Friday, December 31, 2010

SLEIGHT OF HAND SKATEBOARDS - KNOX GODOY



SLEIGHT OF HAND SKATEBOARDS -
Started by Knox Godoy... LAUNCHING SOON so, get ready. For information; www.thesohseries.blogspot.com

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Latino Tuesday

Still Digging that....


Some Old Work....

I still haven't got around to uploading from my camera so in desperate need of something to update the blog I found these on the phone. Some old work I overlooked in keeping the bog updated...

For Central




Life is a Gamble







BDS - Another one for them Blowing Da Scene Crew

THE WAY THINGS ARE DONE


Mark's preliminary drawings are unreal... but as tattoos, they are insanely and infinitely better.

It's hard to believe that there are clients that come in and actually say, "So, when I come down for my appointment, are you just gonna tattoo it without a drawing or will you draw something first?" REALLY!?

The bottom line is... tattooing is not a game of chance and it should never ever be. We don't put the needle in until the client ok's the image and the placement of the image. Preliminary drawings are usually done in most cases. The ones you see in this blog are just some examples. You will see black line, and some blue pencil.

Look how good these are, and they are only the lines... when they are color pieces or shaded pieces, they will look a million times better. Look how awesome these are already!


Aron has a good collection of prelims on the go.. sleeves, backs.. large pieces.

Drawings never show how the tattoo will actually look finished because it's impossible to get the same smoothness or textures when drawing with a pencil as you would tattooing on skin with sharp needle groupings which have way more versatility than a graphite pencil or colored pencil wearing down on a textured white piece of paper.


Sasha stashes all her drawings... only found a few on her work area. Great sh*t. Look at the giant t*ts on the warrior woman.. hot.

When it comes to specific images, stencils have to be used. If a client asks for a portrait, or a logo... it would be silly for ANY artist to try and draw their rendition of that image, freehand. That's why, when portraits or logos come in, we ask for clients to bring us laser copies of their images so we can trace over them on stencil paper to get all the subtle shades, lines, eyelashes... lip texture, wrinkles, shades in the eyes as well as highlights and not miss a thing.

It would suck to have a portrait of your loved one end up with crooked eyes! There is a scientific and and specific technique to achieving perfect portraits, it's never a crap shoot at the Funhouse.

Juan's mirror is covered with blanket of drawings!

Whether we draw on paper, or whether we draw directly on the skin with a pen, the results are always unbelievable. Everyone here is an incredible artist. So versatile and so accommodating. We still say "there is nothing we can't tattoo!"

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Retirement, Social Security, and Culture Wars

John Buell
Author of Evil Doers: Demonization and the End of Civil Debate in American Politics (NYU Press)

The current Social Security debate reflects one of the great paradoxes of US politics. Months after Social Security helped save the economy from complete collapse, the program suddenly became unaffordable. Conservatives of course, from the New Deal on, have despised this program. It is universal and has benefited not only the poor but most middle class citizens as well. Conservatives also suspect it’s a Trojan horse that might well encourage strengthening other universal programs, like health care or college education for all. Combating this strange and paradoxical attack, however, requires consideration of the culture as well as the economics of Social Security. Social Security is part of our broader cultural wars. Some of the most widely discussed “reforms” of the system reflect insensitivity toward or even disdain for the poor, for manual workers, and anyone who values leisure over our work and spend culture. 
The weakness of the economic case against Social Security is obvious and has been meticulously documented by Dean Baker. The cultural implications of the debate have received less attention. Over many years the trust fund has taken in more in taxation than it has paid in benefits. The surplus has been invested in government bonds and the government has used the funds for other purposes, including tax cuts for the rich. The rich in turn have used some of their money to buy stocks and government bonds. Workers have been prepaying for their own retirement. Indeed, since the cap on income taxed for retirement has been relatively low, the tax is regressive. No wonder Warren Buffett’s secretary pays a larger percentage of her income in taxes than does her boss. 
Now that the baby boomers are starting to retire, government may need to draw on the fund by cashing in its bonds and sending some of the proceeds to the folks who funded the bond purchases in the first place. But having made such a stink over profligate government as the cause of our economic woes, there are anguished demands to reign in the promises made to workers. The most discussed idea now seems to be an increase in age at which full retirement benefits become available. 
Mainstream media insist that demanding government meet its fiscal obligations to the Social Security trust fund may be unfair or unrealistic. But turn the tables around. What if a left-of-center government took power and said that in the light of its purported fiscal crisis it would be unfair or unrealistic for government to pay those wealthy bondholders the full principal on their bonds at maturity. I can already hear screams about the moral irresponsibility and dire consequences of such a default. 
And what is the cultural message in the reforms, aka default, citizens are being asked to accept? What is the big deal in being asked to retire at 67 instead of 65? Such a demand is hardly class neutral. I look at my own situation as compared to friends and acquaintances in this working class, waterfront community. One part- time lobsterman, nearing 65, survives by hauling wood, moving, storing and painting docks during the winter. He endures chronic back pain and has suffered a heart attack. Another electrician friend crawls around in attic enclosures I can’t imagine even being able to squeeze into. His pension decimated by the housing and financial meltdowns, he counts on Social Security as his one refuge. Now, however, convinced by the media that Social Security is bankrupt, he laments “I am never going to be able to retire.” 
I am sixty- five. I love the work I do, which includes writing op ed columns and books as well as teaching online college courses. I look forward to every day of work and have no intention of retiring as long as I can still breathe. I suspect Pete Peterson, the billionaire anti social security guru, feels the same way.
Despite all the talk of the US as a post industrial society nearly half of workers over age 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions. And a disproportionate number of those depend most heavily on Social Security. They have every right to demand that government not welch on its obligation to them 
 Life expectancy has increased, but so has the economy’s overall productivity. More broadly, the great promise of capitalism from at least the 1950s has been the claim hard work, savings, and reinvestment would foster technological advance enabling more leisure. Citizens would then have the right to choose how the benefits of increased productivity should be allocated. 
The French still keep alive a part of the capitalist promise that is ridiculed or indefinitely deferred by elites in Europe and especially here in the US. Despite efforts by European and US media to portray public sector workers as greedy or unrealistic, the great majority of French citizens recognize that all workers have a cultural and economic stake in opposing President Sarkozy’s efforts to increase the retirement age for state employees. If Sarkozy succeeds, his actions, much like President Reagan’s attack on the air traffic controllers, will encourage broader attacks on the working class. Mark Weisbrodt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research argues: “It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable to expect that as life expectancy increases, workers should be able to spend more of their lives in retirement. And that is what most French citizens expect. They may not have seen all the arithmetic, but they grasp intuitively that as a country grows richer year after year, they should not have to spend more of their lives working.” 
Corporate capitalism, American style, has never been as simple, complete, and linear as its advocates imagine. Even its successes have opened up new rights claims its fundamentalist advocates disparage or deny. 
Leisure is an especially compelling claim, both for its own sake as a space for other transformational possibilities in our personal and collective lives. Both Pete Peterson and the electricians and boat hands that sustain his affluent life should have the right to leisure and a comfortable retirement. No expert commission should usurp this right.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Latino Tuesday



Since I've been on the lazy buzz to upload tattoo images from the camera regularly, I thought I'd keep this blog interesting.. some Latino musica....these fellas are real big everywhere else but here in N.Z, esp. in the States and Europe...

Hope & Faith Roses addition





Ben came through to add roses to his Love & Music collection...copped these images from his facebook while I wait to upload mine..when I do...big ups for the promo bro

Monday, December 13, 2010

Saturday, December 11, 2010

1969 Mercury Cougar Specifications


The 1969 Mercury Cougar saw many minor changes in the 1969 model year which added to the weight, handling, and power of this premier Mercury sports styled luxury muscle car. The wheelbase remained the same but the width, weight, and length of the sheetmetal was increased substantially. As such, the Cougar lost some of pounce. However, Mercury introduced the Eliminator and convertible models.


Models: Hardtop / convertible

GT: Firmer suspension and better brakes, Wide Oval tires, low restriction exhaust, bigger sway bars, necessary identification badging, and a big block 390cid motor.

XR-7: Wood-rimmed steering wheel, necessary exterior badging, black face competition type instrumentation in a simulated walnut dash, toggle switches, overhead console, leather T handle automatic transmission shifter, and leather seats.

Eliminator: Trans Am racing inspired styling, upgraded V8 options including the 428 cid. Goodyear Polyglass tires on styled rims, rear deck spoiler, special side stripes. Optional ram air and Drag Pak (4.30 Detriot Locker and oil cooler), optional high impact colours.

Production Numbers:

2D Hardtop: 66,331

Convertible: 5,796

XR-7 2D Hardtop: 23,918

XR-7 2D Convertible: 4,024

Powertrain options:

Cid HP Torque Model

302 290 4V
351 250 2V
351 290 4V
390 320 GT standard
428 335 440

Performance:

1/4 mile, sec @ mph: 14.1 @ 103 (Eliminator 428)

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Tatatau - 'Urban'

Previously, I tried reasoning with ideas relating to 'Urban-Kupesi' as a concept in light of what it means to me and my work. I want to further this discussion. The idea of reviving a practice once integral to our culture is beset with various difficulties. Such can be understood in different directions and one way of beginning to understand these difficulties is by an announcement of unison in theory. By this, I intend to mean that the randomness with which a difficult task is understood from the outset may be brought to light through an imagined platform upon which this difficulty may be inherited. For me, though I have come to understand that the process of reviving an event like tatatau is beyond a case of returning to a specific point in history; I intend my work to contribute to at least a dimension of that common platform. 'Urban' as a concept inherits both the difficulty/randomness and imagined unison accorded to the desired platform - from which a journey towards re-evaluating the significance of tatatau to our culture may be launched. One issue I wrestle with in thinking about what I am doing in terms of tattooing is meaning. Meanings attached to certain type of tattoos and images vary according to people and their experiences and values. TO me, meaning in light of what I do is a question whose answers varies and are in constant oscillation. Sometimes, I see what I'm doing as re-evaluating, re-interpreting, re-defining and re-inventing aspects of history. A response to one's surroundings in ways sometimes influenced by my clients. Hence, the concept 'urban'. We live in a world influenced by an apparatus or a complex weave of beliefs and isms. Our ideas and principles are constantly shifting as we move from one cultural platform to another. There is a sense that we are constantly confronted with a catalogue of cultures via newspaper, television, movies, music, books, people and etc. 'Urban' to me is this catalogue. Our movement within this catalogue is partly influenced by the things on it and partly on our own. The 'urban' influence us in where we look and how we look at ourselves. Latin (and) American culture(s) have had a major influence in how some of our youths define and continue to redefine themselves. There's a part in our youths conception of where they stand in their world that is highly influenced by cultures beyond them. Youths become vessels of these cultures the same way actors become vessels of the characters they play. In many ways, what I do contribute to this process via tattoos....2b cont..

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Throwback of the week - Mista & young Bobby V



I never understood why these boys never advanced further than this album as a group...still....probably the most played track in my playlist

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Tatatau 2

You are probably wondering why I am taking the trouble of talking about a person such as Dr ‘Okusitino Mahina when the issue at hand is concerning tattooing or tatatau. Well, I mentioned earlier that Tongan culture and therefore arts is an intricate weave of elements that are interdependent. And Dr. Mahina’s work has been and is an attempt to unravel this complexity. Parts of the Tongan cultural weave are lost to our knowledge and experience and Dr. Mahina’s work attempts to understand these lost entities. He does this by attending to the implicit and tacit elements professed to be at work primarily behind our language.
Dr. Mahina has constructed out of this a Tongan understanding of time and space that is essential to the recovering of a lost philosophical system implicit in the ways Tongans and also Polynesians thought about themselves and the world. Time and space here is understood as ta (time) and va (space). Though these essentialities are professed to uphold everything that we know of, I am going to focus only on some aspects of its compatibility – especially in terms of where our thinking should be in our attempts to recover parts of our culture that are lost in time, e.g. tatatau.
I should also say that what I am doing as a tattooist isn’t entirely a focus on recovering tatatau; rather, I am merely doing tattoos because I love it and love the creativity involved. My work isn’t about recovering tatatau first and foremost. I came up with the term ‘Urban-Kupesi’ because I want it to speak for my work in the sense that it isn’t about just doing Polynesian patterns but also expanding the skills to other type of imageries. The ‘urban’ stands for modernity in perhaps the widest interpretation – modernity as cultural imperialism, as colonialism and post, as urbanization, as diaspora, as contemporary, and etc.. The ‘kupesi’ stands for the philosophy that is behind the idea of art in a Tongan sense.
Kupesi is a term used in Tongan art to speak of the patterns and motifs in ngatu or tapa, it is used in the traditional art of lashing or lalava, it is also used in genealogy and many other aspects of our culture. To elaborate on how both terms come into contact and how they reference my work would take an entire book so I won’t here. All you have to know is, ‘kupesi’ for me is a concept which incorporates the philosophy of art in a Tongan sense in looking out at the present.
Dr. Mahina’s work though is a very complicated labor rooted in both traditional Western philosophy and Tongan thinking. Everything that exists for Mahina consists of ta (time) and va (space). And a good introduction to this theory you’d have to find it yourself in the internet, especially at Nuama.org. The space and time of this moment isn’t enough for me to elaborate. There are many other artists and writers of Tongan descent who has taken on this theory in their work. However, I only wanted to use Dr. Mahina as an example of how the process of recovering aspects of our cultures and re-utilizing it to re-tell stories of our identities….2bcont..

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Tatatau

I’ve been meaning to get my head back into thinking mode for the last month or so, and having some time to spare, I did some browsing on the internet on issues of interest. Thus I’ve been led to think and reflect on important issues relating to what I’m doing as a self-proclaimed artist and my connection(s) to my culture and ethnic background as a Tongan. First of all, there’s the issue of recovering and revitalizing the practice of tattooing in the traditional sense. Indeed, such is an issue that may seem simple and straight forward, and to some extent, it may consider a little knowledge of history. However, the task at hand continues to prove that it is a very laborious process made not for one person and his or her generation but for us and those that have yet to come. The work of Dr. ‘Okusitino Mahina is a very good start in terms of where our knowledge and history may be found, put together and retold. His is a philosophical understanding and methodology for recovering that which has been lost. And although we all encounter elements in which we disagree with such thinking, we know that the process towards decolonization isn’t always in unison.
Dr. Mahina’s work is first of all a highly philosophical and sophisticated labor, both in Tongan and English. His is a movement between Western philosophical traditions such as that announced by the early Greeks and Tongan aesthetic. Thinking in Tongan is an art. Tongan language is complicated with poetics and metaphors – like Old English. By this, I am comparing Tongan language with the kind you’d read in Shakespeare and drama class – that type of talking where everything is referential and poetic. Tongan language consists of complicated and intricate levels catered towards a highly stratified culture and way of living and thus thinking.
This alone is a near-impossible element of our culture to comprehend and to make things more difficult, one has to understand also how it connects to our history and arts. From here, you may begin the process of recovering tattooing or tatatau. But also, you have to take into consideration the fact that the practice has been dead for more than a century or two. And, to make things worse if you are a proud-arrogant Tongan, you have to learn it from the Samoans.
One person I know of who learned partly on his own and from the late Su’a Sulupae Paulo 2, who has already begun part of this process is Aisea Toetu’u. For this, the mana has to be passed to you from the people that have continued the tradition from our past, those that have kept the genealogy in continuation for generations. By now, the task at hand you can say is doable but as I mentioned before, it isn’t for one person and his or her generation, but also for those that have yet to exist. …

Throwback of the Week



I had to think hard about what 'throwback' would mean to people and how they would interpret it..

Heart of a King


For the love of money is the root of all evil - work in progress


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