Vor really does mean 'Thief'

I watched Eastern Promises on DVD last night. Here are some of my thoughts:
a) Damn, Viggo Mortensen.
b) How much vodka do I have left in the freezer? Better get some more.
c) Cronenberg got the leather jackets spot on.
d) I wonder if compass star tattoos will become the new Maori sleeve as a result of this film?
e) This is the greatest male nude wrestling scene EVAH!
f) Has anyone else noticed that Cronenberg and Mortensen look like father and son? They are the spit of each other.
g) The make up girl in the corner is totally checking out Viggo as he gets his tats applied for a scene. Proper order.
h) Damn, Viggo Mortensen.

Ask me about my poor self-image....Part 2

Ummm…Where was I?

Oh yeah, tattoos. One of the first things that struck me about St. Kit’s was the disproportionate number of Tattoo studios (6 in the city centre). Of course, now that I know about the city’s crystal meth cottage industry it starts to make more sense. I’m not saying that meth and tattoos are an inevitable pairing, it’s just that for me they tend to fall into the same category of ‘poor lifestyle decisions’.

And the odd think is, I used to really like tattoos. I was fascinated by them back in the day when I had a biker boyfriend (and yes he did have ‘Live to Ride, Ride to Live’ on his bicep). Every chance I got, my fingers traced the raised ink lines with childish wonder. Painted skin. Cool.

And yet, and yet…I’ve never seen a genuinely good-looking tattoo. In the websites and magazines dedicated to ‘the art’, the content tends to be distinctly underwhelming despite. Dragons, Skulls, Roses, Crosses, Hot Babes. So I was quite exited to find myself watching a docu-dram about top tattooists and the stories behind their creations. As someone whose thought for may years about getting a tattoo, and knowing many in the same frame of mind, I was intrigued to learn what other people’s thought processes are when they go to get inked. Proper thought processes, not drunken clarts on holiday stumbling past the resort tattoo parlor at 2am (hello Hersonissos!).

So I was sorely disappointed to find that people going to Miami Ink basically commissioned the same core iconography of Dragons, Skulls, Roses, Crosses, and Hot Babes for basically two reasons: 1) commemoration of a dead person, 2) finding God (and this often involved reason 1 as well). Executed with wonderful skill but in response to sore lack of imagination. Which really does force me to conclude that there is something essentially mimetic about most tattoos. For all that the customers are claiming their design as a mark of individuality the effect is homogenous branding. I think I will leave my tattoos on the inside.

CODA: Walking into one the Second-Hand bookstores a few weeks ago I overheard this snippet of conversation between the owner and a customer ‘…and he tells me he’s off the meth. And he’s given up the daytime hookers.” Note, nothing said about night whores.

Ask me about my poor self-image....Part 1

I've been sick, really sick. Truth be told I'm still sick, but after 6 straight days in bed I've hauled myself down to my Ikea Poang armchair for a change of scene. I'm telling you the name of the chair because I like the sound of it: Poang! It doesn't have any further role in this narrative. Forget about it.

The worst fucking part of living alone is being sick on your own. Such a drag. And of course, I've managed to lose my mobile, just to add to the felling of isolation. I tell you if it weren't for broadband, iChat and Skype....thank god for the internet. I was remembering my first year in Dublin when I knew no-one and lived in Rathfarnham next to the mountains (back in 1989 this was like living in Wales). And my landlords were an insanely houseproud newly married couple whose spare room I rented. They put a lock on the phone and were always away. And even if I could drag myself from bed the number 16 could keep you waiting an hour in the cold on Grange Road - I really was trapped there. At least with Femputer I can check out Britney's bald head. Yes, my finger is on the pulse of the zeitgeist, though the rest of me can barely sit up.

But I'm not here to talk about my phlegm- and fever-tastic journeys in self pity. I'm here to talk about tattoos.

I know, wierd segue. But there's a logical connection of sorts. This time last year I was interviewing for the job I now have. Around the time of my first interview I began to feel a bit wrong in the stomach, not nerves but something far more fearful: the winter stomach bug. I held it together for the interview and then spent the next 2 days shivering and sweating in my hotel room. And during that time I had the tv on and I watched episode after episode of Miami Ink.

Miami Ink: 5 guys and a token woman set up a tattoo business in Miami. The episodes are built around people coming in for tattoos, what they get, why they want to get it. With and ad break every 15 minutes it was perfectly geared for someone with no concentration who had to shoot to the bathroom.

And then this past week I found clips of those episodes on YouTube. And they got me to thinking about tattoos.