Needled tries to present the very best of tattooing without mocking the bad. That is, unless you're a celeb who has the resources to find the best and pay for it. Then it's open season. But there are moments when I yearn to do the blog version of shaking someone silly and screaming What were you thinking?!
For example, I love BMEzine's Modblog, but when I see something like the Twinkies chestpiece tattoo and the comments saying how awesome it is, I just wanna vomit cream filling. Sometimes acceptance of all things in tattoos isn't a good thing. Sometimes you just have to call someone a dumbass.
Thankfully Vice mag's Aviva Yael and P.M. Chen have done this for me in their new book, No Regrets: The Best, Worst, & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever. [In fact, I was surprised BMEzine didn't get any props in the book as the tattoos featured are often straight from BME's most popular posts.]
You know the ones I'm talking about: the I'm Gonna Kill You Ray Romano tattoo, the Hitler portrait, and the literal tramp stamp.
A good number of the tattoos in the book are excellently done -- for example, Mike Devries' Jack Black and Mike Tyson (tattoo collaboration with Mike De Masi) portraits -- but it's the subject matter that's questionable. Then again, I have an evil child breaking out of the back of my head so who the hell am I to balk.
The best part of the book: by far, the foreword by David Cross mocking ironic tattoos on hipsters. Here's a tasty bit:
"What happens to a young man who has a full-scale back tat of a smiling, beatific Adam Duritz with the legend 'Straight Edge' above, when he realizes that perhaps Ian Mackaye might have been the better choice for something so bold and permanent? And Bob Barker?Who the fuck is gonna remember that guy in ten years? And then you have to explain that he was an unremarkable game show host? And then you have to explain that you thought it was funny (at the time) and then you have to resort to roofies if you ever want to get laid again?"
There's also a line about a Bea-Arthur-giving-Alex-Trebek-a-handjob tattoo, which makes me wanna buy copies of the book just to keep that quote on hand regularly.
The downside is I wish the tattoo artist credits were on the same page as their work instead of jumbled together and squeezed haphazardly in the back. I wanted to know who did the good, bad and ridiculous right away without workin for it.
Still, I'd recommend No Regrets as a fun addition to your tattoo book collection. Buy it on Amazon for $11.55 (on sale now).
UPDATE: I heard from author Aviva Yael and she answered my question on why the images had lots of overlap with Modlblog but without props to them. She said the artists had submitted the images themselves and "with some of the more popular artists and scandalous images, they tend to float around on the web more than others." I was happy to hear that as BMEzine often gets ripped off with abandon but this was not the case in No Regrets. In fact, BME's Rachel Larratt described the book as 'awesome' so that's another thumbs up.
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