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By infmom, August 24, 2008 3:42 pm

….put a sports logo on my arm?

There’s a TV commercial that’s getting a lot of airplay these days, showing sports fans displaying their lovefor their teams in different, mostly creative ways. Painting a car like a team uniform. Wearing a costume representative of the team name. Getting a credit card with a team logo. Getting the team logo tattooed on your arm.

It’s obvious, of course, that the team logo in the commercial isn’t a real tattoo. (Obvious to anyone who’s ever come within ten feet of a real tattoo artist, that is.) But I have no doubt there are people so devoted to their teams, or to their favorite athletes, that they’ve got some kind of sports logo inked on their skin.

I’ve never been a big enough fan of any team or athlete that I’d want a sports emblem permanently attached. Heck, I never even replaced my Green Bay Packers jersey when it finally wore out (I’m not as big a Packers fan as I once was–I guess the days of “The Pack will be back! Way back!” did my early enthusasm in). My grandfather was a lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan, but I can’t imagine him buying a jersey, much less getting a tattoo.

On the other hand, I watch “American Chopper” and look at how crazy Grandma Teutul is about the Yankees. I could totally see her getting a Yankee logo tattooed on her arm (and Paul Sr. paying for it with no questions asked). Sometimes I tune in the Channel 5 news a few minutes early and catch the last minute or so of their wrestling extravaganza du jour, and I can totally picture the people screaming in the audience lining up at the local tattoo parlor to get a pro wrestling emblem or a portrait of their favorite bruiser permanently applied.

Would you get a tattoo of your favorite team emblem or something else related to a sport of some kind? Or is that the kind of thing you might be seeing a tattoo removal specialist about after a few bad seasons or big losses? Is that kind of “sports memorabilia” worth the money?

photo credit: Mac(3)

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By infmom, February 6, 2008 1:20 pm

My late father had a unique sense of humor, and he delighted in the ridiculous. Which is why he was a big fan of the Marx Brothers and the British comedians who did the Goon Show and “Beyond the Fringe.”

At one point in my childhood, we had a housekeeper whose first name was Lydia. My father, of course, thought it would be appropriate to sing “Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, the en-cy-clo-piddea” to her, assuming she’d get the reference.

She didn’t.

And thus ruffled feathers had to be smoothed, and explanations had to be given, and my father learned that not everyone is a fan of classic comedy.

Lydia, the tattooed lady of the song, was covered all over with miscellaneous designs. You could see “Kankakee, or Paree, or Washington crossing the Delaware.” From the pictures I’ve seen, heavily tattooed people in those days mostly did the same thing–just kept adding ink-work till there wasn’t much skin left to be covered. There was no overall design. And in those days, heavily tattooed people did make a living as circus performers, so if the average person were to see someone with a lot of ink, that’s what they would have seen.

If you’re only going to get a few tattoos, it doesn’t really matter if they “go along” with each other in any way. Inspiration strikes, ink is added. What feels right at one stage of the game might not be so appealing the next time around. My own three tattoos don’t coordinate with each other visually in any way (although I must admit I have considered commissioning a gifted artist of our acquaintance to design me a sleeve that would incorporate my seven stars). Given that no two of my tattoos are anywhere near each other, it doesn’t matter at all that they don’t coordinate.

However, it does seem to me that if one’s goal is to get pretty well covered, a grand plan makes the whole thing look a lot better. That’s why those Japanese bodysuits look so good. If we just keep adding stuff till there’s no skin left, it comes out looking like what it is: a mish-mosh. Better, I think, to have at least some plan to coordinate everything. But then again, I don’t plan to get completely covered, so what do I know?

What do you think? Grand plan, or individual inspirations?

By the way, if you want to see Groucho singing “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” in his prime, you can find his performance on YouTube here. I have had no luck embedding videos properly, so better you go see it at the source.

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