Pictures of Kaddisfly playing at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia last weekend. They are playing Warped Tour this upcoming summer as well.

WNBC (NYC) is running a story TONIGHT at 11 o'clock on making 'certain types' of body art illegal. They had close ups of young people with 'snake bite' piercings and stretched ear lobes. I'm sure the story coverage will be both naive and very one sided.

Work work work.

Here are pictures of the Deitch opening of Kristin Baker's 'Surge and Shadow' opening. Also the 'crow art' at the Canal ACE stop.

Also thanks to Sonny and Needled for plugging my YouTube Paper submission video. I'm not sure if the contest is even happening, because as far as I know- less than 10 people entered.

The newest episode of Lost featured the character Claire (Emile de Ravin) piercing someone with a piercing gun.

Unfortunately this episode reinforced to the million of viewers that getting your ears pierced with a gun is okay. It is not advised to get your ears pierced with a gun. Sterility is a factor at risk when getting your ears pierced this way, as well as the questionable skill of the so-called piercer using this method.

Well there was an entry about this on Supertouchblog.com and Needled a few days ago, but it seems to have disappeared now- and I find it quite amazing.

Nike is (has, was, will ?) commissioned Scott Campbell of Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn to tattoo the above design as a back piece on a willing individual. The design will (would ?) be part of the USA / Nike's uniforms for the upcoming Olympics. The individual would also be partaking to be photographed in Nike's Olympic advertisement campaign.

While I have a general disdain for the commodification of tattoo art in popular culture, I find this one of the few times that it isn't tacky- but supremely cool.

I got a few great questions from Katie:

1) Tom Yak's colors are fantastic, why are you sticking with black & white? I know you have a specific simple reason so hey, I bet I know the answer so you don't even need to answer that one.

First, I do not have any white ink in my tattoos. All of my tattoos are in plain black ink, no gray scale whatsoever. I think most people are inclined to say 'black and white' because of a subconscious association with black and white photography.

It's also more economical. A tattoo made up of multiple colors will obviously cost more money. In terms of quality- as time goes by, tattoos will obviously degrade and fade. The fear of colors fading and bleeding into each other was something that always on my mind. Black, on the other hand, I have found will either stay black or fade into a degree of grey- which I feel gives a heavily tattooed body a degree of uniformity. Tattoos that I got 5 years ago look just as good on me as tattoos I got 5 months ago.

I can't see the appeal for myself to get tattoos with color. I already have a difficult time balancing the artwork on my body and I have to deal with the aesthetic design, the weight of black, and location. I don't think I would be able to deal with balancing the aesthetics of color in addition to that.

Also creativity, I find that people will rarely take a stance on what they initially want. My stance from the beginning is and will be that I will only get black ink, as well as have one artist.

I've always felt that my tattoos should always have some sort of WOW factor. I realize that only working with black ink is limiting since there are about a millions colors of the palette that are usable. However, I still feel that the possibilities are endless and yet to be explored with just using black on my body.

2) We miss the personal tattoo stories you used to post, now it's always pictures of this and that, which I enjoy, but really, my favorite part were the short posts about different tattoos on different people and what they meant. So bring that back, I know you have it in you.

If you aren't aware the initial intent of this whole 'thing' was a school project. My goal was to make an amazing project (which I did) and get an A (which I did) and impress my professor (which I did). The idea was to meet people- talk about their work- so on, immediately after the semester ended I started working for Truth during Warped Tour. Warped Tour was sooo incredibly easy to talk to people because everyone is friendly and everyone is tattooed from the neck down. Off of Warped Tour, it started to go more random because that is the sort of place I am right now in my life. It's also really, really cold in NYC right now- most people look like Eskimos- all bundled up so that makes it a bit harder to approach people. For you though- I promise I will try harder.

Dear Nylon Magazine,

Why do you insist advertising Christina Ricci as a tattooed rebel when all I can see is a rinky dinky tattoo on her ankle?

-

Wikipedia reveals she is tattooed, but nothing in my opinion to warrant a headline on something you can't even see.

HELLO WORLD! Paper Magazine for the first time this year ran a user submitted contest for their annual Beautiful People issue. For some strange reason their are only about five or so videos floating out on YouTube for the contest, I'm pretty sure this was because it was only advertised in their blog section of their site.

So if you can all watch it, rate it, comment it, pass it along, repost it- you'll get an idea what I am like somewhat in person- and hopefully you'll see me in a future issue that my mom can show to her co-workers.