Rotating Suspensions

360animation I’ve always been told that rotating or “rotisserie” are the most horribly painful suspensions you can do. I was just talking to Jason from Third Eye Perception Flesh Suspension out of Austin, Texas (or online at thirdeyeperception.com) about his — that’s him in the animated GIF on your right, which is nabbed from the video below of the 360 degree vertical rotating suspension (followed by an earlier horizontal rotation video of Tom Moore, recorded by Jared Anderson, just so you can see both), and he elaborates,

The 360 was the most horrifying yet peaceful moment of my life. I have never been an emotional person during any suspension, but as soon as the first hook pierced me, I was flooded with emotions and literally cried the entire time I was being pierced. The amount of people helping and contributing humbled me beyond expectation. Being tensioned into it — instead of the traditional method of rigging in — felt as if I was being torn into various pieces, but it also made me feel a bit more secure that I wouldn’t fly out of the device. As soon as I gave in and started spinning the pain was beyond anything else I have ever done, and I stopped after a few rotations. Once I stopped, I restarted and began spinning backwards, which is when I felt amazingly calm.

At the upcoming Suscon he’s planning a rotisserie, and after that will be exploring more suspensions along the same theme — maybe a full-on XYZ gyroscope. All of the fabrication of these impressive suspension rigs is by Tom Moore, an essential part of making these unique suspensions possible. Others contributed as well, for example, Emrys Yetz put together the tensioning rig, a ratchet set up (which Jason admits drove him insane because of the clicking noise, but getting the tensioning balanced and tight is what makes this suspension bearable).

Tongue Splitting in the EVIL DEAD remake

A trailer for the new “Evil Dead” remake was played at and leaked from ComicCon, and it “wallows in limb-severing and tongue-splitting” because apparently when you are driven into evil madness, it expresses itself with DIY body modification. Tell me something I didn’t already know by the time I was summoning demons at age eight while sticking needles in my unmentionables. Anyway, here’s a screencap, and you can watch the cam-leak in the attached video as well — the tongue splitting is the highlight knockout punch that they put right at the very end of the trailer to seal the deal. Because you know there’s nothing more fucked up than someone splitting their own tongue. Gotta love mainstreaminbg and gentrification.

[Edit: The video has been pulled, unsurprisingly, so you’ll have to wait for the official trailer to be posted or make due with the thumbnails I snagged. At least they should be legal fair use, not that this stops people from filing over-reaching DMCA takedown demands…]

Three weeks of The Modified World

I realized today that lately I’ve neglected to feature J.C. Potts’s “The Modified World” when it airs on Friday nights. I have so much respect for what J.C. is doing with his videos, and think they’re an incredibly valuable contribution to body modification culture. As I’ve said before, if it wasn’t for one important fact I’d do everything in my power to have Rachel offer him a job at BME and have ModBlog host his videos rather than just linking to them. But that big important fact is that one of the things that makes J.C. so valuable is that he is a true independent, and is beholden to no one other than himself. He’s not afraid to say what he feels needs to be said. I can’t say I agree with every word he’s spoken — although I do more often than not — but I can say emphatically that he’s an intelligent person whose opinions and knowledge I always take the time consider. He’s broadening horizons and spreading the gospel of the modified world for the betterment of this community, and I hope he continues finding the energy to produce “The Modified World” for a long time to come.

Anyway, his most recent show is a continuation in his excellent body jewelry series, this week focusing on Glass Body Jewelry Basics — a follow-up to his earlier introduction to wood body jewelry — seven minutes of stuff every piercing lover needs to know (about four or five minutes of actual “meat” — as he admits, there’s not all that much to say about glass). As a side comment, beautiful production and editing on this show as always — even though it’s only seven minutes of video, serious time and effort went into creating it. This is a true “television show”, not some vlog with a kid rambling into his webcam.

As I write this, Rachel is still moving BMEshop to its new location, but she carries some beautiful glass jewelry made by our old friend Jason from Gorilla Glass.

The glass video was admittedly brief, so hopefully you’re hungering for more. The previous week saw a quick interview with Jared Silverman, a St. Louis-based professional piercer. Personally I like the long videos and you may recall my interviews on BMEradio were often well over an hour, but five minutes is admittedly much easier to fit into your day. This interview I think will be of great interest especially to people thinking about a career in piercing. I also always enjoy interviews from different areas because it gives me a peek into the way this culture that’s so dear to my heart expresses itself in different geographies.

That’s actually part two from an earlier video from the same day that I won’t embed here but you can follow a link to it. It shows you what J.C. got himself up to in St. Louis both as a tourist, and while doing a guest spot at TRX.

But I also wanted to feature another interview that J.C. did a week before that one, with young but very sharp piercer Courtney Maxwell — she’s no stranger to ModBlog either, as you may remember from this charming older client and even a guess where (adult) that better shows off her skill-set — who recently set up a site for professionals to share information via a private forum without the restrictions of being on something like Facebook (that is, she’s seeking to create a safe space). Another great interview that I again would really recommend to people interested in becoming a piercer.

Wood Body Jewelry Facts [The Modified World]

J.C. Potts is back with another excellent weekly video magazine, this time talking about wood body — design, safety, and so on. I’d beg Rachel to offer J.C. a job here at BME if it weren’t for the fact that I think one of his strengths as a journalist is that he’s truly independent — he’s not sponsored by any website or company, so he can speak freely and without bias or influence. Always worth watching. I’ll keep on mentioning it here, but if you’re a YouTube member, you need to subscribe.

Things to come..

I mentioned last week that I was working on a video interview series. We’ve filmed 6 video interviews so far and those are sitting on the video editing box as we speak. This is a quick snapshot that I took from my camera on my laptop. Our first interview is with Trevor McStay. He flew all the way from Australia to tattoo me and get interviewed. We then followed him up to the San Jose Tattoo Convention where we were lucky enough to get to do interviews with Bugs, Henning Jørgensen, Mike Rubendall, Jeff Croci and other amazing tattooers. I look forward to posting these video interviews and if you’ve got other amazing artists you’d like to see interviewed, please post their names in the comments section.

Quick Photo

VIMBY Video: Miya Bailey

Miya Bailey from City of Ink likes to inspire and be inspired; he’s constantly surrounding himself with art and creative minds. He’s also been featured in Inked Magazine, Urban Ink, Blackmen Magazine, The Source, and many others.

City of Ink Tattoo Shop and Art Gallery
Castleberry Hill District
323 Walker Street
Atlanta, GA 30313
(404) 525-4INK [4456]

VIMBY Video: MSK / AWR L.A. Art Show


VIMBY was at Canvas LA for one of their blow-out shows called “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money…”, a group show by MSK x AWR to raise money for a good cause. The gallery featured work by Revok, Augor, Ewok, Risk, and many other amazing graffiti artists.

Related links:
www.canvasla.com
www.theseventhletterstore.com
www.knowngallery.com
Ewok on VIMBY
Risk on VIMBY