The Playlist - WTITYB (Whatever, Tell It To Your Blog)

Ah, my little brother. Not so little really, he’s 6′2 and looks like he’s 19-years-old, or at least a very emo 19-year-old.

So he says eventually he’ll get tattoo "sleeves" on his left arm… awesome. I said I would give an update when i discovered what his new tattoos were, but it’s a little bit anticlimactic – at least for me.

He’s branded himself with the H.I.M. logo which I actually knew of before, but I think since it’s actually the most painful ‘tat’ of them all, I probably blocked out the horror of it, sort of like Vietnam Vets did. For those who don’t know what H.I.M. is, congratulations. For those that do, you better have a good excuse (like you write about stupid pop music and you need to be semi-informed like myself).

For the fortunately ignorant, H.I.M. is a Scandinavian metal band that plays, ahem, "love metal." Don’t ask me what H.I.M. is an acronym for, that I don’t know and frankly I don’t want to know. H.I.M. gained attention in the last few years thanks to professional idiot Bam Margera who featured his music on his MTV show and I guess talked them up at every turn. Apparently they are Margera’s favorite band. Try to contain your excitement.

Emo skate rats are impressionable, i guess. I do know a little about H.I.M. because one night when I had to see Melissa Auf Der Maur for work, H.I.M. was the headlining band and I stuck around because of… hmm, morbid curiosity, the allure of free drinks afterwards, stupidity and punishment gluttony. The band was not surprisingly terrible and they did a hilariously awful metal rendition of Chris Isaac’s "Wicked Game." I guess this is where they love-metal thing comes in.

The H.I.M. heart-a-gram logo, that is so popular with the kids is… oh lord, a heart within a pentagram, hence "heart-a-gram." It’s also kinda of a cross between totally laughable and an aggresively offensive aesthetical abomination.

The next tattoo he has is the fabled and infamous "self-designed" tattoo. Almost everyone I’ve ever known who has a tattoo has once had the courage and heroism to take it upon themselves to design their own tattoo. You know, a meaningful symbol, here, another personal symbol here and boom, instantly you have a garish mark on your body no one else would be foolish enough to ever have on their body, thus validating your own existence as a unique snowflake, because no one else on earth has the "Slippery When Wet" symbol and the middle finger drawn inside a ring of fire. Congratufuckinlations, you’re an individual.

Eric’s self-designed tattoo is seemingly a bunch of interconnected swirls and crop circles that look like they were drawn by a drunk Eskimo.

Lastly, he has the "Circa" skate company logo on his left arm because apparently my little brother likes to give away free promotion for a skate company that doesn’t endorse him, nor is aware of his existence as a skateboarder, let alone a human being. Wonderful.

He also has a new piercing, a thing the kids call a "snakebite," which i guess is not really that uncommon, but i’ve never heard it called by that name. I always thought it was labret, but i guess it’s slightly different. It’s basically two studs that pop out at both sides of your bottom lip. I’m sure it has some sort of practical purpose, but I haven’t quite figured what that may be yet. Possibly the innocent thrill of sticking magnets to ones face.

P.S. My mom is watching a telenova right now and meanwhile the house is on fire.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 24th, 2005 at 9:08 am and is filed under My Crazy Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.