The Probulator

CNN has an article on tattoo regret and removal.  The article mentions the development of micro-encapsulated ink.  This ink, when unleashed on the world, will allow tattoos to be removed with a single pass of current laser removal technology.  Tattoos once represented a commitment you made to yourself; a permanent indelible change to your body.  It was something you and your tattoo artist sat down, agonized over, carefully considered and finally, designed.  You were proud that your creation would be with you for the rest of your live.  I was 26 when I got my first tattoo and had been designing it in my head for years before.  As everything in our society becomes disposable, this consideration is no longer necessary.

There will, of course, be some advantages.  That penis you had tattooed just above your ass-crack while stumbling around in a drunken stupor no longer needs to be an embarrassment  on every date you’ll have for the rest of your life.  (All three of them.)  And law suits will be so much simpler when your sense of cheapness leads you to the bargain shop and the “artist” manages to misspell your significant other’s name.  Now your cut rate Picasso can pay for a single removal session rather than buying you beer and cigarettes for the rest of your life.

Still, all I can see this really doing is damaging a wonderful underground institution buy inundating it with geometric increase in crappy flash and longer waits at shops while every idiot who wants to feel cool gets whatever “inspiration du jour” that just hit them stabbed under their skin.  Why not just get some of those stick on tattoos from  Count Chocula?

Tags: News, tattoo by Dean
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The movie that taught the mainstream what that yellow hankie hanging out of that guys right rear pocket means was finally released on DVD.  Despite direction by Academy Award winning William Friedkin, Academy Award winning actor Al Pacino in the lead role and the presence of several other actors of note, Cruising is no masterpiece.

History notes that the movie managed to anger everyone when it was released.  I was too young to remember so I’ll need to take the many sources at their word.  True, it portrays a culture that, even today, gets little respect outside the its own walls, but there is little sincerity beyond the grimy leather bars.  Most of the bars I’ve been in look pretty much how they were depicted in the movie.  Twenty-seven years after its release and the most relevant thing it portrays is that leather culture is stuck in time to a degree.  Aside from the eighties porno haircuts, you can expect a bar to look like what you see here.

Performance-wise, this whole affair seems forced.  Half the “native New Yorkers” don’t have anything approaching a New York accent in any of it’s multitudinous variations.  Too many scenes sound like the dialog was re-recorded and the actors where half-asleep when they sat down for this task.  A good deal of the dialog is over the top; most people who don’t suffer from megalomania or are about to audition for a play don’t talk like this.  And Steve’s (Al Pacino) girlfriend has a HUGE apartment.  Even back in 1980 such a young woman on her own should be living in a broom closet sized place.  Even the whole murder plot seems rather implausible.

The only interesting thing is Steve’s descent from Average Joe cop to pervert.  It’s a subtle journey that’s the real main story of this mess and it’s Pacino’s real triumph in this outing.  There wasn’t much else for him to work with.

When all is said and done, this isn’t much more than a historical oddity.  As one of the very few serious mainstream movies about leather culture it’s something to watch to “see how things were back then”.  Throw it in the Netflix queue and be glad that those hairstyles are long out of fashion.

Tags: DVD, Entertainment, gay, leather by Dean
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