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Blog Entry 284 of 601 What's Going On

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Contributed by: Brendan Leonard/YourHub.com on 4/3/2007

We've decided to give YourHub.com users an opportunity to show off and/or explain their tattoos. I was hoping we could have some sort of "Dumbest Tattoo Ever" contest, in which we give the winner a large credit to a laser removal center, but it looks like that's not going to happen just yet.

If you go to http://denver.yourhub.com/tattoos, you'll see some of the tattoo photos YourHub.com users have posted so far, and you'll find a link to post your own stories about your tattoos, because we think all tattoos probably have a good story behind them. Except maybe that panther with wings that my high school classmate got on her shoulder.

I'm going to go ahead and participate, too. With the help of my girlfriend, who took the photos of all my tattoos, and Eric's Photoshop guidance, I made a map of all the tattoos I have. I just need one more (sound familiar?) to be done with it once and for all. Here's my list -- none of them are very artistic, in the visual sense of the word, but I'm happy with them. (Sorry, Mom.)

Click here to see the full-size map.

1. A TATTOO
This was my first one. I walked into a tattoo shop the day before my 21st birthday, and the guy sitting at the reception desk happened to be Josh Lockey, a guy I went to high school with but hadn't seen in about three years. Although the shop's artists wasn't there and Josh wasn't officially a tattoo artist, he agreed to ink the words "A TATTOO" on my hip.
"You want it in a specific font?" he asked.
"Nope, just your handwriting is fine," I said.
Boy, this one used to be a great party joke. Then I quit partying.

2. "Too weird to live, too rare to die."
Hunter Thompson has always been a hero of mine, maybe just because of his writing. His earlier stuff is some of my favorite written work of anyone, ever. In the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he describes his attorney as "... one of God's own prototypes: Some kind of high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, too rare to die." I liked it so much, I had it permanently inked onto my lower back just before I graduated from college.

3. 5-31-97
The night my track team returned from the state meet, I accidentally ran into a barbed-wire fence at full speed, in the dark. It left a pretty long scar. That's all I really need to say about that. A few years later, I decided to get the date put right next to the scar.

4. Claddagh ring
My grandma always told me, "Brendan, you're half Irish, and that's the only half you need to worry about." Not wanting to enter the legion of folks that have a tattoo of either a shamrock (St. Patrick's visual aid for explaining the Holy Trinity to the Irish) or a four-leaf clover (one of the marshmallows in Lucky Charms, supposedly good luck) and those who don't know the difference, I decided to get the Irish friendship ring around my left arm my first year of grad school at the University of Montana.

5. Crown and copyright symbol
Both of these used to be incorporated into artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's graffiti tags before he became famous, and into some of his works after he became famous. He was another hero of mine, even though he was dead of a heroin overdose long before I even heard of him. I saw Basquiat's painting, Sugar Ray Robinson, at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis a few months after I got the crown and copyright symbol put on my right shoulder.

6. Keith Haring's DJ Dog
I love hip-hop, or at least used to. I've become a snob as I've gotten older, grumpily proclaiming that almost no good hip-hop music has been made since about 1994 (probably in the same tone of voice my dad used to complain about hip-hop not being music back when I was obsessed with it in the late '80s and early '90s). Hip-hop, in its early stages, was very inspirational for Keith Haring, who made his name as a graffiti artist in New York in the early '80s. Keith Haring is one of those artists you can appreciate even if you think you don't like or know anything about art, like I do. This image is from my girlfriend's Keith Haring book, and sums my feelings for hip-hop up better than, say, the Public Enemy logo.

7. Writer
I asked the guy to make this look like a nametag on a gas station attendant's shirt. I really hope it pans out someday. At least I didn't get it on my forehead.

Here's a gaggle of ink-related stories on YourHub.com:

Nikki Britain explains her ink to everyone
http://denver.yourhub.com/Parker/Blog~281771.aspx

Faith Tattoo Gallery in Golden: Your Christian tattoo shop
http://denver.yourhub.com/Golden/Story~286729.aspx

YourHub.com community assistant Brit Horvat gets talked out of a tattoo:
http://denver.yourhub.com/Boulder/Story~287063.aspx

Wednesday is Family Day at this tattoo shop. Family Day?
http://denver.yourhub.com/KenCaryl/Story~286753.aspx

Tattoo artist says his work is like alchemy:
http://denver.yourhub.com/AuroraNorth/Story~287614.aspx

This tattoo artist puts the emphasis on 'art':
http://denver.yourhub.com/AuroraSouth/Story~287022.aspx

Aurora man makes name for his ink work on pro athletes:
http://denver.yourhub.com/AuroraNorth/Story~286806.aspx

YourHub.com staffer John Brandstetter gets his first tattoo for this story:
http://denver.yourhub.com/LoneTree/Story~287820.aspx

Wanna go bowling or to the tattoo shop, kids?
http://denver.yourhub.com/Parker/Blog~286715.aspx

Two of our staffers spent a whole night at Celebrity Tattoo in Lakewood and still have no tattoos:
http://denver.yourhub.com/Lakewood/Story~287709.aspx

South Broadway is where Denver's bands go to get inked:
http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blog~287773.aspx

Castle Rock has a tattoo shop? Yep:
http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Story~286983.aspx