LA Ink

So I know reality show's aren't real, but this one was so obvious! They clearly hired Aubrey and Liz (Liz Friedman's own website states she's an actress and was booked to star on LA INK....) they used cut scenes, face gestures, and almost every but of "drama" dialogue is copied and pasted together. Just watch some of it when there's drama you almost never see the person that's talking... It's because they're actually not having the conversation you think they are. The scene in which Liz get's fired is proof positive. That scene is the same exact one where they sit down with her supposedly days or weeks earlier on a previous episode and give her a warning, they're wearing the same clothes, and the same people in the background, and if you watch the scene if which she "get's fired" you'll see basically everything Kat says you don't actually see her say it, including the "you're fired" part. It's because they just cut and pasted her saying things from who knows when and put in into the scene, even though it's the same scene that they had her just getting a warning episodes earlier. The audio isn't even put together well - you can hear different background noises and her pitch and everything change's almost word to word...Blech. Kat is spore on the tattoo community and should deserves to go broke a live in a cave for allowing this to happen and pass it off as reality. Should have been a show about tattoo's, I cannot believe Cory Miller took any part of this.

If your English vocabulary is limited to 150 words or less, this TV show is perfect for you. (Or put in plainer English: "You speak not many words, LA Ink great for you.") You don't even have to know the difference between "don't" and "doesn't". In fact, you don't even have to know that "doesn't" even exists as a word. Tell you what: forget that I ever even mentioned it.

The tattoo artists presented in LAI must subscribe to some unwritten code about not being aloud to use the word "doesn't". It might have something to do with them trying to appear as though they have a thing called "street cred" in spite of being quite well off - but I'm just not sure. Perhaps the wrong usage of "don't" is completely innocent. Either way, it does reveal much about them - as if the way they dress and act didn't already.

Every time a woman calls another woman "dude", it cracks me up. It never fails. A common occurrence in the childish world of skin-drawings and ink-poking.

I guess a woman needs to have the hands of a Ukrainian sailor or Welsh miner in order to tattoo professionally. Kat Fondue looks like a sk**k out of a bad Ken Loach kitchen-sink junkie drama. She is a cross between a Goth chick, a confused hobby-punk, an insecure Emo, a man, and a badly burnt woman. Dozens of tattoos on a female body don't constitute a fascinating mosaic - they look like she was rolling in a pool of liquid blue crayons with some mud thrown in for good measure. Kat looks as if she hasn't washed in weeks. I'm sure this is something she is extremely proud of.

"This tattoo will be a celebration of how I feel about myself right now," says a customer. Translation: "I just feel like having one because it'll look cool." At least that woman was comparatively honest; just take a look at this explanation: "This tattoo is dedicated to my brother who lost both his legs saving school kids from charging rhinos during a safari gone bad." Translation: "I just want a tattoo because it looks cool and will impress people." Can't they just give the real reason instead of all this pathetic pretense? In that sense, LAI is almost as predictable as "Love Boat".

It's a pretty damn laughable notion that you need an exalted, "deep", pretentious, "spiritual" (it's that word again), and above all "selfless" reason for paying Kat Fondue to stick hot needles into your skin. We all know why people really get them; it's all about vanity, fashion-slavery, and low IQs. Anyone can make up some sad story about why they need the tattoo, but what it's really about is having a celebrity like Kat Fondue stick metal objects into your body on a nationally broadcast TV show. This simple but idiotic (and expensive) act makes certain types of individuals feel as if they'd joined the "hip crowd", i.e. had their 3 seconds of fame (while enduring hours of pain). Hence the inferiority complex and the exhibitionist impulse to be at center of attention having a lot to do with it too.

Kat's more anonymous customers are well aware that they don't stand a chance of making it on the show unless they make up some cockamamie heart-rending reason for getting a tattoo, so they make up whatever tear-jerkerish BS they can, and voilà: you survive the editing room. In that sense, LAI has evolved into a bizarre and unique show, whose recipe is pretty much taking that whole quasi-tough tattoo-bum biker sub-culture and then dipping it into some truly lame schmaltz which one normally gets in soppy Hollywood chick-flicks. So I can well imagine this show's demographics ranging from bored (and boring) middle-aged housewives to puberty-stricken teens to aging (hence increasingly sentimental) Hell's Angels.

Even more pitiful are those grade-C celebs who come to the show just to promote their newest out-of-the-charts single or B-movie that no-one cares about, or in a last-ditch attempt to remind the viewers that they still exist, hoping perhaps to use LAI, and a few other similarly daft shows/appearances, as a last-ditch attempt to rekindle their flailing semi-careers. They can't sell their souls to ensure the success of their latest show-biz product, but what they can do is sacrifice a piece of their skin for it.

How goofy must it feel to have a woman looking like a Goth Emo stick a hot metal objects right above your ass while you tearfully recount whatever sentimental twaddle you'd prepared by heart as your raison-de-tattooeaux? I can't even imagine it, but I can certainly see it.

No-one will deny the talent that Kat Fondue and her employees possess, but shouldn't they rather be drawing their neat little pictures on paper or on a canvas instead? Skin is a living, breathing organ, the largest one there is, I'm not so sure it was intended for inky butchery. No wonder it sometimes rebels by getting infected. It is trying to tell its daft owner something.

What I'd like to see is an antidote show to LAI, a TV series which follows people who are trying to get rid of their old tattoos. It could be called "L.A. Laser", and would feature people with touching (but also funny) stories of how dumb they once were for allowing themselves to mutilate their skin, and all in the name of fashion and "hipness". "L.A. Laser" should be situated right across the street from "L.A. Ink". Its workers could watch as their future customers leave Kat's place. And they would smile, and we'd smile along with them - at least those of us who aren't slaves to idiotic fads.

Art! Tattoos! Kat! All wonderful. THEN; a loser chick from the suburbs of nowhere comes to leech. THEN; the Jesse James drama (wasn't he happy with his own reality show?)...THEN; oh my, Jesse's been in a crash. THEN; my makeup line/my shoes/my clothing line...

Art? Tattoos? Where? When?

Click.

There were enjoyable moments when LA Ink was about just that...the world of tattooing and the local color of a city of ultimate creativity since its creation. It ended up as it always does, a giant yawn.

I am still an admirer of KVD's as a former tattoo artist (and I think she's beautiful), but I ignored all subsequent seasons of the show.

The obviously staged drama The terrible cuts The horrible behaviour of almost all of them!!!

It's all bad The show is a glorified ad for D-list celebrities to market their 'projects' They were so awful to Aubrey (even though she was indeed a bit annoying) They reminded me of the typical empty-brained bullies you see in high schools.

Sure my rating is high, but the current rating set by others is much much to low. A reality show that hires actors?! No, they wouldn't do that. Really guys if you think reality shows are not staged WAKE UP! Some (like the Gene Simmons show) are extremely staged, while others not so much. This would fall into the not so much category. Do you really think Cat wants an idiot screwing up her shop? You can knock a show for what it is. Its like saying Star Wars would be good if it wasn't set in space! The inspirational stories are a part of the show, and people do get tattoos of their pets all the time. There is no cute factor to it, its just what some people like to do. If you don't like these things which really take up a majority of the show, Don't WATCH! After all its just a time killer nothing more.