Tattooed fingers, tattooed toes.

Man, I tried to put that baby of mine down without swaddling him, and let me tell you, it’s difficult. Granted, I don’t exactly know what I’m doing as a parent, but I’m pretty sure that noise in the background is him screaming. Hmmm…
I went to band practice yesterday for the first time in ages. I haven’t even touched my bass since January. It was great. We played really well and worked on some new stuff. One song was good, one was not so good. Hey, though, fifty percent is an almost unheard of percentage if you’re say, a professional baseball player and you’re talking about hitting. Hmmm…not the best analogy, Kelly. Moving on. It was great to reclaim a little bit of my identity as a guy in a band. For this entire year, I’ve really been a dad and a bartender. Of course, that’s cool too. I don’t mind being a dad and a bartender. I actually LOVE being a dad and being a bartender has its moments, good and bad, so that evens out to okay. I had kind of forgotten that I also love being a guy in a band though, especially because, as I was reminded yesterday, we’ve got some songs that I really, really love to play. Good times. I wrote a song this morning that I’m really happy with. Whatever, who cares? Let’s talk tattoos.

Okay, I’ve got a few visible tattoos. Enough that strangers feel justified in coming up to me, talking to me about them, touching me, showing me their tattoos, etc. Here’s a general little rule of thumb: The guy/girl with all the tattoos that you’re approaching at the 7-11, on the train, in the bar…they don’t want to talk to you about tattoos. It’s true. No one cares about your dumb personal journey through the realm of deciding how many tattoos you’re going to get. Here’s something people actually say to me:

“I want to get a tattoo, but I just can’t figure out what to get.”

Wow. That’s potentially the dumbest waste of a sentence in the history of language. So, essentially, you’re telling me about some vague ethereal notion you have about somehow altering your appearance, but you don’t know how you’re exactly going about it? Well, stranger, I don’t care about your appearance, first of all. Secondly, YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE AN IDEA. You’re telling me about NOTHING at all. You’ve taken a statement that’s stupid and pointless (I’m going to get a tattoo) and made it even more stupid and pointless. This is like saying, “I’d like to invent something, but I just can’t think of anything to invent.” It’s actually impressive, when you think about it. It makes shit like “it is what it is” seem like a fucking passage out of the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Here’s a little info regarding tattoos:
No cartoon characters- Yeah, Snoopy’s awesome. He’s gonna look bad on your arm. I promise. You know those guys with Taz, Mickey Mouse, Calvin (ahem), Dagwood? Those tattoos all look crappy, yours will too. Trust me.

No alien type shit- This should seriously be a general rule of fashion. No aliens from the mind of HR Gieger, no aliens from hippy tee shirts with the big green lightbulb heads. It’s a bad idea. I so promise that alien tattoos will repel pussy with the zeal and power of wearing panty hose over your face and carrying a jar of chloroform.

If you’re a chubby chick with severe bangs and big boobs and you’re covered with sailor tattoos, congratulations. You’re the Cracker Barrel of girls. There’s a million of you. Guys, no matter where you travel, there’s always one of these chicks to make you feel like you’re right back at home. Maybe this one doesn’t bartend, drink PBR and have an ex boyfriend with a shaved head and a goatee. She does? Weird.

Entertain the idea of getting super strange tattoos. A tattoo of a nautical star is dumb. But a tattoo of a nautical pie would be pretty righteous. A tattoo of, say, ghandi dressed up as Rocky Balboa would be neat. You get the idea. That shit is funny. Your tattoos, unless they’re you know, a memorial for a dead child or something, will cease to have any meaning to you almost instantly. So go wild.

No wizards.

Nah, I take that back. Wizards are cool.

Don’t ever EVER EVER EVER EVER wear some dumb sleeveless shirt or take off your shirt or unbutton your shirt just to show off some tattoo while you’re out just letting shit roar. It’s a pretty transparent move and it’s dorky. It’s so fucking dorky that it’s making me angry. Dorks.

Don’t get your face tattooed unless you’re A) not worried about ever getting any sort of job (so you’re either set for life or you’re comfortable living in a car) and B) ridiculously good looking. I have seen exactly two people who pull off face tattoos, and they’re both extremely handsome. Fucked up wastoids with almost no chance of living to get old, but very handsome.

Tattoos that match are the best ones. Tattoos that match that you and your friend do yourselves are even better. You can order a tattoo machine on line. I encourage all of you to get one and just go off.

If you’re a girl and you think your chest is a sort of a hidden place for a tattoo, or your legs for that matter, think again. That shit is out there. Go to the bar and check out the chubby chick with the bangs for an example of how prominent a chest tattoo is on a woman.

Finally, tattoos are stupid. Ami James and Kat Von D and all that shit on TV have sort of convinced the world that tattoos are really important and vital to asserting social independence and all that, but think about it. If that shit’s the subject of TV shows on fucking TLC, it’s hardly the anti establishment, iconoclastic statement that it used to be, huh? Well, unless you get Taz in a USA speedo. That’s off the fucking chain.