I’ve always been told that rotating or “rotisserie” are the most horribly painful suspensions you can do. I was just talking to Jason from Third Eye Perception Flesh Suspension out of Austin, Texas (or online at thirdeyeperception.com) about his — that’s him in the animated GIF on your right, which is nabbed from the video below of the 360 degree vertical rotating suspension (followed by an earlier horizontal rotation video of Tom Moore, recorded by Jared Anderson, just so you can see both), and he elaborates,
The 360 was the most horrifying yet peaceful moment of my life. I have never been an emotional person during any suspension, but as soon as the first hook pierced me, I was flooded with emotions and literally cried the entire time I was being pierced. The amount of people helping and contributing humbled me beyond expectation. Being tensioned into it — instead of the traditional method of rigging in — felt as if I was being torn into various pieces, but it also made me feel a bit more secure that I wouldn’t fly out of the device. As soon as I gave in and started spinning the pain was beyond anything else I have ever done, and I stopped after a few rotations. Once I stopped, I restarted and began spinning backwards, which is when I felt amazingly calm.
At the upcoming Suscon he’s planning a rotisserie, and after that will be exploring more suspensions along the same theme — maybe a full-on XYZ gyroscope. All of the fabrication of these impressive suspension rigs is by Tom Moore, an essential part of making these unique suspensions possible. Others contributed as well, for example, Emrys Yetz put together the tensioning rig, a ratchet set up (which Jason admits drove him insane because of the clicking noise, but getting the tensioning balanced and tight is what makes this suspension bearable).
The Monsters of Schlock, Burnaby Q. Orbax and his brother Sweet Pepper Klopek, just rigged up a tattoo machine to run on battery power and brought it onto the PNE’s big — and very shaky — wooden rollercoaster and tattooed a lizard logo onto Sweet Pepper’s leg. Photo by Syx Langemann (click to zoom), and there was lots of HD video shot so don’t be surprised if you see more that just this quick teaser video in the future on television.
Yes, yes, I know, this is an insult to everything you hold sacred. We’re all very offended.
For the first time in recorded history, a man has been tattooed on a running roller coaster. That man was none other than Sweet Pepper Klopek, one half of the world’s most extreme two man circus sideshow comedy magic extravaganza known as the Monsters of Schlock. His brother, and other half of the daredevil duo, the great Orbax, performed the tattoo. As a matter of fact it was the first time he had EVER tattooed!
The wild stunt took place at the PNE Playland fairgrounds in Vancouver BC Canada on Oct 24th 2012 on the wooden roller coaster. Two successive trips around were required, totalling in just under four minutes of track time covering a total distance of 1732 m. At points the coaster hit 47 mph, took a drop of 75 ft and pulled 2.2 g’s.
The tattoo itself was a lizard face, the logo of their long time sideshow friend and coworker, Erik Sprague, the world famous Lizardman. As the coaster hit the first incline, the five time Guinness World Record breakers proclaimed ‘One small tattoo for man, one giant leap for douchebags everywhere!’.
The Monsters of Schlock have performed skilled, daring and dangerous all over the world but this, by far, they claim to be their stupidest.
Well, well, it seems that Brazil’s population of eyeball tattoos has just jumped dramatically in the last week, with Emilio Gonzalez having done a handful of them, and also Rafael Leão Dias of Dhar-Shan in Jundiaí, who did the striking red eye pictured below that’s going to leave nineteen year old Mary Jo with a life of assuring people she hasn’t been injured. As I’ve said many times, I really like colored eye tattoos a lot.
I know I’m sounding like a broken record on this point, but I think it’s justified — I really implore people to exercise extreme caution and respect with this particular mod. For example, if a practitioner wants to forge ahead and isn’t interested in playing it safe and waiting until the procedure has been thoroughly developed and training is available, I’d really really urge them to use a similar learning curve to Howie five years ago — do a number of small single test injections and get an understanding of the anatomy and how it behaves with the smallest amount of damage. With eye tattoos, remember too that less is more. You want to inject the absolute minimum amount of ink you can get away with — the more ink, the more risk. Do not underestimate the effect it will have on someone’s life if something goes wrong. Hell, even if everything goes right, don’t treat this lightly — be sure that your client is mature enough (and I’m not saying that a teenager can’t make drastic permanent life-altering decisions — that’s got to be handled case-by-base) to understand that if they do this, they will never, ever, ever have a normal life.
Given how many people — even people inside the piercing industry — are having stretched ears reversed, I have real serious concerns about the regret train that could come smashing into us in ten years over eye tattoos (and that’s assuming that it’s as safe as I believe it is and there’s no larger apocalypse). Stretched ears have a very minimal impact on ones social and public life when compared to eyeball tattoos. I’m not telling anyone not to do these things. It would be silly and hypocritical for me to do so. Personally I think eyeball tattoos are awesome. But more than any other modification, I hope that people treat it with respect and caution. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that because I think they look amazing and you think they look amazing that the world agrees with us. The world thinks we’re fucked in the head for doing this, and I don’t see them changing their mind on that any time soon. And, if eventually they beat us down and make us regret it, guess what? Too bad. This tattoo can’t be lasered off. If you hit the ink particles with a laser, the body can not remove the broken down bits. And you certainly can’t excise the tattoo surgically without destroying the eye. Regrets be damned, because this is for life.
Rafael also posted a video of himself doing the eye tattoo that I posted yesterday. Please, do not treat this video as a “how to”. If anything, note how incredibly differently the first injection and second injection behave — the margin for error in this procedure is extremely slim, and unfortunately the only way to figure it out at present is trial and error because the procedure is still being refined and is still experimental. You can’t sign up for a class in it at the next APP convention. So it’s almost certain that every practitioner that throws their hat into the ring is going to mess up some eyes — over-injection, lumpy eyes, various sorts of damage, aesthetic shortcomings, facial stains, and perhaps even serious injury. Different types of tattoo ink respond very differently (for example, UV ink has responded badly in some people). Again, trial and error. In a perfect world, people would seek out experienced practitioners, and practitioners seeking to add this to their roster would seek out training from those with years of experience. But unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world. Just remember, if you may a mistake on an eye, it’s not like a piercing or an implant or a normal tattoo — there’s no rewind button. You can’t go back. You can’t go to someone and have it reversed. It’s for life. No going back, whether you get it perfect or whether something goes wrong.
It’s the weekend — and a long weekend here in Canada — so I hope you can permit me to post a couple of silly YouTube videos. The first one I want to share with you is of our old friend Rafa Mendes, who you probably know has a ginormous lip plate. If you’ve ever watched videos of indigenous cultures that wear large lip plates eating and drinking, you know that they sometimes integrate their lip discs into the activity, using them as bowls and such from time to time. Rafa takes a trip down that road and uses his to blow soap bubbles in this clip.
I’ve got to post a thumbnail of that as well because it’s just so charming. The size of your lip disc may not determine the size of your wedding dowry any more, but it does at least determine how much fun you’re going to have entertaining the little kids at the the wedding you’re invited to!
The other video is maybe a bit more controversial, and for the obvious reasons you’d assume when I tell you it’s filed in the “Dildo” category. That’s because it’s my friend from Dildo Tattoo Studio (dildostudio.gr) in Greece having some maniacal fun doing a “piercer challenge” at the shop to test their piercing kung fu… That’s right… BLINDFOLDED PIERCING. They tell me that the next challenge is a blindfolded eyebrow piercing. I hope they’re kidding — the only time I want to see a needle in the eyeball is when it’s injecting ink.
Ok, I mostly hope they’re kidding.
And before you get all stick-up-your-ass cranky about this, these are all friends just goofing around together. It’s harmless fun. Or I should say “low harm fun”. Either way, it makes me happy to see people having fun.
I am just terrible about telling you about these on time, so go subscribe to his YouTube channel! J.C. Potts has posted the most recent The Modified World (and the new one should come online tomorrow I hope), and you’ll be happy to hear that it’s an interview with long-time IAM/BME member Tye Olsen, talking about his “surgically modified pointed elf ears”. Another great show.
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I’ve always been told that rotating or “rotisserie” are the most horribly painful suspensions you can do. I was just talking to Jason from Third Eye Perception Flesh Suspension out of Austin, Texas (or online at thirdeyeperception.com) about his — that’s him in the animated GIF on your right, which is nabbed from the video below of the 360 degree vertical rotating suspension (followed by an earlier horizontal rotation video of Tom Moore, recorded by Jared Anderson, just so you can see both), and he elaborates,
