times I did it, I stopped in the same places and now the waitresses would say, “Oh, those are great tattoos!” They’d get the busboys and the dishwashers and everybody would be out front showing off their tattoos—this is in the very same towns! It’s everywhere. Every little town across the United States has a tattoo shop now.

BME: Is that a positive thing, though? Or do you think they should weed out some of the lesser shops?

BR: Well, that’s what we were saying, the health departments want to make sure everything’s sterile, you got a foot pedal and hot water and sinks and you wash everything down with hydrochloric acid and all that crap, but I’ve seen shops that were absolutely immaculate, you could eat off the fuckin’ floor, all the best equipment, all the expensive shit, everything’s wrapped in prophylactics, and they have the shittiest fuckin’ artists in the world. They don’t govern that. It’s art, who says it’s good or bad? Somebody might like what this guy does, but to me it’s absolute fucking garbage. The guy should have his fuckin’ thumbs cut off, at least. But they don’t regulate that, and that’s what needs to be regulated. Look how many unfortunate people in all good faith walk into some of these shops and throw their money down, and they’re getting fucked up and having their money taken from them. And there are a lot of them.

BME: You’d think with as many good artists as there are now, the worse ones will be exposed eventually.

BR: They don’t care, man. Like I said, they’re going in to get a pack of cigarettes. That’s what it is to them. They don’t know about all that stuff. It’s always been that way. I’ve known guys—who will remain nameless—who’ve been tattooing for 47 years that are just terrible. That’s all they’ll ever be, just sitting there and fuckin’ people up forever. But they’re people you’ve never heard of. Most people that you’ve heard of, that have been around…I just saw Maurice [Lynch] was in here, a lot of people don’t know who that is. That’s Tahiti Felix’s son, who just turned 75, and when I worked in Santa Ana, I used to see his Felix’s Marine Corps stuff come through, and it’s still ingrained in my brain. The first eagle, globe and anchor I saw—I’d seen work at The Pike and all they did there, but I’d never seen too much other work that I thought was good. I just remember seeing this guy’s arm, this was 38 years ago, and it’s as plain in my mind as if I saw it yesterday. That’s all those guys did. They don’t try to invent nothing, they don’t try to get out of the realm of their own shops, they just did good, simple tattoos—and a lot of them. Not because it was cool, not because they thought something looked like a good gimmick, they just did it. There was no reason. They were there, and that’s what they did. And guys like Bob Shaw and Col. Todd, they were just pure-hearted tattoo artists, there were no lines about how this is cool or trendy or fashionable or anything else. They just did it, man.

You’d see this for years, man, breaking in at The Pike? Guys just came in and did this stuff. Sailor Jerry just did it. They weren’t on T.V. Journalists? People like you? They’d throw them out. “Hey, wanna be in the paper?” “No, just get the fuck outta here.” They didn’t want to have anything to do with it. People get into it now and they have a lot of pride, a lot of self-satisfaction. You get to be a big-shot, it’s cool, you make a living. But, some people? Some people were just thrown on the ground and they fell down a hole and that’s where they are. They’re never gonna be anything else.

Visit Bob and his crew online at SpotlightTattoo.com. All paintings featured by Bob Roberts. All photos from Tattoo Hollywood by Phil Barbosa and Thaddeus Brown.

Union In Partition

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

Good day, ModBloggers! Let’s begin today with the lovely The Rotten Cherry, checking in from somewhere in the Fatherland, surrendering her ghostly paper heart to (or perhaps just sharing it with) you, the viewer. Sure, you’re probably thinking, “But Jordan, I already have a shelf full of paper hearts from attractive German women with impressive black-and-grey dot-work sleeves (one with an angel and moths, clouds, flames and a swastika, the other with a troll, bats, stars and saturn)—this would just be garish and maybe even overkill.” To which I must reply, it is time to forgo these delicate design sensibilities and accept gifts of this sort when they are offered, the end.

It’s Wednesday, folks. Put on your old man shoes.

Tattoo Hollywood, BME’s first tattoo convention, is coming to Los Angeles from August 21-23, featuring contests, prizes and some of the best artists from around the world! Click here for more information.

See more in “Miscellaneous Tattoos“ (Tattoos)

Full Coverage: Links From All Over (July 27, 2009)

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

[HTMLGIANT] Well, after last week’s sober discussion of policy and legalities and whatnot, we’ve got some comparatively light fare to kick off our illustrious news week this time around. First things first, looks like a few of those bookish types over at HTMLGIANT are putting together a book project of literary tattoos, which is the sort of thing we may have clowned in the past (seeing as there’s no shortage of one-joke cash-grabs centered around stolen tattoo photos), but these folks seem to have the right idea:

Submissions are open to all kinds of literary tattoo work: quotations from your favorite writer, opening lines of novels, lines of verse, literary portraits or illustrations. From Shakespeare to Bukowski to The Little Prince in a Baobab tree, if it’s a literary tattoo and its on your body, we want to see it.

All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it’s based. We’d also like to read a few words about the tattoo’s meaning to you — why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. How much (or how little) you choose to say about your tattoo is up to you, but a paragraph or two should do the trick.

Hey, that doesn’t sound so bad! On the other hand…

/flexes muscles, drinks bottle of Jager, punches nerd, vomits, falls down, shits pants

[Jacksonville.com] Ha, hey guys, did you know tattoos aren’t even hardcore anymore? It’s true! Really though, here’s a person with no tattoo experience aside from scoping out “tramp stamps” in annoying nightclubs, and even she can notice the diluting effect that those vampiric Audigier fellas and their ilk are having on tattooing.

From the minute I stepped into the Miami airport on our return trip and was faced with the first inked skin and $110 Ed Hardy tattoo-inspired T-shirts I’d seen in a week, I was shocked back into my own culture and its swarm to the tattoo aesthetic. What was once an edgy, fringe-culture practice has gone quite cutesy-commercial compared with its roots. The trick, then, becomes navigating between the art form and the marketing trend, and it’s not too tough to spot the items that just don’t belong in tattoo culture.

The Ed Hardy brand, launched in 2004 by designer Christian Audigier, after he gained the rights to the “Godfather of Tattoo” Don Ed Hardy’s designs, was clothing once revered by L.A. rocker and starlet types.

Now the brand is dabbling in the domestic department, bedding and such, and sir, is there anything possibly tough or rogue about you when you’re snuggled up in your $300 duvet set? I don’t care if it’s a roaring tiger or an eagle tearing apart a snake you’re showing off in the bedroom- it does not belong on a frilly neck roll pillow.

This is a funny tipping point we’ve reached, is it not? After years of tattoo culture being something to be looked upon as vaguely dangerous and limited to the “outlaw” set, it has now been co-opted and commodified to the point that even the bystanders who had no real interest beyond the fact that tattoos were part of an obscured subculture are now mourning the death of those salad days and bemoaning the commercialization of something of which they were never even a part. Just sayin’.

[Pasadena Star News] And now, huh, here is a strange artifact indeed, courtesy of veteran funnyman (?!) George Waters. It is about tattoos, apparently? We should probably do a close reading of this.

In the 21st Century, getting a tattoo seems to have become de rigueur

Speak English, commie!

(“the rigueur”).

Much better.

Statistics show that 36 percent of males age 18-35 have a tattoo, and the other 84 percent have dreamt about Jessica Alba giving them a tattoo.

Wait, what? Maybe I’m out of the loop, but I’ve heard precious little about Jessica Alba’s skills as a tattoo artist. What does George Waters think happens during a tattoo? Is “tattoo” now slang for “hand-job in the swimming pool”?

In contrast, only 31 percent of women age 18-35 have a tattoo, yet fully 67 percent dream of forcing their husbands to watch as George Clooney gives them a tattoo.

This is the least helpful sex advice column I have ever read.

I do not have a tattoo myself. I have major freckles. A snarling tiger on me would look diseased. A yin/yang symbol would look like a scoop of Cookies-N-Cream.

Since when does Cookies-N-Cream have red dots in it? Where the fuck are you buying your ice cream, man?

Not to mention that my pain threshold is so low, pygmy ants have to look down to see it.

That’s pretty low.

What I will never understand is, while choosing a tattoo design is entirely dependent on personal taste, often my friends will ask me for “advice,” when really they are just looking for validation. A typical conversation goes like this:

Friend: OK, give me your opinion. Tell me straight: cobra, leopard or eagle?

“Also, which arm is the ‘gay arm’ for tattoos?”

Question: I want to get the name of my boyfriend, Scuz, tattooed over my heart. My friends say I am crazy, that if we break up I will be stuck with it forever, but I love him. What do you think?

Answer: I, too, think your love for Scuz is timeless, and your friends are just jealous. Besides, if the worst happens and you break up, you can always have the words “is a cheating jerk” added to the design. This genre of tattoo is known as “post-romantic.”

Mr. Waters mentioned that he forgot to ask for reader submissions for questions about tattoos, so instead he went back and stole questions from old Ann Landers columns and hilariously modernized the names to reflect the subject matter, like “Scuz,” which, ha. Dave Barry, take note: If you start swallowing your mouthwash in the morning, this could happen to you.

Question: What does a facial tattoo say about a person?

Answer: It says that as bad as this economy is, it clearly hasn’t hurt liquor sales.

Hoo boy, if this guy only knew how many humorless straight-edgers have their faces tattooed, he’d be in some real trouble. (Kidding! Kidding!)

My experience has been that the general public cannot be trusted with an aesthetic statement so permanent. After all, the general public made Adam Sandler a millionaire.

He is clearly just jealous because SHAMPOO IS BETTA.

The Dumbest Story You’ll Read All Day You’ve Read Every Day, Forever

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

Confession time: I have been purposely avoiding writing about this “story” because it is such a stupid fabrication, but for some godforsaken reason it has sadly become a legitimate news meme—indeed, it seems to have usurped that rash of, “Hey Even Your GRANDMA Is Getting Tattooed Now” pieces from late last year—and has seriously been repeated at least 20 times in various outlets over the past few weeks, so, whatever, let’s pick one at random. Anyway, remember those glorious salad days when people were just getting tattooed all the time, without a care in the world, because there were JOBS? Well, now that the world economy has been assassinated and all of our money has been shot into space to make room for all of the inconsiderate over-populators, lots of newspapers and TV stations are reporting that tattoo-removal businesses are the new kings of earth, paragons of solvency and all sorts of other things that probably aren’t true. Here is the tale of one such master race from New Mexico:

Many are afraid that a simple tattoo could keep them from getting a job, so many of them are making a date with a laser.

Dr. Lauren Chavez runs Clear Waves Laser Center and says a lot more people want to get rid of visible tattoos.

Chavez said Friday, “We seen just in the last couple of months…a really high increase in desire for tattoo removal on the hands, wrists, neck, face anywhere that’s visible.”

She said, “Some of them tell me that their hopefully future employer told them that they wouldn’t hide them, because of the visible tattoo. Some employers have even offered to pay for it, which is awful surprising…and that was a local bank.”

A local bank, you say? Well holy shit! What more incontrovertible evidence could you possibly need? See, this is the kind of non-reporting that comprises damn-near every “trend-spotting” article of this sort and truly makes my balls ache above most other things. This canard arguably originated in this May 24, 2009, New York Post article, which was similarly light on facts and relied on a thimbleful of weak-ass anecdotal evidence, but hey, tattoo-removal centers probably appreciated the press, right? So they fanned out across the country, calling up their local understaffed newspapers and news stations and whatnot to say, “Hey, this isn’t only happening in big old New York! This very popular trend is also occurring right under your noses!”

And so a bogus, wholly manufactured and preposterous “trend” is born. Are people getting tattoos removed these days? They surely are. Is it happening en masse because a generation of these ink-stained hoodlums is desperately seeking recession-proof work in the private sector? Ha ha NO, that is almost definitely NOT what is happening, except you wouldn’t know it by the almost daily articles on this very subject, everywhere. Phew. In conclusion, this, like most things, is probably the Post‘s fault.

More Job Seekers Getting Tattoos Removed [KOB.com]

A Promise More Precise

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

Good afternoon, ModBloggers! Let’s kick things off with the lovely Lyn who, judging by the X on her hand, is apparently fresh from a concert (or perhaps “the club”?). Beyond that, however, she’s sporting tattoo work by a fairly elite fraternity of artists—the sleeve we can see is by the excellent Rob Coutts, while her forehead dots were courtesy of Chris David, then of TCB and now at Sailor Jerry Swallow’s Olde Tyme Tattoo.

Hey, it’s Friday! This week is just about over, friends. Time to do the cockroach.

Full Coverage: Links From All Over (Feb. 20, 2009)

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

[CNBC] Scandal rocked the worlds of sports, print media and soft-core pornography this week when it was revealed that Sports Illustrated digitally removed IndyCar racer Danica Patrick‘s lower-back tattoo from her photos in this year’s Swimsuit Issue. (The chilling photographic evidence is above.) When made aware of this startling injustice, Patrick’s camp issued the following response:

“Danica is aware of the edits and is comfortable with the final photos.”

What sort of high-level coercion are these Sports Illustrated fat-cats using to elicit this sort of timid, fearful response? The publication outright refused to comment on the subject, for at least a day, until CNBC’s Darren Rovell was able to squeeze the following explanation from an SI spokesperson:

“The Swimsuit Issue emphasizes natural beauty […] The freckles are left on and, in this case, the tattoos came off.”

Oh. Well, that makes sense. When you look at it that way, actually, this is a fairly historic move for the Swimsuit Issue. Indeed, the magazine’s photo editors also went ahead and Photoshopped all of the models’ breasts back to their original sizes, used only natural light, and limited their airbrushing to erasing offensive tattoos like Patrick’s. The issue has thus far sold seven copies.

[Citizens Voice] So you may have heard about the case of this cretin, this fool, Holly Crawford of Sweet Valley, Pennsylvania, who was arrested for selling what she called “Gothic Kittens.” These are just like regular kittens, except this dildo had pierced their ears, the napes of their necks, and cut off their tails and pierced the remaining nubs, and then attempted to make a business of selling these to … who the hell would buy these? Anyway, the case is going to court now, Crawford is facing criminal charges and, as such, more details are emerging:

“This was tying a rubber band around a cat’s tail so tight that it falls off,” said Deputy District Attorney David Pedri. “She caused the cats pain. She did this to sell them to make money.”

Crawford’s defense attorney, Demetrius Fannick, argued state law “goes on and on” about specific acts of animal cruelty, but nothing about piercing cats and docking their tails.

Prosecutors said a part of the cruelty included Crawford tying rubber bands around the tails of the cats so they would fall off. She’d then pierce the nub.

“There’s nothing in the statute that expressly says you can’t pierce your cat’s ears or necks, or even crop their tails,” Fannick said. “It’s a case that you will be for or against as an animal owner. Let the legislature say you can’t pierce or tattoo your animal, and it will be different.”

Magisterial District Judge Paul Hadzick said the case was a gray area in the law and predicted it might one day cause for a clarification in the law. At the very least, he said it’s a case that should be decided by a jury or a higher judge.

“I don’t think that the decision is for me to be made here,” Hadzick said.

While it’s probably true that this is fundamentally not all that different from pet owners who clip their pets’ ears and tails, this just seems particularly idiotic to me for some reason — probably the winning combination of animal abuse with the hoary old “piercings are goth!” chestnut.

[Scripps News] Good news, tattoo artists, the recession is over! For you, at least! The anecdotal evidence is in and has decisively shown that people would rather get tattooed than eat or give their children medicine.

“My question is ‘What recession’?” said Kate Hellenbrand, a tattoo artist for the past 38 years. “Every day, new clients are being born. The media promotes the industry. There are ads everywhere and sports heroes, rock n’ roll stars and models all have tattoos.”

While this may be true, it may also be a touch skewed coming from one of the most famous tattoo artists in the world, but nonetheless. The article goes on:

Sergio Reynoso of Salt Lake Tattootland was one of the few vendors who said the recession has hurt his business. Since about 80 percent of clients are Latinos, many experiencing trouble finding a job in a down construction industry, he has noticed a drop in business. He has, however, been doing a good business lately repairing or sprucing up bad tattoos done on the street by less qualified artists.

I’m not so P.C. that I’m going to act terribly offended by the implication all Latinos seem to be in the construction industry, but holy crap is this poorly written. Anyway, let’s bring it on home:

Even in Seattle — where thousands have been laid off in recent months — tattoo art is a shelter in the storm. Seattle tattoo artist April Cornell keeps quite busy.

“If you weren’t watching the news, you would not know there was a recession,” she said.

Artist Vinnie Almanza of Anchorage, Alaska, said he was booked all weekend in Salt Lake and is booked through June at his home shop. “One thing people definitely don’t have a problem spending on is their ink,” he said. “It’s like an addiction.”

There you have it: A statistically meaningless sample size that likens the impulse to get tattoo work to your common booze and drug addictions, as proof that tattooing is recession-proof. I can’t wait to read several thousand more of these articles over the next 10 months, at which point I will have to sell my computer, to eat, or more likely, to get tattooed. Best recession ever!

The State of The Lizardman Address

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

It’s been a few years since we’ve heard from our friend Erik Sprague, The Lizardman, here on BME — and really, it’s been too long. The world is a much different place now (well, marginally different, at least), and it’s always reassuring to have him around as a bright green guide through the chaos that surrounds us. He and I recently exchanged e-mails over a couple of days, talking about the new American president, the rigors of life on the road and the difficulties of making the transition from sideshow to stand-up.

BME: The last time you wrote for BME, you were asked who would win in a fight between Christopher Hitchens and Jerry Falwell (you chose Hitchens). Who doesn’t love a hypothetical death-match? Let’s kick things off the same way: Who would win in a good old-fashioned Chicago-style brawl between Rahm Emanuel and Rod Blagojevich?

The Lizardman: I see Rahm taking this one — he is clearly cunning and a survivor. Blagojevich embodies the characteristics of the unstoppable undead and a turd that won’t flush, but lacks offense. It would be a long fight with many seeming victories by Emanuel, only to have Rod rise again before a final defeat.

BME: Blagojevich as zombie-poop? I think you just wrote several South Park episodes, my friend. Now, you were on tour throughout January, correct? For what were you out on the road? Were you able to take a moment to solemnly pour out a 40 for your boy George Bush?

TL: I was on tour for the last 10-11 days of January, and for the first 20 I was home after getting back from the fall Jagermeister Music Tour on December 23, 2008. I was running around the far-too-cold northern areas of the U.S., beginning with my now 10-years-running gig performing at the Am-Jam tattoo expo (subject of one of my old BME columns some time ago) in Syracuse, New York. From there, I had club gigs in Rockford, Illinois, at Kryptonite, and Washington, D.C., at The Palace of Wonders. Fellow Austin stand-up comic Joel Keith was along for the ride, opening up the shows.

I did not pour out anything for Bush, but considered doing so for Texas in somber worry for his return to the state. Even as a Texas convert (I moved to Austin eight years ago), I can spot his fake wannabe-Texan B.S. from miles away. It still stands as one of his greatest deceptions that he convinced so many that he was Texan. You can make a case for WMDs, but not for that …

BME: From a make-believe cowboy to a “half-breed Muslin” — what a country. Really though, what did you think of Obama’s inauguration and the phenomenon that was his campaign in general? How healthy a dose of skepticism is necessary in order to not expect the world over the next four years?

TL: I think we need a massive dose of skepticism for not just the next four years but for the rest of our lives. As great a scapegoat as Bush makes, the truth is that everyone dropped the ball and he and his crew only got away with it by not being challenged enough. The solution is not, and never will be, blind obedience, even if it is to a message of hope. I’d like to see Obama succeed, but nobody gets a blank check. For all of his soaring rhetoric and good intentions, Obama is still a politician and now president of the US — a beneficent dictator is still a dictator. For someone like myself with a number of so-called radical views which are always in the extreme minority, I am forever wary of the majority’s designated player since his job is, in part, to further their goals — often over my rights. Putting the right people in charge is only the beginning and it does not absolve the rest of us from our roles. We have to help him get things done and get them done in the right way.

BME: Do you actually have faith in the American populace to hold up its end of the deal?

TL: That may be the last bit of idealism I have left in me. I feel with the system we have that even when the populace fails, a few good people in the right spots can save things. Look at an issue like black civil rights or women’s rights and you see cases where the populace overall dropped the ball horribly, but those who were right were able to use the system to kick the rest in the ass and fix things. Of course, the system fails as well at times, and then it is up to the populace to pull things together. I think that the American people, along with the Constitutional system we have, represent a good shot at making it and that we are still, overall, on an upswing — things are getting better. The last eight years only seem incredibly horrible because we lived through them, but from a historical perspective of what the U.S. has faced from within and without, it was barely a pebble in the road. History won’t vindicate Bush, but it will tell the rest of us to put our bitching in perspective.

Random aside from these political musings: How great and how perfectly American will it be when we see the first gay shotgun wedding?

BME: I can’t wait. “Ain’t no lesbian daughter of mine gonna get turkey-basted outside of God’s good grace!” And then it’ll be filmed and played on PBS’s celebrity gossip show. This has been quite the decade. What’s your favorite cultural train-wreck of the modern era?

TL: I try to avoid getting into that whole train-wreck-watching scene; it can be mesmerizing and is generally used as a distraction from things of real importance. However, schadenfreude is just so damn tasty, isn’t it? I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, but I do take momentary joy every time I see some douchebag who railed against gay rights get outed as a self-hating closet-case, or when an anti-drug bible thumper shows up at rehab.

BME: Let’s get back to talking about touring: You’ve been going out on the Jagermeister tour and other such things for, what, 50 years now? What are some of your favorite and least favorite things about touring?

TL: It certainly does seem like it has been that long sometimes. I have hosted the Jagermeister Music Tour since 2003 and it has been some of my more high-profile work. I love touring. It is the perfect fit for me, I was made to live and work on the road … which is why for the last decade I have spent over 200 days a year on the road. The best parts would probably be the travel and performing for new and different people around the world. If there really is a complaint to be made, it is like the lack of appreciation for the job. Many people seem to think it is just one big party, and while it is a job I love, there is still a lot of real work involved.

BME: So what’s a typical day/week/[appropriate sample size] on the road like? Also, do you have to bring your own cocaine, or do the venues typically provide that?

TL: The joy and the challenge of life on the road is that there is no typical day. Every city and venue provides a new different experience. For tours like the Jagermeister Music Tour, the cycle was often something like:

5-7 a.m.: Possible media slot, usually a morning radio show.
11 a.m.: Load-in to venue.
12 p.m.: Daily drop of production materials.
12 p.m. till finished: Production setup — poster hanging, VIP section setup, anything else that needs doing.
3-5 p.m.: Possible media slot.
6 p.m.: Doors.
7-11 p.m.: Show.
11 p.m.-1 a.m.: Load-out to truck.
2 a.m.: Buses roll to next city.

Rinse and repeat — rinse being optional since showers are a luxury you grab when/if you can.

When not out with Jager or a similar national traveling production, I tend to tour on my own from one gig to the next. These can be tattoo conventions, comedy clubs, private events, TV shoots, etc., and they are all different. My days then tend to be media promotions, performances, and travel — all-day flights and/or marathon drives across the country.

Cocaine, and other drugs, are pretty easily available across the board but who pays depends on the gig and your level of celebrity. The quality varies and it almost all comes with the hitch of having to hang out with the provider more than you would like.

BME: Right. So when Metallica wants a bottle of pure Velociraptor semen, they can probably just request it in the tour rider, no questions asked. Hey, do you have a tour rider? If so, what’s in it? Have any of the bands with whom you’ve toured over the years asked for anything particularly strange?

TL: I have had a rider in the past and sometimes still do, but it is usually strictly for things I need for the show but won’t have the time or opportunity to get and/or traveling with would be difficult or impossible. A few examples being fuel for fire acts, concrete blocks, empty beer keg, various ingredients for stomach pumping, live insects for myself or a snake to eat. The thing about riders that most people don’t realize is that you do pay for that stuff; during settlement, the cost of things on the rider will be taken out as expenses before you get paid. A rider is a convenience, since you don’t have the time to run out and buy new socks or get snacks for the bus, and often you pay a premium for them since many venues will gouge on the price. I have seen people try and charge $6 for a single diet coke or $30 for a case of water.

In terms of weird rider things, I know of a band that specified no mixed color candies (like Skittles) because their OCD drummer, no joke, would sort them compulsively; he also had to have all the wingnuts on his drums lined up or he couldn’t play without stopping to fix them. Another band had a lead singer who required a massage at a specific time before the show started or they got the option of canceling the show. Weirdness on riders is usually there to make sure people are reading everything they should and paying attention to detail, or it is something that makes sense if you know all the details.

“It’s not that I can’t read,” says The Lizardman, “it’s just that I don’t follow instructions well sometimes.”

BME: Let’s talk about your act itself. Does it vary depending on the audience/sort of show? How has the act evolved over the years?

TL: I see myself as providing an experience for my audiences and making them active participants in that process. As a result, the show will necessarily vary, but there is still a certain form that it generally follows. In the past, I have tailored shows to any situation that I could manage to get myself booked into, but now I often try to use the show to manipulate the situation. I’m not sure how much sense that makes as stated, but it works in practice.

My show has evolved and gone through many permutations through the years. It might seem subtle to some observers, but to me, not surprisingly, it seems like night and day. Probably the biggest shift has been my move towards stand-up comedy and spoken word and finding a home in those genres. Back when I first started, I said that I would always do stunts, even if it was just in my living room, because no one would come and see, but now I find myself doing more and more of my stunts and rituals strictly for myself in private or semi-private situations because my work as a performer has taken me to a place where I am more a comedian/commentator. The audience is still there for the stunts (and I do still include some of my favorites), but as a performer I have moved away from doing them onstage — at least as the main draw.

BME: That’s interesting. Do you feel like you’ve always been funny enough to do stand-up and just made a decision to not include it so much in the earlier days, or is that something you had to teach yourself along the way as well?

TL: With the exception of very rare cases, “funny” or “not funny” is not a natural inescapable state for people; it turns out that “funny” is interesting and insightful presentation. Think about one of the staples of humor (one which I personally try to scrupulously avoid): the differences between men and women. Someone can say something that is beyond obvious to everyone, but make them laugh by presenting it with a personal insight and in a manner which engages the audience in a way they weren’t used to or expecting. Everyone has to teach themselves and/or learn to be funny — this is often called “finding your voice,” and it is the process of figuring out how to present your anecdotes and observations in a manner which people will not only accept but also crave. I have always had, and almost everyone does, the premises which are the seeds of “funny,” but it takes time to develop and refine them.

In a way, the sideshow acts were a crutch — a way to draw and hold people through the developmental process of refining the comedy. I avoided some of the pain many stand-ups have to face through the early days by having an additional element that supported my work on the comedy/commentary and kept me in decent gigs. Now, I have well refined stunt acts and comedy that stands on its own without the stunts so, it is the best of both worlds.

BME: In the past, you’ve mentioned some inspirational sideshow/etc. figures. Who are some of your comedic inspirations?

TL: I think I have been influenced more in terms of philosophy than style when it comes to comedy. Some of the names that leap to mind for me are Rodney Dangerfield, Steve Martin, Mitch Hedberg, and Don Rickles. Martin’s book, Born Standing Up, had a real influence on how I approached some things and look at performing. It hit me at just the right time when I was working through some things and really had me thinking about what I wanted to accomplish with each show.

BME: A recent review of your show stated that you were “offensive to many of the crowd, insulting Asians, women, overweight people, among others.” As a Jew, I’m rather offended that we didn’t make the list. To what sorts of things was the reviewer referring? And be as candid as you like, I can guarantee that nobody will have read this far into the interview.

TL: I love that review. In fact, I have been quoting it as part of a bit in my show since I first found it online. My best guess is that the reviewer was referring to a joke where I talk about chasing Japanese people pretending to be Godzilla, which is really a joke about me being delusional and/or under the influence. As for the women and overweight people, he must be referring to a bit where I mention that fat chicks give the best blow jobs, which I think is a compliment — not to mention an empirical fact according to the evidence most men have collected.

I apologize for not having offended Jews that night, but I had to cut a lot of material for time. That guy posted that review almost a month after the actual show and wrote almost entirely about me, even though I was a grand total of maybe 15 minutes out of a four-hour show that night. But he only wrote one line that wasn’t about me — I call that reaching someone. The rest of the crowd laughed and cheered but he waited a month to act indignant on a website.

BME: Now that you’re moving more into stand-up and storytelling rather than stunts, is it challenging to get audiences to take you seriously, what with you being “The Lizardman” and them potentially expecting a bunch of gross-outs or what have you rather than cerebral/topical humor? Do you think your appearance/”novelty” status could be a hindrance in this respect, or has it not been an issue?

TL: The great thing about club-level and alternative comedy venues is that the crowds are very accepting of anything, so long as it is good. If you show up with good stuff, they get past anything else quickly. I think that being The Lizardman is an advantage so long as I use it properly. My modifications make me memorable and provide me with an instant conversation starter. At this point, my biggest challenge may not lie with winning over new people but rather hanging on to those who were more into the stunts, but that has gone well thus far. For instance, a couple years ago the lawyers for the Jagermeister tour decided the stunts presented too much liability, so I had to go to a purely stand-up hosting routine — which is probably one of the most difficult and hostile ways to do stand-up. But it ended up working out and giving me a great deal of confidence. After shows, though, people would come up and ask why I didn’t do any stunts, and after I explained they would generally say that it sucked that I couldn’t do them but they really enjoyed the show and laughed their asses off. On my own though, as I said, I do include some stunts — my favorites and the fan favorites.

So, thus far, I would say it has mostly been a non-issue, but I could see it becoming one if I continue to succeed because it makes for a harder sell. Breaking some molds is OK, but people are protective of others. When TV first latched onto me as the weird guy with an education, it was a sort of feel-good story challenging the preconceived notion of modified people as uneducated. Convincing agents and the like to give me a shot at being funny goes against their expectations in a way they don’t like to risk; they don’t have faith in people to get past the initial shock of my appearance. It also doesn’t help that much of my material is not TV friendly — I often hear, “We loved the show but we can’t air that sort of stuff.” But that is very much the story of my career, gaining little by little and winning over those I can get to take the chance.

Visit The Lizardman online at TheLizardman.com for tour dates, speaking engagements and various ephemera.

* * *

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BME’s Big Question #5: The Series of Tubes

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

Welcome to BME’s Big Question! In this feature, we’re going to ask a handful of the community’s best and brightest piercers, tattooists, heavy mod practitioners and shop owners for their opinion on one question or issue that’s affecting the body modification community. Many, many thanks to all of the contributors.

If you’d like to be a part of future editions, or if you have an idea for an issue or question you’d like to see addressed, please e-mail me.

This week’s topic:

The Internet has obviously changed the body modification industry dramatically: The amount of information and discussion about it can be staggering, and more people are engaging in it than ever before. Some see this as a positive thing, while others may have misgivings about such an increased amount of attention, and perhaps a watering-down of the talent and art involved.

If you were working prior to body modification’s rise on the Internet, how did you adapt to its emergence? If you came around afterward, how large a role did the Internet play when you were becoming established in your field? And for everyone, what are the positives and negatives of having the Internet available, whether as a tool for research, marketing, or communication? Where do you think the industry would be without it?

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John Joyce

When I first started piercing, I wasn’t aware of any type of body modification community online. Without that online community, I took everything the person who was teaching me to pierce to be truth. What he said was how it was done, and I had no reason to think otherwise. I later found out about BME and IAM. Through BME, I found that there were many things that we were doing that weren’t really the best way to do things. Talking to other piercers online made me a better piercer, helped me improve myself and the studio I was working in.

Now there is so much information out there and so many great piercers, and body jewelry manufacturers online (just on this site alone) that it really irritates me when I see someone doing things half-assed. When I was starting out, you really had to search for information, now it’s right there ready for you to take, but a lot of the new piercers just aren’t taking it.

Derek Lowe

I see the availability of information to be a good thing. It’s not a matter of the information, or its availability, having a negative impact … it’s what people do (or don’t do) that is positive or negative.

As John pointed out however, it does make it extra frustrating when you see people doing things that make no sense at all. The information about various options is so readily available, there is really no excuse (other than laziness or just not caring) for doing things grossly below par.

Maybe I’m just being nostalgic and romanticizing things, but I do think there is something to be said for the effort you had to put into finding information before the Internet was around. You had to go out of your way to find books or magazines, you had to actually pick up the phone and call someone or go hang out with them. It required a greater commitment of time and energy from everybody involved.

I think one benefit of the information being less accessible was that it forced people to do more critical thinking about their procedures; especially if it wasn’t a traditional procedure. Instead of hopping on BME or YouTube and seeing pictures/videos of procedures being done, you had to think through the process step-by-step and you had to evaluate what your different options were. You often didn’t have a “right way” to fall back on; you just had the way that made the most sense to you. And that way would likely change as you became more skilled/experienced.

Many younger piercers I deal with these days simply want to know how they are “supposed” to do it. They are often reluctant to consider various options and they just want to know what’s “right and wrong.”

Ryan Ouellette

When I started piercing I remember having to scrounge for any information I could get about piercing. I picked up Grey’s Anatomy and dog-eared all the pages on the ear, face, nipple, etc. It was much more of a challenge finding any useable information. The internet has made it so easy for any idiot to watch some other idiot do a horrible piercing on a third idiot. The Internet is great at helping good piercers become better piercers. But I think it’s used more frequently to turn bored people with no career into shitty piercers.

I grew into the Internet really slowly. I used to have this research folder full of any old article I could come across in print or online. I had to track down bits and pieces over months and years. By the time the Internet really started to trickle out the professional-level information I was already fairly established so I really just used it to learn other people’s little tricks of the trade. I’m glad that I had to work for it in the real world instead of just pulling all the info down off the Web.

I think my professional opinion is that I dislike almost everything about the Internet’s marriage to this industry, minus the publicity aspect, but at least it’s evolution. It started off as a community of professionals sharing information with people they felt comfortable with. There’s no barrier of good judgment or apprehension anymore, it’s all just public domain. I liked it more when people kept secrets and you had to work for it.

John Joyce

Oh man … I know what you’re talking about. The first day of my apprenticeship I was handed folders, and binders, full of random information. I was given an old Gauntlet seminar hand book, interviews with Keith Alexander, Fakir, Jon Cobb, the Modern Primitives Book, all kinds of things.

And when I started apprenticing Shelly, I did the same thing. I gave her all kinds of information and said, “Read all of this and then find your own.” I think it’s important for people coming into this industry to do their own research and not just look to a forum and say, “Hey, how do you do this?” without doing any of their own digging first. We’re always learning and always changing our techniques, so if we can get our apprentices to do their own research right from the start it will keep them being proactive throughout their careers.

Stephen DeToma

I started my own notebook of everything the guy teaching me said. A lot of that helped give me a point of reference as I continued to learn. When I was just cutting my teeth, Ask.BME was something I read often.

I still feel I’m many levels below everyone else on this panel. Hell, I read the writings of more than a couple of you years back. I think I found my way onto BME just after I began my apprenticeship and it’s been an invaluable communication and education tool ever since.

In terms of a glut of availabile information, I certainly echo the displeasure of being able to watch kids sticking each other with needles on the school yard. Not that I think experimentation in youth is a bad thing, I’m sure we’ve all been there. But seeing something on a video through the Internet often lends an air of credibility to the experimentation, allowing others to follow in line.

I remember one afternoon, less than six months of learning in, one of the regulars from the shop brought in a stack of old PFIQs — I thought I had hit the jackpot. Now, being able to pull up any amount of varied articles at any time, it’s certainly easier, but the thrill of the hunt has diminished …

Meg Barber

When I first started my “apprenticeship,” I was given the “Pierce With a Pro” VHS tapes, the “Hole Story” VHS tapes, a pile of old PFIQ magazines, and was told to read and watch.

There was no easily accessible info to be found online really at that point, as BME was still in its earliest stages. I have to agree totally with the above statement,
“Maybe I’m just being nostalgic and romanticizing things, but I do think there is something to be said for the effort you had to put into finding information before the Internet was around.” You had to work to find the info you needed. Anatomy books, medical journals, actually reaching out to other piercers by *gasp* going to their studios, and hands-on trial-and-error were all par for the course, and I think that is why the older set of piercers are better at what we do. We worked for it, same as any job. Chances are, you will never really excel at something if you are just handed it on a silver platter, which is how I see apprentices nowadays.

While I DO think that there is some GREAT info available online, and I see the Internet as a great resource for piercers and other mod artists, I also feel that it contributes to the the over-saturation of idiots in our industry. Perfect case in point:

Me to a client: How did you end up with such a horrible piercing?

Client to me: Well, my friend and I watched this video on how to pierce your own *fill in the blank* on YouTube…

And yes, while these YouTube-trained home piercers are not technically a part of our industry, they are putting out piercings. They are perpetuating the idea that piercing is ugly, full of risk, and a delinquent behavior. The videos are also, for the most part, scary to watch, and I get a ton of clients now that are more terrified than ever after watching them!

I just feel that, like anything, the Internet as a tool for us is both positive and negative. It has its high points. I mean, how else could projects like this be possible? But it has its low points. There is a greater amount of information available to those seeking it, which can be wonderful when that information is put into the right hands, but really, how often have we all cringed when we’ve seen the results of that put into the WRONG hands?

Allen Falkner

In 1979, my father purchased a dual floppy, wooden cased, DOS-based computer called the NorthStar Horizon. With no hard drive, a giant dot matrix printer and a tiny monochrome screen, this magical machine could run the tax software for his CPA firm, making the tedious task of written double-entry book-keeping obsolete. Although the device is now just gathering dust in my garage, at the time it was a tool that allowed his business to grow dramatically without needing to hire more accountants.

Jumping forward a few years … I started piercing in 1992, the World Wide Web didn’t exist and the only comprehensive online resource was the rec.arts.bodyart newsgroup. Yes, there were plenty of photos changing hands in those days, but the random body modification you might see was simply the byproduct of downloading porn. Yes, porn was passed around before the WWW. Crazy, huh? Sites like BME and SPC didn’t exist and the body modification community was inspired by images in printed materials, most notably Modern Primitives, of which many careers including mine got their start.

Back in those days I know the desire for body modification existed, but without the Internet to expose the masses, it remained an obscure art form. It was the practitioners that appeared in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s that were the first generation to really cut their teeth simultaneously as the Internet began its influence. Some embraced the new technology and their careers grew and thrived. Others tried and ultimately floundered in the wake of the World Wide Web’s massive and sudden overexposure. Then a third group of modders either missed the boat altogether or purposely avoided the Internet, and who can blame them? For every positive thing posted there seems to be numerous negative and often hateful responses, especially in those days.

Remember the days of film cameras and scanners? Back then people had to take pictures, have them developed and scan them before they could ever be uploaded to the web. It was a time when Paul King was the MTV poster boy for navel piercings, and practitioners were changing from simple craftsmen to rock stars almost overnight. Tattooers may have earned that stature before the rest of us, but the Internet definitely played a key role in helping everyone working in the body modification industry to reach a new level of fame.

Back then if you put a ring in your friend’s penis using a safety pin, you might have been viewed as a hack, but take a picture and put in on the web and you were a pioneer and an innovator, and it didn’t stop there. One ring in a penis? How about two? Three? Heck, why not cut it in half? Half, shit, cut it off!

Now before the age-old debate of how far is too far begins, I will step back and say this: People are going to do what they want. Do photos on the Internet shape the viewer? To an extent, sure. Do these same images inspire people to reach for the next level? Yes, of course, but don’t blame the Web for people’s stupidity and poor choices. It’s like blaming rock music for murder. Giving someone an idea is far different than forcing their hand.

The Internet is a tool, nothing more. A very complex, multifaceted and often entertaining tool … but still just a tool, one that the body modification community uses more effectively than any other hands-on trade. Maybe it’s the fact that our industry blurs the line between craft and entertainment. In a sense we hit the reality crazy before the TV ever did. Want see the strange and bizarre? You can program your TiVo to find the shows or you can just turn on your computer.

So here we are, the subject of constant controversy from both inside and outside our ranks. The male ear piercings we found so shocking the ‘70s hardly raise an eyebrow anymore. Will two-inch lobes and facial tattoos be viewed the same way in 30 years? Who can say? There’s no doubt the Internet has helped body modification to thrive. Would television, film and print media have had the same effect? Probably not, but our growth may have been more controlled. Research would have trickled down slower. International communication would have been difficult at best. Marketing and exposure? Really I have no clue.

If there is nothing else I’ve learned over the years it’s that technology is ever changing. No matter what the field, all industries must learn to adapt and use what is available to the fullest if they hope to survive.

John Joyce

The first shop I worked in used to play the “Pierce with a Pro” VHS tapes in the waiting area. I hated it, but the boss thought it would be good for clients to see what they would be going through beforehand. We used to get this kid who would come in just to watch these videos. Then, guess what? About three months later that kid was piercing at a studio down the street. That was all the research he did. He continued to be a hack for a few years after, before disappearing.

And I agree with Allen that you can’t “blame the web for people’s stupidity and poor choices.” Remember when that picture of the stretched-up Achilles heel piercing was on ModBlog? I thought that was fantastic. It’s amazing to me what the human body is capable of and that there weren’t serious complications from that. I loved that it was on ModBlog because otherwise I would have never gotten to see it. Does that mean I’m going to offer Achilles piercings? No fucking way!!! People need to have some common sense, and take responsibility for themselves.

With the lack of hands on research and initiative, people also seem to be losing professional morals and ethics.

Allen Falkner

You know what’s funny? We were all hacks once, especially the old timers. My training came from a one day course by Fakir. This was before his school, and I was his second student after Erik Dakota.

So in a sense I was one of those hacks that knew very little and just set up shop. In a way I’m kind of glad I did it that way. Because I didn’t have any formal training, I had to work twice as hard to both learn and prove myself.

John Joyce

Right, but you worked hard to learn and improve. People seem to be losing that motivation. Almost 12 years later, I’m still working hard and improving. There are all these piercers now that think they have it all figured out, they are masters of their craft. I just don’t understand that mentality.

Meg Barber

“Because I didn’t have any formal training, I had to work twice as hard to both learn and prove myself.”

Hear, hear.

The kids that think they are master piercers, so to speak, after piercing for a year KILL me. There has been nothing earned, no sacrifices made.

What do you think? Let’s hear it in the comments.

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From Here You’ll Watch the World Go By

Posted on January 18, 2009 by Jordan Ginsberg

Tim Gunn checks in:

“So, Caralena, what have you got for us? Oh MY! I think that leopard-print headband is really daring, let me just say. And surrounding those lovely blue eyes with dark colors is doing it for me. It is. Oh, and juxtaposing the blues of your eyes with the bright pink beads on your surface piercing? You have made it work, my friend.”

Thanks, Tim!

(~~Legendary Pink Dots~~ anti-eyebrow/surface piercing by the folks at Skullfly Tattoo and Piercing in Eugene, Oregon.)

See more in “Facial Surface Piercing“ (Surface & Unusual Piercing)

Death, Taxes …

Posted on October 21, 2008 by Jordan Ginsberg

… and gorgeous work from the Swastika Freakshop. Only a few things in life are guaranteed.

(More from the Swastika Freakshop team: More, more and more still.)

See more in “Religious and Mythological Tattoos“ (Tattoos)