Showing posts with label a sailor's not a sailor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a sailor's not a sailor. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Down for the count.
On Saturday, 2 friends and I went to visit Paul, so he could push some ink into our skin.
Curly decides he wants to go second. So Jay goes first and gets a tattoo on the back of his neck. Quick and painless, like an old ink veteran.
Next, Paul draws up the stencil for our first-timer, slaps it on his arm and then Curly plunks down in the chair, ready for his first tattoo ever.
Paul gets two lines done and notices Curly starting to fidget and get clammy.
Paul asks how he's doing, and Curly says " I think I'm gonna..." and before he can finish his sentence it's LIGHTS OUT!
Curly passed out cold.
He's only out for maybe a minute. All of a sudden, Curly's eyes shoot open, he forgets where he is and what's going on, and starts flailing his arms around, mumbling "I gotta get out of here! I gotta get out of here," while trying to jump out of the chair. He's flailing his arms around so wildly that Paul thinks he's going to punch him. Paul is blocking his head so Curly doesn't deck him, Jay is laughing and I'm running around looking for orange juice. (Orange juice is really good to drink during tattoo sessions as it's high sugar content is great for replenishing energy that you use up when your body fights the tattoo pain. Also, it's delicious.)
Paul keeps saying, "Curly. Curly. Don't try to get up, you'll just fall over. Curly. Curly." Finally, Paul just grabs him by the shoulders and pushes him into the seat so he doesn't start running around and injure himself.
Curly then realizes where he is, settles down, and apologizes. Paul assures him that it happens sometimes, and not to worry. Paul gets him some cool towels for his neck and face, and some orange juice to drink.
Half an hour later, Paul starts again on Curly's arm and it was no problem. He's already talking about getting another one. hehehe
Curly decides he wants to go second. So Jay goes first and gets a tattoo on the back of his neck. Quick and painless, like an old ink veteran.
Next, Paul draws up the stencil for our first-timer, slaps it on his arm and then Curly plunks down in the chair, ready for his first tattoo ever.
Paul gets two lines done and notices Curly starting to fidget and get clammy.
Paul asks how he's doing, and Curly says " I think I'm gonna..." and before he can finish his sentence it's LIGHTS OUT!
Curly passed out cold.
He's only out for maybe a minute. All of a sudden, Curly's eyes shoot open, he forgets where he is and what's going on, and starts flailing his arms around, mumbling "I gotta get out of here! I gotta get out of here," while trying to jump out of the chair. He's flailing his arms around so wildly that Paul thinks he's going to punch him. Paul is blocking his head so Curly doesn't deck him, Jay is laughing and I'm running around looking for orange juice. (Orange juice is really good to drink during tattoo sessions as it's high sugar content is great for replenishing energy that you use up when your body fights the tattoo pain. Also, it's delicious.)
Paul keeps saying, "Curly. Curly. Don't try to get up, you'll just fall over. Curly. Curly." Finally, Paul just grabs him by the shoulders and pushes him into the seat so he doesn't start running around and injure himself.
Curly then realizes where he is, settles down, and apologizes. Paul assures him that it happens sometimes, and not to worry. Paul gets him some cool towels for his neck and face, and some orange juice to drink.
Half an hour later, Paul starts again on Curly's arm and it was no problem. He's already talking about getting another one. hehehe
Sunday, December 30, 2007
what?
On friday I took my Father to get a tattoo, which came out really well. It's beautiful. But this isn't about the tattoo, it's about the loons that wander in and out of the shop all day. The shop is in an odd little part of town and there are always guys with varying degrees of sketchiness roaming around.
I'm sitting there chatting with Paul and then I notice some guy shuffling around.
His shirt read "WILL WORK FOR RABIES."
I don't have any idea what that means.
I'm sitting there chatting with Paul and then I notice some guy shuffling around.
His shirt read "WILL WORK FOR RABIES."
I don't have any idea what that means.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
I wish I was kidding...
This actually occured:
random stranger: Do you know Kat?
me: kat who?
random stranger: Kat Von D.
me: I know who she is, yeah.
random stranger: No, i mean do you guys hang out and stuff?
me: uh. eh. no. why?
random stranger: Well, you know it looks like you know her.
me: um?
random stranger: cuz, you know, you've got tattoos.
me: I have to go now.
What is wrong with people?
random stranger: Do you know Kat?
me: kat who?
random stranger: Kat Von D.
me: I know who she is, yeah.
random stranger: No, i mean do you guys hang out and stuff?
me: uh. eh. no. why?
random stranger: Well, you know it looks like you know her.
me: um?
random stranger: cuz, you know, you've got tattoos.
me: I have to go now.
What is wrong with people?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Waste of words...
The following article, reprinted here from bostonglobe.com, is quite possibly the worst article about tattooing I have ever read. The author apparently has done absolutley no research about the topic before attempting to scribe something worth reading, and instead fumbles around for paragraphs spewing cliches and even goes so far as to refer to patrons in a parlor as "extraterrestrials."
The whole article reads like it was written in 1952. Ugh.
Why this author would even bother to take on this subject, when he obviously holds such archaic thoughts regarding it and is unwilling to reconsider his opinions, I have no idea.
I pity Ram for having to even waste his time being a part of this....
The colors of success
People line up to be this tattooist's canvas
By Sam Allis, Globe Columnist | June 17, 2007
Last week I watched Fat Ram skateboard up to his tattoo parlor in Hyde Square embracing an air conditioner. You just don't see that every day on the streets of Boston, not even in J.P.
But then Ram (pronounced "rahm") has always lived in a parallel universe. He used to wear a suit or tux every Friday during his estimable "Formal Fridays" campaign to ridicule the "Casual Fridays" instituted by corporate America.
Ram is covered with freckles and tattoos. He is a robust mix of Lithuanian, Irish, and Scottish, leavened by something exotic from the West Indies. He's a skateboard and surfing addict. Spent last weekend on the waves off Nantucket.
How was the surfing, I ask. "It was sick," he says. "Is that good?" I ask. "Yes," he says.
Ram is widely considered Boston's primo tattoo artist. The waiting list to see him can run a year, and people come from far and wide for his talents. Now 35, he's been tattooing for 20 years -- underground on occasion in Massachusetts before tattooing was legalized here in 2001 -- and above ground from Texas to Virginia, New Hampshire to Rhode Island. His shop, Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo, was the first licensed tattoo parlor in Boston.
Upon entering it for the first time, the Observer is convinced he has stumbled into the space bar in "Star Wars." It is full of strange-looking people sporting strange-looking haircuts wearing strange-looking clothes with really strange-looking stuff all over their bodies.
That said, it should be noted that I, outré in khakis, blue shirt, and sensible shoes, look every bit as bizarre to them. Ozzie Nelson meets the extraterrestrials.
You generalize at your peril these days about tattoo clientele. Yes, a guy can still walk into a tattoo parlor near a military base at midnight and get a SS Death's Head on his forearm. And you still hear about someone who went into a blackout after the fifth bar and woke up with "Shirley" written across a red heart on his groin.
But it's old news that tattoos have migrated to the right side of the tracks. They've been de rigueur for ages from Hollywood to the Hamptons. They're ubiquitous in the world of J. Crew and Armani. What may soon define cutting edge will be an adult without one.
Ram works on countless doctors and lawyers who should recoil from tattoos like vampires to garlic. Wrong. "You have no idea who's sporting what," he says.
Ram's clients take their tattoos seriously. They want something profound. An 81-year-old man got a small tattoo on his arm from Ram in memory of the beloved wife he had just lost.
Lew Loren, 41, an engineer from Medford is getting his entire back covered. "It came pretty easily," he says. "I talked to my wife about it for about six weeks. I wanted to tell a story that will be aesthetically pleasing."
In it will be a star, representing Stella, their young daughter who died. There will be a lily to honor the name of the South Korean child he and his wife adopted. There will be a moon for his wife, Diana. Anchoring everything will be a large likeness of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant deity Loren calls the mover of obstacles and protector of women.
"When we finally brought a child home, we wanted to commemorate it in some way," he says.
Today, Loren undergoes a grueling three-hour session to get the outlines down. Then he faces four more marathons of another four hours each for the coloration and detail work.
Does it hurt, I ask.
"It stings," Ram says.
"It feels horrible," Loren corrects.
Does he feel strange getting his back covered? Nope. "My friends have always been a couple of deviations from the norm," he replies. "I don't hang out with people who judge me on my appearance."
And then there's Dane Loeliger, 26, a long-ball hitter who is having Ram extend on his upper right arm a tattoo that began on his left one and will eventually end up at his right wrist. "I'll get my back done as soon as I have the money," he says. What about parents? "They're not big fans."
Loeliger's tattoo tells the saga of a lone samurai and a child. In this latest chapter, explains Ram, "There's a demon guy mashing people into a pestle." (Loeliger, who runs a mouse colony of 1,200 rodents at Harvard Medical School, sports a T-shirt that displays, in his own words, "spiders having sex with people.")
The Observer was delighted to learn the classic tattoos common to generations of American servicemen -- anchors, pinups, hearts -- are back. "They're huge," confirms Ram, who calls them "neo-traditional." "Simple color palette, bold outline, heavy shading. There are people who do that exclusively."
Tattoos have always spooked me, and I've hectored my daughter for years to avoid them or face immediate death. So far, so good. She's 24 and inkless. I tell her: Picture yourself in your 40s. You're at a nice dinner party. Killer black dress, fab heels, pearls if you're lucky. And a coil of barbed wire tattooed around your arm. Nonono.
I, however, subscribe to the school that says you can do anything you want when you hit 60, which I have done.
The whole article reads like it was written in 1952. Ugh.
Why this author would even bother to take on this subject, when he obviously holds such archaic thoughts regarding it and is unwilling to reconsider his opinions, I have no idea.
I pity Ram for having to even waste his time being a part of this....
The colors of success
People line up to be this tattooist's canvas
By Sam Allis, Globe Columnist | June 17, 2007
Last week I watched Fat Ram skateboard up to his tattoo parlor in Hyde Square embracing an air conditioner. You just don't see that every day on the streets of Boston, not even in J.P.
But then Ram (pronounced "rahm") has always lived in a parallel universe. He used to wear a suit or tux every Friday during his estimable "Formal Fridays" campaign to ridicule the "Casual Fridays" instituted by corporate America.
Ram is covered with freckles and tattoos. He is a robust mix of Lithuanian, Irish, and Scottish, leavened by something exotic from the West Indies. He's a skateboard and surfing addict. Spent last weekend on the waves off Nantucket.
How was the surfing, I ask. "It was sick," he says. "Is that good?" I ask. "Yes," he says.
Ram is widely considered Boston's primo tattoo artist. The waiting list to see him can run a year, and people come from far and wide for his talents. Now 35, he's been tattooing for 20 years -- underground on occasion in Massachusetts before tattooing was legalized here in 2001 -- and above ground from Texas to Virginia, New Hampshire to Rhode Island. His shop, Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo, was the first licensed tattoo parlor in Boston.
Upon entering it for the first time, the Observer is convinced he has stumbled into the space bar in "Star Wars." It is full of strange-looking people sporting strange-looking haircuts wearing strange-looking clothes with really strange-looking stuff all over their bodies.
That said, it should be noted that I, outré in khakis, blue shirt, and sensible shoes, look every bit as bizarre to them. Ozzie Nelson meets the extraterrestrials.
You generalize at your peril these days about tattoo clientele. Yes, a guy can still walk into a tattoo parlor near a military base at midnight and get a SS Death's Head on his forearm. And you still hear about someone who went into a blackout after the fifth bar and woke up with "Shirley" written across a red heart on his groin.
But it's old news that tattoos have migrated to the right side of the tracks. They've been de rigueur for ages from Hollywood to the Hamptons. They're ubiquitous in the world of J. Crew and Armani. What may soon define cutting edge will be an adult without one.
Ram works on countless doctors and lawyers who should recoil from tattoos like vampires to garlic. Wrong. "You have no idea who's sporting what," he says.
Ram's clients take their tattoos seriously. They want something profound. An 81-year-old man got a small tattoo on his arm from Ram in memory of the beloved wife he had just lost.
Lew Loren, 41, an engineer from Medford is getting his entire back covered. "It came pretty easily," he says. "I talked to my wife about it for about six weeks. I wanted to tell a story that will be aesthetically pleasing."
In it will be a star, representing Stella, their young daughter who died. There will be a lily to honor the name of the South Korean child he and his wife adopted. There will be a moon for his wife, Diana. Anchoring everything will be a large likeness of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant deity Loren calls the mover of obstacles and protector of women.
"When we finally brought a child home, we wanted to commemorate it in some way," he says.
Today, Loren undergoes a grueling three-hour session to get the outlines down. Then he faces four more marathons of another four hours each for the coloration and detail work.
Does it hurt, I ask.
"It stings," Ram says.
"It feels horrible," Loren corrects.
Does he feel strange getting his back covered? Nope. "My friends have always been a couple of deviations from the norm," he replies. "I don't hang out with people who judge me on my appearance."
And then there's Dane Loeliger, 26, a long-ball hitter who is having Ram extend on his upper right arm a tattoo that began on his left one and will eventually end up at his right wrist. "I'll get my back done as soon as I have the money," he says. What about parents? "They're not big fans."
Loeliger's tattoo tells the saga of a lone samurai and a child. In this latest chapter, explains Ram, "There's a demon guy mashing people into a pestle." (Loeliger, who runs a mouse colony of 1,200 rodents at Harvard Medical School, sports a T-shirt that displays, in his own words, "spiders having sex with people.")
The Observer was delighted to learn the classic tattoos common to generations of American servicemen -- anchors, pinups, hearts -- are back. "They're huge," confirms Ram, who calls them "neo-traditional." "Simple color palette, bold outline, heavy shading. There are people who do that exclusively."
Tattoos have always spooked me, and I've hectored my daughter for years to avoid them or face immediate death. So far, so good. She's 24 and inkless. I tell her: Picture yourself in your 40s. You're at a nice dinner party. Killer black dress, fab heels, pearls if you're lucky. And a coil of barbed wire tattooed around your arm. Nonono.
I, however, subscribe to the school that says you can do anything you want when you hit 60, which I have done.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Painless Paulie
Went to visit an old friend this weekend....
...not surprisingly, I left with some art!
...not surprisingly, I left with some art!
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Rat-A-Tat-Tat...
On saturday, my friend Chet came down from New York to get a tattoo by my tattoo artist. I say "my" only because I've been getting work from him for 8 years and we've developed a nice friendship. I'm pretty much a walking portfolio of his work. If he ever retires, I'll lose my mind.
His shop is in Conneticut, and I'm in Boston-ish, so it's a nice drive to get there. I don't mind the drive at all. It sort of makes the experience special because I can't just go on a whim. The shop is far enough away that I need to plan a bit if I'm going to get a new tattoo. (Although on this trip, I'm not getting any new ink.. only Chet.)
At the shop, we set up a time-lapse camera and set it to take an image every ten seconds. This equals less frames per second than traditional animation, so the effect was pretty neat. The two hour tattoo became roughly a thirty second quirky little video, with the tattoo machine moving so fast that it looks as if Chet's arm is simply being sketched on with a marker.
If I can figure out how to add video to this blog, I'll post it here. I'm not that adept at coding or techie-type things, so don't hold your breath.
His shop is in Conneticut, and I'm in Boston-ish, so it's a nice drive to get there. I don't mind the drive at all. It sort of makes the experience special because I can't just go on a whim. The shop is far enough away that I need to plan a bit if I'm going to get a new tattoo. (Although on this trip, I'm not getting any new ink.. only Chet.)
At the shop, we set up a time-lapse camera and set it to take an image every ten seconds. This equals less frames per second than traditional animation, so the effect was pretty neat. The two hour tattoo became roughly a thirty second quirky little video, with the tattoo machine moving so fast that it looks as if Chet's arm is simply being sketched on with a marker.
If I can figure out how to add video to this blog, I'll post it here. I'm not that adept at coding or techie-type things, so don't hold your breath.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Some unrelated rambling...
So, I'm feeling better...not great, but better. I'm taking it easy this week, because I've set a move in date for July 30th, and I want to be fully recovered by then. Moving House is the bane of my existence as it is, and I can only imagine how awful moving will be if I still feel under the weather.
I've been taking a car-load of junk to my house everyday, so that by July 30th, I'll only be moving furniture.
This is the plan anyway... It's amazing how much stuff I've accumulated over the years. I have a problem where I like to collect things. Things like interesting packaging, amusing images clipped from magazines, clothing that doesn't even fit anymore....
I'm hoping there is some sort of support group somewhere for pack-rats.
And now for something different...
The Genius behind www.needled.com has a great article posted on www.bmezine.com. You can read the article by visiting here... http://www.bmezine.com/news/edit/A60719/artwhati.html
In addition to being really well-written and amusing, I also find the article to be really accurate in the experiences it documents. Although I've noticed that I get less mouth-agape stares from people gawking at my artwork in recent years than I have, say five years ago, I still encounter similar situations to those mentioned in the article.
Uh, I'm rambling, but cut me some slack..
I'm under the weather.
I've been taking a car-load of junk to my house everyday, so that by July 30th, I'll only be moving furniture.
This is the plan anyway... It's amazing how much stuff I've accumulated over the years. I have a problem where I like to collect things. Things like interesting packaging, amusing images clipped from magazines, clothing that doesn't even fit anymore....
I'm hoping there is some sort of support group somewhere for pack-rats.
And now for something different...
The Genius behind www.needled.com has a great article posted on www.bmezine.com. You can read the article by visiting here... http://www.bmezine.com/news/edit/A60719/artwhati.html
In addition to being really well-written and amusing, I also find the article to be really accurate in the experiences it documents. Although I've noticed that I get less mouth-agape stares from people gawking at my artwork in recent years than I have, say five years ago, I still encounter similar situations to those mentioned in the article.
Uh, I'm rambling, but cut me some slack..
I'm under the weather.
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