My Crane
Friday, November 2nd, 2007Yay! I got a tattoo from amazing artist Chris O’Donnell! He is so incredible and I love my tattoo so much! I know I look like I am not enjoying myself but it really wasn’t so bad. And Chris is hell of fine!!!
Archive for the ‘Tattoo’ Category
Kat Von D Tattoo
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007I just got an amazing tattoo from Kat Von D on her show ‘LA Ink.’ I have been a fan for a long time and I am so excited to finally have it done. Kat is incredible and totally nice and funny and fun. We had an awesome time and it didn’t even hurt because Kat is so pretty nothing she does could possibly hurt anyone!
Cherry Blossoms
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007I can’t get enough cherry blossom tattoos. These are by Barnaby from Mom’s Tattoos at the Pomona Fairplex this past weekend.
True Colors in Vegas
Friday, June 8th, 2007Note: sorry for the late entry - part of being on the road!
The True Colors Tour kicks off today. I have been in Las Vegas for the last two days rehearsing and getting ready and hanging out with everyone. Here are a few pics from dinner taken by Diana Yanez.
Here is me with Rob Roth, the director, left and Jonny Podell, right:
Here is Cyndi looking beautiful and thoughtful with the cute boy of the moment, Brian Viglione, from The Dresden Dolls:
and here is my new tattoo all healed!!
Tattoo Photos Part Five
Friday, March 9th, 2007Now I have total tattoo fever…. can’t get enough. Here I am being tattooed by artist Andrew Moore from Shogun Tattoo in Pasadena. It actually didn’t hurt as much as it looks like it hurts!
Tattoo Photos, Part Four
Monday, January 23rd, 2006
Forbes and Me
Tattooed Tribe
Friday, January 20th, 2006It hurts to look at it, but it is finally finished. I think it hurt even more this time, maybe because I forgot about the pain, much like childbirth I am told. I made lots of impressive faces, but I stayed fairly still the entire time. I have now passed over to the other side. I am now of the tattooed tribe. My life is all new, with this brand new body, and the chance to start over. It is a fantastic rebirth, and I am so glad to be here. Thank you to the “DON” of tattooing, Don Ed Hardy and his lovely wife Francesca Passalacqua, and my friends Forbes, Suhaila and of course, Andre, cameos from Dave and Karen from Moongirl (who make the most awesome clothing and cute cute cute bags with felt doggies), filmmaker and Hardyologist Emiko Omori and the all-hottie staff at TattooCitySF. I love my tattoo!!! It is the best thing I have ever put on and I am never taking it off.
Tattoo Photos, Part Three
Friday, December 16th, 2005
Me and Suhaila
My Tattoo
Thursday, December 15th, 2005I meet Forbes and Ed at Tattoo City on Lombard early in the afternoon. Ed first makes a drawing on my body, for placement of the tattoo. It looks so great I want it on me right then! I am lucky because after so many years of being the tattoo maestro, Ed wants to focus more on his painting, and do less tattooing. He still does it of course, but he doesn’t do the epic pieces he is known for anymore. He says that mine will be the last one!
The needles are at hand, but Forbes and Suhaila are keeping me calm and happy. The room is crowded with love and anticipation, and we are starting. When the tattoo gun hits my skin, I am surprised at the pain. I didn’t think it would hurt so much. The peony is centered right at the base of my spine, where the nerves are outraged at the unusual stimulation. Ed has a gentle touch, and works quickly, but it still feels like my skin is being scraped off my skeleton. I keep looking up at Forbes and Suhaila for reassurance, and that makes it better – but then it goes on again and wow! It really hurts. I almost start crying at the cutting feeling, the way it shoots sparks of pain up into my arms and down my legs. I am so very alive and I feel it quite keenly. The searing sensation is really bad over my rib cage. The tattoo gun vibrates the skin directly on the bone, which feels like a dentist’s drill being used as a murder weapon. It is unbearable, but I am bearing it.
And then it’s over. The time goes by quickly, and it’s a good thing. Half of the outline is finished, and the beautiful peony and one snake are bandaged up for the night. We go to dinner in North Beach, with Ed’s fantastic wife Francesca, and I can’t stop laughing and sneezing. I seem to have come down with the worst allergies ever. But I can’t stop smiling, even though my nose is running.
Tattoo Photos, Part Two
Friday, December 9th, 2005
Me and Forbes
With Tiffany and Pierre
Pierre Likes Me
Preview - more photos to come!
With Forbes, Suhaila, Don Ed Hardy, and Francesca
Tattoo City
Thursday, December 8th, 2005The illustrious Don Ed Hardy is doing my tattoo. He did Forbes, many years ago, and I have been a fan ever since. He made the world of tattooing what it is today, bringing the traditional Japanese imagery from the vibrant outlaw tattoo culture of the samurai and blending it with old school nautical themes, while at the same time making huge innovations in technique, introducing the tribal phenomenon, editing, curating, teaching, learning, growing, of course tattooing, and all in all, making great strides in establishing tattooing as a fine art form. He lives in Hawaii and commutes to his shop in San Francisco, called Tattoo City.
San Francisco is tattoo city, so the name is sweetly appropriate. Because of Don Ed Hardy’s incredible influence and vision, the best tattooists in the world have set up shop here, and the city dwellers sport some of most impressive artwork around. It’s my hometown, so I never need an excuse to go up there. Forbes hooked us up, and I was fortunate enough to get a little time with Ed, in the midst of my own hectic schedule. The most challenging thing about the whole process was scheduling, since I am all over the place all the time and so is Ed, but miraculously it worked out so well, I can only conclude it was meant to be.
Ed designed a beautiful back piece for me, a very large and lush peony (my name in Korean – “Moran”) with two snakes curling around a branch of cherry blossoms, with falling petals. The snakes curl around to the front, and then back again. They have a dear and protective disposition, and I am proud to wear them for life.
Before heading to Tattoo City, Suhaila and I spent all morning at her home in Kensington, where she let her snake Pierre rest on my shoulders. I am terrified of snakes, but I love them too. I had never held one, but Suhaila said that since I am going to be wearing not one, but two, for the rest of my life, I had better get used to it now. Pierre was gentle, curious, climbing up and down my back and shoulders, his long, black licorice tongue darting out to catch snippets of conversation. His boa constrictor body supple and fine, slowly settled in the valley between my breasts and around my neck. His triangle head rested on my hand, and every once in a while, his tongue would dart out and lightly surprise my fingers. He liked me, I think.
Snakes are magnificent creatures, like nothing else on earth. I don’t know why I am afraid of them. Possibly because they are so different, mysterious and unknowable, unpredictable. But on my back, they will be my protectors, my guardians, my cheerleaders and my friends.
Tattoo Photos, Part One
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
Me with Don Ed Hardy
Forbes, Me and Don Ed Hardy
Tattoo Planning
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005In the last few weeks I have been furiously researching, planning, preparing and obsessing about my new tattoo!!!! I have wanted a tattoo since 1986, when I saw my friend and good stepfather Forbes get one. He has a magnificent Japanese monk committing suicide on his back, and lovely sumo wrestler water nymphs making a Busby Berkeley splash scene on his arms. The piece is magnificent, and looks great today as it did when Don Ed Hardy finished it over twenty years ago. Forbes takes very good care of his skin and only exposes it to candlelight.
I’ve spent weeks now, poring through design books, tattoo books, art books, collecting images on my desktop, hoping, fantasizing, dreaming. It is amazing how many people have tattoos, and big ones. There are of course the legions of people with small butterflies, hearts, a single rose, tiny things, but then there are the formidable dragons that wrap lovingly around entire torsos, giant wings that sprout from backs and threaten to take flight. There are nipples turned into hearts, skin rupturing to reveal robot parts underneath, numerous tributes to 9-11 and people who have died yet now live on in their loved one’s skin.
I love tattoos because they represent a brief glimpse of a person’s insides, their passions, their true heart. It is like a riddle, a complex haiku that you may or may not be able to decipher, that you are fortunate to even have the opportunity. Even after the thrill is gone, the tattoo remains, as a reminder of a personal history, a life lived, flawed yet genuine, faded yet viable, and if it is visible to us, in daily life, it modifies the public personae in a way that no other physical alteration does.
I love heavily tattooed women. I imagine their lives are filled with sensuality and excess, madness and generosity, impulsive natures and fights. They look like they have endured much pain and sadness, yet have the ability to transcend all of it by documenting it on the body. Women’s bodies are fraught with controversy, because it is believed that our bodies belong to the state. We are not supposed to choose what we can do with them. We don’t have complete control over reproduction. Though we can get abortions (right now) we must be in the right place at the right time, and even then we might need the consent of someone else (a man) in order to take care of OURSELVES!!!
Transgressive behavior of any kind is intolerable. If you are larger than the models in the magazines, you are shamed for your size, and urged to diminish yourself by any means necessary. If you decide to show your body, then you are punished for being too sexual, both by the status quo and feminists alike. There are women out there, who although they will say they are feminist, don’t like women. It is mostly a particular generation of so-called feminists who have a peculiar aversion to women’s bodies. They don’t want to see them, they don’t want to praise them, they just want to build a shapeless, formless, genderless warrior race, without baby tees and makeup (but please don’t burn the bras because the nipples must be hidden under layers of foam and wire – so just wear two bras) because they think if we want to feel good about our bodies, it must be a weakness for the male gaze that must be stamped out for the good of the cause.
Having lived under such a regime for so many years, I am finally free, and for once in my life, actually able to do something with my body that I have always wanted to do, because I feel safe enough to. Nobody is going to judge me for wanting to wear a beautiful piece of art on my skin. I will not allow it. This is my body, and this is my body with tattoos. Any questions? Slide show to come….