Posts Tagged ‘tattoo’
“Puns are the highest form of literature”*…
From tough guys to tramps…
… it’s all about the ink… and a sense of humor…
You can find the most hilarious puns ever as well as some cute pun tattoos all over the Internet.
* Alfred Hitchcock
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As we noodle on the needle, we might send smiley birthday greetings to Joe E. Brown; he was born on this date in 1891. One of the most popular American stage and screen actors and comedians of the 1930s and 40s, he is perhaps best remembered for his role as Osgood Fielding III in Billy Wilder’s exquisite Some Like It Hot, in which Brown uttered the film’s immortal closing line, “well, nobody’s perfect.”
“Wear your heart on your skin in this life”*…
Opening this week at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, ”Tatoueurs, Tatoués” (Tattooists, Tattooed) features 300 works of tattoo art, sourced from the 18th Century to the present day, and from around the world.
Captain Costentenus tatooed by order of Yakoob-Beg, 19th century © Fonds Dutailly, Ville de Chaumont
Traditional Japanese tattoo © Photo: Tatttooinjapan.com / Martin Hladik
Read more about the show, and see more of its offerings, at “Tatoueurs, Tatoués: The Biggest Tattoo Art Exhibition In The World.”
* Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
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As we concede that it’s all about the ink, we might recall that it was on this date in 1925, in the ninth inning of a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, that Glenn Wright, shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, completed an unassisted triple play: with runners on first and second, Wright caught a line drive, stepped on second base before the leading runner could return to the bag, and tagged out the runner who had been on first. This is a feat that has been accomplished, in the history of Major League Baseball, only fifteen times– making it rarer than the pitching of a perfect game.
Carrying the World on Your Shoulders: It’s All About the Ink, Part Two…
Tattoos have been with us since Prehistoric times; indeed, early tattoos were a kind of prehistory: for example, 5th century BCE Iron Age corpses found preserved in frozen tombs (on the Ukok plateau in the Altai mountains in Siberia) are festooned with depictions of hunting and prey. Tattoos have been capturing world views and memorializing events (along with more personal passions, of course) ever since.
For much of the modern era in the West, tattoos were the preserve of outliers (e.g., seamen) and outlaws– until the latter half of the 20th century: in 1936, only 6% of Americans had a tattoo; in 2003, that percentage had risen to 16%; and by 2008, 36% of Americans 18 to 25 had a tattoo, rising to 40% for 26- to 40-year-olds.
As tattoos have become more common, their subjects have become more varied. Part One of “It’s All About the Ink” looked at mathematically-themed tattoos. But what about the physical world?
Our old friends at Strange Maps look at cartographic tattoos…
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As we contemplate getting from here to there, we might send thoughtful birthday greeting to the co-founder of Western philosophy, Socrates; today’s date– June 4– is the best guess* as to the date of his birth in 469 BCE.
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
– Socrates, quoted by Plutarch
* Socrates’s birthday was specified by Apollodoros the Chronographer: the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad, the Archonship of Apsephionos, the Sixth day of the Attic Month Thargelion (i.e. the birthday of the goddess Artemis). Athenian months ran from New Moon to New Moon (roughly mid month to mid month), so Thargelion overlapped May and June. The Julian date was established by Eusebius. (All this said, lunar calendars were sufficiently inaccurate– and Greeks, sufficiently unconcerned with precise birth records– that it was common practice to ascribe all children born in a twelve-month cycle the same “birthday,” which was actually just a “birth-year”; even then, some historians suggest that Socrates was born in 470 BCE, not 469.)
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