Kottke posted a link yesterday to photos of people just before and just after they died. It reminded me of a documentary I watched the other night from PBS’ P.O.V. series called A Family Undertaking, about the growing home funeral movement.
After the civil war, American funerals moved out of the home and largely into […]

The first tattoo of this episode is a crane on a girl’s ribcage. As Kat’s applying the stencil some dude Corey’s tattooing is ogling her and making rude comments. If this ever happened to me when I was getting tattooed, I would never come back. If I were the artist working on a client who […]

The theme of the episode is Kat’s dramatized self-intervention. She gets wasted, says something to upset her boyfriend and decides to stop drinking. Hmm, probably a good idea since her party antics got her fired from Miami Ink, and it appears she doesn’t have much involvement managing her own shop. The last thing I ever […]

The previews for this show frame it in such a way to suggest a lot of drama will happen each episode. But this is almost entirely gimmick, and very little actually happens. It took until the end of the episode before Kat decided to “lay down the law” with Pixie after being a big passive […]

What’s up with the creepy new title credits that sound like the movie Seven?
Kat talks a lot of shit about running a business, but she ran off and left Cory in charge. How can she expect her “employees” to take her seriously when she takes off whenever she wants? Secondly, the artists themselves are […]

Television tattoo artists are in the unfortunate position of ambassadors between the tattoo world and the so-called “normal” world. It’s certainly less than ideal, but this is how TLC chooses to present their reality franchises, as insight into lives and professions most of us will never experience. Little People Big World is a perfect example […]

I believe this is the first episode of LA Ink where Kat doesn’t tattoo a celebrity. Instead she accompanies some girl’s lame sob story with equally lame lettering. “I came out, and my parents said they still loved me. It was real sad.” Yeah I definitely feel for you, wow what a life changing experience. […]

Every week this show becomes less about tattoos and more about Kat’s personal life and client tragedies. This episode focuses on Kat’s new boyfriend with a gross, unironic mustache.
Kat does a terrible tattoo on Jenna Jameson, who seems to be going for the world record in worst tattoos. After she finishes, Kat’s sure to […]

What can I say about this episode that I haven’t said already? Most of the customers are ridiculous, and most of the tattoos are flash grade crap.
Kat Von D only deigns celebrities worthy of her services. She has an astounding collection of bug-like sunglasses. And she instigates drama at every given opportunity. Sounds like […]

A sexsomniac rapes his girlfriend’s sister. This is not the main plot of the episode.
For kicks, two art students become 14 year old prostitutes in a Second Life knock off.
One of them is kidnapped by online admirer “The Executioner”.
The kidnapper, a rare book dealer, turns out to have abducted another girl 25 years before who […]

Kat’s 5 hours late which is completely unacceptable and unprofessional for any artist let alone supposed shop owner. Were she working for anyone else she would’ve been fired- again. She continues the show’s trend of only tattooing celebrities, presumably to keep the ratings up. After making the guitarist of My Chemical Bromance and his hired […]

One of my biggest problems with this show (and any tattoo reality show for that matter) is it’s attempt to pass fabrication as reality. No artist has a 5 minute turn around time for the preliminary drawing of a good portrait. The fact is since all of the tattoos on the show are prearranged the […]

Over the last couple of episodes I’ve grown to appreciate Kim Saigh’s work more. While her style isn’t necessarily my favorite (always a matter of personal preference) she has good drawing skills, isn’t afraid to use a lot of color, and has very clean and sterile practices. She’s the only artist on any of the […]

For its first season, Weeds was everything I hoped it would be and more. It pushed some boundaries, was highly satirical, made fun of stereotypes, etc etc. Then came the second season. While the first season was more about Nancy’s journey in picking up the pieces of her family, season two delved into the “seedy […]

HBO cancels John from Cincinnati. I wanted to like this show, but the bizarre dialogue, weird character interactions, and poor acting on the part of the youngest surfer made it difficult. Haven’t watched the season / series finale yet, hopefully it gives some closure, but probably not.

Wednesday night Alana and I watched the first episode of LA Ink. On these tattoo reality shows you have to take everything you see with a grain of salt, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. For example, I’m fairly certain TLC actually puts up the money for these shops and owns them, which […]

I used to be one of those people who thought tv was generally terrible and for the uneducated masses. Then I got cable. My how things have changed since I got a DVR. Not only did I start watching television, I started watching a lot of it! I suddenly could control what was on, and it was great. I got HBO and Showtime, then a giant television, and then Netflix. Everything I was watching was prerecorded, and most of it was movies. Then something else happened, Thursday night suddenly had great shows. I began watching live television again, commercials and all. (And let me tell you there is some crazy stuff going on in commercials right now.)