BME: Body Modification Ezine

A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Author: Jordan Ginsberg

  • The Things That Carry Us

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg
    Photo Credit: Jerome Abramovitch / chapter9photography.com

    Three years ago, John Berg, now the president of marketing firm Taxi NYC, sent out the following message to the employees of another marketing firm, Bulldog New York:

    It is with profound sadness that we inform you that Keith Alexander, Bulldog New York’s head of technology, lost his life in a bike accident last evening. Bicycling was one of Keith’s newest passions. Those who knew Keith well saw the intensity and the enthusiasm he threw at new things that excited him. As with most of his passions, Keith was way into bicycling and its technology, history, mysticism and how it’s done at the very highest level. He had become a huge Lance Armstrong fan. These past weeks I would receive several links daily about Lance’s prospects in the Tour de France. There is no question that Keith died as he lived, doing something he absolutely loved.

    Keith was with us from the very beginning, committing himself to our success and was a steadfast presence helping us through the bumpy early days. We all loved Keith for his fiery determination, perfectionist qualities and huge heart. Bulldog New York will not be the same without him. We will miss him always.

    On this, the third anniversary of his death, I’ve invited some of Keith’s friends and loved ones to share memories, stories, and to comment on their lives over the past three years.

    * * *

    Sean Doyle:

    It is very hard for me to believe that it has been three years already.

    I’m not going to do the usual thing that people do on the anniversary of someone’s death and sit here telling stories about the person while they were still with us — there are plenty of other motherfuckers out there who will be better qualified to handle that angle for you.

    Instead, I’m going to tell you all a little secret, so hold tight and check this out:

    I don’t think a day goes by where I do not ask myself, “WWKAD?”

    That’s right, I said it. “What would KA do?” It happens to me almost instantaneously, in any and every situation. Not long after KA was killed, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Immediately, my mind raced to “WWKAD?” and I received the answer with the quickness: Drop it all and do the right thing by my father. And that is exactly what I did, no matter how hard or fucked up it was.

    When I got back to NYC after my father’s death, I needed a job and fast. So, my mind pulled out “WWKAD?” and I did what he taught me (and countless others) to do: I sort of conned my way into a job I wasn’t all-the-way qualified for. Once ensconced in that job, I took the rest of the advice and gave myself 90 days to learn how to do that job better than anyone else had ever done before me.

    And now?

    Now I run that company’s entire East Coast operations, and I do it better than anyone else ever has.

    This whole “WWKAD?” thing has pushed my monkey-ass to do everything I can to better myself every day. To no longer waste time and sit around feeling fucking sorry for myself when shit doesn’t necessarily go my way. Hell, if it wasn’t for “WWKAD?” I probably wouldn’t have got my act together and met my wife.

    It’s as if I have this little audio clip stuck in the tiniest portion of my brain that comes rumbling out of the darkness whenever adversity dares to show itself to me, and that clip is Keith’s voice, telling me to push further, to work harder, to learn more.

    I might not have know him as long as some, but the lessons he taught me will keep working that Brooklyn magic for the rest of my life.

    And you can bank on that shit.

    * * *

    Kathleen McGivney:

    Keith Alexander was the kind of person that is difficult to sum up in a paragraph. Hell, anyone would be hard pressed to try and summarize Keith in a Dostoevsky-length novel. I can’t begin to describe who he was, what he meant to me as a friend, or even share an anecdote without feeling that it doesn’t do him justice. The impact he had on the people who knew him was incredibly deep and long-lasting. I’ve heard some people say he was an asshole, but that really wasn’t it — he was just a straight shooter from Brooklyn who didn’t take shit from anybody and wouldn’t let friends or acquaintances just sit back and whine when things didn’t go their way. He enjoyed a good-natured ball-busting. If you were his friend and something went wrong, though, he’d go out of his way and drop everything to make sure you were okay. And then once you were, he’d bust your balls about it.

    I have learned lots of things from Keith, both from his life and from his death. From his life, I learned to never take shit from anybody, to look at things that others might see as setbacks as opportunities, and to bullshit my way through things I knew I could learn quickly. (One of Keith’s mantras: Give me 60 days, and I can learn it.) He encouraged me to take leaps of faith with my career, and it’s his encouragement that still drives me to take informed risks, like starting my own companies. From his death, I learned to never take anyone for granted, and not to ever put off things I wanted to do until later. Since he died, my relationships with my friends and family have gotten stronger, and I’ve strived to live every day to the fullest, just like he did.

    * * *

    Dee Snider:

    Dee Snider was researching his movie Strangeland when he met Keith. While visiting Gauntlet NYC and perusing the shop, Keith recognized him almost immediately, introduced himself and, when he found out Snider was making a movie heavily related to piercing, he invited Snider to come watch him pierce a client, then and there. Snider’s first piercing experience? A Prince Albert.

    “Thankfully,” Snider says, “Keith positioned himself between [the client and me], so at least I didn’t have to see this dude’s johnson.

    “But Keith realized that, and told me to ‘scooch over’ so I could see the whole process.”

    Though it was a bizarre occurrence, Snider says Keith’s bedside manner was stunning, so much so that he brought his six-month-old daughter, Cheyenne, to get her ears pierced by Keith. Snider, during the same visit, got his septum pierced, which went smoothly. As for Cheyenne’s piercings, though?

    “He was so nervous,” Snider says, laughing, “the placement was all wrong. We ended up having to take them out and had a dermatologist redo them.”

    Strangeland centered on a sadistic serial killer named Captain Howdy, played by Snider, who tortured his victims with bizarre body piercing techniques. Keith ended up serving as the film’s “piercing advisor,” a role Snider says Keith knew would draw backlash from the piercing community, and understandably — Snider admits that the character he created was borne from his own misconceptions.

    “I thought it was a self-mutilation thing,” Snider says of body modification, “something done in anger, something done to make you less attractive.” But Keith’s guidance changed his view of the community, and made him realize one thing in particular: This movie was going to piss off a lot of people. Knowing this, Snider readjusted his focus and sought to drive home the fact that Captain Howdy was an outsider, that he was not a member of the community, and that he was a bad guy who was tarnishing the reputation of pierced and tattooed people.

    Even still, Snider says, Keith knew people would fault him for his participation in the project, but he refused to compromise, refused to abandon the film.

    “He wouldn’t be pressured by what the population thought,” Snider says of Keith. “I think that maybe he resisted because of the pressure — that if people didn’t get on his case about it, he wouldn’t have cared so much.”

    The Many Faces of Keith Alexander

    Once they became acquainted, Snider told Keith he was planning on putting a band together to do some touring and to play some old Twisted Sister songs. Keith, being a fan of Snider’s and a well known musician in his own right (he was a founding member of Carnivore and Primal Scream NYC), seemed like a natural fit, and the resulting band — Dee Snider’s Sick Motherfuckers — ended up being built around Keith. On their first tour, when the tour bus hit Brooklyn to pick up Keith, he was dressed entirely in bright yellow. Says Snider,

    “This was the ‘yellow tour.’ We showed up, and he was wearing this yellow rain slicker, yellow hat, yellow everything. He looked like a yellow version of the Michelin Man. And he was as into technology as he was into yellow, apparently, so he had matching yellow walkie-talkies for us all, yellow CD players, everything. It was weird, but we went with it, because that was Keith.”

    When they came to pick up Keith for the next tour, he had “dropped 50 pounds, cut off all his hair and got a military cut. He looked like a fucking marine! But he was so passionate about these things, nobody would ever question it.”

    On the last tour Keith did with the band, he decided on another gimmick — one ostensibly more practical than the last.

    “That was the ‘poncho tour,’” Snider says, laughing. “Keith had somehow decided that the poncho was the single greatest accessory a man could wear. It was the most utilitarian item possible. It was warmth, it was comfort, it was a port in a storm, it was everything.

    “So we showed up in Brooklyn to pick him up for the tour, and there he was, wearing shorts, sandals, a cowboy hat and a poncho. He looked absolutely ridiculous.”

    * * *

    Liz Polay-Wettengel:

    If you ever went into a body modification-related online chat room prior to July 2005, you would have undoubtedly witnessed what seemed like an attack on someone with a question. The attacker would have been Keith. The secret to all of that vitriol? He was trying to make you think for yourself. He wasn’t just trying to be rude or mean — he was trying to help you learn. People thought he was just being vicious, but the truth of the matter is that he was the ultimate mentor.

    Keith was — and, in some sense, still is — my greatest teacher.

    The last three years have been hard. Not a single day goes by that I don’t think about him. I have had many accomplishments and joy since he has been gone. I changed my career, I had a beautiful baby boy whom we named Alexander, and I continue to have a happy marriage with my amazing husband. I have wonderful friends that I hold close and love.

    All of those things? Keith has been there every step of the way. Whispering in my ear: “You can do it,” Look it up and learn it, you will be teaching them in six months,” “Don’t let anyone else tell you what you can and cannot do,” “Live happy and surround yourself with great things.” All of his years of encouragement and teaching, and being my cheerleader (OK — that’s an amusing visual) are still with me.

    You see, Keith’s physical presence may be gone, and trust me, it is a huge, huge void in my life, but he is still with me every day. Cheering me on, encouraging me to learn and grow and challenge.

    I hope I can teach my son to be the kind of man Keith was. I hope I can teach him the things that Keith taught me. If I can do that — and I will do that; Keith would accept no less — then I can pass on the strength and the confidence that will allow him to become the great man I know he will be.

    I still miss Keith so much every day.

    * * *

    Shawn Porter:

    Weeks back, I committed to the task of transferring an aging VHS tape to a more secure digital file. I knew it wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world to do, but the thought of anything happening to this footage was worth the emotional ramifications. As I slid back in my chair and pushed play, my screen filled with the image of a grinning Keith Alexander. Hair farmer-era Keith. Rock star Keith. Freeze-framed as I fumbled with my questionably obtained editing program, I found myself making eye contact with him.

    My first thought wasn’t how much I missed Keith. It was that were he here, he’d be making fun of me for still owning a VCR. He’d likely also be making fun of me for the music I was listening to. And quite possibly my haircut. Or for any number of reasons known only to him. Then he’d tell me he loved me.

    As the years pass without Keith around, I don’t know which I miss more: Him breaking my balls (and trust me, my balls were never so expertly broken by anyone else), or him telling me he loved me.

    Both have been done, in varying degrees, by scores of others in the three years since he was taken from us, but no one else seems to be able to do them both at the same time with the same effect. No one makes me so succinctly aware of both my wins and my losses in life. No one calls up ex-girlfriends of mine while drunk on Akvavit and tells them he hates them, hanging up as suddenly as he called in a torrent of insane giggling.

    I tried to compress my thoughts on Keith into a few tidy paragraphs. Stories culled from memories shared by those of us lucky enough to have known him closely are plentiful. But try as I might, I couldn’t summarize a light so bright in my admittedly limited prose. I can only say that I’m a better man for having known him.

    I take comfort in those stories, in the video I transferred, in the remnants of the scar he was kind enough to give me. I take comfort in the fact that he documented every idea that popped in his head via his nootrope.net site and that it’s still online for us to read. Most of all, I take comfort in knowing that through him, people were able to find something in themselves, something primal and beautiful, and share it with the rest of the world.

    “Maybe I’ll inspire you to be exactly who you want to be.
    Maybe you’ll call me a fool.”

    – Keith Alexander

    November 23, 1963 – July 11, 2005

    For Jordan’s memorial for Keith, click here.

  • So … This is New

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    Let me just take a second to go over how to navigate this crazy machine:

  • The newest feature story will be found in the Lead Story spot.
  • The three most recent feature stories (after the Lead Story) will be found in the three Feature spots directly below.
  • In the column next to Features, you’ll find … columns! Among these is the new ModBlog. From the main page, you can either click the entry to see the newest post in each category (ModBlog, Editorial, etc.), or you can click the category name to see all the posts from that category. You can also browse these categories — surprise, surprise — by clicking their links in the Browse Categories box on the right sidebar.

    Please note: Comments on Modblog are disabled to allow the entries to be migrated without the loss of new comments. Once the old entries are imported, the template will be updated to allow browsing of the “new” modblog in a similar format as the old one. You will not have to click through to each link.

    • Questions? Comments? Proclamations of hatred and distrust for anything and everything new? Post ‘em in the comments.

  • Film Review: Flesh and Blood

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    If there’s a body modification practitioner who deserves to be the subject of a documentary, it’s probably Steve Haworth. A nearly 20-year veteran of the industry, Haworth started piercing in 1990, opened his first HTC Body Adornments (now HTC Body Piercing) shop in Phoenix shortly after, and has since been a legitimate pioneer in the field, particularly with regards to 3D and transdermal implants. Haworth recognizes his importance to the field and is light on humility, heavy on charm: He considers himself nothing less than an artist whose medium is flesh, and inflects his speech with predictable gravitas to uphold the identity. Tall, often dressed in black, shaved bald and lantern-jawed with sharp triangles of facial hair forming about one-third of a goatee, Haworth’s look seems carefully cultivated, somewhere between mad scientist and Master. (Neither is far from the truth.) Much of Flesh and Blood, a new documentary from filmmaker Larry Silverman, is dedicated to capturing this element of Haworth: The reverent remarks from those close to him, his own elder-statesman philosophizing, and the apparent adoration from the woman in his life (at the time), Beki Buelow.

    Silverman’s film dives right into material that may rightly strike fear into the hearts of heavy modification practitioners, showing Haworth performing implants (both transdermal and subdermal) while launching into an opening salvo in which he deflects as-yet unheard charges that he is illegally practicing medicine. On the contrary, he claims, everything he does, he does legally, and lays out his points — he does not make diagnoses, cut into diseased flesh or try to heal people — with the skill and practice one would expect from a person frequently on the defensive. But Haworth is charming, and his points are compelling: One wants to believe that he’s on the right side of the law, and that a documentary offering such explicit exposure of this world will be treated as an artifact and not an indictment. After years of (potentially unfounded) rumors that Haworth and others like him were being hounded by the FBI, it’s hard to know how the general public will receive Flesh and Blood.

    But for those who appreciate the subject matter, Silverman’s film is a well produced affair, five years in the making. Procedure-wise, he captures some of Haworth’s most well-known projects (Joe Aylward’s “metal mohawk” of transdermal scalp implants, Stalking Cat’s septum repositioning and whisker implants), and manages candid interviews with enough of the peripheral forces in Haworth’s life to solidify the man as a legendary figure, albeit one whose mystique stands in stead of a true depth of character. Indeed, throughout the majority of the film, one of Haworth’s only true displays of emotion occurs when discussing the circumference of his penis (which he whips out to prove it is, in fact, as thick as his wrist) and a self-done meatotomy; mention of the latter leads to a vigorous reenactment, complete with an exaggerated pantomime and screams about excessive bleeding.

    It’s also during this scene that Haworth and Buelow discuss the boundaries of their relationship, which Buelow says began in earnest when “[Haworth] sat me down on his lap outside his house and said, ‘You’re not going to see anyone else and neither am I, OK? OK. But we’re going to have multiple sexual partners.’” This was the first such relationship of which Buelow had been a part, she mentions, and that an adjustment period would be in order. In Haworth’s eyes, however, he had done due diligence, laying out “the way I am, what my needs were, and [letting Buelow] make the choice to be with me.”

    This seems like a throwaway line, another facet of the mysterious Steve Haworth, until the film’s powerhouse final act comes out of nowhere, and the till-then advertorial tone that had been established gives way to real drama and pathos as the 45 minutes of film prior are revealed as something of a smokescreen. It’s revealed that many of Haworth’s personal motivations are, indeed, sexual, and that Buelow is finding herself in service more than as half of a proper relationship. She starts taking up activities like rock climbing to get out from under the umbrella of this little desert family, but by then it seems too late; one excellent scene has Silverman in the car with Buelow while she argues with Haworth over the phone about him being at home with a new girlfriend while she drives around, with Buelow’s side of the conversation indicating that Haworth is putting the blame on her for the current situation. This, in spite of the earlier declaration that neither party would date anyone else, multiple sexual partners notwithstanding, a rule that Silverman’s film only shows one party breaking.

    After Buelow and Haworth’s relationship falls apart, Haworth’s teenage children come to live with him. His son and daughter arrive very much in his image, fascinated by body modification to the point that both children say they would go to cut-rate piercing and tattoo shops to flout their father’s rules about obeying age limits for such work, and even Haworth can’t bring himself to look displeased. It’s an idyllic moment — the interview takes place while the trio rollerblades along Haworth’s street — but the pastoral memory is interrupted by the realization that just over a year later, Haworth’s 18-year-old son will be killed in a car accident.

    For a film that starts off as a well-made commercial and pulpit for the philosophy of a body modification pioneer, that it ends with such an honest and candid look at the subject which it spent so much time building up as the ur-practitioner is a testament to Silverman’s filmmaking abilities. (And his commitment to the project, which, again, took over five years to complete.) In an era where body modification artists are becoming, more and more, the subjects of sycophantic hero worship, it’s refreshing to see the arguable progenitor of the field so deliberately constructed as an ideal before being brought back down to earth — a character deeply flawed, victimized by fate and hubris, and undeniably human.

    To purchase a copy of Flesh and Blood, please visit FleshAndBloodMovie.com.

    Please consider buying a membership to BME so we can continue
    bringing you articles like this one.

  • You Are All Diseased.

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    Several thousand people have sent in this article over the last few weeks, and with good reason: It is, in every way, the absolute nadir of mainstream media coverage of modified people, written by a stupid man who is entirely committed to his thoroughly unenlightened views. Which is not to say he’s not entitled to them — by all means, hate to your heart’s content! — and it’s not that he’s stupid because of his views, but rather because his views seem static; he’s counted out the possibility of ever wavering on his ideas about tattooed people.

    In previous instances of this sort of post, I’ve looked at articles by smart people (Jason Whitlock) and innocent, dumb-yet-harmless people (Sarah Robbins). Those are fun because the authors, though misguided, seem to be of a mindset that allows for the evolution of thought; Paul Carpenter is just hateful, and critiquing his silly missive would be akin to flogging the gaping asshole of a very dead horse.

    But you know what? While recuperating from BMEfest and ModProm the other day, I was playing with my 11-year-old dog, and she started walking on just her hind legs while begging for a treat; to my knowledge, she’d never done this before. And you know what? It made me rethink my decision to not give Carpenter the benefit of the doubt. I mean, I figure he has to be at least half as smart as my dog, and if she can learn a new trick, maybe there’s hope for this old coot yet.

    So, I relent. Let’s dive into this rotten ruby of the Internet, FJM-style:

    Disfigured skin points where culture is going

    I bet it does, Carpsy. I fucking bet it does.

    You can tell where a culture is headed by examining whom its members seek to emulate.

    Oh, sweet synecdoche! Of all the issues with this sentence, the largest is probably that it adheres to the antiquated notion of “culture” as Just One Thing. Which, of course, is problematic, especially when speaking of modern Western culture, which is, at this point, a glorious amalgamation of too many cultural movements to count. And culture, of course, is fluid: To suggest that it is going in a single direction is not just silly, it’s an impossible assertion.

    But go on.

    Just a few centuries ago, there was a culture still mired in the Stone Age, with no written language, no science, no math, no architecture, no nothing requiring thought. Its members had not even managed to invent the wheel.

    But the proud residents of Lehigh Valley, PA, home of The Morning Call, resisted the urge to return to the muck whence they came, and now enjoy such modern treats as running water, paved roads and delicious Hungry Man Dinners! (Check the back page for coupons!)

    That culture’s only contribution to the world was the decorative ”tatu.” In most other parts of the ancient world, tattoos were disfigurements used only to identify criminals or slaves.

    Oh. I guess you weren’t talking about Lehigh Valley, PA, home of The Morning Call. Well, at any rate, claiming that something is bad because it was once used to identify criminals or slaves is hardly an indictment of its modern applications. Australia was once literally nothing but a home for England’s criminals, and look at it now! It’s well upon its way to becoming a legitimate, respectable country. Keep hope alive, Aussies! Yes you can!

    Now that Polynesians can read, use wheels, count and appreciate musical instruments other than drums, they’ve advanced to a point where most of them have abandoned tattoos.

    Yeah, stupid indigenous tribes! It’s about time you got mothafuckin’ Imperialized®! Put down that shitty drum, quit tattooing each other, have a cheeseburger and listen to the dulcet sounds of Michael McDonald.

    Also, reading, wheeling, counting and music have fucking nothing to do with tattoos.

    But go on.

    As one culture ascends, it seems, another declines.

    “Culture” is not a zero-sum game. Not even close. Insane argument.

    This week, we learned that 36 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have tattoos. It was just last year The Morning Call reported that 16 percent of all Americans were thusly self-mutilated.

    Really? I thought those numbers would have been higher, to be honest. Come on, culture! Get with the times!

    The sight of Mike Tyson’s gorgeous artwork, no doubt, has persuaded millions to flock to tattoo joints. Or maybe it’s the growing popularity of ”mixed martial arts” bloodfests, which put tattooed subhumans into cages to brutalize each other.

    Mike Tyson has long been considered a world-class crazy-person and, your sweet sarcasm aside, I highly doubt that anyone has ever looked at him and thought, “You know what, bra? Right after I get done raping my wife, bra, I am totally gonna get some sweet tribal ink right on my face. Shit’s gonna be epic, bra.”

    As for inexplicably lumping in mixed martial arts, psst! Your crotchety-old-man-osity is showing.

    ”Proud parents bear tattoos honoring their kids,” said a headline over Monday’s story.

    True story: My dad got his first tattoo when he was 55, a piece he designed himself, with my brothers’ and my initials as the centerpieces. It’s awesome, and about as surprising a move as one could expect from a man who, when a teenaged me would come home with new piercings, would often respond with a succinct, “Ugh! Disgusting!” See? Evolution of thought. My dad’s a smart guy.

    ”You’ll never find a more meaningful tattoo than one for your kids,” said Kiel Ferrari, described as an ”artist” at the Minds Eye Tattoo in Emmaus. (I also have seen graffiti vandals described as ”artists.”)

    I’ve seen columnists for The Morning Call described as “writers,” too. Fucking weird.

    And look, I think graffiti is largely pretty disrespectful, but that doesn’t mean it’s not occasionally well done and pleasant to look at. Everything is not binary — things can embody more than one set of traits concurrently. I can enjoy the work of Wagner without goose-stepping around my apartment in tribute, my status as a self-loathing Jew notwithstanding.

    Along with the story, there were photographs of bodies mutilated with hideous ”artwork.” One was of an arm with a truly unfortunate depiction of a child’s face. I am sure the real child is cute; no child could actually be that homely.

    There are lots of bad tattoos.

    On the very same day that our eyes were insulted by those vulgar photos, the paper ran another story elsewhere, plugging the premier showing of a new television program about the joys of prostitution.

    So, you’re upset because a newspaper was … reporting … news?

    I can’t say I’m an expert on prostitution. I’m too parsimonious to gain first-hand knowledge. (Stories on Eliot Spitzer’s $4,300 dalliances nearly gave me apoplexy.)

    Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

    Nonetheless, I’ve said a lot about both prostitution and tattoos, which, come to think of it, always seem to go together.

    Wait, what? Why? Since when? Because you said so? Is there some overlap between tattoos and prostitution? Sure, because tattoos overlap with everything. To say they “always seem to go together,” though?

    … Go on.

    No one can deny that the heaviest concentrations of tattoos occur in the lowest segments of society — prostitutes, pimps, pugs, prison inmates, Ku Klux Klansmen and the members of street and motorcycle gangs.

    I spend about 17 hours a day in front of my computer on the Internet. I’m almost always reading something. I’ve read a lot of dumb things. And yet, I feel comfortable saying that the above paragraph makes the Top Five Dumbest Things Jordan Has Ever, Ever Read on the Internets. Holy fucking fuck. If only black street gangs and the KKK knew how much they had in common!

    Now, according to this week’s story, 36 percent of young people have decided to emulate such lowlifes.

    “Emulate” typically means to imitate. Simply doing something that other people do is not “emulation” unless it is consciously done as a form of imitation. Guys in prison exercise all the time — are health nuts just emulating the prison population? Are hateful idiots who write absurd, pointless missives in their own low-rate local papers emulating you?

    And some news media want to glamorize them.

    Reporting does not equal glamorizing. If you were a professional writer, you would know this. Just because you have concocted the most specious of reasoning to link prostitution (and, by extension, gang members and the KKK — God, what a crazy fucking sentence that is) and tattoos does not mean that a single news feature covering parents who get tribute tattoos for their children is somehow indicative of a massive trend towards “glamorizing” tattooed people.

    Do not glamorize accomplishment. Do not glamorize intelligence, insight or integrity. Don’t glamorize courage, generosity, leadership, skill or diligence. Such qualities are for nerds. By all means, glamorize pimps, prostitutes and those who emulate them. That is the future of America’s culture.

    OK, I’ll admit one thing that impressed me about this paragraph: That is one hell of a straw man you’ve crafted there, Carpsy. Seriously, take a bow. And then, while you’re down there, go fuck yourself.

    Aware of how some of these devoted self-mutilators are going to react, I am compelled to emphasize that I do not favor any restrictions on personal behavior. If an idiot wants to get a tattoo, he or she should be free to do so. I just think responsible news media organizations should not glamorize them. What’s next? Glamorizing child molesters or kluxers?

    This is exactly why I hesitated to comment on this article — this very line. What’s the point of engaging a person who comfortably lumps together tattooed people with rapists and racists? It’s not even detestable as much as it is pitiable — it’s actually kind of unbelievable that this sort of delusion still exists, much less finds a publisher.

    But then, this article was never about tattooed people at all, nor was it even a requiem for a culture the author feels has wandered off the noble path: It is the sad admission of a man whose own obstinacy has prevented him from relating in any meaningful way to the world around him. It is not an indictment of the so-called “culture,” but rather a cautionary tale about the fate of the mind that outright rejects the wonders of a dynamic approach to learning and personal growth. Not that body modification (or the appreciation of it) is necessary to be a happy and well adjusted person — not by any means. But to be repulsed by it on such bizarre terms?

    Carpenter has conflated all the things that he does not enjoy or understand in an attempt to simplify his life, but in doing so, he’s become a more confused and depressing man than ever.

    Carpenter’s initial column garnered so much mail that he wrote a follow-up. With much apprehension, I’ll tackle that one shortly.

  • Full Coverage: Links From All Over.

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    [Premiere.com] Long-time BME supporter (and full-time-job-having sell-out) Jenni recently interviewed Vera Farmiga, co-star of the new amputation-fetish film, Quid Pro Quo. Nick Stahl takes the lead as wheelchair-bound journalist Isaac, who, while researching the subculture of voluntary amputees (some of whom mention their jealousy of Isaac’s condition), meets Fiona (Farmiga), a woman with Body Integrity Identity Disorder who wants nothing more than to spend her life in a wheelchair. Something tells me Farmiga’s been reading BME. From the interview:

    Farmiga: You know, you read these testimonies online and there’s such a sense of aloneness and this desolate feeling of despair, just feeling so alone in this, and self-demand amputation is illegal [except] under only the most rigid psychiatric evaluations and testing. There’s only a handful of doctors and hospitals that will approve self-demand amputation, so people go to great lengths… throw themselves in front of trains, use shotguns, hurt themselves. I don’t know what to think. I can’t even imagine… This obsession completely possesses these people, and there is a real sense of spiritual unrest. The cases I’ve heard of and read about of people actually going through [amputation] — whether they’ve done it themselves or had it professionally taken care of — there is a ninety-something percent satisfaction, that these people say that they feel more spiritually fulfilled and it’s not a case of being disabled any more, it’s becoming able-bodied… feeling whole in relation to that broken person within. I cannot pretend to comprehend it, and it’s very difficult. I mean, this is like the same thing as transgenderism a while ago; people couldn’t fathom it… I have no personal feelings towards it; I couldn’t, especially having to play Fiona.

    [InkedMag.com] Athletes with tattoos hardly qualify as breaking news, but Inked Magazine just put together a rather entertaining profile of Florida Marlins pitcher Justin Miller, who is pretty much tattooed from asshole to elbow. He’s so heavily covered, in fact, that Major League Baseball insisted that he wear long sleeves, as his various pieces of work were apparently too much of a distraction to opposing batters. Luckily, his teammates seem fine with it:

    […] it was revealed that Miller had “I (heart) Billy Koch” tattooed on his ass after losing a bet with teammate and friend Billy Koch. In exchange, Koch gave Miller $2,000 for his trouble and paid for the tattoo. As word of the bet spread, Koch felt so bad that he gave Miller’s wife $500 as compensation for her pain and humiliation.

    “It was a silly bet. Honestly, at the time I was getting a lot of tattoos. [Koch and I] got traded for each other a couple of years before. I have fun telling that story, and we’re boys to this day. He’ll definitely never let me forget about it,” Miller says. “I think [my teammates] wait until the shower just so they can peek instead of asking to see my ass.”

    Of course, it’s hard to live down the reputation one receives after getting teammates’ names etched on one’s hindparts, I guess:

    Marlins pitcher Scott Olsen, who had been pulled over by Florida police the previous summer and charged with DUI before allegedly being shocked with a taser, approached Miller with a proposition of his own. “He wants me to get his mug shot tattooed on my ass. I don’t think that’s going to work,” says Miller. “I don’t think my wife wants to see Olsen’s picture there. So we’re not going to go with that.”

    Geez, you lose one bet and everyone treats your ass like the community mural. Remind me to convert to a religion that prohibits gambling. (Via Deadspin)

    [MSNBC.MSN.com] Speaking of religion (Ed. Note: That’s how you do a fucking segue, friends), Jessa sends in this story about Todd Bentley, an evangelist from British Columbia, Canada, who is not the average preacher. Bentley, the founder of Fresh Fire Ministries, leans toward the Pentecostal range of practices — none of which, luckily, seem to conflict with the fact that he is likely one of the more heavily pierced and tattooed evangelical ministers around. Apparently, such appearances are insignificant when you can flex your God-ceps the way he claims to be able to:

    Bentley claims that God has used him to supernaturally heal hundreds of people of diseases ranging from glaucoma to diabetes to even cancer.

    […] he doesn’t know exactly why now, why him, […] and he does not promise that everyone who comes to him will be healed. But he does maintain a pragmatic posture toward prayer.

    “I say, you have nothing to lose but your sickness. If the doctors can’t help you, why wouldn’t you give God a chance?”

    Pragmatic indeed! But I hear you saying, “Well, religion is a crutch and a fairy tale, why travel such a distance and at such an expense when I could just as easily pray to the water stain on my bathroom wall?” To which I say, if you’re not willing to give yourself up to the will of a man who lists on his MySpace page the people he’d most like to meet as “Jesus, King David, Paul the Apostle [… and] Hulk Hogan,” well, then you probably deserve the Gout or whatever the hell it is that’s wrong with you.

  • How I Learned to Stop Being a Vapid Moron and Kind of Love a Guy With a Tattoo.

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    Via those sassy dames over at Jezebel (“sassy dames” is the preferred nomenclature, right?) comes this inspirational story of a courageous woman named Sarah Robbins who learns to see past the gruesome disfigurement terrorizing the precious corpus of her boyfriend. Or something. Let’s give this the thorough FJM’ing it deserves.

    Is Love Skin Deep?
    One guy’s scary body art puts his girlfriend to the test.

    Hey, we’re all pretty experienced, erudite fans of body modification here, so the chances of one of us finding body art “scary”? Probably pretty low. That said, I can certainly sympathize with the average un-modified person (let’s do everybody a favor and bury the term “plainskin”) who may be fascinated, disturbed or even, yes, scared by someone like, say, Skullboy. If body modification were totally foreign to me for whatever reason and I ran into him randomly? Might be a little spooked.

    So … clearly the “scary body art” referred to in the title here must be something like that, right?

    […] on our third date, he made me dinner at his place. By then, I was really liking what I saw: a handsome, short-haired, glasses-wearing guy who owned his own business and attended the ballet with his mom.

    OK — probably no skull tattoos on his face. Split tongue, perhaps? That might be scary. Come on, split tongue!

    I was admiring the way he decorated his apartment with both framed photos and living plants when suddenly his lips were on mine. Kissing him was even more warm and wonderful than I’d imagined.

    Damn it. Genital beads? Gotta be it. Hulking, intimidating, mountainous, pulsing genital beads.

    Then he pulled off his sweater, and something came between us.

    Third arm! Fuck! That was totally my next guess, too.

    Technically, it was someone: a tattoo on his upper left arm of a vibrant, crazy, and most unmistakably skinless man. Not a skeleton, mind you; a man with no skin—just organs, graphically rendered in sickly red, orange, and yellow swirls.

    Oh. Just … a tattoo? Huh. That sounds like a pretty cool tattoo, actually. Attention, gentleman with the crazy girlfriend who writes for Marie Claire: please send a picture of your cool-sounding tattoo to BME.

    I was shocked by the aggressiveness of it. He’d seemed so…normal. Gentle, even.

    Little did she know that he kidnaps men, peels off their skin, uses a complex system of rays to shrink them down and then buries them deep within his arms! Ahhhh!

    “What is that?” I blurted.

    Totally the sort of thing you’d blurt out after … seeing … a tattoo … on a grown man?

    I regretted it right away. With those three words, our makeout session came to an abrupt end, as he pulled back, giving me the chance to sneak another look at that thing on his arm. Yes, there was no getting around it: a man made entirely of muscles and guts, with piercing green eyes.

    I’d say he was probably actually made mostly of ink. And some sweat. And maybe just a little bit of love.

    “What, this?” he asked. “It’s a tattoo.”

    Excellent answer. Quick, to the point.

    Uh, yeah. It was actually the biggest, brightest, scariest piece of body art I’d ever seen close up. “But what…is it?” I inquired, a little more gently this time. “What does it mean?”

    Maybe I’m just antisocial, but I hate answering this question more than just about anything. I’d rather every meathead on the subway ask me, “How much them shits in you ears hurt?” than have to explain away my ill-fated high school interest in sacred geometry.

    Anyway, not to be too much of a jerk, but I have a hard time imagining a place in modern-day North America where a grown woman could live 25-30 years (I’m guessing) without ever seeing (what sounds like) a half-sleeve in the flesh. Were you just released from a basement in Austria?

    He tried to explain: It had something to do with his interest in the medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch. And there was a mention of total respect for the tattoo artist. Oh, and, “These designs are exactly what brain synapses look like…”

    I’m seriously liking this guy more and more. Is it too late to invite him to ModProm?

    I wanted to like it—to dig the anatomical accuracy and artistry—because I liked him. But the truth is, it was a turnoff. Skeletons and synapses? No thanks. While my mind reeled, he kept talking.

    Was your mind really reeling? It sounds like you two were about to get busy, and now all you can think about is the tattoo on his arm? If someone were trying to tattoo a skeleton onto his penis while you two were having sex, sure, maybe that would be a turnoff, but you’re just being ridiculous, lady.

    “…And I can’t wait to finish it.”

    Turned out, he hadn’t had time yet to complete his masterpiece.

    I hope when you’re cooking him dinner some day, he walks over, tastes a piece of uncooked chicken and then, in between retches off the balcony, makes a bunch of bullshit catty comments about how lucky he is to have such a talented gourmet chef in the house.

    When my friends heard the story, they reminded me that not only are tattoos totally common (more than a third of 20-somethings have at least one), but ink is, for many, a big turn-on. Bottom line, they said: A tattoo, no matter how weird, should not be a deal-breaker. The guy had too many other great qualities. Plus, it was still winter—there were plenty of months of sweater weather ahead of us.

    They “reminded” you of this? Because you were just so mortified, so absolutely dumbstruck that these difficult and complex points just could not penetrate? You are so brave.

    As the weeks wore on, I tried befriending the skinless man who slept between us. One night, after a few glasses of wine, I gave him a name: Telly Savalas, after the late, bald actor who starred in a detective series when I was a kid. Let’s face facts: It’s not like the tattoo was going anywhere. I was naming the elephant in the room.

    You should have made an ultimatum. No, really. I would have loved to see how that played out. Also: you were seriously still hung up on this after a few weeks? Apparently Marie Claire needs to get you copyediting or something to occupy your time.

    Our meet-the-parents moment came in the midst of a serious heat wave. Even sandals felt stifling; long sleeves were out of the question. Although Telly peeked out just a few inches past my boyfriend’s T-shirt sleeve, I was a nervous wreck, keeping tabs on which side of my mother my boyfriend walked on. Blessedly, my folks didn’t say a thing.

    “Well, Jim, you’ve got a good job, handsome features, a winning disposition and you’ve never been anything but a perfect gentleman to Sarah. Unfortunately, it’s been brought to my attention that you have a small tattoo on your arm. In light of this, the guards will escort you to the gate, and a laser fixed to a satellite will disintegrate you if you come within 100 yards of my daughter. You asshole.”

    As the work of art neared completion, strangers couldn’t help but take notice.

    “Dude! What is that?”
    “Can I see?”
    “Where’d you get that?”
    “Why’d you do it? Did it hurt?”

    The questions came from all sides—in the subway, on the street, at restaurants and movie theaters. My boyfriend just blew them off. “Imagine complete strangers feeling entitled to touch you,” he told me. “Plus, I did it for me. I shouldn’t have to explain myself.”

    Uh … yeah! I can totally see why you’re into this guy. Fuckin’ on point, man. Are you doing anything later? Let me buy you a beer. As friends! Just friends.

    I was surprised, and a little irked, by his reaction: Why walk around with something so nutty if not to provoke a response?

    Because not everybody is a narcissistic dingbat who puts the minutiae of their lives up on a national pedestal for everyone to scrutinize (and, ideally, praise). You know, like a columnist writing a dumbshit article about how difficult it is to love a wonderful man who has a single tattoo.

    Seriously though, is this for real? You don’t understand why getting a tattoo in a visible place isn’t an invitation to strangers to come and touch it? This is surprising? Irksome, even? Did you get your journalism degree from the University of Phoenix?

    I started thinking about our future. After all, a tattoo in your 20s is one thing, but what about in your 70s? If we had kids together, would they be terrified of that monster on Dad’s arm?

    No.

    […] Telly has actually taught me a few things. A little about anatomy, sure, but more about the ways I can be superficial. I’d long trusted that my boyfriend’s love for me runs far deeper than the way I look; now I can say unequivocally that I feel the same about him. It’s a truth that, every once in a while, bears repeating.

    So, you acknowledge that you’re totally superficial, and rather than try to change that wholly unappealing part of you … you embrace it completely and, in fact, claim some sort of moral victory due to the fact that you’re occasionally able to set aside your own glaring flaws and not be disgusted by this entirely inconsequential part of your boyfriend (who sounds awesome, by the way) that actually means a lot to him?

    Um … sweet.

  • Gettin’ Sloppy at RABcon ’99.

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    Mmm, milk!

    “I say, Josh! This milk is most refreshing!”
    “I concur, fair Yttrx! Most indubitably!”

    Nooo!

    “Heavens, Josh! No!”

    Heavens, no!

    *gasp*

    I\'ll show you what a sponge can do!

    “Spring forth, my burly protector, and save me!”
    “Why, I’ve got just the thing!”

    Ooh! Ahh!

    Behold! The cleansing power of TSD!

    YAYYY

    “It’s a miracle!”
    “Thanks, TSD!”

    (Photos courtesy of Yttrx, who insists all parties involved in this production were dead sober at the time. Sure. Full gallery here.)

  • The NBA: Where Tattooed Freaks of Nature Happen.

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    One of the drawbacks of being a columnist is occasionally having to write insane, rambling, borderline incoherent insane ramblings and then try to justify these random words and phrases as a cogent thought you squeezed out of your very own mind grapes. For example:

    In NBA playoffs, less ink means more viewers.

    Sigh. Excuse me while I go all Fire Joe Morgan on what is sure to be quite the tone poem, after the jump.

    Over the next couple of weeks you’ll hear lots of theories about why TV ratings are surging for the NBA playoffs.

    Hmm, well, there may be lots of theories, but the correct ones will be the ones that mention (A) the fact that this season has been repeatedly noted by the press as being one of the most exciting ones in recent memory, and (2) that the NBA has trotted out some pretty great advertising campaigns this year, including these rather awesome split-screen TV spots. Also, with the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers now in the Finals, two of most popular franchises ever have been playing their asses off.

    Of course it helps that large TV markets with storied franchises (Boston and Los Angeles) are still alive and favorites to make the NBA Finals. And, yes, it helps that the league’s two most successful franchises over the last five years (San Antonio and Detroit) are competing against the Lakers and the Celtics.

    Hey, that’s almost like what I said!

    But there’s one issue driving improved ratings that likely won’t be touched by all the NBA talking heads on TNT and ESPN.

    I’ll mention here that Jason Whitlock is, at times, one of the better sports writers in America — or, at the very least, one of the most fearless. He speaks to bloggers more frequently than most other mainstream media personalities; he takes controversial positions on race relations, but seldom backs down and is always ready to defend himself. Also, along the way, he gained the fabulous nickname, “Big Sexy.” All of this is to say, I like Jason Whitlock, and if he claims there’s another important issue at stake here, I’m willing to listen.

    Tattoos. Or rather the lack of tattoos in the conference finals.

    Oh, fuck.

    Part of the reason more people are watching these playoffs is because the average fan isn’t constantly repulsed by the appearance of most of the players on the court.

    Maybe I’m bad at being a basketball fan, but I’m usually more concerned with the incredible feats of strength and agility being performed on a basketball court than the barbed-wire some guy has on his bicep.

    Most of the key players left in the playoffs don’t look like recent prison parolees.

    Neither do most of the players who have been eliminated, but hey. You’re the nationally respected sportswriter, I guess.

    The only accurate way to describe Garnett, Pierce, Duncan, Allen, Manu, Parker and even Kobe is “clean cut.” Yeah, there are a couple of tattoos in that group — Duncan has something on his back, Kobe still has his post-rape-allegation tat — but the Lakers, Spurs and Celtics have far less ink on average than your typical NBA franchise.

    For those keeping score at home: Tim Duncan’s tattoo is the exact same as the metaphorical tattoo Kobe Bryant wears in the form of residual shame after being accused of raping a woman. If you have trouble understanding this equation, please see Dr. Whitlock to pick up your crazy-pills.

    Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony have more tats on their hands than the entire Spurs roster.

    Also, they’re incredibly talented players and often seen as being far more interesting as human beings than the robotic Spurs, who are renowned for lacking anything resembling human qualities.

    I know many of you probably think the number of tattoos doesn’t influence viewing habits.

    *raises hand*

    *shakes hand wildly*

    *starts pounding head on desk with hand in the air*

    You’re wrong. Like everything else televised, appearances matter. There’s a reason you don’t see nude scenes in movies with fat people. Trust me, fat people have sex. It’s just no one wants to see it. Not even fat people.

    And take it from Whitlock, a bona fide fat dude! Anyway, of course appearances matter, but we’re talking about a professional sport where the average height is like eight feet. People watching the NBA should be used to seeing humans who look slightly different than the average person.

    No one wants to watch Delonte West or Larry Hughes play basketball. It’s uncomfortable and disconcerting. You don’t want your kids to see it.

    True story: West and Hughes are bad at playing basketball. Especially Hughes. Terrible form for your kids to take after. Makes me kind of sick just thinking about it, actually.

    You don’t want your kids to think they should decorate their neck, arms, hands, chest and legs in paint. You don’t want to waste time explaining to your kids that some millionaire athletes have so little genuine self-confidence that they find it necessary to cover themselves in tattoos as a way to mask their insecurities.

    Oh … you meant because they’re tattooed. Right. Well, I mean, Allen Iverson seems about as self-assured as professional athletes come: when his Nuggets were about to face Kobe and the Lakers, he made several comments saying that Kobe — this season’s MVP — is still not as good as he is. Maybe he just likes tattoos?

    You just want to watch basketball and feel like you’re watching people you can relate to a little bit, people you somewhat respect.

    Like I said, you’re watching eleven-foot-tall supermen who make no less than $275,000 a year. I’m sure many of them are very nice guys, but on what level are you relating to them? Sure, Gilbert Arenas likes to hang out at home and play video games, but his home is a castle the size of your street and his plasma screen is made out of the actual plasma of endangered leopards.

    We finally have that again on the NBA’s biggest stage, and everyone can see it because the league’s substance isn’t covered in a barrel of tattoo ink.

    OH BECAUSE OTHERWISE WE COULDN’T SEE BECAUSE OF ALL THE INK LOL

    It’s a television show. Pleasant smiles, non-threatening people sell products better than menacing, tattooed brutes.

    Like Signal to Noise mentioned, the latest issue of Sports Illustrated features a cover story on Josh Hamilton, the heavily tattooed center fielder of the Texas Rangers who happens to be one of the best players in baseball this season. I mean, considering I don’t know what the fuck Sports Illustrated is and can only assume they’re a brand new “sports” “blog” or something or other that was only created in order to fail miserably, it would stand to reason that they would put this totally unmarketable, tattooed freak on their cover. Fucking idiots. I bet he doesn’t even have a winning smile.

    If I was David Stern, I’d commission Nike and/or Under Armor to create a basketball jersey with long sleeves, all the way down to the wrists. I’d make Iverson wear a turtleneck jersey with sleeves. I’d cover the tats.

    Good idea. Luckily, David Stern isn’t a moron and would have you forcibly removed from his office before you could even finish making this suggestion. You know, the Nazis had turtlenecks they made the Jews wear.

    Do you think Sports Illustrated would let its swimsuit models cover themselves in tattoos? Models are paid to look good.

    Also, Sports Illustrated swimsuit models are very frequently airbrushed with colorful designs that may as well be tattoos. And, hey, they still look good! Admittedly, though, I do mean good enough for this so-called Sports Illustrated thing that neither I nor anyone else has ever even heard of.

    Athletes are no different from models.

    They’re actually completely different, aside from the general lack of body fat.

    It’s unfortunate that too many young athletes are too unenlightened to approach the game like a business. They resist almost all ideas that would put more money in their pockets. They have to be forced to do the little things that would help them make more money.

    You know, I’d argue the more unfortunate trend is that young athletes are encouraged to be all about the business end of things. Not to say that they shouldn’t be coached and expected to be as professional as possible, but treating the game strictly like a business leads to athletes with no real personalities of their own — just soulless shills for their sponsors, driven by the desire to squeeze a few more dollars rather than enjoying themselves and their status as some of the best athletes in the world in one of the most physically taxing sports leagues in the world. Isn’t there a certain purity in a player who would rebuff sponsors and, instead, get all tattooed and kick ass on his own terms?

    Growing NBA ratings is what’s best for the players in the long term. Adopting a non-prison-ready appearance would help everyone in the league earn more money. But no one will talk about it.

    Ratings were high all season long, even when these miscreants and ruffians were still in action. Also, the idea that, “no one will talk about it” is as absurd as it is incorrect: just a few seasons ago, NBA commissioner David Stern instituted a new policy that required all players not playing on a particular day to follow a fairly strict dress code and to not wear “street clothes,” which is kind of the same thing, right?

    Maybe Stern (correctly) assumed that, considering how many of the league’s elite players have tattoos — I would wager it’s somewhere around 99% — it would be idiotic to tell them to, you know, not get them? Or to punish the ones that do? Wouldn’t that be worse for business — to water down the talent pool to just the ink-free — than letting these goddamn thugs and circus freaks just play basketball?

  • You Don’t Have A Potato?

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    Once in a while, ModBlog will scour the internets for the best and
    brightest amateur piercers and sit down for a candid one-on-one with them.
    Here’s one of these shining lights.

    (Interview after the jump.)

    BME: Before we begin, you’ll have to clarify: maybe my
    vision is going, but I can’t tell from the video if you’re Steve-O or
    Matthew McConaughey.

    Video Fella: My name is Thomas.

    BME: Steve-O, this video really had it all, from light
    blood loss to creative sponge usage. How much time did you and the Jackass
    crew spend on this masterpiece?

    Thomas: We’re not Jackass. It only took about half an hour,
    though.

    BME: Now, looking at the video, I can count about four
    different sets of grody frat-boy hands touching your face right around the
    fresh, open piercing — none of which you seem to mind. What are some of
    your other favorite ways to attract infections?

    Thomas: I’m very healthy.

    BME: Some of your friends can be heard to remark that
    you’re “fucking tough” after the first pin is jabbed through your lip. Are
    they also really impressed when the people at Dunkin’ Donuts get their
    orders right?

    Thomas: I don’t know.

    BME: You look vaguely disappointed when you ask for a
    potato — presumably to act as a cork and to catch the sharp end of the pin
    in your mouth — and your friends come up empty handed. Do you regret
    getting fucked up on Mezcal earlier in the day and shooting all of your
    potatoes at each other out of PVC tubes?

    Thomas: That didn’t happen. And the sponge worked just as
    well.

    BME: Clearly. And I see you used what looks like a band pin
    for the second attempt. Let me guess: Nickelback.

    Thomas: No.

    BME: Creed.

    Thomas: No.

    BME: Puddle of Mudd.

    Thomas: Yeah, actually.

    BME: A-ha! See what I did there? I limited my guesswork to
    a bunch of terrible bands that are associated with fan-bases that make
    terrible decisions. You know, like getting pierced during a frat party with
    a dirty tool by your meathead friends. Lastly, I see a Super Bowl XXVII
    decal on the mirror in your house, a game in which the Buffalo Bills were
    soundly defeated by the Dallas Cowboys; I imagine you’re a Buffalo fan. Does
    this sort of haphazard infliction of unnecessary pain with potentially
    lasting problems come along with rooting for the Bills?

    Thomas: They’re a good team.

    BME: Steve-O, thanks for taking the time to speak to us.

    Thomas: Okay.

  • Hola Gringo!

    Written by

    Jordan Ginsberg

    BME Visits BodyFest 2005 in Mexico City

    “When you bring an act into this town, you want to bring it heavy. Don’t waste any time with cheap shucks and misdemeanors. Go straight for the jugular. Get right into felonies.”
    – Hunter S. Thompson (RIP), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

    BodyFest 2005

    It was 8:15 a.m. when my flight reached cruising altitude, and then there was certainly no turning back. The trip that had been the bane of my existence for a week’s time — the weekend that the thoughts of which had caused my nerves more damage than leaving my home in Toronto to actually live across the continent — it was underway.

    All things considered though, I was taking the event in a more heroic fashion than I had imagined I would be.

    Traveling is a new beast to me. Until the third of March this year, my minor voyages had been limited to the American northeast — never west of Detroit, and never south of Camden, New Jersey. And certainly never on a plane. By the time I was en route to Mexico City on the morning of March 12th, my flight experience had propelled me past the stage of gripping the armrests to the point of muscle tears, and turbulence was no longer a source of intestinal unrest. It was the trip itself, a weekend as a tourist in a metropolis known for devouring tourists, leaving them penniless and beaten by the city limits, that gripped my psyche, throttled my sanity and sent my neuroses to the front lines.

    I may have been blowing things out of proportion.

    The city is absolutely immense, and there’s no mistaking that. The airport was quick to calm my nerves though; it was practically a merry-go-round compared to, say, the blazing re-entry wreckage that is LAX — a newfound mortal enemy of mine. Within minutes I was in a taxi, where it quickly became evident that the statistic of one being safer in the air than on the ground on the way to the airport was founded in Mexico City. After forty-five minutes of the most diabolically terrifying driving I’d ever been involved with, my heart riding shotgun at the roof of my mouth and my bowels lagging behind, somewhere around the rear axle of the cab, I arrived at my destination of the Rockotitlan club, site of the purpose of my trip: Modificaciones Corporales Tatuajes’ BodyFest, featuring Lukas Zpira.

    I was struck immediately by the amount of heavy work — very large-gauge piercings, visible and facial tattoos, implants, etc. — and that it was by and large quite well done, and worn largely by surprisingly young people (eighteen to twenty-five, roughly). While the volume of this manner of work is certainly present in any convention-type setting, seldom have I seen it in this predominantly younger age bracket. Following closely behind as far as immediate impressions went was the fact that I was quite obviously the only person who spoke English as a first language in several city blocks, and certainly the only one in the building. Thankfully, both Rafael and Beto were more than willing to help this desperate gringo translate his way through the weekend with the multitude of tongues at their relative disposals.

    The day began with a seminar on cutting by Lukas in a tent set up on the terrace outside the club. While no actual work was done on the spot (though a piece was drawn onto a client to be cut later on in the day), he spoke to and fielded questions from the audience for a little over an hour, and it was really quite interesting to watch the information transcend several language barriers. The seminar was conducted in English and was then translated into Spanish by a volunteer from the audience, but on the occasions that Lukas would get tripped up on the proper English terminology (from his native French tongue) his wife Satomi — also bilingual — would then provide him with a French-to-English translation. The crowd, though, was very giving and professional — exercising patience not often seen in Canadian or American events. It would seem that while people in those markets generally like to think they’ve already got the facts and the know-how, the BodyFest contingent was extremely receptive and devoured the information — they needed it. The same was true for the following day’s seminar, which was split up into two sections, one for branding and the other for implant procedures; the same format as the previous day was in effect, with most of the time being spent on Lukas fielding the eager audience’s questions.


    Lukas Conducting the Cutting Seminar
    Designing a Cutting

    It was suggested to me that perhaps it was dangerous for Lukas to be divulging this information to the people there, that it might give them the impetus to jump into performing procedures that they weren’t ready to do yet, or at least not do cleanly and safely. However, it was relayed to me that, before I arrived in the city, some people had ventured to the downtown core and witnessed implant procedures being done right on the sidewalk.

    One more time, with feeling: People were doing implants on the sidewalk.

    And not well, by the sounds of it. Mexico City is not known for its particular cleanliness to begin with and, as Lukas would explain, the care you must take when performing implants is much higher than when cutting or even branding. There is no city block in the world that would be the appropriate location for that procedure, especially when the facilitators are haphazardly dropping instruments on the ground and, after what essentially equates to a spit-shine, continuing to use them. But the popularity is there. People are going to be doing these things whether they’re safe or not. The fact that Lukas was providing an outlet for these people to at least learn proper techniques is commendable, though unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the street-team contingent was in attendance.

     

    By nightfall I was delirious with hunger, but not wanting to miss any of the event combined with a mostly-irrational fear of the local food kept me from taking a break for dinner. My pangs faded with time though, and I was right to keep a close eye on the proceedings — a suspension performance not listed on the program kicked off the evening portion of the event. The duo — a larger fellow in a spiked and studded leather bondage mask and his scrawny partner in a gasmask — hit the stage, the bigger member hanging suicide-style while his diminutive friend began with hooks in his upper back as well as his knees, swinging around above the ground in a crouched position. While not groundbreaking techniques, the show delighted the crowd. The atmosphere was much more that of a festival than a traditional convention — industrial dance music blaring through the PA at all times, and large projection video screens set up to broadcast in real-time what was occurring on stage, as well as to show Lukas performing procedures in a smaller tent-studio — enclosed in clear plastic — set up on the upper level of the club. Once the smoke (machine) cleared and the performance came to a close, I headed upstairs to check out a cutting piece in progress.

    Lukas works extremely fast.

    The piece being worked on was in fact the one he had designed following his cutting seminar earlier in the day — an odd jagged vision with sinister witch-like faces worked into it — that, in spite of covering much of the client’s thigh, was nearly complete within roughly ten minutes of being started. Luckily I caught the tail end of the process and was able to see for myself the speed with which he conducts himself. Lukas has a wide range of experience under his belt — he is more often than not on the road working in countries all over the world — that surely contributes to the speed at which he is able to work, but it’s his confidence in the work itself and his own abilities that seems to be the deciding factor. This was even more evident the following day when he, with the aid of Satomi, completed a large implant in someone’s forearm in literally less than four minutes — a procedure that easily could have taken other artists over an hour. His uncanny precision, custom-made PTFE instruments, and the symbiotic relationship he and Satomi display when performing this kind of work truly set him apart from other practitioners in the field.

    With a criminally cheap, oversized beer in hand, I settled in for the next performance, not prepared for the spectacle that was to follow. Another troupe — again, not listed on the program — marched onto the stage, adorned in what appeared to be some variation of Nordic warrior garb, some brandishing weapons, others playing drums, horns and flutes — there was even a guy with bagpipes.

    Seriously. Bagpipes.

    As the percussion-heavy yet highly listenable music began, two men were suspended vertically from their chests in the center of the stage. As well, a semi-circle had formed around another member of the group who had stationed himself on the floor of the club rather than on the stage. Wearing various pieces of armor and a grotesque hog of hell mask, he unleashed guttural death-metal throes that would not have been out of place in front of a crowd of 30,000 screaming Norwegians, all the while stomping around the perimeter of his area and clanging his sword and shield together.

    (Let me note that by this point in the evening, I was really cursing myself for not knowing any Spanish, or at least bringing a Babel fish along with me. The Mexicans (some from Mexico City, others from Guadalajara), as well as the Guatemalans present, were all terribly gracious and accommodating, often apologizing for their poor English when speaking to me, when really, I’m the nitwit who moved to their country without speaking a word of the language!)

    Just when I thought the theatrics had reached a climax, a few fellow warriors joined the pig-man on the ground, and then the unthinkable: A firefight broke out. One of the newcomers began blowing flames at the orc-ish character who blocked them with his shield, when another of the new arrivals began tossing a flaming sphere up into the air and catching it with relative ease.

    For those keeping score at home: Drummers and percussionists, flutists, horn-players, bagpipes, chest suspensions, death metal vocals, swords, fire, and pig-men. Merely calling this a spectacle would be on par with calling syphilis an inconvenience.

    After a break in the action, a mélange of people outfitted in bondage and S&M gear took to the stage in procession — to enormous applause — and a simulated sex show ensued. While the men occasionally took the upper hand, the show saw the women generally dominate their male counterparts with a variety of whips, chains, and riding crops. Here, the audience impressed me; maybe I’m just cynical, but I still expect most people I meet to have some sort of homophobic tendencies about them — especially in developing nations where religion and history are more pervasive to modern day society. So imagine my shock when one of the women whipped out a massive dildo, began toying with the ass of her scantily clad slave, and the male-heavy crowd — after a brief “Is that what I think it is?” moment — cheered even louder than they already were! Nary a disgusted grunt could be heard in the place; these people paid good money to be there, and damned if they weren’t going to see some simulated anal violation live on stage. Very pleasantly surprised.

    The cavalcade of smut — and I use the term lovingly — exited stage left, which meant it was nearly time for the evening’s main event, if you will, featuring Lukas and Satomi. With a crowd gathered close to the foot of the stage, the industrial music segued into gentler, poppier techno-beats, smoke filled the venue, and a comely young lady wearing only bikini bottoms emerged through the haze. Planting herself on her knees, hands folded in her lap and head down, another figure made its way into the light: It was that of Satomi, dressed in head-to-toe black, and rope in hand. Thunderous applause roared from the audience as they took her in in all of her dominatrix glory, now towering over the petite, seemingly demure girl at her feet — on which she wore platforms giving her at least another six inches of height. After sizing up her victim briefly, with a swift gracefulness, she began to bind the girl’s hands behind her back.

    The act continued as Satomi brought the girl to her feet and, with skillful precision that would have left a Boy Scout shaken and traumatized, tied a series of complex knots around her arms, torso, and through her legs; escape, she showed, was impossible. She then whisked the girl to the side of the stage, and out came Lukas with a harness around his chest and hooks already in his back, ready to be suspended. Once he was in the air, the bound girl was reintroduced into the equation — Satomi was going to tie her to him. Flawlessly fastening more devious knots, this time around attaching the girl’s legs to the web of rope in her back, she then ran the rope through a ring in the middle of Lukas’ harness and lifted the girl off the ground through it and tied it off, leaving Lukas to support her weight as she hung off of him. With a malevolent smile, Satomi then dug a knee into the young girl’s back and proceeded to climb atop her horizontally-suspended body, putting immense pressure both on her and Lukas, and judging by the approving cheers from the audience, they certainly appreciated the difficulty of the act. The crowd left quite satisfied it seemed, some of them certainly having had their eyes opened to something entirely foreign, but exciting nonetheless.

    The second day’s festivities closed out with another suspension performance, yet one in a much different vein; with the stage encircled in soft red candles and gentle sounds of nature pulsing from the speakers, Beto sat patiently in a trance-like state while Lukas pierced his back and knees, and was slowly lifted off the ground. With unremitting concentration and purpose, he hung nearly dead still for several minutes before beginning a soft swaying. Certainly a change of pace from the high-action theatrics of the previous day’s performances, but it served its purpose as a smooth comedown and finale to the weekend. In the midst of the serenity though, the rope handler slipped and Beto came crashing down from at least ten feet above, the handler catching the rope at literally the last second with Beto only inches from the ground. He opened his eyes for the first time since being onstage, shot a humored glance to the man who had dropped him, and was raised once again.

    In no way do I mean to invalidate any of the other performances, but this one moment got more applause than any amount of seven foot tall mistresses or dildo-on-man-ass action could have hoped for.

    The segment came to a close with Beto hanging vertically and his lovely wife coming onstage to latch onto him as they kissed in a mid-air embrace. An art fusion performance followed, but I was quite literally running on fumes by this point and headed back to my temporary place of residence with Marciano of Kaustika, a local piercing and tattoo shop, an incredibly gracious if somewhat intoxicated young man.

    Sadly, I’ve omitted the details of a number of other portions of the event, but these were seminars and speeches conducted solely in Spanish without any translation. Unfortunate, too, as many of them sounded quite interesting, covering such broad topics as the History and Methodology of Suspension (by members of Kukulcan, featuring Beto), Ethics in Professional Body Piercing (by APP member Danny Yerna of Wakantanka), Tattoos as a Means of Identification (by Dr. Julieta Gutiérrez López), and the Discrimination of Tattooed People in Guatemala (by staff from the Guatemalan piercing studio Shogun). God knows I’d better be more competent in the language by September’s convention in Guadalajara.

    These people definitely got it. In spite of the relative unease I felt from much of the city, those present at BodyFest were some of the most genuine, friendly people I’ve met in the community, regardless of language barriers. I imagine it must have been a similar atmosphere to last year’s Buenos Aires convention, in the sense that holding large-scale events is a relatively new thing to the area and, as a result, the excitement level and the potential for novitiates to gain insight into some of the more advanced procedures and processes are greatly increased (though sadly, according to some of the organizers, the turnout was not nearly as high as anticipated). Also interesting to note is that Internet access in Mexico (Mexico City in particular) is largely very limited — most of the people I spoke to said that they had spent almost no time online whatsoever. I think a case could be made that in America and Canada, the Internet plays a large role in the proliferation of heavy modifications; the fact that in Mexico these ideas seem to truly spread through osmosis rather than through sites like BME — which, again, very few of the people had even heard of — really spoke to me of a very organic desire to get this kind of work done. There’s going to be some really fantastic stuff coming from the Central and South American contingent of practitioners very soon I think (really though, there already is).

    And as it turned out, Mexico City was not the den of crime and iniquity that I had been expecting. It’s certainly a place to exercise more caution in some respects than one normally would, but as with anything, a little savvy and some common sense can go a long way. That said, I opted for a subway ride to the airport the next morning rather than taking another taxi. Holding onto my backpack like grim death on public transit sounded far more appealing to me at 6:00 a.m. than ruining the only pair of pants I had while weeping gently in the fetal position in the back of a little green Volkswagen Beetle, whipping through the streets — supersonic — at dawn.

    Savvy indeed.

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