Just about every morning I wake up naturally between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. It takes me a few seconds before I realize, once again, that I do not have to get up just because I wake up.
This morning when I clicked on the TV to the just-beginning Today Show, I was greeted by the treacly sound of Ann Curry’s voice solemnly recapping the Rodney King saga that touched off a heart-stopping race riot in Los Angeles in 1992, when police who beat King bloody on camera were acquitted of any crime.
Early Sunday morning Rodney King was found dead at the bottom of his backyard swimming pool, assumedly drowned.
As I surfed through the articles online related to this story, I came across another story I had heard about in passing. Chris Brown – yes, THAT Chris Brown; the one who rearranged the face of the beautiful Rihanna a while back – was in the news again for brawling with another one of the fair Rihanna’s ex-loves, the rapper Drake.
You probably think this post is about celebrities behaving badly or the star-crossed nature of some people who simply cannot seem to stay the hell out of trouble. Nope.
This picture was reportedly taken just before someone threw a bottle and left a deep gash on Brown’s chin.
My attention was immediately drawn to those tattoos! And my curiosity, as usual, was off to the races.
Wow, look at those tats! Man, I bet that hurt. Why would he do that? Who else has such dramatic, body-covering tattoos? Isn’t that dangerous? What happens when tats go back out of style? Will Chris have to spend millions of dollars and months of pain trying to laser them off? Will they even come off with a laser? I wonder how long people have been using their bodies as billboards?
Poor Rodney King’s fate, sad as it is, was left in the dust, along with any further thought of how pathetic Chris Brown is for setting himself up for another onslaught of negative publicity.
Wondering how I ever existed with this rampant curiosity of mine without Google at the tip of my fingers, I found example after example of celebrity men who have endured similar inky needle attacks in an effort to decorate their already heavenly bodies.
David Beckham, soccer star and Hollywood pinup.
His choices include two full sleeves, a half chest and some kind of Chinese character. I wonder how wife Victoria feels about all this. The ink, I mean.
Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock, former wrestler and current movie star.
Johnson’s left shoulder adornment is cultural, as in Polynesian. His Polynesian shoulder art is a tribute to his half-Samoan heritage. Look at those…colors. Vivid colors.
Shamar Moore, star of TV’s Criminal Minds
The kingly lion on his right shoulder caught my eye while I was watching CM reruns one day. Then I remembered him as a teen playing American Legion baseball against my son’s team. Focus returned.
Then I found this:
L’il Wayne, rapper
My response? Ewwwwwwww! From the cross on his forehead to the gang wannabe teardrop on his face, which denotes a person killed in gang communities, this mess denotes a frenetic fashion statement for this pretender. This father of four looks like he was rolled in slightly wet newsprint!
According to a National Geographic Magazine article, body art via tattooing is somewhere around 5000 years old. Scientists, in 1991, learned from the remains the Copper Age “Iceman” they named Ötzi that powdered charcoal tattoos found on the lower back, ankles, knees and foot might have been used as a medical treatment for pain relief.
Whatever the purpose, tattoos have been a part of human life ever since.
Okay, enough serious history. Now I started wondering what these elaborate tattoos would look like later in life, when the earth’s gravitational pull starts creating nooks and crannies, slopes and slide on the bodyscape. I wish I had stopped while I was ahead.
Curiousity got the best of me after reading escrito por nada's last comment:
Janeane Garafolo, actor and activist
She does look a little seedy in this photo, but I don't think the tats are entirely the reason.
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Terry McKenna
Jacob Sugarman
Devi Hart
M.Stan Yow
Man Talk Now
Kim Gamble
Salon.com
Comments
1. Bad taste,
2. Being so drunk they don't know what they're doing,
3. Fashion slavery,
4. Belonging to a culture that requires tattoo as a rite of passage, or
5. Willing to literally bleed for art.
I'll post my tattoo experience at a later date.
Scary, huh?
LOL
Rated
Of course, I can't openly-state "that's stupid" to her, but it is what I think.
2 weeks ago I didn't know who Chris Brown was. The evening before that pic was taken, my son met him at a private party in NYC. They struck a pose and had a pic taken, which sonny posted on Facebook. That I didn't know who CB was dates me, I guess. I quit paying attention to music sometime during the disco era.
A little tattoo is fine. But the human body is beautiful. Tats should accentuate and grace the body, not uglify it.
I know a very mild, conservative middle-aged woman whose upper body is heavily tattooed. She says there's an addictive quality to the endorphins released in response to the pain.
sweetfeet: I agree with you on both. I prefer moderation in just about everything. Full-body is just more than my eyes can appreciate.
Con: That’s a familiar version of corporate passive aggression!
nerd cred: I personally am disgusted more by my own saggy old skin, sans tattoos. I do think arms would be one of the better places for tats to avoid wrinkle and sag.
I tried five times. Comment?
It smell like bah`Salamander.
cc
I send to White House Cook.
I love you for included Kerry.
Editor needs a long sea break.
He in Bellevue chewing tobacco?
He might spit in James M.E. cup.
Buy JME & Kerry a new Mugger.
Kerry use dollar mug to drool.
He droll in cup and bum dope.
He @ Salon - famous dope duh.
?
Security & Exchange lend coin.
Kerry get a $1.00 CA loon coin.
Kerry L.?
Behave.
Be nice.
No bunk with:
bad porcupine
`
gads
`
Getting back to the topic, I think tattoo art is quite intricate; I just don't agree with using the human body for a canvas.
R♥
r.
Now for someone like Chris Brown, an aspiring actor, it's pure folly. Who does he think he is, Angelina Jolie? She can get away with it because she's an a-list superstar. They will gladly use make up to cover her ink when necessary. Brown on the other hand is...brown, and with a bad reputation to boot. Surely his future roles will be limited.
For most people, ink is not a fashion accessory. You know when you do it that you're marking your container for the rest of its existence. Your image holds special meaning for you, and expresses something of your inside on your outside.
Worth mentioning is the burgeoning practice of tattooing imagery on surgery scars, a way to turn something not so pretty and representative of trauma into something beautiful. I have been thinking about doing this on my mastectomy scar for several years, and know exactly what I'd do: a phoenix flying out of a green X (last thing before they put you to sleep for surgery is ask you to point to the breast they will remove, then they mark it with an X in surgical marker–one step in protecting against removal of the wrong organ). Nobody would see this but me, or maybe I'd place it so the phoenix wing would show where I don't have cleavage, for a little visual interest.
Point. Counterpoint. Maybe this is the first time ever on OS that I haven't agreed with you ('-')
My husband says he would like me --at this age -- to get a little butterfly somewhere only he can see. I'm not sure if he's kidding but it ain't gonna happen.
The Rock- yes, very nice... colors. Gulp.
Shamar Moore- very nice features on that lion. Yep, very nice features...
L'il Wayne- I'm glad you said that. I was thinking that was a bit much, too.
Well, at least you can still pick out the designs...
This was fun, indeed. :)
Scanner: I think you are right about that.
Art James: Bunking with a porcupine, good, bad or otherwise, was not on my bullet list. :D
Alysa: You are so right about the commitment. I am so with you about needing variety.
Fusun: The GREATEST feeling of the day. :D
Jon: As I sad above, I think some of the art is fabulous.
babe: Yes, the pain. I don’t get how someone could sit for all that. Chris is self-destructing, which is a shame.
greenheron: I don’t see where you are disagreeing with me. You are teaching me. I’d never thought about what they’re doing with scars. I do know from watching some of the ink shows on A&E that most of the images are quite meaningful to the person getting the work done. There is no question in my mind at all that some tats are literally works of art. My niece has a gorgeous, colorful butterfly that covers her shoulder the way Shamar’s lion does.
OB: I have a picture of The Rock with his arm around me, thanks to the fact that my son had a part in one of his movies. He is beyond gorgeous in person. And he has a terrific personality.
Matt: I can tell you have a young adult daughter in the house. :D
just p0hyllis for now: I see you got my drift. :D Great Granny used to hang over the clothes line in the backyard speaking her native language the lady down the street. She never taught us one word of it, that I can remember anyway.
I don't have tattoos, but a lot of them are actual works of art. ~nodding~
Now tattooing your face with a crappy cross is kind of lame but to each his own!! ~nodding~
:)
RATED!
Bob: LOL! Think about the descendants generations from now!
Tink: Wow, I’ll bet that’s interesting to see. I wonder how long it took to do all that?
And yes, I too wish you had stopped before the final two photos.
Of course, if you really follow all those regulations, you can't be an organ donor. In my movement, we think it's a greater priority to save lives than to respect the sanctity of our corpses to that extent. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the orthodox reached that conclusion - they wouldn't now, because they're way too doctrinaire, but a century or a few centuries ago, if transplants were possible, they may have very well ruled that they were approved.
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Kosh: A sheynem dank!
My 50-year-old daughter just returned from a trip to England where she got a tattoo of John Lennon (the self-portrait sketch) on one upper arm and a Scottish thistle on the other. Quite nice. I have no aspirations myself.
The older daughter didn't get a tat in Seattle. It came 20 years later and 5 years after her daughter had a kidney transplant. She has a full sleeve that includes Lord Ganesha, the elephant god, and Phoenix rising, a tableau that tells of the rebirth of her child born with kidneys that didn't work, and the inner strength she didn't know she had to deal with the disaster. Another self designed work of art.
I still don't like tattoos. I am a retired pathologist. One of the things we do at autopsy in the initial examination of the deceased is a complete examination and recording of body marks. What we find is that 1) ink fades. 2) skin stretches and the hula girl from WWII may wind up looking like some other form of primate. 3) the tattoo may eventually be partially hidden by folds of flab.
Tattoos can ruin your life. Walking down the 'Ave' in Seattle sometime in the early 90s we met a young woman with one side of her head shaved, revealing a tattoo on her scalp, and the other half spiked and dyed green. The older hostile appearing guy she was with had a fly on the end of his nose and a spider web covering his face radiating away from the fly.
The girl could let her hair grow out someday and no one would ever know. The guy was screwed. He could get a job washing dishes but no one would even hire him as a busboy.
Your last photos are pretty typical of the beauty of aged tattoos. R
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............... *•.¸.•* ♥⋆★•❥ Thanx & Smiles (ツ) & ♥ L☼√Ξ ☼ ♥
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escrito por nada: As a pathologist I’ll bet you’ve seen just about everything that can be done to the human body. Your daughter’s story is like many of those I’ve heard and read about people who get tattoos. Thank you for answering my question about how tattoos age. That they can ruin a person’s life is something many people prefer not to think about, but I know it has happened.
Algis: Thanks!
escrito por nada: In your honor, I will find and post Janeane.
That said, if gorgeous men want to ink up and show off, I can get behind that cause.