This Week In BME


Good Shabbos, ModBloggers! We all got such a kick out of Timmo‘s pimp-bee the other day that we figured, hey, it’s a mitzvah, right? Luckily, he had more work in his portfolio to provide us with the means for an appropriate celebration. L’chaim! After the jump? More of Timmo’s handiwork. Compton, stand up.

And that’s the week! What went down this time around?

This father-daughter bonding made us all melt just a little bit.

Life, death and scars.

Peck will seduce you now.

Everyone has their own methods for dealing with living in the bible belt.

That’s one happy Dalai Lama.

Speak up, zipperface!

We didn’t really expect anybody to guess this “Guess What?” edition.

And there we have it. Weekend rules apply as usual. Next week? We’ll be on the scene for Tattoo Hollywood all week, so expect lots of goodies. Until then, have fun, stay safe and, of course, thank you for your continued support of BME.

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.

We’re Out For Blood


New Rule: I do not like Motley Crue. I do not think I have ever intentionally listened to one of their songs all the way through. I would like to see Tommy Lee slathered with delicious chestnut honey and chained to a tree in Death-Bear National Park. With that said? The Dirt is one of the most entertaining musical memoirs ever written, and if you commit to an entire goddamn (and surprisingly well-done) backpiece dedicated to these train-wrecks, well, you get featured on ModBlog, friend.

(Tattoo by Tania Sinnaeve at Body Design in Belgium.)

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 Music Tattoos (Tattoos)

Chop It Down


And finally, folks, let’s end our day with this handsome portrait of, hands down, one of the baddest m.-fuckers in rock and roll history. Have we seen rock star portraits before? Of course we have. But when we get such an exceptional piece honoring a man who treated his guitar like an extension of his genitals more than anyone else we can think of, well, that gets posted, friends.

Tomorrow, we’ve got an interesting interview with a community member who’s feeling conflicted over a procedure he’s recently undergone. Until then, machine gun. Night night.

(Tattoo by Justin Jakus at Pop’s Place Tattoos in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.)

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 Portrait Tattoos (Tattoos)

And That’s The Way It Is


Ever since Michael Jackson died/was killed/got beamed back up to the mother ship/whatever, we’ve worked tirelessly to bring you the very best in tattoo portraiture to honor, poke fun at and generally remember the man and his music. Well, with the publication of this outstanding piece by Denis Prevost of Live Once Tattoo in North Bay, Ontario (on a 50-year-old client getting her second tattoo ever, no less), we’re going to close the book on ModBlog’s dogged pursuit of King of Pop pieces; we think this is a fine note on which to go out. Wouldn’t want to become too predictable, right? Right.

And with that, we’ll leave you for this evening. See you tomorrow, folks.

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.

A Children’s Treasury of Dead Celebrity Tattoos


As everybody knows, celebrities have been dying constantly lately, because they are probably under attack or particularly susceptible to some sort of terrible monster flu that we lesser folks are not important enough to be murdered by or something along those lines. BME has been doing its best to keep tabs on these doomed creatures and the grotesque memorial tattoos that follow, but holy smokes did we just hit the mother lode, as Jeremiah at Good Life Tattoos & Piercings in Akron, Ohio, just wrote in to inform us that Brian McFadden, also of Good Life, has just done a series of portraits of our favorite recently deceased famous people, and, sure enough…he has, indeed.

First up is noted auto-erotic asphyxiation-enthusiast David Carradine, seen above as a grasshopper, because, hey, why the hell not, with a conveniently placed rope in case you didn’t get the joke already.

As luck would have it, there is nothing particularly vulgar about this Farrah Fawcett piece, aside from the masturbation insinuation, which…yeah, we guess that is still pretty crude, now that we think about it.

Say hey, Billy Mays! We’re not entirely sure why he’s on a cupcake but at least he isn’t beating off.

As we discussed previously, we think the jury is still out on the acceptability of pieces of art portraying ol’ MJ as a dead person. This would typically be a pretty cut-and-dry case, but seeing as he shot to international fame largely due to a video in which he played a damn godless zombie, well…you can see our dilemma. Whatever, we’ll allow it.

And finally, the dead celebrity who started it all, Academy Award-winner Heath Ledger, seen here as the murderous Joker, albeit crossed, for some reason, with Krusty the Klown, who, as far as we know, is not a murderer (yet?). In conclusion, hopefully this will be the end of the untimely deaths of celebrities, points of light among us to whom we should aspire to be, the end.

BME Shop is holding a 20-percent-off sale on most items this week until midnight on Thursday, July 16! Click here for details.

The Funk of Forty Thousand Years


When Andy sent in this zombie Michael Jackson tribute (?) portrait, it was accompanied with the ever-present, “Too soon?” Now, under normal circumstances, sure, getting a tattoo of a recently deceased celebrity as a hideous member of the walking dead may be in poor taste, but hey, Michael Jackson was arguably most famous for a video in which he appeared…as a zombie! If anything, this is how he would want to be memorialized! (Maybe not.) At any rate, our initial clinical reaction was, No, this isn’t too soon. Get yer MJ zombie on with impunity and a clear conscience, folks!

Oh, right, and then we noticed his right hand. You are going to Hell.

(Tattoo by Bryan Lewis at Ink Factory Tattoo and Piercing in Hudson, Wisconsin.)

See more in Music Tattoos (Tattoos)

Everything is Untrue


I’ll confess that I was never much for Amen—more of a smooth jazz guy, personally—but it’s hard to argue with Maki‘s skin-removal scarification piece of the band’s frontman, Casey Chaos. It’s two months into the healing process here, so let’s hope it stays so well defined.

(Cutting by Samppa from Mad Max Tattoo.)

See more in Skin Removal Scarification (Scarification)

And All You Can Do Is Laugh


I admit that my knowledge of Polish avant-garde hip-hop is woefully underdeveloped, but nonetheless, I can certainly appreciate this portrait of one of the ostensible pioneers of the genre, Bartosz Waglewski/Fisz, nicely rendered by Tofi at Art-Line in Rybnik, Poland. After the jump, his older brother, Emade, a hip-hop producer as well.

See more in Music Tattoos (Tattoos)

This is the Girl


Meltbanana sends in this photo of her new “Zombie Elvis” tattoo. It’s a very well done piece, so I mean absolutely no disrespect whatsoever, but I had no idea Zombie Elvis looks so much like alive David Lynch. That’s good, though, because I wasn’t planning on sleeping for the next 50 years anyway.

(Tattoo by Marco Lari at Quetzal Tattoo in Milan, Italy.)

See more in Sci-Fi Tattoos (Tattoos)