In the Mel Gibson directed & produced film Apocalypto- all of the Mayan characters are heavily modified- from the young to old.

In the new film Children of Men- the character, Alex, is depicted as a self-medicated, neurotic, tattooed, but highly intelligent character in his brief sequence. Am I wrong but does he has CRAZY tattooed on his neck (?)

Ballin' show @ Bowery Tattoo last Friday.

Also check out page 9 of Urban Ink magazine this month! I'm in it!

In 1998, Mattel released 'Butterfly Art Barbie.' In 1998, I was 16- free of any tattoos or any other sort of body modification. Butterfly Art Barbie was promoted as a Barbie doll with 'painted on' butterfly art designs. While you can rationalize that they might possibly painted on (ala Barbie's weekend vacation to the Jersey shore-WHY DO I KNOW EVEN KNOW THIS?) in reality it is a tattooed Barbie. The idea- very cool. The execution- predictable & tacky.

There is even a 'Butterfly Art' car that Barbie & crew can ride in as well.

Here's some more info. You can find a plethora of these dolls on Ebay.

David Lynch has a new book out now called 'Catching the Big Fish.' He did a director talk at Barnes & Nobles this past Thursday night. The book is highly inspirational- half of it deals with meditation, the other half deals with his films.

I went to a Brooklyn-based exhibit of multiple artists entitled 'Flesh' this past Friday night. All the pieces related to our awkwardness of the human body or flesh. The most interesting piece to me was human skin (?) mounted onto individual pieces of wood / canvas.

Then there was also the 'Bomb Scare' opening at Invisible NYC as well. The show dealt with repeated patterns printed on inkjet paper (in essence- wallpaper).

Reset Design is a wonderful graphic design site. There is a section of the site devoted to design and placement of future, wanted tattoos. The detailed design and placement of the future tattoos would be a great idea for any person to bring to their own tattoo artist.

From the site:

'Reset Design Tattoo is a special tattoo collection made by some of our favourite designers in order to propose new functional and aesthetic way of thinking this permanent fashion body sign. Reset Design Tattoo is now a permanent tattoos gallery open to every designer who wants to propose his tattoo vision.'

Reset Design Tattoo Gallery

The site is based out of France, thanks for the link Jerry.

There is a special night going on today (and only) at the Anthology Film Archives regarding body modification or as they put it, 'radical identity adjustment.'

http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/schedule/

Various / Deitch Projects opening of Womanizer.

Everyone should make an effort to see the Second Nature exhibit at Art & Idea.

The exhibit is filled with 'art' made of trash. The skeletons and skulls are all made of melted-constructed & discarded cassette tapes. There is also a piece made of 'cut' pages of books to form a body.

Found via gothamist.