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Triggering this summertime selection of semiotic sidebars was the second Annual New York Tattoo Convention last month, unleashed once more within the many-chambered, multi-leveled honkytonkery of Times Square's Roseland Ballroom. Again the illustrated multitudes streamed into Roseland from all points of the globe....in a visually melliflous interplay of the seen, the seer and the scene.

Event Facilitator Clayton Patterson

Making their return to this kooky carnival of inked epidermis were such internationally known subluminaries as Hamburg's sexugenarian Tattoo Theo, and grizzled underground icon Spider Webb, whose role as a spokesman for the unspeakable dates back to the tattooed fetus so enduringly photographed by Charles Gatewood for 1981's Forbidden Photographs.

Out front on West 52nd Street, The Soft Toy Department came upon omnipresent flesh photog Gatewood himself, photographing a sinuous Pre-Raphaelette who coolly bared her bosom to the public gaze.

Mr. Gatewood Strikes Again

Standing by perhaps too watchfully for this flesh-filled public/private moment was Skin and Ink editor Bob Baxter. [BME readers may recall that this was the same Larry Flynt hireling who last year published in Skin and Ink -- along with a not-written-for-publication query letter sent by BME publisher Shannon Larratt -- a sneering tirade against non-tattoo body modification. Later, in a BME editorial, Shannon wrote off the "pseudo-slandering" with the observation that, "Magazines like International Tattoo do a far better job anyway."]

Another thumb-in-the-eye tabooist, Merle Allin, brother of the late GG Allin -- who perished in an unforgettable 1993 East Village overdose but lives on in the assortment of merchandise Merle had for sale that celebrated GG's brutish life and band, The Murder Junkies. Former Murder Junkies bassist Merle was looking sleek as ermine -- vastly better than he did in 1993's semi-posthumous GG Allin documentary Hated. [In a non-exclusive Soft Toy Department interview, Merle attributed his preternatural vivacity to giving up drugs, alcohol and cigarettes ]

Much of the credit for making the second New York City Tattoo Convention such a triumph of alternative entreprenurism and exhibitionism must go to the ever-intriguing Clayton Patterson, whose pedigree as a documentor and promoter of societal extremes dates back to his 1988 videos of the Tompkins Square Park riots -- videos that resulted in the indictments of numerous NYPD officers for brutality. Since then, Patterson appears to have recognized that the Tompkins Square Park of today and tomorrow is the human body itself. Not only has Patterson thrust his camcorder lens into some of the most shadowy human interstices of these times, but as an exhibitor -- and as Tattoo Society of New York founder -- he has hosted shows for such Modern Primitives-related artists as ManWoman and the inevitable Charles Gatewood.

"Most of the exhibitors recovered their expenses on the first day", summarized Patterson, "and many are already signed up for next year."

The Soft Toy Department salutes the New York Tattoo Convention for bringing proud flesh back to Times Square, if only for one weekend a year.

Merle Allin and Spider Webb

In a concurrent development, experts say that your piercings can KILL! That's right: According to researchers at the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., reported the New York Times , "Because body piercing involves breaching one of the body's main protective barriers -- the skin -- it brings with it a high risk of infection.... Bacterial endocarditis is a serious, difficult-to-treat, and potentially life-threatening condition." These warnings echoed an earlier Times item that scudded across The Soft Toy Department's desk in January: The American Dental Association passed a resolution to oppose oral piercing.. Warned the Association's president, "There can be nerve damage that affects the way you talk and swallow. When you swallow 2000 times a day on average, this can be a lifelong problem... To have someone push a needle...through a vascular part of your body -- the risk of disease has to be immense."

Bob Baxter: Call home!

But seriously, folks, are not the dangers of medically sanctioned soft-tissue intervention equally alarming?

What of the fiendish in-and-out that is liposuction?

Liposuction procedures typically remove five to 12 quarts of fat. And to accomplish this, the surgeon must pump in nearly the same amount of lidocaine. Revealed one expert to The Newspaper of Record: "The more fat you take out, the more trauma to the body. This is like an internal burn." And for the unlucky -- a prescription for DOOM!

Nevertheless, beauty knows no pain, and public relations strategies as smooth and deft as a surgeon's fingers are emphasizing the blithe everydayness of what they're now euphemistically calling "facework."

"Goodbye, power lunch. Hello, laser surgery", gushed the New York Post: Droves of image-conscious Gothamites are "skipping the arugula for an afternoon quickie under the knife, needle or laser beam".

Some, however, may wish they ordered the arugula. Warned one quotable New York expert: "Just because these procedures can be done in as short a period as lunchtime -- and don't require general anesthesia -- they should not be trivialized".

Those, however, who insist on trivializing these procedures should consult the Park Avenue cosmetic surgeon who estimated it would cost "$58,760 to make a 50 year old woman look like Barbie": "...$12,000 for liposuction on her thighs and an eye life, $3,000 for a 'mini face lift'...and $8,000 for a tummy tuck", plus sundry health-club expenses and plenty of arugula.

And this just in: Forcible-penectomy survivor John Wayne Bobbitt -- best known for the severed member to which he was surgically reattached -- has signed on for The Jim Rose Sideshow most recent European tour.

According to The New York Post's "Page Six", Bobbitt's resurrected meatplough won't be part of his act. Instead, there will be "light comedy, magic tricks and escape acts"...in an attempt to "rehabilitate Bobbitt's image."

Thus concludes the millenium's final mid-year Soft Toy Department. And remember: It's not just a job. It's a clip job. <snip>