Chris Brown, This is Your Fault!

 

Just about every morning I wake up naturally between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m.  It takes me a few seconds before I realize, once again, that I do not have to get up just because I wake up.

This morning when I clicked on the TV to the just-beginning Today Show, I was greeted by the treacly sound of Ann Curry’s voice solemnly recapping the Rodney King saga that touched off a heart-stopping race riot in Los Angeles in 1992, when police who beat King bloody on camera were acquitted of any crime.

Early Sunday morning Rodney King was found dead at the bottom of his backyard swimming pool, assumedly drowned. 

As I surfed through the articles online related to this story, I came across another story I had heard about in passing.  Chris Brown – yes, THAT Chris Brown; the one who rearranged the face of the beautiful Rihanna a while back – was in the news again for brawling with another one of the fair Rihanna’s ex-loves, the rapper Drake.

You probably think this post is about celebrities behaving badly or the star-crossed nature of some people who simply cannot seem to stay the hell out of trouble.  Nope.

This picture was reportedly taken just before someone threw a bottle and left a deep gash on Brown’s chin.

My attention was immediately drawn to those tattoos!  And my curiosity, as usual, was off to the races.

Wow, look at those tats!  Man, I bet that hurt.  Why would he do that?  Who else has such dramatic, body-covering tattoos?  Isn’t that dangerous?  What happens when tats go back out of style?  Will Chris have to spend millions of dollars and months of pain trying to laser them off?  Will they even come off with a laser?  I wonder how long people have been using their bodies as billboards?

Poor Rodney King’s fate, sad as it is, was left in the dust, along with any further thought of how pathetic Chris Brown is for setting himself up for another onslaught of negative publicity.

Wondering how I ever existed with this rampant curiosity of mine without Google at the tip of my fingers, I found example after example of celebrity men who have endured similar inky needle attacks in an effort to decorate their already heavenly bodies.

David Beckham, soccer star and Hollywood pinup.

 

His choices include two full sleeves, a half chest and some kind of Chinese character. I wonder how wife Victoria feels about all this.  The ink, I mean.

 

 

Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock, former wrestler and current movie star.

 

 

Johnson’s left shoulder adornment is cultural, as in Polynesian.  His Polynesian shoulder art is a tribute to his half-Samoan heritage.  Look at those…colors.  Vivid colors.

 

 Shamar Moore, star of TV’s Criminal Minds

 The kingly lion on his right     shoulder caught my eye while I was watching CM reruns one day.  Then I remembered him as a teen playing American Legion baseball against my son’s team.  Focus returned.

 

Then I found this:

L’il Wayne, rapper

 

My response?  Ewwwwwwww!  From the cross on his forehead to the gang wannabe teardrop on his face, which denotes a person killed in gang communities, denotes fashion statement for this pretender.  This father of four looks like he was rolled in slightly wet newsprint!

 

 

According to a National Geographic Magazine article, body art via tattooing is somewhere around 5000 years old.  Scientists, in 1991, learned from the remains the Copper Age “Iceman” they named Ötzi that powdered charcoal tattoos found on the lower back, ankles, knees and foot might have been used as a medical treatment for pain relief. 

Whatever the purpose, tattoos have been a part of human life ever since.

Okay, enough serious history.  Now I started wondering what these elaborate tattoos would look like later in life, when the earth’s gravitational pull starts creating nooks and crannies, slopes and slide on the bodyscape.  I wish I had stopped while I was ahead.