But what they got instead of
glitz was a collection of hard- grizzled life stories.
These two inky shows give viewers a glimpse at bizarre
lives that most never lead or follow. And there is some
respect being demanded. The Miami Ink tattoo artists
could be working elsewhere as graphic illustrators
or in fantasy comics. But they're where they
 belong,
or shown to be so.Still, the customers seem
more Miami Ink camera-worthy than the workers. A 22-year-old named
Erin Kelly hires tattoo artist Chris Nunez to cram 23
words from a Red Hot Chili Peppers song onto her foot.
Kelly says she's doing this to honor her dead brother,
who killed himself. Nunez reveals that his dad killed
himself. Violins swell.
"I got it on my left foot, because that's what side my
heart's on," Kelly says of her new Miami Ink body art.
As if a counterbalance of sexuality were required to
steer things back to an upbeat track, another
22-year-old woman flashes her left butt cheek in her
quest to have a Christian-cross tattoo covered by a new
Miami Ink tattoo. Her butt reads, "I Will Succeed Thru Him."
"I'm atheist now, so I gotta fix it. Is there a way you
can work with that?" she asks.
James ponders her query and calls over a male colleague.
She bends over. They glare at "Him," at her cross and at
her crack.
But James proves that even a tattoo shopkeeper has his
limits. His apprentice, Yoji Harada, wants to have a
tattoo inked onto his head. James threatens to fire him.
"This
 is
not a freak show," an irate James says, even while a
tattoo of Buddha throbs on his own neck.
Actually, this is a freak show, or it's meant to be. The
other tat show of the week, "Inked," exhibits less
freaky stuff. It focuses more on conflicts among
staffers at Hart & Huntington, a shop that buzzes inside
a thimble of a retail space inside the Palms
hotel-casino, where one of the "Real World" seasons was
shot.
The heartstring-pulling in "Inked" comes from manager
Thomas Pendleton. He says his ex is the one who gives
their son the kind of stability he never had as a kid.
But for the sake of "Inked," father Pendleton and young
son sit in their hoodie sweatshirts for a spell.
  "He's
not gonna be an artist, that's for sure," a weary
Pendleton says, eyes drooping, clearly hoping to keep
his kid out of his path. But his namesake rebels: "I'm gonna be an artist, AND I'm gonna ride a motorcycle.
LIKE YOU!"
Neither show's debut delves into the touristy host
cities. There are no shots in strip clubs or clubs on
the Strip, although the first half-hour installment of
"Inked" does reveal a well-endowed Vegas mom, who lets
her daughter watch as she gets the youngster's name, Kaylee, drawn on an arm.
In the absence of the wild-on party nature of Miami and
Vegas, both shows remain hooked on frowns. The second
half-hour installment of "Inked" includes a moment when
an apprentice named Dizzle merrily spanks a beer-bottled
female customer. But Dizzle is also a motherless child
of a sort.
"The drugs my mom was on was meth," he says in a
narrative profile.
"It was not a good place for my
brother and my little sister to be in. So we woke up at
6 one morning and got on a bus and kind of got shipped
here like a package."
 Sad-sack
stories keep on rolling. A Vegas customer, an Oakland
rapper named AP 9, drops this story: "My brother took
one bullet. I
took 12. I'm still here," he says. "I grew up in the
projects, man. Ain't nothin' but killin' and sellin'
dope. ... My mom got murdered when I was 9 years old.
Her boyfriend killed her in front of me. ... She's in a
better place than this right here. It's hell right here,
you know what I'm sayin'?"
 It's
not odd to hear a rapper proclaim that hell is life on
Earth for a lot of people. But his statement serves as a
theme for both "Inked" and "Miami Ink," and that begs a
question. Is it commendable that show-makers wanted to
dive more than skin deep into the lives of their
grizzled subjects? Or were they just looking for good
quotes?
Doug Elfman will report from the Television Critics
Association press tour in Los Angeles this week.
Author Doug Elfman Copyright The Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
All rights Reserved.
|
