Off Beat Ink

Kat Von D and her Sensuous Smells Sinner and Saint

Khalid — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:39:05 +0000

No tattoo aficionado can avoid knowing of Kat Von D. She is LA’s best known female tattoo artist and persona. She has been instrumental in the shift in attitude towards women and tattoos. In fact, I credit her with the huge societal ground shift which has seen professional women choose to have tattoos to adorn their bodies and enhance their sexy charisma, their power and their talents. If I have any criticism it is only that tattoos have now become so popular that the trend buckers among us are going to start soon to choose to go as blank canvasses just to be different…
Why do I say that? Well, Our Kat has done what every other celeb woman has done (or tried to do) – she has launched her very own smell, or smells in this case… Kat Von D has introduced her very own signature fragrances which reflect her view of herself as naughty but nice, I presume….
Sinner starts with a light, delicate blend of orange blossom flower, mandarin citrus and luscious ripe plum, creating “a contrast with a provocative, sultry heart”. In there can also be detected a hint of sweet jasmine and earthy cinnamon, an “herb associated with ancient rituals of pleasure”. Beneath that, you also have a “dark, mysterious back of earthy vetiver, patchouli, and woods” leaving a sensual musk lingering on the skin. A mouthful, but actually a rather delicious scent, if rather complex for my personal tastes. I can see, though, that this would work well for an evening perfume.
Kat’s alter ego, then, would be the Saint. This also begins with a citrus and plum overtone but one that is much sweeter and lighter. The depth of the scent is provided by the combination of the exotic Tiare flower and the temptation of caramel. Jasmine, a hint of vanilla and the depth of sandalwood anchor this perfume which also leaves a sweet musk lingering on the skin.

Rescue Ink

Khalid — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:41:06 +0000

Ever heard of Rescue Ink? Well, you should have (no, neither had we) because they are the epitome of inspirational and just plain fantastic human beings. I’ll tell you why…
Rescue Ink is a group of people – well, men, for the most part - almost all heavily tattooed, who work out of Long Island, NY to rescue animals from abusers. Their motto is: “Abusers are losers”. In their own words from their own website, they are: “a bunch of tattooed, motorcycle-riding tough guys who have joined together to fight animal cruelty, educate abusers and help resolve situations other rescue groups can’t – or won’t – handle themselves.”
I see them as the Sea Shepherd of the domesticated animal world. These guys are all people who have been in need of a second chance themselves at some point in their lives. They are all street savvy and know how things actually work in the down dirty reality of animal abuse.?
Mary Fayet is the unlikely gravity pull that holds the group together. She is pretty much the boss from all we can see. Especially wonderful when you realise how tiny she is compared to the men whose work she organises and directs. Go Mary!
The group members include a former restaurant manager, a bodyguard, a retired cop, a firefighter, a landscaper… some are martial arts experts, others just very, very big. Their names range from Junior to Angel to just plain ‘G’ (Ok, so you try calling him George and see what happens…). Batso in particular is a special character in the mix. This 75 year old power lifter makes natural soaps and his body is a shrine to the art of tattoo art. One thing that binds all these men and the others to each is their deep love and affection for animals as well as their deep and abiding fury at the way animals are sometimes treated.
Rescue Ink got their message out in a National Geographic program aired on TV last moth but their popularity and respect for their work had already inspired dozens to sign up online to a blog promising to be tattooed if the Inks would come clean their town of animal cruelty.
“A visit from the badass guys of Rescue Ink would generate the momentum to really get an animal-protection movement off the ground,” said an employee of Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. She offered to get a tattoo of her pitbull’s paw print and 55 other people pledged to do the same.
As one member of Rescue Ink so eloquently states: “You can …be a tough guy and a badass, but you can do the right things.”

Davina McCall Whacky Tattoos

Khalid — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:38:10 +0000

Davina McCall was born in 1967 in London. The world was never going to be the same. The wild child product of a messily broken marriage, she suffered anorexia and went a bit off the rails in her twenties, which was to be expected. However, during those days of drug induced hazes, she still managed to sing at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, work as a nightclub hostess in London and date Eric Clapton. Yes. Eric Clapton. Love her yet? In fact it was Clapton who put her on the road to recovery, despite her mother who died years later. Davina’s comment on the matter? “We hadn’t really communicated in the last ten years. She sold stories about me to the Daily Mail, one about us attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting together, which you just don’t do.”
Today Davina is most well known for presenting Big Brother on Channel Four but she has a good few shows under her belt including several on MTV and was once a popular and successful model booking agent. After a brief marriage to Andrew Legget, she finally spotted Pet Rescue presenter, Matthew Robertson while walking her dog in the park, They were married 18 months later and today have three children together.
It all sounds so conventional, until you hear her talking and realise that this is a woman who is candid, forthright and spank in the middle of the UK media’s eye. A rare creature indeed. When talking about her workout video, she freely admitted it was all to do with conquering her post-babies “jelly belly”.
On her 40th Birthday, she threw a Mutton themed party where she wore “an outfit I used to go clubbing in when I was 18, a bright-pink leotard with a skirt attached”. With every intention of looking “chronically mutton”, she even learned dance routines from the movie high school Musical.
Davina also has some wacky tattoos: horns on her hips, a rose on her wrists, chilli peppers on her shoulder blade and an alien on her bottom. “I love my tattoos… I’m … going to get the chilli peppers on my back covered up, because everybody thinks they’re carrots and that’s not cool”… but she is. Cool, that is.

London Tattoo Convention 2009

Khalid — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:22:33 +0000

The last weekend of September 2009 was a memorable one for East London. There were hundreds of tattoo and body artists from all over the globe attending and performing their trade from traditional Nordic facial tattoos applied with a chisel and hammer to heart-stopping full body designs ranging from Eastern mystic creatures to science fiction characters and more.
The Convention is well known for its wide variety of entertainment from exhibitions, artistic events and live rock bands to burlesque performers from around the world. The food stalls are bewildering in their variety and mouth watering in their offerings. There are also your traditional East End bars and pubs but the best part of the day is just sitting with an ale in the corner and watching the throngs pass by in all their glory.
25,000 body art aficionados descended on the Tobacco Docks for the fifth annual London Tattoo Convention. Full on piercings and implants, full body art, dragon horns and devil sprouts. They were all there. So many attendees stood out for their artistry, wackiness or just plain gorgeousness. One in particular, a 29 yr old Japanese woman called Rie Gomita won the Coxsoft Art Bum Of The Month Award in deference to her rather gorgeously tattooed buttocks.
The event has been widely reported in the mainstream press, as one broadsheet said proudly: “Some of the world’s top artists fly in for the occasion giving British tattoo fans a plethora of styles and attitudes to choose from. The Japanese and Chicano (Mexican-American) styles seemed to have the longest queues. Forget “tramp stamps” or small butterflies tucked away discreetly on a barely visible part of the body. At the London Tattoo Convention big and bold is definitely in.”
Go London!!?We are still waiting for the final verdict from Guinness but orgaisers assured everyone that they managed to beat the previous Guinness world record for most people simultaneously tattooed under one roof.

Khalid — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:13:24 +0000

Wim Delvoye is a Belgian conceptual artist known for hi rather unconventional endeavours. Born in 1965, he is a Dutchman and lives in Ghent.

Among the weirdest of his projects is Wim Delvoye’s Art Farm in China. There, he has been tattooing pigs since the 1990s. Why China? Well, my guess would be that it is because there are fewer regulations regarding animal welfare out there than in most parts of the Western world. In 2005 Wim was joined by artist Danny Devos who spent several months at the farm, reorganizing, managing and rebuilding. Danny Devos is a vegetarian, it appears.

The pigs are tattooed by Wim and a well known Antwerp tattoo artist. Wim also sells his tattoo designs or will have them inked on you, if you come out to China for the privilege. The pigs, however, are usually slaughtered and stuffed or their skin is cured then sold as art at exhibitions all around the world. Occasionally, though, they are displayed alive. “Marcel, a pig adorned with a Harley-Davidson tattoo, has visited several European cities, while Bonnie and Clyde spent last Thanksgiving at the San Francisco Art Institute and Boris and Tatiana went to the Moscow Art Fair” as declared on Wim’s website.

Speaking of his website, if you go and have alook, assuming you can work out how to navigate the complex site, you will be greeted by such delights as his birdcage in bondage leathers or even his anal kisses on various hotel stationery from around the world. Yes, it is all for sale, as are his cloaca machine. This last I think I will leave you to discover for yourself, though… I will warn you though that it has been reported that “At a school visit, a little girl burst into tears in front of the machine. She might have been right. After all, she wasn’t expecting to see such a powerful, shitty portrait of man.”

Leona Lewis got her first Tattoo

Khalid — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:59:44 +0000

Leona Lewis has what?! Yes, you heard me right. Squeaky clean Leona has gone and got her first tattoo. Imagine that! Ms Lewis has been East London’s darling ever since she won the X Factor program all those years ago. Simon Cowell was so impressed with her performance that he is rumoured to have called the boss of J Records and told him: “You might have the next Whitney Houston on your hands.”

The modest Leona is still in a relationship with her boyfriend Lou who she met when she was 10. Lou is an electrician and her one true love. He is also fairly elaborately tattooed, not that that has anything to do with anything…

About the tat, she is being rather coy: “It’s incredibly private and something that we both had done. It’s Hebrew letters and I’m thrilled with it. I can’t reveal what it is. Some things need to remain private for me.”

The main reason I adore Leona is that she turned down a very lucrative deal with Mohamed Al Fayed to open a Harrods sale. Why did she turn it down? I’ll tell you why. She turned down the deal “on the grounds that Harrods is the only UK department store which continues to stock clothing made from animal fur.” Another reason I adore this woman? She has been a vegetarian since she was 12, she won PETA’s Sexiest Vegetarian along with Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers) in 2008, and again in 2009 with actor Scott Maslen. She also was named PETA’s Person Of The Year for 2008.

“My love for music is my main motivation as an artist,” Leona says quite clearly. “I’ve found that you can help so many people with your songs. I’ve received a lot of letters from people saying that ‘Bleeding Love’ really helped them. I think if you can do that, it makes it all worth it.”

Her latest single “Happy” is released this month. I’ll be having that…

The Fabulous Nic Cage

claudine — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:27:48 +0000

The son of a dancer and a literature professor, Nicolas Cage is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola. Cage changed his name so that his career would be judged on merit alone. He chose the name Cage for the cartoon hero, Luke Cage.

He struggled to get started, despite studying acting, and at one point was selling popcorn in a theatre. By the 80s, though, he had completed some memorably quirky and truly outstanding roles and had made a name for himself as a method actor.
He has been linked romantically with the likes of Uma Thurman, married and divorced Patricia Arquette and Lisa Marie Presley and is currently married to Alice Kim, a sushi waitress he met in New York.

Nicolas Cage’s roles are usually flamboyant, eccentric and off the wall. Among the strangest facts about him is that he got Johnny Depp his first acting job, another is that he owns the Shah of Iran’s old Lamborghini. He also collects comic books because they are “today’s equivalent of mythology”.

Cage is one of only 3 actors with an Oscar nomination for playing multiple characters in a film. He attended high school with people like Angelina Jolie, Lenny Kravitz, David Schwimmer and Crispin Glover. He ate a real cockroach in the film Vampire’s Kiss (1988), although it reportedly took three takes. He once said: “Every muscle in my body didn’t want to do it, but I did it anyway.”

He named his son after the comic book character “Kal-el” (aka Superman), he trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and is called the “Jazz musician of acting” by David Lynch.

He has said that in order “to be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new… There’s a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.”
He has also said: “I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.”

What I want to know is why he has a tattoo of a monitor lizard wearing a top hat on his back…

Tattooed Librarians

claudine — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:40:43 +0000

They do say that a tattoo represents your soul on the outside. One group of people you would not normally expect to wish to portray their inner selves to the outside world is the quintessential reserved librarian. How wrong you would be!!

A group of women representing the Texas Library Association have done just that and published the results in a new 40 page calendar called “The Tattooed Ladies of TLA.” It’s all for a very good cause, one that they feel very passionately about. The Texas Library Disaster Fund helps libraries along the Gulf Coast recover from natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina.
Gretchen Hoffman, a 42 year old who set the pace as Miss August 2010 by posing on a rowing boat with a purple boa strategically positioned to highlight the starfish tattoo on her upper back said: “It was just a fun thing to do… I like the idea that the calendars are stereotype-busters. You don’t usually see [librarians] as tattooed and sexy. We’re not the little old ladies who walk around with buns.”

Miss June 2010, Melody Kelly, is 62 years old and the associate dean of libraries at the University of North Texas as well as a former president of TLA. “I’m somewhat amazed at the response we’ve had,” she said. Her tattoo represents the universal symbol for goddess on her ankle. Apparently they have had enquiries from all over the world, topping at 60 calls in a single day. “I am just so thrilled — it’s phenomenal,” she said. “There’s a need for disaster funds to buy materials and help with shelving in small towns that don’t have the resources.”

The idea was first thought up in 2007, just after the “Men of Texas Libraries” calendar so successfully and quickly raised over $9,000 in donations. It was Kelly who suggested the theme after noticing the tattoos on some of her colleagues, suggesting they capitalize on their inked assets.

“It was one of those ideas that just floated around for a while until someone decided to finally work on it,” said Hoffmann, who served as president of TLA when the men’s calendar was released. “Now it’s more than a buzz. It’s an explosion.”

Toxic Party

claudine — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:09:35 +0000

Tattoo parties have been around for a long time. The idea is a simple one. A group of people get together at someone’s house, a tattoo artist shows up and everyone gets a tattoo. Problem is that the tattoo artist is not necessarily qualified, the environment is not sterile, alcohol makes you bleed more profusely and crowds are distracting. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me somehow.

I am sure there are examples of good tattoo artists attending sterile tattoo parties where the clients were all of legal age, no alcohol or drugs were on site and the tats were of a superior quality. I just haven’t yet heard of one. The usual reasons for holding a tattoo party include celebrating an event (usually involves some form of inebriation), the lower cost per tattoo, the clients are minors or (worse) the tattooist is unqualified, unlicensed or just bad and has to work underground.
The absence of safety protocols and the sheer volume of work being carried out usually results in a large number of badly inked tats of poor design which leave the clients with nasty tats, infections and scarring. Just think of the blood borne diseases we normally are wary of. According to one authority on the subject: “Even if they use single-use needles, which is the typical line of defense for many of these tattooers, that doesn’t mean you’re safe. When a person is tattooed, microscopic blood and body fluids spray and fly everywhere; everything around the client and the tattooer is contaminated. The only way to kill the germs, bacteria and blood-borne pathogens that go along with every tattoo is to make sure every inch of the artist’s work station is cleaned and sterilized thoroughly between clients. All surfaces must be non-porous like tile floors and vinyl seats; anything porous should be protected by being covered with plastic, and then that plastic must be discarded after every client.”

The advertising in this case is a lie. To put it brutally: if you can’t pay full price for a tattoo, then don’t get one. If you’re too young then wait until you’re old enough. And if you are throwing unauthorised tattoo parties, please realise you are jeopardising the industry and its reputation with your selfishness. I sincerely hope you don’t kill someone for the sake of your own greed.

Tattoo Madness taken just a tad too far…

claudine — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:27:54 +0000

How far? How about as far as Russia. Now, we all know that in everything there is a boundary that must not be crossed. Call it bad taste, call it social madness, even call it outright wrong. Russians have found just such a boundary and boldly gone where no true animal lover could possibly contemplate going.

The new trend first arose in Russia. While it may have occurred elsewhere before, never in recent history has any society embraced such an aberrant use of tattoo art with such openness and lack of shame. What is this horrid new fashion? It is the tattooing of one’s pets.Cat owners have taken to getting their felines tattooed with elaborate, colorful designs for no other reason than because they can.
It is reported that one woman had her Canadian Hairless put under general anesthesia for three hours while an image of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun was tattooed on its chest.
Needless to say, this practice has animal right ativists in Russia spitting hairballs in fury. One spokeswoman of the movement has publicly condemned the cosmetic tattooing of animals, saying: “The ethical thinking about animals in Russia lacks behind that of the West. People in Russia mostly buy animals for selfish reasons and anything that happens to them afterwards is a consequence of that.”

The reaction, however, is not restricted to the former USSR. The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the UK) has published its opinion on the matter also: “We are totally against using animals for purely cosmetic reasons just on the owner’s whim. Clearly the animal has no say in the matter. We do not believe in using pets as fashion accessories. It shows no respect for the animal whatsoever. So far we have only heard about this practice happening overseas - and we hope it doesn’t spread.”

The tattoo artist who undertook the task is called Anatoly Keksel. The cat’s owner apparently “wanted something new and different for the times we live in” while Keksel proudly lifted up his shirt and announced that he had the identical tattoo himself. It makes you wonder why he would want to share that information…