© Markus Cuff Photo 2009

Markus Cuff has been cooperative so far, but now he’s stiff-arming me. We’ve been on the phone for a good half-hour or so, having a perfectly pleasant conversation about his 15 years as one of the top photographers at Tattoo magazine, and now this? He gives me the high-hat over a harmless, standard interview question?

“How old are you?” I ask with my typical childlike sweetness and wonder.

“I’m, uh….” He stops himself short. What have you got to hide, Cuff? “I’m 103,” he finally says. “My age is a closely guarded secret.”

“You can be vague,” I tell him. “Just say you’re ‘something-ish.’”

“‘Something-ish,’” he repeats, and pauses again. “A hundred and three.”

Whatever, wise guy. I’m only asking because his story makes it seem like he’s lived through (and contributed to) a number of seminal cultural moments, and these life experiences just seem a little incongruous with his lively, almost boyish voice. But, sure…103.

What he tells me is by the time he got around to photography, he already felt like he was late to the game. If he’d started in earnest as a teenager, he could have been going to concerts and shooting bands like Led Zeppelin and Cream, guys like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn, and maybe he could published a retrospective book by now, making money off portraits of rock gods. He saw others go that route, but while his potential peers were chasing fame as photographers, Cuff, the boy from suburban Maryland, home of Link Wray, took a detour and made a name for himself as a musician instead. He spent two years handling the drum kit for Emmylou Harris’s band, touring and playing on her Pieces of the Sky album. Some time in the late seventies/early eighties, he moved to Los Angeles and ended up playing in The Textones with Carla Olson and Kathy Valentine (the latter of whom would go on to join The Go-Gos), hitting the L.A. club circuit with bands like X and The Blasters.

It was there in L.A., though, that he made friends with some kids who were taking photo classes at Santa Monica College, and Cuff, who had once long ago learned how to develop prints from black and white film, felt that old passion start to warm. “I looked at their work,” he says, “and thought, ‘Damn! I know I could do as well as that! I think I’m a lot more artistic than these people!’ And I think it just sort of clicked with me—no pun intended.”

As a teenager in Maryland, Cuff would spend a lot of time in D.C.’s cultural institutions—the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian, the Freer Gallery of Art—that allowed visitors in gratis. He developed a taste for Hokusai woodcuts and other Asian-style pieces, but more generally developed and nurtured an inclination towards the visual arts—an inclination that would lie dormant during his musical excursions, that is, until he joined his friends at SMC, where he excelled. He got a lot of A’s. He immersed himself in photography. He sorted out his influences: Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Robert Frank and Walker Evans, and, of course, the master as far as he’s concerned, Irving Penn, who he calls a “dynamo of photography.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever been as versatile as he is,” he says of Penn, who’s shot everything from portraiture and fashion to cosmetic ads and the “mud men of New Guinea.”

None of this should come as a surprise. A young, eager photographer falling in love with the classical beacons of the art form? Sure, and next you’ll tell me there are freshman philosophers with things for Freud. But what happened next was Cuff, instead of shooting tulips and teapots, got picked up in 1990 by the magazine Easyriders and started photographing motorcycles. “That was fine with me,” he says. “I needed a job.”

Mike Rubendall / © Cuff

Except it was luckier than that. When he wasn’t hanging out at galleries or playing drums in his younger days, he was going to car shows, reading hotrod magazines and trying to copy the custom car designs of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth on white T-shirts with felt-tip pens. He had experience dealing with insular communities of people who liked to go fast—motorcycles were a breeze. But Easyriders didn’t just traffic in bikes; their roster of magazines also included Tattoo and its sister publications, Flash and Savage. In 1994, Billy Tinney, the editor-in-chief and senior photographer for Tattoo, tapped him for a special assignment: To start shooting profiles of tattoo shops in Los Angeles for the magazine. It was an era, Cuff says, when tattooing was still somewhat underground. “This was before you were seeing [tattoos] on every basketball player, every football player,” he tells me, “and way before things like Ed Hardy shirts and Affliction.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is mighty…niche. I wonder where this could ever go?’”

Cuff’s first assignment was to shoot Greg James and the crew at Sunset Strip Tattoo, or, as he describes it, “baptism by fire.” He was accompanied by two other editors under the Tattoo umbrella, Frenchie Nilsen and Dave Nichols, to make sure he knew what he was doing and that he was the guy for whom they were looking. Sure enough, he didn’t freak out or soil himself or anything of the sort. And the tattoo artists? Well, they took to him quickly, too, he says. But I’m not buying it. If he’s not going to tell me his goddamn age, I figure the least he can do is give me some dirt about the vicious hazing he must have faced at the hands of these old school bad-asses…except he doesn’t budge. “I’m kind of a get-along guy,” he says with such sincere cheer that I know it has to be the truth. It’s becoming apparent that this is a guy who trades in gaining access to the famously inaccessible, and that’s the sort of station that requires either authenticity of personality or a high tolerance for fakery. After nearly two decades behind the lens, though, it strikes me that the latter would be too exhausting to cling to.

With Sunset Strip Tattoo in the can, Cuff was anointed “the local guy.” He hit shops all over the city, photographing their interiors, exteriors, staff and clients, building records for each. There are only so many local shops to cover over a year’s worth of issues, though, let alone four or five years’ worth, so the magazine started sending him on the road, first to San Francisco and San Diego and Santa Barbara, and eventually to Phoenix and Portland, New York City and Boston, Hawaii and Tahiti. He learned as he went along, though he still says he wouldn’t consider himself an expert. When he went to Tahiti, he picked up a book about the history of tattooing on the island and, when taking refuge from the heat, read about the English and Russian explorers who came to the island and left with tattoos, only to be gawked at back home like circus animals. It’s in these more “exotic” locales that he typically feels more compelled to educate himself about the culture. “The more literal kind of old school, classic American-style tattoo is a little more understandable,” he says. “It has symbolism, but it’s something you grow up with. You see someone walking by with a sailor-style tattoo and you don’t think it’s that strange. With the island tattooing, I felt like I had to study it a bit more.”

The Dutchman / © Cuff 2009

One of his greater thrills was getting the chance to photograph The Dutchman and his Dutchman Tattoos Studio and Gallery in Burnaby, British Columbia, a few years ago—partially due to admiration, but also because no one had photographed the artist in years. “He pointed to an old article on the wall,” Cuff says of The Dutchman, “and said, ‘See? We’ve been done before.’ And it was from the ’80s! I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

But some of his favorite studios are back on the mainland. He raves about Mike Rubendall’s Kings Avenue Tattoo in Massapequa, New York, to which he’s made several professional visits. “The level of the artistry is just so high,” he says. “There’s never one image that comes in front of my lens where I think, ‘Oh no, how am I going to do this?’ or, ‘I’m going to delete this after I leave.’ Because that does happen.” One of Cuff’s biggest pet peeves when shooting clients’ tattoos is going home afterward, looking at the images on his computer, and realizing that someone has tried to sneak a cover-up past him.

“All power to those who can do cover-ups,” he says, “but for me it doesn’t work. I see something underneath the other image and it bothers me, especially nobody’s told me it was a cover-up.”

At this point, he’s got shop-shooting down to a science. Shops are approached far enough in advance to allow time for the artists to contact clients to come in and be photographed, and once shows up and sets up his lights, it’s all business, blowing through an average of 25 clients a day, in addition to any supplementary photos of the shop itself and staff. There are no assistants, no make-up artists, no hair dressers, so part of his success and peace of mind can hinge on the cooperation of his subjects, some of whom, he says, go above and beyond. It’s not uncommon for shops to assign counter staff to handle photo releases and other paperwork and to supply him with coffee and muffins. Beyond that, though, the ingredients for a great photo shoot are somewhat expected. “Some hot girls are always fun,” he says. “It’s always great when you see someone who has it all together. Great makeup, hair, cool clothes…it’s a great feeling and makes my job pretty easy.”

Most shops, he says, have had a convivial atmosphere during shoots, but there have been exceptions. Occasionally, he’s had shoots where he’ll take a staff photo early in the morning, and then need to take another one in the evening—because someone was fired or quit during the day. “That’s not a horrible thing for me,” he says, “but it definitely makes you think, ‘Hey, there’s some drama going on around here.’”

All of this—the travel, the education, the meetings and greetings and inside baseball—and yet, Cuff himself does not have a single tattoo of his own. Sure, he has his reasons—he’s very light-skinned and prefers long-sleeved shirts, so he wouldn’t ever show one off; he doesn’t work out assiduously and isn’t going to be flexing in the weight room with a pinup girl on his biceps—but he largely abstains because he considers himself a sort of cultural anthropologist in the tattoo world. “I’ve dropped in via photography,” he says, “and I’m documenting a world. I don’t necessarily have to participate actively to document it well.” He analogizes the fact that he doesn’t have tattoos to the common phenomenon of great fashion photographers who neither (1) dress well nor (2) walk the runway. “The idea that you have to be a motorcycle rider to shoot motorcycles,” he says, “or a tattooed person to shoot tattoos is kind of a holdover idea from the ’50s and ’60s, when the tattoo and motorcycle cultures were so underground that the only people who were interested in capturing them were from those worlds.” When Easyriders came around, however, Cuff’s focus wasn’t on becoming a biker: It was on becoming a great photographer. “I’m a beauty fiend,” he admits. “I’m not trying to expose an underbelly, and I’m not trying to get at somebody and expose their weaknesses. I’m just trying to document things in the most beautiful and flattering way I can.”

Justin Weatherholz / © Cuff 2008

Following Cuff’s immersion into the world of tattoos, however, he’s experienced a dilemma all too common to the heavily tattooed: a relative lack of mainstream acceptance. Some photographers are able to stack their portfolios with tattoo imagery, he says, “but I don’t think if I sent in my portfolio of images and they were all loaded in that direction that I could get a job with a mainstream ad agency.” He’s approached gallery owners in Los Angeles about potential gallery showings, and has frequently been told of the catch-22 inherent in this sort of work: the people who are more likely to enjoy his work are the least likely to buy it. “It speaks to a certain crowd,” he says of tattoo imagery, “and it’s largely a younger audience, who, in general, is trying to pay their rent, trying to feed themselves, and they don’t have the kind of disposable income an older, moneyed crowd has. So if I print an image fairly large and I mount it and I matte it and frame it and I charge ‘X’ amount of money, it’s something that’s going to appeal to an older audience as far as the quality and presentation, but it’s something that a younger audience is more likely to buy…if they could afford it.”

It’s a tough spot, he admits—all the more reason to not allow himself to get stuck in one niche. As a photographer, he’d love it if people looked at his tattoo work and, in that, saw someone talented enough to do fashion or advertising, or looked at his motorcycle shots and entrusted him with a car campaign. It’s a conundrum for the photographer who worships the versatility of an Irving Penn, yet maintains, “I don’t necessarily want to sell out, I don’t necessarily want to be watered down.” The common thread through all his work, he says, is that he seeks imagery with an edge—work that speaks to what he calls a “knowing audience.” The sort of thing that can be off-putting to people in the “straight world.”

And sure enough, he has branched out: Within his portfolio is his “Wasteland” series, which focuses on broken down, dilapidated rural scenes (with some shots of Hank Williams III included for good measure), as well as some of the live concert photography he missed out on in those early days. “It’s like big-game hunting,” he says of shooting concerts. “You’ve got three songs at the front of a concert. That’s all. You get the thing in your sights and you get it…or you ain’t gonna get it.

“There’s an adrenaline rush when Madonna jumps out on stage; you’ve gotta get a charge out of what you do.”

Nonetheless, he still feels like he’s hustling to catch up and build his body of work. “It’s almost like their classic rock photography is my classic tattoo imagery,” he says of those who jumped on the photography train ahead of him, the artists close to him in age—whatever that is. “Maybe if I live to be 100,” he says, laughing, “there’ll be a retrospective.”

Wait…100? What the hell happened to 103?

Dawn Purnell / © Markus Cuff photo 2008

Visit Markus online at MarkusCuffPhoto.com.

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Joy Rumore

I would theoretically support regulation for the sake of client and practitioner safety, but realistically it would be a NIGHTMARE. It’s hard enough to find doctors that don’t panic at the first sign of a healing tattoo or piercing, let alone those who would be willing to stand up to their peers and condone body modification publicly and THEN be willing to create and support regulations for the industries. Even if all that did happen, there are the hurdles of politicians and PTA mothers to clear, as well. Or am I being too pessimistic?

Tracy Baer

My guess is that you’re being realistic, Joy. And pessimistic or not, the politicians and PTA mothers are the hurdles that would be the hardest to clear. Well worth the effort, but still a tricky one. The rules and regulations on tattooing have caused our industry to improve in countless ways just in the last decade. Ever tightening boundaries on what is considered safe and sane in the world of tattooing has caused those of us who tattoo for a career to improve and adapt. In my opinion, those changes have been for the good. Long gone are the days of tattoos only being for “sailors and whores.” Don’t get me wrong, I still tattoo my fair share of both groups…but, we see a wide mix of people on a daily basis. Church ladies share a couch in the waiting room with gangster rappers while waiting for us to finish tattooing the cop. The surgeon on his day off stops in for a consult on his back piece, while the renegade biker brings his daughter for her first piercing. And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. There have been many changes I’ve grumbled about over the years, but in reality, it’s the things I’ve grumbled about that have caused my chosen career to become widely accessible to all of those groups, and more. You learn to work around the ones you don’t care for…and find, for the most part, a better way.

John Joyce

I would support regulations if they were made with the support of people in our industry. Too often bureaucrats and health department officials write up the regulations without getting any input from someone in our field. The health inspectors that inspect studios in most places are used to inspecting restaurants. They don’t really know what they are looking for in a tattoo/piercing studio. California right now is in the process of writing regulations. They met in a few different cities with piercers, tattoo artists, the APP was represented by Steve Joyner, and that is how I feel it should be. That way you are getting regulations that make sense.

Meg Barber

Well said, Tracy. The idea of regulating the things we do is a double-edged sword. On one hand, rules and guidelines set up and ENFORCED are a wonderful thing, but only when the rules and guidelines are created with input from the practitioners who are professional and on top of their game. I have worked in shops in the past that were about as dirty and unethical as it gets (this was over 10 years ago), but the owner tattooed a health board member and got to make up the rules—that is TERRIBLE. That’s why the autoclave area was also a break room. Other cities get it right though. In Philadelphia, if I am not mistaken, shops must use internally threaded jewelry for initial piercings. They hit gold when they got Bill Funk to help write legislation. Of course, the downside to responsible legislation is that it sometimes harnesses what we can do as far as more extreme procedures. The law tends to frown on scalpels, biopsy punches, anesthetics and the like. It’s a cross we have to bear, I suppose: Do we operate within the laws designed to protect the public from the stupidity of people who don’t know what they are doing, or do we break the law because we are responsible and know how to use the tools we aren’t supposed to be using? If legislation were to go into effect that really, truly protected people—the outlawing of ear piercing guns, the requirement of weekly spore testing for all autoclaves and statims, mandatory bloodborne pathogen training, etc.—then that would be the right start, in my opinion.

John Joyce

Where I live and operate my studio, there are no regulations—other than the state law of not tattooing anyone under 18 or who is intoxicated. I’ve been open for eight years, and worked in this area for almost four years before that. In 12 years, I’ve never seen an inspector, or even heard of one inspecting any studio around here. I would love to work with the health department or whoever, to set at least a minimum set of guidelines that all studios have to follow. Walk into most studios around here and ask them what a spore test is and when the last time they ran one was? You’ll get blank stares.

Meg Barber

John, being in NY as well, we have NO inspections. We have to hang a sign up that says if you are unhappy or have a complaint, dial 311. In NYC, where we are, it’s worse than the usual statewide ignorance, I think. There are sunglass vendors doing piercings at sidewalk stands for $30, jewelry included, no age limit. We hear horror stories all the time of the St. Marks piercers doing 14-year-old kids’ nipples and stuff. Tattoo artists are required to register with the city, get a license, etc., but piercing is totally and completely unregulated. It’s terrifying.

Tracy Baer

I like to think if I were in an area with absolutely no regulations, I would run, not walk, to the powers that be and get started with some input. With a quickness. This in NO WAY is meant to cause a fuss, or to point fingers, but it’s easier to complain about the lack of (or problems with) regulations if you have no intention of trying to be involved. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but in most cases there should be a chain of command to follow that will lead you to a meeting or an individual with whom you can voice your concerns.

John Joyce

I’ve contacted the health department in the past and was told there was nothing they could do because they just didn’t have the money. I’ve even had clients tell me that they had called the health department on other studios after having work done there, and were told the exact same thing.

Meg Barber

New York just doesn’t give a flying fig about it. They figure that the people can govern themselves, which is REALLY backwards considering that tattooing was illegal here until very recently because of the health problems associated with dirty tattooing. That’s why the licensing is in place, although from what I understand, it’s pretty useless. Our piercer at our other store has a tattooist license just so he can get wholesale pricing on piercing supplies through a few NYC–based companies. Funding for such things is very limited here. It’s there for welfare programs and other things, but not there for the general health and welfare of people getting modified. If I was 16 and knocked up here, I’d get the best care, but if I get the hep from a dirty studio? Forget it.

John Joyce

NYC is a little different than the rest of the state. We don’t even have a tattoo licensing process here [in Syracuse]. Although, I have heard that the licensing process in NYC is set up more to make the city money than to actually benefit the general public. Another big problem I’ve seen is areas that have good regulations in place don’t have the funds to enforce them. Look at Philadelphia. It has some of the best piercing regulations in the country. But, they aren’t enforced at all, and you can walk into any number of studios and get pierced with crap externally threaded jewelry, even though regulations say you can’t use that for an initial piercing.

Meg Barber

True. Money always seems to be best put to use on other programs. Giving everyone who smokes in your city the patch for free is more important I guess. I asked Maria about the health inspections here in NYC. In 17 years, there has never been one, but about 10 years ago, someone with a fake badge came around and demanded $100 to do an inspection. Have any of you actually worked with the health departments in your areas?

Derek Lowe

When I lived and pierced in Madison, Wisconsin (’96-’98), I worked closely with the state when they decided to set up statewide regulations. They formed a committee of three piercers, three tattoo artists, a doctor, a public health nurse, an epidemiologist and a few other people. They had a basic template when we started and then we worked on refining the regulations. For the most part it was a pleasant and productive process. The non-practitioners were respectful of what we had to say and in many cases took what we said about our specific industries very seriously. We ended up with what I felt was a decent set of regulations. Unfortunately, I left the state before those regulations went into effect. I can’t speak to how well they are, or aren’t, enforced. Here in Minneapolis (and they are looking at going state-wide soon), we have a set of regulations that isn’t bad. There are definitely some things that could be improved. The regulations were created before I lived here, but it is my understanding that there was input from at least a few piercers and tattoo artists. Unfortunately, those regulations include bans on branding, scarification, implants and suspension. I have worked with the Minneapolis health department a fair amount, but they seem to be in the position that most health departments are in: they don’t have the money to do any more than the bare minimum they are required by law. We get our once-a-year inspection (which is okay, but not fantastic) and we don’t see them again unless there is some sort of complaint. I think the key to good regulations (which I support) is having knowledgeable, ethical practitioners involved in the process from the beginning. It’s much easier to get the regulations right the first time around than it is to try and get them to go back and change things once they are in place.

Steve Truitt

In New Mexico, the laws went statewide late last year—instead of just the city of Albuquerque, like they have been for the last 10 years or so. The laws were written with piercer and tattoo artist input, and there is a piercer and tattoo artist on the board that regulates us (Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists unfortunately). We have some decent laws, like all shops have to pierce with implant grade jewelry, for example. However, they straight-up told us that they are not going to enforce the laws or shut down any shops that refuse to comply because then they couldn’t make any money off of that shops permits, etc. It always comes down to money. Even if they didn’t enforce the laws and just sent out a letter or something pretending that they were going to, it might help make a lot of these shops clean up their acts or close down on their own. The stupidest thing they could have done is what they did by telling us that yeah, these are the laws, but they have no intentions of enforcing them because they want to make as much money as possible—and that means giving everyone with $300 a permit even if they don’t meet any of the “qualifications” that the board has set to get a permit in the first place.

John Joyce

I’ve heard that same story a lot—that basically, you send you city, county, or state some money to get a certificate and that is basically it. After that, there is no real enforcement. I think it’s great that the stories some of you have shared involve meetings with piercers and tattoo artists to set the regulations up, but it doesn’t do any good if they aren’t enforced.

Derek Lowe

I’m not trying to make excuses for health departments or health inspectors that aren’t doing their jobs. I do think it’s important, though, to keep in mind that very few of the people involved in inspecting and enforcing piercing/tattoo regulations know anything about the industries to begin with. So, not only are they being asked to take on additional inspections, and probably for no additional pay, they are also expected to further their education regarding piercing and tattooing with very little, if any, resources (i.e., time and money) being provided by their health departments. Most inspectors are trained in inspecting restaurants, nursing homes, local fairs and possibly hospitals—not piercing and tattoo studios. Clearly, continuing education is part of any job. Imagine, though, if someone came along and told you that you needed to become familiar with how to do a manicure or a pedicure. After all, those things involve the body just like piercing and tattooing…even though you have no interest in those things. Now, not only do you have to learn that stuff, but you aren’t going to be given any time or money to do it. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine how much time and effort any of us would put into learning about those procedures.

Ryan Ouellette

I’m terrified of regulation. On the plus side, it would keep some crappy shops less crappy, but I’d be concerned with the state banning procedures they don’t understand. A few years back, New Hampshire tried to ban all piercing because some councilman’s daughter got an illegal piercing. So rather than just making stricter rules, they attempted to outright ban the entire practice. I would love to see responsible regulations in place, but not if it limits what procedures can be done. In the last few years, New Hampshire has actually lessened regulation due to budget restrictions. They can’t afford to inspect shops anymore, so basically everybody works off the honor system, and you can imagine how ridiculous that gets. I’m sure every body art worker wants reasonable regulations. I don’t think the majority of health departments are educated enough to understand what it is they’re regulating and how best to do so. The double edged sword is that it’s often one individual’s personal opinion that decides what gets a regulation and what gets a ban.

John Joyce

Over-regulation is definitely a major concern, and the possibility of banning certain procedures is part of the reason I’m OK with the lack of regulations we have right now. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to see some reasonable safety guidelines set in place. I think there should be checks at least twice a year to make sure at the very least studios are running regular spore tests.

Derek Lowe

“The double edged sword is that it’s oftentimes one individual’s personal opinion that chooses what gets a regulation and what gets a ban.” That’s very much true. When I first moved to Minneapolis I was discussing the ban on suspension with the inspector who handles piecing and tattoo shops. I asked her why suspensions were banned and she responded with something along the lines of: “Someone brought in a tape of it for us to watch. Have you seen that stuff?! My God.” Seems as though they were pretty freaked out by it and so they went the route of banning. I don’t think any of the piercers involved in the process were interested in suspension, so I don’t think they fought it very hard, if it all.

Jordan Ginsberg

Would you rather potential legislation be focused on “body modification,” as a catch-all for piercing, tattooing, scarification, implants, etc., or do you think those should all be treated as separate industries?

Derek Lowe

I think it makes sense for cities/states to address them at the same time, so maybe in that sense they should be grouped together. However, I think it’s important that each discipline be addressed individually to make sure the regulations make sense, are effective and are enforceable.

Tracy Baer

They should absolutely, without exception, be treated as separate industries.

Steve Truitt

The problem is, if they’re treated as separate industries, most people don’t know much about scarification, implants, etc., so if they have to go make separate laws about that instead of grouping it all under a body art law they will most likely just make it illegal. There are enough piercers, tattoo artists, and mod practitioners together to make up a legitimate presence at a hearing to pass laws about those issues. If they break it up separately there are a lot fewer people in each category and that makes it easier for them to pass laws to regulate us out of business completely. Most laws for public safety in a piercing, tattoo, mod studio apply to any form of modification as well, so separating them is more of a headache for law-makers, too, which makes them less likely to want to do that. It’s much easier for a lawyer, politician, etc., to say, “Make that illegal” than to say, “Make it legal, but make sure that anyone doing it is complying with this 30 page list of rules and regulations I’m going to draw up.”

John Joyce

I don’t see any problem with grouping them together. Like Steve said, it makes it less likely that they will just make certain things illegal. For the most part, a lot of the regulations would be the same anyway: age requirements, spore testing, autoclave logs, single-use sharps, sharps disposal, etc….

Tracy Baer

OK, maybe I’m talking in an ideal world that they should be separate. Honestly though, how much in common does tattooing have with any of the things that you all are discussing? Aside from the fact that they both are a modification to the body and that these days they share a building.

Ryan Ouellette

I’m sure to all of us the difference between piercing and tattooing is like night and day. But, to someone outside of the industry, they aren’t going to care. They’re just all things that make their granddaughters look like whores.

Steve Truitt

Tattooing has plenty in common. Like John pointed out, autoclave usage, spore tests, use of gloves, using sterilized single-use needles, disposal of sharps, use of disinfectants, etc. I’d say about 90 percent of the laws in most places could go for any type of modification, and only about 10 percent are specific to any one form of it.

John Joyce

Exactly. There are going to be some specific laws for each, but the most important regulations are going to be pretty universal.

What do you think? Let’s hear it in the comments.

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Meg Barber

I’ll step up to bat with this one. I hate microdermals with a capital H. I think that while they do offer some possibilities that haven’t been seen before as far as placement and jewelry styles, they are problematic, hard to successfully heal for the long haul, and are just an all-around hassle. I see a lot of them reject and leave pretty nasty scars, because most of the time the client isn’t looking at it on a regular basis (because of its weird placement) to see if anything is wrong with the piercing. I see a lot of them with massive piles of shmutz built up around them for the very same reasons. People don’t tend to view them as “permanent” at all. It’s something to get done now, like an earlobe or nostril, and there is no forewarning about the issues that arise with them from most piercers. When they started to get huge, I admit, we got on the bandwagon, but we have certainly backed off on our enthusiasm with them since watching issues arise. This past month, Vibe magazine had a blurb about microdermals in their fashion issue. It showed a piece on a girl’s side that we did, but what it didn’t show was me resetting that sucker back in there two weeks prior to the shoot because it had been shifting outwards. I know that there are a lot of people gung-ho about them, and they can be fun, but I think they should be viewed much like surface work with a more permanent edge.

Ryan Ouellette

I was leaning towards a negative opinion of them a few months back, but then I started experimenting with longer stem lengths and now things are going a lot smoother. I’ve done about 250 of them over the last 18 months, I’d say the first 200 were 3/32″ rise, no matter the location. I was getting some tilting, and the occasional failure, but still maybe a 60-70 percent flat heal success rate. I think out of that initial 200 I personally removed maybe 15, and a few were cut out by other shops. Now with the 1/8″ and 5/32″ stems I haven’t had a single significant tilt or failure in about five months. The only ones I’ve taken out have been for work reasons, or people just not wanting them. [Ed. note: Ryan adds, “I just checked my numbers on past microdermal orders and I'm under on my guess for how many I've done, but the success rates are still pretty accurate.”] A big issue about them is removal. I’m the only shop in my area that takes them out without using a scalpel. I just use a needle and micro surgical hook to take them out without enlarging the stem hole at all. A lot of people are terrified of trying them because they think they have to get them cut out if they fail. Overall I’m a big fan of them and I try to push people towards those over surface piercings for all nontraditional surface placements. With how easy they are for me to remove I don’t even refer to them as permanent. I just call them semi-permanent and offer future removal for free for any I’ve installed.

Rachel Larratt

Does anyone else offer free removal as standard practice with a microdermal? Microdermal rejection scars look fairly extensive from the photos on BME. Do you suggest to clients the immediate removal at the first signs of rejection or do you generally try to reseat the microdermal? In what situations have you refused to do a microdermal?

Ryan Ouellette

I’ve tried re-seating once or twice but now I think it’s just pointless. And I usually tell people that if they can see the foot through the surface and there is any redness it’s time to remove it before you get an ugly scar. But if I take them out early I get barely any scar at all. I only refuse if the skin is too delicate to support the jewelry—areas like the inner wrist or high anti-eyebrows. Or areas where you get a lot of friction, like low hip placements.

John Joyce

I have a pretty high success rate with microdermals as well. In a lot of cases I think they are a much better option than surface piercings. However, I think it is the responsibility of the piercer as a professional to go over the risks and make sure the client understands them. A lot of people make a big deal out of their “permanence,” but honestly, removal isn’t that hard. Like Ryan said, they don’t need to be cut out with a scalpel, and a lot of the time I can remove them without even using a needle. Scarring really isn’t anything major with these and it’s a lot less than you would get with a rejecting surface bar. The only area I’ve seen consistent problems with these is along the collar bones, especially more towards the shoulder. I won’t even do them in that area anymore. Most of the ones I take out now aren’t because of rejection, it’s because the person didn’t want them anymore, or, in most cases, it’s because they were done with inferior quality jewelry. I always remove them free of charge since it’s something the client can’t do themselves, and I don’t want them trying to. I’ve done these in a lot of different areas. A lot of my friends, including my girlfriend, have some that are over two years old now. These are in places like the lower back, sternum, anti-eyebrow area and above and below a navel. I have re-seated some that were not that old, and they healed up fine. I think this really only works if the piercing is still fairly new. Scarring keeps coming up, but honestly I haven’t seen any real scarring from these at all.

Meg Barber

I’ve had a 50/50 success rate with re-seating ones that are tilting; some work, some don’t. The areas I see the biggest problems are the back of the neck and cleavage, and the shoulder is a troublesome area as well, like John said. We generally remove them for free, unless they were done elsewhere. I don’t cut them out either, just a little massage usually does the trick, although the feet with the big hole…those are a a lot tougher to remove, and sometimes need to be helped out with a needle. As for scarring, the worst I see tends to be on the rejecting nape placements. Lots of buildup with those, not pretty. Are there any other placements you guys shy away from? We don’t do the thin-skinned areas Ryan mentioned, or hands or feet—too much trouble.

Steve Truitt

I do a lot of microdermals, and I also try to talk people into them instead of surface piercings when they come in for something like a sternum, anti-eyebrow, etc. I rarely take any out because of rejection—mostly I remove them because of issues at work/school, or the person just doesn’t want them anymore. I’d say from what I’ve seen we have about an 80 percent success rate with them. I offer free removal if they were done at my shops, and sometimes even if they weren’t. There are a lot of shops around here that use the horrible ones made in Thailand/Korea/wherever it is that sell them for $1 or less. When educating people about them and why they aren’t working out for them, most of the time they understand what I’m saying and come back to get them done with the proper jewelry in them, so when it seems like a situation like that, I don’t charge for the removal. When I remove them, I just massage the tissue until the heel can pop out, then pull them out. Sometimes I have to slide a needle underneath them to cut through the scar tissue that grows through the holes, but that’s only about 50 percent of the time. I’ve seen some scarring, but normally less than from surface piercings or other rejecting piercings. If someone wants to keep the microdermal when it seems to be rejecting I’ll try re-seating them if there isn’t a lot of scar tissue built up already, or if there is, then I have them wait a few weeks till it goes down and can be re-done. The place I’ve noticed having the most problems with tilting out and needing to be re-seated more often than anywhere else is the lower-center forehead, the “third eye” position, or closer to the eyebrows there as well. I think this is due to all the movement in the area, so I warn people that come in for those before doing them.

Rachel Larratt

There are several variations: solid base, one hole, two holes and three holes. Which design do you generally prefer?

Steve Truitt

I prefer the Anatometal pieces with one large hole. I’ve used the IS and Wildcat pieces as well; IS are my second choice. The bases on the Wildcat pieces are a little too thick for my liking, and the finish isn’t as nice as the Anatometal and IS pieces. The Anatometal pieces tend to heal much better and more securely in place in my experience, however that does make them slightly harder to remove than the others.

Stephen DeToma

I’ll chime in “thumbs down.” I was really excited when I first saw them. I had a pair of them put in my forehead by Didier at Enigma a few years back and it didn’t take me long to start changing my mind. I’m also not a huge surface piercing fan to begin with so I guess I should have seen that coming. The whole issue of removal was a great deal more complicated when people hadn’t removed them a whole lot. I don’t like doing them so generally I pass and book an appointment for the boss, but I’ve gotten very good at taking them out. The biggest problems I see with healing is people’s inability to remember they have them: catching them, snagging them. I had one guy that had lost the top of an anchor he had in his nape while on vacation. The shop he went to put a 6 mm steel ball on the jewelry and he then spent a week in bed till he came to see me—the thing had grown out completely sideways. But, curve balls aside, if someone is coming in to take an anchor out, removing the threaded end and attaching a threaded taper, gently enlarging the pocket under the tissue by stirring the jewelry a bit works pretty well for me. It feels a lot like losing a tooth; just kinda wiggle it until those threads let go. As Meg said, the large hole model is a little trickier.

Meg Barber

That’s how I take them out too, Stephen, although remember that one disaster you had to remove when you were guesting here? That thing was so scary!

Stephen DeToma

Yeah, that was one of the authentic “surface anchors” that has one half bent like a closed staple and an arm that holds the gem. It was the first time I had seen one and was a little puzzled. You can’t just wiggle those things out because of the shape; it’s similar to the old bar trick of folding a drinking straw in half and inserting it into the neck of a bottle to pick it up. For that one, I actually used the bevel of a needle to widen to hole enough to take out. That poor girl was completely freaked out. That’s another thing about anchors: I think there’s just as many people who understate what can happen with anchors as those who get everyone all wound up about scalpel removal. I think it’s important to inform the client of possible risks without downplaying them or scaring the crap out of them, and also, to recognize the capabilities and limitations of anchors—meaning, they open options but they aren’t foolproof.

Meg Barber

As for the base I prefer (back to Rachel’s question), I like the IS ones for ease of removal, but the Anatometal ones for staying power. Those suckers are tough to get out though. I’ve got a client that got a “Madison” placement dermal, and it rejected three times with the IS one. I popped in an Anatometal one, and it’s going strong at about eight months now. I’m pretty thorough when I explain the hows, whys and removal aspects of them, but not everyone understands, even after a talking-to. People see pictures of all this crazy stuff done with them (like eyelids) and then get irritated when they find out that they can’t just take them out when they want to and put them back in like a standard piercing. My big question for all of you is how long do you tell your clients they take to “heal”? I tell mine that they will settle in after a few weeks to a month, but can never really be called “healed,” as there is never gonna be a neat little dry pocket around that base. Also, what is your aftercare suggestion for them? Do you have your clients bandage them initially?

Ryan Ouellette

I tell people the “initial healing period” is about a month, but that it can take a few extra weeks to toughen up. I also tell them to wait at least six weeks to come in for an end-piece change, or to wait three months if they want to do it themselves. I cover all mine with a Nexcare waterproof bandage and tell them to leave it on for anywhere from one to three days depending on the location.

Allen Falkner

Microdermals hit about the time that I started transitioning out of piercing so I’ve only done a handful. So, it’s really hard for me to formulate much of an opinion. [Ed. note: But that’s never stopped you before!] As for my like or dislike of dermal anchors…personally, I like them. Less invasive than traditional larger transdermals and if well-placed they hold up infinitely better than surface piercings. If anyone has ever read one my rants you’ll know I’m not a big a fan of surface piercings…but I don’t want to get too far off-topic. As for removal, I’ve helped with a couple, but that’s usually because Allen gets roped in when it requires brute force. I’m definitely not shy about getting out “stuck” jewelry. As for price, well, I’m sure everyone has their own opinion. Me, I think all removal and most general maintenance should be free, no matter who put in the jewelry. It’s been my experience that people normally tip really well for a free service. Plus, it’s good for business and ultimately good for the community. Each crappy piercing that walks down the street or appears in the media is a blow to the entire piercing industry…and you know how it is. There is a certain satisfaction about fixing someone else’s mistakes that really makes doing your job worthwhile.

Meg Barber

Price is a good point. What are you guys charging to do microdermals? Do you include the foot in the price? Our cost is $75 for the service, which includes the base, then the additional cost is what frontal you want on it—disks or gems or whatnot. And we take them out for free.

Steve Truitt

I charge $80 for one and $60 for each after (in the same session on the same person) with a disc on them. If they want gems, etc., the price goes up depending on the end.

Ryan Ouellette

I charge $70 for one, $130 for a pair, $60 each for three or more. Price includes standard disc ends; gemstone or alternate ends are an additional $10-$15 each. Free removal if I installed it, $20 if it was put in somewhere else. I charged $80 when I was first doing them, but now with IS lowering their prices I can’t see charging that much. I only charge $65 for a surface piercing with an Anatometal flat surface bar and those cost twice as much as microdermal jewelry.

John Joyce

I charge $75 for one with a flat disc, more if they want a gem. Each additional one done after that I take a little off the price. Free removal whether I installed it or not.

Stephen DeToma

I believe were running $50 for a basic disc, $75 for gems.

John Joyce

Since we’re talking microdermals, I’ve had two different people come in over the last two days that both had microdermals done on their sternums at a different shop in Syracuse. One girl’s fell out within a day, and the other girl’s was sticking way out and was about to fall out. I’m not sure what method was used to put these in, but there was a huge pocket made. In the one that was still in, there was a gaping hole around the post of it. The rise used on both of them was far too long for these girls as well. I think most people in this forum are probably getting somewhere in the 85-90 percent success rate with microdermals, but I think it’s really important to remember that we aren’t the majority of piercers out there. There are going to be a lot more piercers only getting 50 percent success rate or maybe 75 percent at best. This could be from any number of things: using poor quality jewelry, poor installation technique, poor aftercare, poor placement, or just not really understanding what a microdermal is. My point is, with piercing, but especially microdermals it is important for the client to do their own research first. It is also important for the practitioner to make sure they fully understand microdermals, and how they work.

What do you think? Let’s hear it in the comments.

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Mike Beer and his offensive tattoos have received their fair share of attention on ModBlog, and the reaction has been … mixed, to say the least. Since the dawn of time, humans have wondered what goes through the mind of a person who devotes his skin to tattoos of jokes about child rape, transsexuals and gay Nazis. Today, we get a little closer to answering these questions.

Note: Most of the tattoos featured in this interview have been featured previously on ModBlog.

BME: First of all, tell us about yourself.

Mike Beer: Well, I lived in Northern Virginia my whole life, but recently moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to play in my band, Call The Paramedics, full time, as well as to be surrounded by assholes like myself. I have been getting tattooed since I was about 17 and am now about to turn 23. My first tattoo was a small hand-poked pentagram on my ankle, which I have had fixed so that it no longer looks like garbage, but I’ve had mad love for Satan since the beginning.

Humor is very important to me. However, since I would say I am rather desensitized to almost everything, the things that are hilarious to me are not very amusing to others, which is what brings us to this interview.

BME: Indeed it does. Have you always been an attention whore?

MB: Yes, I’ve been an attention whore for pretty much as long as I can remember — mainly because, when I was real little, my parents would beat me, lock me in the cellar, and occasionally make me put put on sex shows with our German Shepherd for them and all their friends while they would drink moonshine and throw dixie cups of scalding hot water on me. (Throughout my childhood, our dog Roxy was my best friend.)

I guess nowadays I’m just finding my outlet for all the pain and humiliation I endured as a kid … or maybe I just want to have an excuse to take off my clothes in front of strangers and everything I just said was a lie. Who really knows?

BME: Alright, enough of your yarns. How would you describe your sense of humor? What’s funny to you?

MB: I’d have to say my sense of humor is a cross between “modern” and extremely ignorant. I’ll make a joke out of anything: cripples, old people, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, whites … and any other things I may have forgotten. Your dog dies? Funny. You have a death in the family? Funny. A girl and her boyfriend have been trying for a long time to have a child, they finally get pregnant and eight months into the pregnancy she has a miscarriage? Hilarious. But don’t worry folks, whatever I dish out I can take in return.

BME: So it’s less to do with being funny and more to do with being an awful human being. Got it. Anyway, your declaration of love for Satan aside, what was the first “offensive” tattoo you got? Tell us about it.

MB: First “offensive” tattoo I got was the man with a pussy eating himself on my leg, although nobody ever really found it to be offensive. Shortly after getting that, I got the chick with a cock shitting on herself. Both tattoos were done by Eric Doyle at Jinx Proof Tattoo in Washington, D.C. Many people were not happy with chick with the cock, so I’d consider those my first offensive tattoos. I originally just wanted the guy eating himself and at the last minute decided he should have a pussy. The idea for the chick with the cock was merely an attempt at some kind of symmetry on my legs. And again, the poop was added last minute.

BME: Hey, when you’re right, you’re right — the poop certainly adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the piece. What came next?

MB: If I’m not mistaken, the white power unicorn tattoo came next. It was all downhill from there.

BME: The white power unicorn is offensive to pretty much every imaginable group. What was the thought process behind that one? Did you feel like you were crossing a certain threshold once you got a Nazi swastika tattooed on you, the ridiculous context and the fact that it was for the sake of a joke notwithstanding?

MB: The Nazi unicorn was also pretty spontaneous. My buddy Jason wanted to tattoo this piece of unicorn flash and couldn’t find anyone who wanted it, and I was obviously game under certain conditions — that is, I told him it had to be the most hateful unicorn ever. The best reaction I’ve ever gotten was, “How could something so beautiful be so ugly?”

For the record, I am not a Nazi — I just like to make fun of everything. People need to lighten up, and if they don’t like what I’m about? That’s fine with me, join the rest of the crowd. I didn’t really feel like I crossed over some kind of line, but that is pretty much when I decided that damn near every tattoo I got from then on needed to come close or outdo the last one, and I’ve been making good progress, with plans for much more.

BME: Have you gotten any memorably bad reactions to your work?

MB: Nothing that really stands out. I’ve noticed my mom on several occasions looking at the trannies on my legs; she knows that they are there but never really says anything. I’d imagine she is just bottling it up deep down inside and never letting it out. I’ve had trannies actually come up to me after they saw my legs, and they thought it was hilarious. Surprisingly enough I’ve gotten the most negative response on here, which is funny because some of the most horrible things I’ve seen were on BME. It’s kind of ironic.

BME: While I’ve got you here, why don’t you tell me a bit about your band.

MB: Well, I play drums in Call The Paramedics. We’re Atlantic City–based scumbag death rock. I guess our music could be described as Cannibal Corpse raping AC/DC while El Duce narrates. We attack the crowd, our singer cuts his face open, I blow fire, and this is all accompanied with massive amounts of cocaine. I’ve been told the music is pretty good too. You could say we’re for fans of GG Allin, rape, dirty needles, golden showers, cars parked in front of handicapped ramps, elderly shut-ins, and people broke down on the side of the road due to massive car pile ups from wandering stray dogs on the highway.

BME: Well, that sounds … great. Does anything offend you? Do you think it’s possible to go too far? Humor me here.

MB: Eh, not really. There are plenty of things that I think are wrong, but it doesn’t mean I won’t make a joke out of it. For example, I love animals, but I just got a dog in a kennel being put down tattooed on my leg. I would probably never rape a little kid, but I have “It’s rape time” with candy and little kids’ body parts tattooed on me, and so on. I live in an area and am friends with some of the most rotten people on the planet; around here it’s an ongoing battle of who can really lower the bar. I just want to fit in, you know?

BME: Nice of you to mention that you’d “probably” never rape a little kid. Classy. So where do you go from here?

MB: Aside from hell?  There is nowhere to go but down. Oh, for all the ladies on here, holla at me. I’m a great “bring-home-to-the-parents” kind of guy.

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In 2004, Darrin Fowler started the BME Scholarship project, a community-funded program established to award one student from the BME community every year with a donor-based scholarship, based on the strength of an essay of the scholarship administrator and judges’ choosing. The winner of the 2005/06 scholarship was Diego Olavarría, whose winning essay can be read here. We recently caught up with Diego and exchanged e-mails over a couple of days, discussing where his education has taken him, where to find artistic inspiration, and his take on how society interacts with body modification nowadays. I’ll note that Diego’s last response is actually more like a short essay, but it’s fantastic. I hope we’ll be hearing from Diego again very soon.

To participate in or donate to this year’s scholarship fund, please visit BMEScholarship.com.

BME: First of all, tell us a bit about yourself.

Diego Olavarría: Well, I think I should start with the essentials. My name’s Diego, I’m 24, and I won the BME Scholarship back in 2006. I do many things with my life, but nowadays I think what I do most is study, read, translate, write, and travel … as well as buy groceries and all sorts of other mundane activities that take up more of my time than they should. Despite what most people who know me would have predicted a few years ago (because I openly and constantly admitted hating the place), I live in Mexico City, although I don’t see myself growing old here.

BME: What don’t you like about Mexico City?

DO: Well, that’s a question which I could spend the rest of the day answering, but in general, I think it’s fair to say it’s a rather unhealthy place to live in, a very stressful place. If you don’t take it with a (copious) dose of humor, it gets to you. It’s hard to find peace and quiet here; you’re just constantly attacked everywhere by ads, bad music, car horns. It can be dirty, it can be dangerous (although a lot less so than it’s usually made out to be, I think. You can live more sheltered from crime here than in other Latin-American cities). What else? There aren’t many trees, the drivers are aggressive, distances are big, public transportation sucks, so does the traffic, there are too many people everywhere. People live in fear of each other, the police can’t be trusted, the wealth-gap is huge …

But on the other hand, the weather is pretty good, and if your daily activities don’t require a lot of commuting and you live in an interesting area, it can be a pretty enjoyable place. There’s a good level of cultural activity, cheap eateries, well-stocked bookstores, the best university in Mexico, and it’s overall a pretty colorful and surreal city. Its a good place to see strange things happen. A place like this keeps you inspired.

BME: Do you think it’s sometimes more important to be inspired by your surroundings than to actually enjoy them?

DO: That’s a very good, but also a very difficult question. To answer it, I will have to reflect on what “enjoyment,” “inspiration” and “peace of mind” (peace is where I draw profound enjoyment from) all consist of. As someone who creates (as I mentioned earlier, I write), I think it is important to be inspired by my surroundings. Some people draw inspiration from past events, and really don’t care much about their settings; that is not my case. Settings are important. However, if forced to choose, I’m sure I would prefer peace of mind over inspiration. Mexico City is a good place to spend a few years, but it’s a killer place in the long run. What I mean is that I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life here.

It’s quite true that much of the art in the last hundred years has a tendency to create an aesthetic effect of the unpleasant. Most good books and paintings are disturbing pieces. Most of the best artists have been tormented souls, people consistently disturbed by metaphysical and historical terrors. Seen through this perspective, Mexico City could be a work of art, perhaps even a masterpiece.

But do I live here because I prefer enjoyment over inspiration? I think it’s important to find a middle ground between one and the other. For instance, I’m sure that war is very inspirational, and so are tragedies and diseases. But I wouldn’t voluntarily bring them into my life just because they inspire me. Like if the uninvited problems weren’t enough! Otherwise I would be a bit like a Dostoevsky or a Roberto Arlt character, someone who needs guilt and pain to move on, and who is willing to bring it upon themselves. And on the other hand, I appreciate peace more after a bit of torment. Mexico City is my platform into both worlds. It’s a place I’ve chosen consciously because, on one hand, it keeps my mind alive (it inspires me), and on the other, I’m lucky enough to have found a way to deal with it so that it doesn’t drain my soul away (meaning I can also be at peace here).

BME: How does the city compare to some of the other places in which you’ve lived (or at least in which you’ve spent significant periods of time)?

DO: Well, I guess Mexico City has problems that are common to all large cities, but they just seem bigger here because of the amount of people. It’s a terribly hard place to organize. There are lots of things that compare and contrast, but one thing that’s unique to Mexico City is the light. I don’t know another city that has the same kind of light. Maybe it’s because of the smog, maybe it’s the colors of the houses, or the glow of the pavement. I don’t know. The effect is sort of dirty, dusty, grayish and unappealing. But when the cold wind blows in in the evening, sometimes you have these incredible pink sunsets.

Some cities I’ve been in (Rio de Janeiro, Paris) are beautiful. Others (Lima, Sao Paulo) are ugly. Mexico City happens to be both, at the same time. It’s also a city that’s been through a lot. It was the capital of the Aztec empire (it was probably the biggest city in the world by then), and at some point during the colonial era it was the most important city in the Americas. It has been totally and effectively urbanized (the natural settings have been annihilated: there are no rivers, all lakes have been dried up, there are not many trees left), but at the same time it’s located next to a volcano that could erupt any second; it’s near a fault, and therefore an earthquake could shake the place down in a matter of minutes. I find the whole setting pretty intense, and I don’t know if there are many cities who have so much to say about themselves.

BME: So what’s a typical day like for you, if such a thing exists?

DO: I try not to have a routine, and my days change a lot depending on what I am thinking or reading or doing. Right now I’m back to the university, so first thing I do every morning after waking up and browsing the news online is head over to the university for my daily Russian lesson. Then I usually have some breakfast at the university, and head over to the library where I’ll either bump into some friends or read for a while. Either way, I try to read for at least an hour every day. The rest of my day depends on whether I have other classes/meetings/pending translations. I usually come back during the afternoon and cook myself something. I spend the afternoon either translating or reading or relaxing, although I try and go out for a movie at least once or twice a week. I usually write late at night.

Some months I also run, and some months, when I don’t go to school and have enough money, I travel. When I’m in the city, I see my friends a couple of times a week, although I spend most of my time by myself. If I have free time, I enjoy not doing anything. Since I don’t have a 9-5 job, things change every week for me. I like it that way. My life changes a lot, all the time.

BME: You’re back at university — what’s the status of your educational career? Where do you attend, for what, etc.?

DO: I’m currently studying my second Bachelor’s degree (Latin American Studies, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico; my main focus is on Latin-American Literature). I still have a bit to go, since I took some time off to travel and also to focus on other aspects of my work. I already completed the credits for my first Bachelor’s (Interpretation) and am currently starting to write my thesis.

I’m not sure I’m going to finish my second degree, though. I think it’s more likely that once I finish my thesis for my other degree, I’ll start a Master’s program instead. It’s not too difficult to get a scholarship for your Master’s degree, so it’s a better deal for me.

BME: What’s the topic of your thesis? And was that the program in which you were enrolled when you won the BME Scholarship?

DO: Well actually, the programs I was enrolled in back when I won the BME Scholarship are the same ones I am still finishing now. I hadn’t finished the credits for my degree in Interpretation, but I was already doing this one in Latin-American Studies.

My thesis is a bit strange. I just started it, but I’m excited about it. It’s a linguistic and social comparison of Latin-American literary Spanish in three different recent urban novels. The point is to somehow find similarities between Spanish dialects (specifically words in Peruvian, Mexican and Cuban Spanish) that can be traced not to a common etymological origin, but to social factors that lead to the invention of certain concepts. I’m particularly interested in words that can be traced to a Latin-American context (words that refer to symptoms of specific types of social inequality, for example).

BME: Can you talk about applying for the BME Scholarship? Was it helpful? Was the topic something to which you had given much thought prior to it being announced?

DO: Well, ever since I heard of the scholarship it seemed like the right thing for me. I waited for the 2006 edition to be announced and when it was, I began preparing my application. I thought about the question for a few weeks, took a few notes, and once I felt I was ready to write it, I started doing so. Essay is a genre I approach with more enthusiasm than precision, and this particular essay was probably the longest paper I had written in English by then, so it took me a bit to write, but once it was announced that I was the winner, I was thrilled about it, of course. The effort was well worth it.

But what’s really important for me about the BME Scholarship is that it helped me achieve objectives that would otherwise have been very hard to reach. The most tangible one is that I was able to pay off some of my academic expenses, and this allowed me to save money to go backpacking in South America, with the intention of writing a travel book. Which I did. The book, Más allá del sur (Beyond the south), is a collection of chronicles, stories and meditations, and it would have been impossible to write without the scholarship.

BME: Do you ever revisit the essay you wrote for the scholarship? How do you feel it holds up, a few years later?

DO: To say the truth, I don’t revisit it. I don’t like to read my own texts once they’ve been published. It’s a cruel thing to do to yourself. I’m sure some aspects of the essay would probably make me blush a bit now, but in general, I think the main ideas of the essay (freedom of the body and the moral consequences of some types of body modification) are issues I still hold very close to me and believe in, as well as being subjects which I still deal with in my writing.

However, I am a bit saddened by something I hadn’t noticed at the time I wrote the essay, but that seems more and more apparent to me: the existing tendency towards the trivialization of body modifications. Although there has always been a tension between whether it should be a cosmetic issue or a path of self-exploration, I feel that freedom of the body matters less and less to most people and has ceased to be a dominant force behind most people’s incursion into the world of body modification.

BME: I apologize if this qualifies as cruel, but in relation to your last point, in your essay, you wrote the following:

Do you think the sort of trivialization to which you refer is perhaps an inevitable byproduct of this march towards widespread acceptance? Is this acceptance, in your opinion, worth the dilution and “superficial” nature of body modification you’ve observed lately?

DO: That’s a great question, but it doesn’t have an easy answer. I know this debate has been addressed on BME, and many opinions have been offered in regards to it, but personally, I think the answer lays in the core of not only body modification, but culture itself. I think body modification can be a form of art, and it responds to many of the same parameters as artwork, so maybe we can find answers if we reflect a bit on the main issues of the current aesthetic debate.

I’m familiar with literature, so I’ll place an analogy with literature. In the last thirty years, the amount of titles published throughout the world has been enormous. There have never been so many books being published. However, one of the main things bothering critics and other specialists is that the amount of good books being published has been scarce. What is considered a good book? Let’s just say that it’s a book that can say enough about language, life and art itself that it will withstand the passing of time. It has been very hard for scholars and critics to identify what the most important books of the last fifty years are, but it is widely agreed that the most relevant books of the twentieth century (titles by Proust, Joyce, Mann) were written early in its early years.

I don’t think the problem with this is that there are no good writers; there are several other reasons that can explain poor artistic production when compared to other periods of time. But one thing that has greatly affected literature is the fact that the market and the capitalist order have taken over much of literary production. This means that literature has become an object and if the market demands easy books, if people want to buy dumbed-down versions of books written two hundred years ago, publishing companies and writers comply. The purpose of a book is no longer to disturb or create intense feelings or say durable things, but to entertain. Books are no longer written because they need to be written, but because there is someone who wants to buy them, and authors care less about furthering an artistic tradition than they care about making money and selling books that say absolutely nothing new and will be irrelevant in five years.

A similar thing is happening with body modification. The problem is not that it is becoming mainstream per se, but that it is becoming mainstream in a society of trivial intentions. It’s the same with other subversive aspects of culture, such as literature, drugs and sex. I think the fact that we have a healthy publishing industry is great; I think that the fact responsible drug use has gained acceptance makes us more free; I think that sexual liberation is one of the most wonderful cultural transformations of the last fifty years; and I am in favor of making body modification available to the world, to anyone who wishes to learn from it.

The problem with this approach is that since we live in a culture where pleasure-seeking and “having a good time” are our main values, we’re bound to turn these freedoms into means for easy thrills. For instance: most drug users no longer use psychedelic experimentation as a means to expand their consciousness. For most people who take ecstasy at a club on a Saturday night, it’s just way to have fun and forget about uncomfortable issues in their lives. Sex is no longer done with the subversive or liberating intention that can be found in the prose of the Marquis de Sade or in Georges Bataille’s A History of the Eye, in which characters question and destroy their moral values through intense pleasure. Nowadays, sex has become less erotic and more like standard pornographic fare, more of a spectacle and something frequently done out of social pressure than something truly fulfilling. People fuck to impress, not to enjoy, and therefore sex becomes little more than a slightly better way of reaching orgasm than masturbation.

It’s the same thing with publishing houses that use the prestige of books to make consumers think that reading dumb bestsellers is somehow a more refined way of spending time than watching TV. In a society that thinks this way, there’s no reason why a ritual that was once sacred for Native Americans, such as suspension, can’t just be a cool way of spending a Saturday afternoon, as good or bad but slightly more exciting than going to the movies to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

There is no lack of talented tattoo artists in the world, but it surprises me that the amount of people taking risks when it comes to tattoos (and I don’t mean extreme eyeball tattooing; I mean simply getting tattoos that go beyond the icons of popular tattooing) is so low. One thing which really exemplifies this whole thing can be the growth of pun and joke tattoos. Tattoos that are meant to be funny and make reference to pop culture memes which will not matter in two weeks. I am not saying it is wrong to get a tattoo like this; it can actually be very subversive (a permanent expression of something impermanent). Actually, I’m not saying any of this is wrong, only that if these are the pervasive attitudes towards culture, we can’t expect much. I find it a bit odd that I can see thirty tattoos of puns, but no tattoos of poetry. Twenty portraits of pinup girls, but rarely do I find reproductions of fine art or art in general, however beautiful they may be. This indicates we live in a culture where the impermanent and the superficial have a much stronger appeal than the lasting.

Here’s where current body modification and literary trends can draw a strong parallel, because most readers and most consumers of body art probably find searching or innovating too arduous. It’s probably too hard to learn about literary tradition or too boring to wait to think of a tattoo concept, and much easier to get a tattoo that you know people will like because there are already a million people with one like it and it looks good, or read a book that won’t challenge you too much.

And I’m not only referring to people getting standard butterfly tattoos, praying hands, or yin-yangs. This extends to the bigger pieces as well. People want a sleeve and they want it now, and if they’re ready to pay, they can get it. Whether it’s been done a million times and is full of clichés is irrelevant to them, and artists only have so much say in terms of what they will put on their customers. That’s one of the biggest paradoxes about popular tattooing: so many people get tattoos to be different, and end up looking all the same. Basically, what this shows is how easy it is for consumers to have both body art and literature on a short leash. Consumers become a tyrannical force and can turn culture into something devoid of meaning.

But does this mean we’re doomed? I hardly think this is the case, much less with body mods. There will always be the artists who create because they need to create and the artists which will develop a style and take it to the limit. There will always be people who get mods because they need to get mods, as there will always be those who write not because of the money, but because they’ll go nuts otherwise. That will never change.

The body is probably the ultimate canvas, one of the most powerful means of expression we currently have. Some artists know this. For example, when I see the work of Emilio González (to mention just one of many of the artists I admire), I see something incredible, something highly profound and poetic. He has transformed people’s bodies and made them look like nobody and no body has ever looked before. In this I see a whole new concept and a new poetic of what the body can be. It doesn’t even matter what the customer’s reasons were, he has been transformed into something else. But I’m not saying that everybody should go for the heavy surgical mods or that heavy mods are the only place where artistic criteria can apply. I think there is still tons of room left for innovation within tattooing, piercing and cutting.

But even though body modification has never seen so many adherents in the West, and this is surely a victory when it comes to social acceptance of mods, whether this social acceptance helps preserve and increase the profound and life-changing aspects (as I already noted, the fact that more books coming out hasn’t really improved the quality of literature) of body modification is something worth questioning.

Read Diego online at 55° S. For more information about this year’s BME Scholarship, please visit BMEScholarship.com.

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It’s been a few years since we’ve heard from our friend Erik Sprague, The Lizardman, here on BME — and really, it’s been too long. The world is a much different place now (well, marginally different, at least), and it’s always reassuring to have him around as a bright green guide through the chaos that surrounds us. He and I recently exchanged e-mails over a couple of days, talking about the new American president, the rigors of life on the road and the difficulties of making the transition from sideshow to stand-up.

BME: The last time you wrote for BME, you were asked who would win in a fight between Christopher Hitchens and Jerry Falwell (you chose Hitchens). Who doesn’t love a hypothetical death-match? Let’s kick things off the same way: Who would win in a good old-fashioned Chicago-style brawl between Rahm Emanuel and Rod Blagojevich?

The Lizardman: I see Rahm taking this one — he is clearly cunning and a survivor. Blagojevich embodies the characteristics of the unstoppable undead and a turd that won’t flush, but lacks offense. It would be a long fight with many seeming victories by Emanuel, only to have Rod rise again before a final defeat.

BME: Blagojevich as zombie-poop? I think you just wrote several South Park episodes, my friend. Now, you were on tour throughout January, correct? For what were you out on the road? Were you able to take a moment to solemnly pour out a 40 for your boy George Bush?

TL: I was on tour for the last 10-11 days of January, and for the first 20 I was home after getting back from the fall Jagermeister Music Tour on December 23, 2008.  I was running around the far-too-cold northern areas of the U.S., beginning with my now 10-years-running gig performing at the Am-Jam tattoo expo (subject of one of my old BME columns some time ago) in Syracuse, New York.  From there, I had club gigs in Rockford, Illinois, at Kryptonite, and Washington, D.C., at The Palace of Wonders.  Fellow Austin stand-up comic Joel Keith was along for the ride, opening up the shows. 

I did not pour out anything for Bush, but considered doing so for Texas in somber worry for his return to the state. Even as a Texas convert (I moved to Austin eight years ago), I can spot his fake wannabe-Texan B.S. from miles away.  It still stands as one of his greatest deceptions that he convinced so many that he was Texan. You can make a case for WMDs, but not for that …

BME: From a make-believe cowboy to a “half-breed Muslin” — what a country. Really though, what did you think of Obama’s inauguration and the phenomenon that was his campaign in general? How healthy a dose of skepticism is necessary in order to not expect the world over the next four years?

TL: I think we need a massive dose of skepticism for not just the next four years but for the rest of our lives. As great a scapegoat as Bush makes, the truth is that everyone dropped the ball and he and his crew only got away with it by not being challenged enough. The solution is not, and never will be, blind obedience, even if it is to a message of hope. I’d like to see Obama succeed, but nobody gets a blank check.  For all of his soaring rhetoric and good intentions, Obama is still a politician and now president of the US — a beneficent dictator is still a dictator.  For someone like myself with a number of so-called radical views which are always in the extreme minority, I am forever wary of the majority’s designated player since his job is, in part, to further their goals — often over my rights. Putting the right people in charge is only the beginning and it does not absolve the rest of us from our roles. We have to help him get things done and get them done in the right way.

BME: Do you actually have faith in the American populace to hold up its end of the deal?

TL: That may be the last bit of idealism I have left in me. I feel with the system we have that even when the populace fails, a few good people in the right spots can save things. Look at an issue like black civil rights or women’s rights and you see cases where the populace overall dropped the ball horribly, but those who were right were able to use the system to kick the rest in the ass and fix things. Of course, the system fails as well at times, and then it is up to the populace to pull things together. I think that the American people, along with the Constitutional system we have, represent a good shot at making it and that we are still, overall, on an upswing — things are getting better. The last eight years only seem incredibly horrible because we lived through them, but from a historical perspective of what the U.S. has faced from within and without, it was barely a pebble in the road. History won’t vindicate Bush, but it will tell the rest of us to put our bitching in perspective. 

Random aside from these political musings: How great and how perfectly American will it be when we see the first gay shotgun wedding?

BME: I can’t wait. “Ain’t no lesbian daughter of mine gonna get turkey-basted outside of God’s good grace!” And then it’ll be filmed and played on PBS’s celebrity gossip show. This has been quite the decade. What’s your favorite cultural train-wreck of the modern era?

TL: I try to avoid getting into that whole train-wreck-watching scene; it can be mesmerizing and is generally used as a distraction from things of real importance.  However, schadenfreude is just so damn tasty, isn’t it? I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, but I do take momentary joy every time I see some douchebag who railed against gay rights get outed as a self-hating closet-case, or when an anti-drug bible thumper shows up at rehab.

BME: Let’s get back to talking about touring: You’ve been going out on the Jagermeister tour and other such things for, what, 50 years now? What are some of your favorite and least favorite things about touring?

TL: It certainly does seem like it has been that long sometimes. I have hosted the Jagermeister Music Tour since 2003 and it has been some of my more high-profile work.  I love touring. It is the perfect fit for me, I was made to live and work on the road … which is why for the last decade I have spent over 200 days a year on the road.  The best parts would probably be the travel and performing for new and different people around the world. If there really is a complaint to be made, it is like the lack of appreciation for the job. Many people seem to think it is just one big party, and while it is a job I love, there is still a lot of real work involved.

BME: So what’s a typical day/week/[appropriate sample size] on the road like? Also, do you have to bring your own cocaine, or do the venues typically provide that?

TL: The joy and the challenge of life on the road is that there is no typical day. Every city and venue provides a new different experience. For tours like the Jagermeister Music Tour, the cycle was often something like:
 
5-7 a.m.: Possible media slot, usually a morning radio show.
11 a.m.: Load-in to venue.
12 p.m.: Daily drop of production materials.
12 p.m. till finished: Production setup — poster hanging, VIP section setup, anything else that needs doing.
3-5 p.m.: Possible media slot.
6 p.m.: Doors.
7-11 p.m.: Show.
11 p.m.-1 a.m.: Load-out to truck.
2 a.m.: Buses roll to next city.
 
Rinse and repeat — rinse being optional since showers are a luxury you grab when/if you can.
 
When not out with Jager or a similar national traveling production, I tend to tour on my own from one gig to the next.  These can be tattoo conventions, comedy clubs, private events, TV shoots, etc., and they are all different.  My days then tend to be media promotions, performances, and travel — all-day flights and/or marathon drives across the country. 

Cocaine, and other drugs, are pretty easily available across the board but who pays depends on the gig and your level of celebrity.  The quality varies and it almost all comes with the hitch of having to hang out with the provider more than you would like.

BME: Right. So when Metallica wants a bottle of pure Velociraptor semen, they can probably just request it in the tour rider, no questions asked. Hey, do you have a tour rider? If so, what’s in it? Have any of the bands with whom you’ve toured over the years asked for anything particularly strange?

TL: I have had a rider in the past and sometimes still do, but it is usually strictly for things I need for the show but won’t have the time or opportunity to get and/or traveling with would be difficult or impossible.  A few examples being fuel for fire acts, concrete blocks, empty beer keg, various ingredients for stomach pumping, live insects for myself or a snake to eat. The thing about riders that most people don’t realize is that you do pay for that stuff; during settlement, the cost of things on the rider will be taken out as expenses before you get paid. A rider is a convenience, since you don’t have the time to run out and buy new socks or get snacks for the bus, and often you pay a premium for them since many venues will gouge on the price. I have seen people try and charge $6 for a single diet coke or $30 for a case of water. 

In terms of weird rider things, I know of a band that specified no mixed color candies (like Skittles) because their OCD drummer, no joke, would sort them compulsively; he also had to have all the wingnuts on his drums lined up or he couldn’t play without stopping to fix them.  Another band had a lead singer who required a massage at a specific time before the show started or they got the option of canceling the show.  Weirdness on riders is usually there to make sure people are reading everything they should and paying attention to detail, or it is something that makes sense if you know all the details.

“It’s not that I can’t read,” says The Lizardman, “it’s just that I don’t follow instructions well sometimes.”

BME: Let’s talk about your act itself. Does it vary depending on the audience/sort of show? How has the act evolved over the years?

TL: I see myself as providing an experience for my audiences and making them active participants in that process. As a result, the show will necessarily vary, but there is still a certain form that it generally follows. In the past, I have tailored shows to any situation that I could manage to get myself booked into, but now I often try to use the show to manipulate the situation. I’m not sure how much sense that makes as stated, but it works in practice. 

My show has evolved and gone through many permutations through the years. It might seem subtle to some observers, but to me, not surprisingly, it seems like night and day.  Probably the biggest shift has been my move towards stand-up comedy and spoken word and finding a home in those genres. Back when I first started, I said that I would always do stunts, even if it was just in my living room, because no one would come and see, but now I find myself doing more and more of my stunts and rituals strictly for myself in private or semi-private situations because my work as a performer has taken me to a place where I am more a comedian/commentator. The audience is still there for the stunts (and I do still include some of my favorites), but as a performer I have moved away from doing them onstage — at least as the main draw.   

BME: That’s interesting. Do you feel like you’ve always been funny enough to do stand-up and just made a decision to not include it so much in the earlier days, or is that something you had to teach yourself along the way as well?

TL: With the exception of very rare cases, “funny” or “not funny” is not a natural inescapable state for people; it turns out that “funny” is interesting and insightful presentation. Think about one of the staples of humor (one which I personally try to scrupulously avoid): the differences between men and women.  Someone can say something that is beyond obvious to everyone, but make them laugh by presenting it with a personal insight and in a manner which engages the audience in a way they weren’t used to or expecting. Everyone has to teach themselves and/or learn to be funny — this is often called “finding your voice,” and it is the process of figuring out how to present your anecdotes and observations in a manner which people will not only accept but also crave. I have always had, and almost everyone does, the premises which are the seeds of “funny,” but it takes time to develop and refine them. 

In a way, the sideshow acts were a crutch — a way to draw and hold people through the developmental process of refining the comedy. I avoided some of the pain many stand-ups have to face through the early days by having an additional element that supported my work on the comedy/commentary and kept me in decent gigs. Now, I have well refined stunt acts and comedy that stands on its own without the stunts so, it is the best of both worlds.

BME: In the past, you’ve mentioned some inspirational sideshow/etc. figures. Who are some of your comedic inspirations?

TL: I think I have been influenced more in terms of philosophy than style when it comes to comedy. Some of the names that leap to mind for me are Rodney Dangerfield, Steve Martin, Mitch Hedberg, and Don Rickles. Martin’s book, Born Standing Up, had a real influence on how I approached some things and look at performing. It hit me at just the right time when I was working through some things and really had me thinking about what I wanted to accomplish with each show.

BME: A recent review of your show stated that you were “offensive to many of the crowd, insulting Asians, women, overweight people, among others.” As a Jew, I’m rather offended that we didn’t make the list. To what sorts of things was the reviewer referring? And be as candid as you like, I can guarantee that nobody will have read this far into the interview.

TL: I love that review. In fact, I have been quoting it as part of a bit in my show since I first found it online. My best guess is that the reviewer was referring to a joke where I talk about chasing Japanese people pretending to be Godzilla, which is really a joke about me being delusional and/or under the influence.  As for the women and overweight people, he must be referring to a bit where I mention that fat chicks give the best blow jobs, which I think is a compliment — not to mention an empirical fact according to the evidence most men have collected. 

I apologize for not having offended Jews that night, but I had to cut a lot of material for time. That guy posted that review almost a month after the actual show and wrote almost entirely about me, even though I was a grand total of maybe 15 minutes out of a four-hour show that night. But he only wrote one line that wasn’t about me — I call that reaching someone. The rest of the crowd laughed and cheered but he waited a month to act indignant on a website.

BME: Now that you’re moving more into stand-up and storytelling rather than stunts, is it challenging to get audiences to take you seriously, what with you being “The Lizardman” and them potentially expecting a bunch of gross-outs or what have you rather than cerebral/topical humor? Do you think your appearance/”novelty” status could be a hindrance in this respect, or has it not been an issue?

TL: The great thing about club-level and alternative comedy venues is that the crowds are very accepting of anything, so long as it is good.  If you show up with good stuff, they get past anything else quickly. I think that being The Lizardman is an advantage so long as I use it properly.  My modifications make me memorable and provide me with an instant conversation starter. At this point, my biggest challenge may not lie with winning over new people but rather hanging on to those who were more into the stunts, but that has gone well thus far.  For instance, a couple years ago the lawyers for the Jagermeister tour decided the stunts presented too much liability, so I had to go to a purely stand-up hosting routine — which is probably one of the most difficult and hostile ways to do stand-up. But it ended up working out and giving me a great deal of confidence. After shows, though, people would come up and ask why I didn’t do any stunts, and after I explained they would generally say that it sucked that I couldn’t do them but they really enjoyed the show and laughed their asses off. On my own though, as I said, I do include some stunts — my favorites and the fan favorites.
 
So, thus far, I would say it has mostly been a non-issue, but I could see it becoming one if I continue to succeed because it makes for a harder sell. Breaking some molds is OK, but people are protective of others. When TV first latched onto me as the weird guy with an education, it was a sort of feel-good story challenging the preconceived notion of modified people as uneducated. Convincing agents and the like to give me a shot at being funny goes against their expectations in a way they don’t like to risk; they don’t have faith in people to get past the initial shock of my appearance. It also doesn’t help that much of my material is not TV friendly — I often hear, “We loved the show but we can’t air that sort of stuff.” But that is very much the story of my career, gaining little by little and winning over those I can get to take the chance.

Visit The Lizardman online at TheLizardman.com for tour dates, speaking engagements and various ephemera.

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I was in San Francisco for two weeks attending some software training classes with my business partner when I received an email from Rachel. She informed me that BME was to sponsor an upcoming Tattoo and Piercing Conference in Italy (APTPI), but that she may not be able to attend due to a snowboarding accident; some skier had taken her out from behind and messed up her knee so badly that she couldn’t walk. She asked me if I was able to go instead and provide some coverage for BME. I had been to Europe a few times, and always wanted to check out Milan, so I figured, “What the hell?”

I changed my returning flight from San Francisco to return a day earlier to make it back to New York City to repack and jump on a plane to Milan. I’m a frequent and very spontaneous traveler, so I’m familiar with these types of travel conditions.

A few days leading up to the return to NYC/departure to Italy, Rachel informed me that her leg was feeling much better and that she would be able to go as long as she wore a leg brace. So now it was going to be the two of us heading out there. I welcomed the opportunity to get to know Rachel as a person and not just from all the rumor-mongering. I was hesitant, and kind of on guard, but I went with an open mind.

I arrived at JFK airport about an hour before we were to begin boarding. With my luck, it was a smart move: There was an “issue” with my ticket … awesome. I never found out what the deal was, but I got the pleasure of standing in two separate lines that both terminated with women that seemed pretty irritated that I got in their line. (Side note: I have amazing luck with having to deal with people that just seem to hate me from the get-go in the airline industry. I guess I’m just awesome like that.)

I got my ticket, proceeded through security, and then off to the waiting area where I was to meet up with Rachel. I saw her working away behind a laptop and fidgeting with her stuff. We said our hellos and moved all our bags towards the gate for boarding.

Our rows were called and we got on the plane. Our flight time was six-and-a-half hours. We left at 5:15 p.m. on Saturday and landed at 6:45 a.m. on Sunday (six-hour time difference). We must have had an awesome tailwind, because we shaved an hour off of our flight time. The first thing I noticed when we deplaned was the smell of smoke and a fire alarm going off. Perfect! We never found out what the smoky smell was coming from, but the alarm was turned off by the time we reached customs.

Now normally, I fly right through customs with no problems, and I was expecting the same here. Welp … looks like Rachel doesn’t have that luck. The customs guy picked up the phone and looked kind of pissed off. Great! If he doesn’t like her, he’s just going to love me.

Since neither of us spoke Italian, we’ll never know what he was going on about, but eventually he let her through and then I just sailed right through.

Brenno or Bruno (two of the guys putting on he convention) were supposed to meet us at the airport and give us a ride back to the hotel, but since we were an hour early, nobody was there. Rachel also informed me that they most likely wouldn’t be showing up anyway, because it was seven in the morning and they’re most likely passed out and recovering from last night’s partying. We opted to take a taxi to the hotel and hope to catch them before they left. To anyone that’s taking a trip to Italy, don’t take a taxi!! They’re expensive as hell!

We arrived at the hotel and tried to check in, but my room wasn’t ready yet, and I had to come back at noon. Even better than that, they had completely lost Rachel’s reservation. The dude working the counter with a pretty pimp comb-over was being a total douche to her about it, too. (I know it’s not nice, but I found it pretty funny.)

We dropped our bags off behind the counter and headed downstairs for breakfast. Rachel really wanted to pass out and was hoping to find someone she knew so she could go crash in their room, but there wasn’t anyone really there yet — just a bunch of businesspeople. Also, I learned that she doesn’t like to have her photo taken after being up for almost 24 hours.

We were told that the convention center was to open at 10 a.m. and that all the vendors could get in earlier to set up their tables. Rachel brought a suitcase full of shirts to sell, and we were getting kicked out of the dining room anyway, so we headed down to set up shop. When we got there, there were already a bunch of people lined up to buy their passes and just hanging about.

We dragged the suitcase downstairs and grabbed a table next to Rachel’s friends Jimmy and Jason. Jimmy, from Austin, makes some of the most amazing and intricate organic jewelry that I have ever seen. One of the media with which he works is Mammoth Tusk. Freaking Mammoth Tusk! You should check out his stuff. Some of it is sold through BME Shop.

Jason makes glass jewelry in a style that I have never seen before. His company, Gorilla Glass from Mexico City, makes all their jewelry by hand. He was explaining some of the processes used to create the intricate patterns in some of the plugs. Pretty impressive!

We placed all the shirts on the table and loaded it up with stickers. We were now ready for the masses!

They opened the doors to the public and the people came in to do some quick buying of wares before the first class was to begin. There were two rooms of vendors and they both filled up quite nicely. This was the first time the convention opened itself up to people outside of Italy, so they had lot more people than their previous events.

My Italian isn’t so hot … OK, I don’t speak a lick of Italian, so it made it a little difficult to communicate with everyone that was attending the convention. But me being the social butterfly that I am (still sober at this point, FYI), I tried to spark up some sort of conversation with everyone that was coming through. There were just so many cool and friendly people there that I wanted to at least get a “Hello” in. I mean, check out these two guys … how could you not want to say, “What’s up?”

When the announcement for the classes was made, everyone left the vendor spots and filed into the lecture halls for the speeches and workshops that were to be given. Most of the talks were done in Italian with a couple in English. They provided headsets that would give translations into their respective languages. Being the techo-geek that I am, I thought this was one of the coolest parts!

I’m not a piercer or a tattoo artist, so I didn’t follow along to the lectures. But I ran into a nice fellow from Germany that works for Wildcat.de named Stephan who seemed to have a similar interest in tech. I asked him why he had an external D-Link WiFi card on his MacBook Pro with a smirk on my face. When he returned the smirk with an equally menacing grin, I knew we’d get along. (Ten points to anyone that knows what he was doing!) [Ed. note: Nerrrrrrrrrrrds.]

Around 2 p.m., I went back to the hotel lobby to get my room and put all my crap into it. Pretty painless. The most difficult part was looking at the bed on my way out of the room. Going on about 24 hours being awake, it was begging me to come lie on it. But no! I had to fight it. Must fight it! If I go to sleep now, I’ll never be in sync with everyone else, and the weekend will be ruined. Back to the convention!

When I got back downstairs I grabbed a Coke for the caffeine. (Coke in Italy doesn’t taste good … neither did the 7-Up, for that matter. Maybe it’s all soda over there … hmm.) We went back to the booth to relieve Rachel so she could go get her room all straightened out now. When I arrived, she was face down on a stack of shirts. I think someone probably got the “bonus” shirt with Rachel drool. (Just kidding … maybe.)

She grabbed her stuff and said she was going to go take a three-hour “nap.” Uh huh … next thing I know, it’s 8 p.m. and everything is over. I packed all the shirts away, and we all headed back to the lobby to meet up and go to dinner. I decided to wake up Rachel so she could come with us out to dinner. I asked the hotel clerk for her room number and she gave it to me (which I found odd). At this point, I’d been up about 30 hours and was kind of losing it. I got to the midget elevator (it’s like six feet high inside … I’m seven feet tall. Sucks for me), and there were two Asian girls in there that were immediately inquisitive about me. I chatted with them on the ride up and got off on the eighth floor. Crap … what was the room number? Ah yes … 813! I walked down the hall and knocked on the door loud enough to hopefully wake her up. Being the slap-happy moron that I am, I put on a stupid grin and song-and-dance stance when I heard the door opening. “Ta-Da! Whoops … my bad. Wrong room. Sorry!” Shit.

Back into the elevator, to the lobby, and I asked the lady again what the room number was that she just gave me. 815! So close.

Then she informed me that I can just call up from the phone right behind me. Why didn’t she say this the first time? I call. It rings. And rings. And rings. Nothing. Great, she’s sleeping the sleep of the dead. Back to the elevator!

Door opens, I go down the hallway to 815 and knock loudly. The door opens, and it’s her. Very groggy, and with “the look.” Not sure what it really means, but it’s kind of an, “I want to kill you, but with a fluffy bunny” look. Exhibit A:

Back in the lobby, we met up with everyone and then decided what to do for dinner. There were two parties: One was downstairs in the hotel restaurant, and the other was a group of people going out somewhere. After having to sit at a table by ourselves downstairs, we decided to meet up with everyone that was going out instead. We jumped in a taxi and were off! We had our own little room in the back, lots of food, lots of wine, and Jimmy threatening to butt-rape everyone there (in the ha-ha kinda way). Good times all around! Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera, but there were a lot of people that did, so I’m sure you’ll see some embarrassing photos floating around.

In the taxi ride back, I began to nod off. Almost there … must stay awake! It was around midnight and I was fading fast. Rachel took a different cab back and waited for me at the door to make sure I got back OK. Aww … how sweet. We agreed to meet up around 8 a.m. downstairs for the continental breakfast, said our good-nights and I headed up to my room.

I’m not sure if my pants even came off. I’m almost positive that I was asleep before I even hit the bed. Forty hours later and I’m out! Day one was over.

Day two began with the hotel maids. They just love to ignore the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the door. The first time they knocked on the door (yeah, they came about three times) I woke up and opened the door thinking it was Rachel, telling me to get up. Surprise! It was two maids making gestures about how they want to come in and service the room while pointing at the sign! I just laughed. What else could I do? “No, no, no,” I protested, and then went back to sleep. The next couple times they came by I just shouted from the bed to go away.

I wound up finally getting up around 5:30 p.m. The sun was definitely gone. I got myself together and headed downstairs to catch the tail-end of the convention. When I got downstairs, I saw my new friends, Rachel and Stephan, hanging out and goofing around. Ahhh … my people.

Turns out, Rachel had the same though as me this morning, “I’ll just stay asleep a little longer, [Adam/Rachel] is probably already down there running the show.” Haha! We hung out for about an hour and a half until the end of the convention. The next item on the agenda was a fancy dinner banquet in the hotel. The unwritten rule seemed to be, go change into your evening clothes and then meet in the lobby for drinks. Rachel, Stephan, and I seemed have skipped out on the first part of that and just went straight to the lounge. It filled up rather quickly and everyone was in a great mood. To me, this is what conventions are all about. It’s a large gathering of similar thinking people that would normally never meet otherwise having an awesome time trying to talk in all kinds of languages.

Rachel and I wanted to make sure that we didn’t get stuck alone at a table this time, so we headed in first and grabbed a table. Unless everyone secretly conspired against us, we had good a chance of having our friends join us. The room filled up rather quickly and was full of cheerful talk, laughter, and some occasional hollering across tables. Everyone was in good spirits and ready for dinner.

Our first course was a mushroom and asparagus pastry with a cream sauce. I think it lasted about 30 seconds in front of me; it was damn good. The next course was a risotto. Ours wasn’t cooked all the way, and our table turned into the Top Chef judging table. It wasn’t the most delicious thing in the world, but it was good and I was hungry. I also had a feeling that I would not like the main course because the only word on the menu I recognized in the main dish was eggplant … blech! Sure enough, eggplant was delivered. It did have these two giant tater-tot things that were pretty good, but that was all I ate of it. A couple from our table decided to head in early, so we all had the great idea to put our food by their spots so it looked like they didn’t eat the food. It was brilliant!

While we were waiting for dessert, I went over to another table to mingle with a couple from Oslo. I mean, how often do you get to hang out with girls from Norway? While we were chatting, a guy asked me what his shirt said. Yesterday, two guys at the table purchased a shirt from the BME booth with a pictogram that says, “I Screw BME Guys.” Turns out, the “screw” portion of it didn’t translate properly, and they weren’t too pleased that they had been walking around wearing a shirt that said they liked guys. We poked fun at each other for a while about it, and then one of the guys told me that he wanted one of the shirts that I was wearing. I told him that it was impossible because it was the only one: I made it myself for my site. It wasn’t even a BME shirt. But, being the awesome guy I am, I told him that I would trade him shirts, but it had to be right then. He accepted. So in the middle of the dining hall we traded shirts. I think the few glasses of Jagermeister and wine in me helped with this process. Here’s a photo of a happy guy in my shirt:

I spent the rest of the evening in his shirt proudly proclaiming that I screw BME guys … ha ha. Amazingly, girls seemed to have dug it. Or maybe, Jager makes you think that girls like you wearing shirts that say you’re gay. Either way, we all had a great time and great conversations.

The cake came out, and the cheers came from the crowd to Bruno, Brenno, and Beppe for hosting the convention. I’m pretty sure there was even a, “Hip, hip, hooray!” After the toast, we all filed back to the convention area for an evening of entertainment. The hall filled up with everyone eagerly awaiting the sexy burlesque show.

The chairs were about a hundred feet back from the stage, so I took it upon myself to grab a bottle of wine and my camera and go plop down in the front. That seemed to have started a trend. Soon everyone that didn’t have a seat came running up to the front for a closer view of the show. There were three performances, a 20-minute break, and then a few more to wrap it up. The final showing was my favorite. Great use of giant ostrich feather fans. I mean, add a nekkid girl and how could it not be awesome?

When the show ended, everyone parted ways and for the most part went back to their rooms. It was about midnight or so (maybe later … no clue really). Rachel wanted to crash out, so she went to bed. Stephan and I on the other hand wanted to find out where the party was. Mission one: walk up and down the hallways and listen for a party. After three floors, we found nothing! I couldn’t believe it. Mission two: Head to the lobby and see if there were a bunch of people hanging out there.

As soon as the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, there was a girl standing there. Stephan, with his German charm, asks, “What room are you in?” Ha ha! She told us to follow her to meet up with everyone else. Worked for me. We hit up a couple more rooms and picked up a couple others that wanted to hang out and then headed back down to the lobby. Sadly, there was no one there to disturb.

Now we were down to our last mission: Alcohol. The bars were closed, and there weren’t any stores around open to buy anything. Then, like an angel from Croatia, our friend Ana showed up with a bottle of Jager, some vodka, and wine. Hells yeah!

I’m not sure who was all there throughout the evening, but overall, we had a great time! I think we may have gone over the top on the crazy side at some point though. There was a point where a cool Croatian guy was showing me takedown moves with the flick of a wrist, and a Slovenian girl grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos.

The end of the night is a bit foggy, but it was somewhere around four or five in the morning and all the alcohol was definitely gone. We all agreed that the night was over and exchanged our good-nights. Day two had come to an end.

For the third day, I figured I’d get up early. I rolled out of bed around 1 p.m. and went down to the vendor booths. We spent most of the remainder of the conference goofing off and playing with the stickers. Stephan gave us a bunch of “No Piercing Guns” stickers, and Rachel took it upon herself for us to advertise how strongly we feel about it. There was a chair involved so that my head would be in the photo.

Towards the end of the conference, a lot of photo-taking was going on. We all met a lot of new people and had great times sharing the space with each other. I don’t think there was a single person that left the conference without a smile on their face. Everything was just too much fun!

For our final dinner in Milan, Stephan took it upon himself to find a great (not merely “good”) restaurant. Again, with the taxi game of, “Who had the lowest fare?” we all made it to the place just in time before the kitchen closed. Unfortunately the menu was only in Italian, so ordering was a little difficult. Then came in our saviour, Christiano! He played interpreter for us all to the waiter. I accidentally ordered a lump of gelatinous cheese as an appetizer. It wasn’t the most delicious thing in the world, but it was kind of entertaining to eat. The main course for all the meat-eaters was a giant pan of steak and potatoes.

Rachel and I had to do a little convincing and schooling as to why we should order it medium-rare. Can you believe someone actually asked for it medium-well? Sheesh! It was cooked perfectly and had excellent layers of flavor. After the main course, a bunch of people ordered some desserts. Jason got a “special” dessert. We then went through a couple more bottles of wine and headed back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel, we wanted to continue the festivities, so we all piled into Rachel’s room with a few more bottles of wine and some heavily demanded trail mix. All I’m going to say here is, don’t light the filter! Ha ha! We all hung out until at least 3 a.m. or so, laughing and carrying on. Jason got us in trouble a couple times because he doesn’t like to be shushed. He just laughs too loudly! And … we kinda kept prodding him to keep him laughing.

Rachel and I had to leave the hotel by 8 a.m., so we knew that we weren’t going to bed that night. Most people bailed around four in the morning to crash in their rooms. Our friends Didier and Christiano kept us company the whole night! They even came down to breakfast with us. Those are some true rockers. For anyone that knows me, staying up 30-plus hours at a time isn’t anything unusual at all, and apparently Rachel’s a big fan of insomnia and working insane hours too. Yay!

Close to 8 a.m., Rachel and I jumped in a cab and headed for the airport. We got through customs and security pretty easily. I guess not too many people were leaving Milan on a Wednesday that early in the morning. We even had time to grab a slice of pizza before getting on the plane.

Our flight back was just over nine hours (crap). I think Rachel passed out pretty much right after take off. I stayed awake just long enough for the free lunch and to watch Lakeview Terrace (which sucked). I then put on my headphones and passed out.

I was woken up by Rachel stepping on me trying to get over me to go to the bathroom. (She’s so mean!) We landed about 20 minutes later. I normally don’t sleep so well on airplanes, but I had no problem this time.

Rachel had to continue on to Austin, so I gave her a hug and said adios. I jumped in a cab and went home. Finally … three weeks later and I get to sleep in my own bed! I had an amazing time in Italy. I wish that I could have seen more of what the city had to offer, but time and weather just didn’t permit it. Maybe I’ll go back for the Milan Tattoo Convention in February. We’ll see!

I hope to meet more of you and build some awesome memories.

Take care everyone!

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