A black-and-white photo of a person mid-air in a Superman-style body suspension pose, supported by multiple hooks in their back and legs, smiling joyfully toward the camera. They are suspended horizontally in a large indoor space with high ceilings and visible rigging. A group of onlookers—some seated, some standing—watch with expressions of admiration, amusement, and support. The atmosphere is lively and communal, capturing a moment of shared experience and transformation.
  • The Empire Strikes Back…with Tequila!

    This tattoo of a Stormtrooper decorated like a sugar skull was done by Robert Fraser of Infamous Ink. I don’t know what the client had in mind when they decided on this piece, but for some odd reason it just makes me happy.

    I figure it would make me quite the arsehole if I did not  share my weird found happiness with modblog readers on a cold Monday morning, so here you have it!

    subit687390


  • Howie has infiltrated the prison system!

    Well maybe not, but the procedure of eyeball tattooing that he has been known to perform has.

    Thanks to  Allen Falkner for passing on this video to me.


  • Better Late Than Never News

    Here I am with your weekend update, what I will now refer to as your “better late than never news”.

    What would news be without some celebrity gossip? Apparently, Katie wants a tattoo, but Tom says, I don’t think so! Charlie Sheen is having some personal problems but his tattoos seem to be the topic of discussion. I’ve seen several reports on his recent spat with his (probably soon to be ex) wife and nearly every one talks about his tattoos. Of course, most importantly, Miley Cyrus wants Taylor Swift to get a tattoo. Whatever you do, don’t let Kanye find out!

    Ok, now that we’ve taken care of that, let’s move on to some real news:

    An exhibition in Philadelphia is tracing the history of tattoos and sailors. The exhibition runs until February 7th so if you’re in the area, check it out and let us know what you thought.

    In California, an Air Force recruit, whose tattoos caused some controversy, has finally been sworn in. The Air Force is continuing to look at the issue of tattoos and whether or not to develop some kind of policy about them.

    Here’s the kind of story I love, about a 78 year old lady who just got her first tattoo.

    In Orlando, a firefighter’s tattoo has inspired a line of clothing.

    Finally, I was just sent a link to this story, that interviews a mother who, along with her husband, is being charged with cruelty to a child after they gave 6 of their 7 children homemade tattoos. They used a homemade machine to “draw” the tattoos on, as the article says, using a guitar string as a needle. The youngest of the children is ten years old. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking the guitar string wasn’t autoclaved and the risk to their children goes beyond some poorly done tattoos. What’s your opinion?


  • Vote for Bob Roberts

    Happy New Year to everyone! I was checking out Juxtapoz.com and noticed that Bob Roberts was nominated for inclusion in the top 100 moments of 2009.

    Voting is still in progress but I wanted to ask Modblog readers to help vote up an icon in our community because he deserves the recognition for all that he has done and continues to do for the tattooing community.

    Click here to vote!

    100. Bob Roberts: Alive at Canvas LA, Los Angeles
    This may have been the first show we went to this year where a jaw-dropped. Haven’t never seen a Bob Roberts’ piece of the size that were on display at Canvas LA, these pieces were like keys to an entire generation of artists who followed the man.


  • Do you Wiki?

    I don’t know if how many of you know this but BME has its own Wiki. While there is a wealth of information on it, there is always more to add and entries to clean up. If you’d like to help out, consider signing up for a free SSO account. This will give you access to edit entries on the BME wiki.

    Take a look through it to see how things are done. Read the “Intro Help File“. Since the Wiki was create we have wanted it to be an all encompassing body modification reference. While there is a wealth of information about various body modifications entries for films, books, television shows and even celebrities remain sparse. Please consider contributing information in these categories if they happen to be something you know a fair bit about. Templates exist for film and television pages. I plan to create similar templates for adding people relatively soon and any old pages under these categories will need to be edited for uniformity.

    If you’re new to editing Wikis, have a look at this off-site Media Wiki Guide. If you’re an IAM member, there is even a Wiki Editors Forum. (I accidentally deleted the previous version of this forum but it’s definitely the place to go with questions.) Much like Wikipedia, entries are on the BME Wiki are monitored to ensure no vandalism occurs and that all entries are relevant BME content.

    Every little bit helps, like checking for broken links, fixing layouts and doing grammar and spelling checks as many of the old BME Encyclopedia entries that were migrated over when the Wiki was born still need to be cleaned up. Even if you don’t feel that editing the Wiki is something you would enjoy, pop over and check it out.


  • When hairstylists get even…

    This is why you should always tip your hairstylist!  Aside from a large gauge tongue piercing (equipped with tint brush jewellery), we also get some nice 2ga nostrils.

    subit688014


  • 2009 BME Year End Awards

    Happy New Year!! Let’s start this off by giving away free stuff!

    It must have been the year I turned 21 that each day started by passing more and more quickly. I remember being 12 thinking I”d never be 16, then 18, then 21 and now I’m 4 months away from being 30. It means another year of growing BME has come and gone. It seems like the 2008 Awards were posted just a few days ago but it’s been a year. A whole year. We’ve seen so many ups and downs. This year marks the largest contribution by one person over the course of a year, which is also the largest contribution by one person during a year in the history of BME. There are also a couple faces here from last year that we couldn’t kick off the leader boards if we tried. Perk900, I’m talking to you, let’s see you get first place next year!! With this being the last day of 2009, I figured I’d kick it off right and present the 2009 Year End Contributor Awards!

    You’ll also note that if you check the leader boards you’ll see different people listed in the top ten for image contributions than are listed below. Our 2nd and 3rd place winner is actually the same person so they’ve been combined and Jen gets disqualified and doesn’t get to win a contributor staff shirt because she already gets one for being staff! That moves everybody up one or two spots and that’s how we’ve come up with the list below.

    If you are on the list, you’ll be contacted by me personally. If you don’t hear from me, check your spam or please email me with your address and shirt size to [email protected]. We will be sending out a very special surprise to the top contributor in each section!

    I’m throwing in some BME trivia for you all to enjoy as well:

    BME Facts:
    Photos: 4,493,138
    Experiences: 46,980
    Videos: 7,942 (plus more that have been posted on Modblog!)
    Posts on Modblog: 8,061
    Comments on Modblog alone: 177,491
    Average Daily Modblog readers; 112,387
    Tattoo & Piercing Shops listed on 411.BME: 10,680 (not including the shops that are pending verification
    Countries with users on BME: 70
    Ask.BME answers: 1,083 (not including the previous version of the QOD)
    Ask.BME comments: 2,870

    There are tons of other things I haven’t included but I just wanted to show what we have all built together and thank you all again for contributing to BME and making the site what it is today.

    TOP 10 IMAGE CONTRIBUTORS

    1. 45,802 images

    number1

    Kitano Karyuudo

    See the rest of this year’s top contributors after the break!


    2. 15,488 images
    number2
    kokomi.3k
    3. 2,717 images

    Perk900
    4. 1.014 images

    Alienboy
    5. 872 images
    number6
    UREA
    6. 626 images
    image71
    China Tattoo Portfolio
    7. 577images

    Allen Falkner
    8. 560 images
    number9
    LilFunky1
    9. 559 images
    number10
    JOSEPH DOWNUNDER
    10. 473 images
    number10image
    Thou_Art

    TOP 9 EXPERIENCE CONTRIBUTORS


    1
    . 7 experiences

    Devro


    2. 7 experiences
    expnumber2
    Larry666

    3. 6 experiences (tie)

    Bluestar

    3. 6 experiences (tie)
    expnumber3missbrutal
    MissBrutal
    4. 5 experiences (tie)
    exp4hoboqueenhoboqueen

    4. 5 experiences (tie)
    exp4scrletroseScarlettRose
    4. 5 experiences (tie)
    exp4dear29

    dear29

    4. 5 experiences (tie)
    exp4sevendaze
    sevendaze

    4. 5 experiences (tie)
    exp4ycul

    Ycul







    Experience Reviewers:

    I wanted to add in a special thank you to our reviewing volunteers who vote on experiences so they can be added to the site. Without them, Jen and I would be reading a lot of experiences and going cross eyed. Experience reviewers earn credits towards limited edition tshirts through out the year. The 25 linked are logged by experience reviews for all time, not broken down by year which is why they’re generally not included in the Year End Awards but I wanted to give them some extra recognition and say thank you again for the reviewing that you do. I appreciate it a lot.

    EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

    Tiff Badhairdo
    Ask.BME staff

    Meg Barber
    Roundtable member,
    BMEshop

    Brian Decker
    Roundtable member

    Stephen DeToma
    Roundtable member

    Allen Falkner
    Roundtable, Author

    Ferg
    Author

    Russ Foxx
    Ask.BME staff

    Ron Garza
    Roundtable, Author

    Warren Hiller
    Ask.BME staff

    Derek Lowe
    Ask.BME, Roundtable

    John Joyce
    Roundtable member

    Paul King
    Author

    Lexci Million
    Ask.BME staff

    Ryan Ouellette
    Ask.BME, Roundtable

    Sean Philips
    Ask.BME staff, Modblog

    Shawn Porter
    Ask.BME, Author

    Efix Roy
    Ask.BME staff

    Joy Rumore
    Roundtable

    Lori St. Leone
    Ask.BME staff

    Steve Truitt
    Roundtable member

    James Weber
    APP Author

    Since everyone works from home, I’m not able to give each and every one of them a huge hug and say thank you for all the help that they do behind the scenes in making BME such a great place, not to mention keeping it updated, the servers running properly and the members happy! If you can, drop them a line and say thanks! Without them, I’d probably go crazier than I already am!

    BME STAFF



    Phil Barbosa

    Image processing, party
    planning, mustache rides


    Mike Brum

    Server maintenance,
    TOS banhammer


    Jen Savage
    Customer service,
    loud noises


    RETIRED BME STAFF



    Jordan Ginsberg
    Former Witty Guy who took amost two
    years of beatdowns courtesy of
    Modblog

    RooRaaah Crumbs
    BMEvideo


    Tristan Henry-Wilson
    Designer Extroidinarre, whom we
    call upon from time to time!


    Jonathon Marshall
    Our thanks still go out to Jon who helps us
    whenever we need him!


    jasongrazer
    Jason
    Former Admin

    shannon2
    Shannon Larratt
    BME’s founder and former EIC

    I can’t thank everyone enough for continuing to support BME, not only the site itself but the community that it has fostered over the years. I look forward to a new year with new goals, obstacles and hopefully many many triumphs. The first one being the long overdue launch of the new Beta BME Galleries, then the rest of BME and finally the transition of IAM onto the new software. I’ll be able to start adding new features, aside from the ones already implemented in the new site, and BME can continue to grow while giving itself back to the community where it belongs. I can’t wait!

    I also wanted to give a special thank you to the people who have contributed to BME’s Legal Defense Fund. To date we’ve raised $1,470.00, which certainly helps. As I’ve mentioned before any and cost recovered if we’re awarded attorney’s fees will be donated to BME’s Legal Defense Fund that I’ve started to help defend the body modification community at large.

    And now what you’ve all been waiting for, this year’s award is the t-shirt below! I wanted to figure out how to make a shirt that said “I was a top contributor to BME and all I got was a bag of dicks!” but Alie K. came up with this great design! Check more of her work out at GoodTattoos.ca if you want to get tattooed by her or need someone to do design work. She’s come up with more than a few gems for BMEshop.

    sausage-party-mockup-shirt

    Rachel Larratt

    * * *



  • Last post of 2009!

    The ball in Times Square is about to drop and Tim’s balls look like they are about to explode!

    rsz_jnv5-5-full-to-bursting-censored

    Whether you celebrate tonight by ingesting alcohol or injecting saline (or neither) have a safe, fun night and a great start to 2010. I hope to continue entertaining, educating, challenging and disturbing modblog readers throughout 2010. Here’s a sampling of what I have in store for 2010:

    -An in depth look into the life of BME’s punk rock anti-hero perk900.

    -Lots more From The Vault features.

    -Interviews with some of the most fascinating people on BME who most would never hear of otherwise. I really want to get one with Tiger shark man a true man of the sea, who lives on a boat and has filed his own teeth down to be more shark like.

    -I will continue to use words like “taint” just so Ian McKown will continue to have something to bitch about.

    -And of course, plenty of sexy women, modified genitals and tattoos that make you go “hmmmm”.

    Obviously, you can see the non-censored picture from Tim’s BME Hard bonus gallery by simply clicking through.

    rsz_jnv5-5-full-to-bursting


  • Demons to some. Angels to others.

    Continuing the theme of “why you should visit Montreal” are these incredible portraits by Melissa Valiquette out of Sin City in Montreal.

    subit686455

    One more after the jump.

    subit686457


  • Crunchy!

    Coming to you from Poland is this delicious diamond filled strawberry.  The calf belongs to Factorygirl and credit for the ink goes to Slawek, in Poznao, Poland.

    iam00435897