This isn’t related to anything except my interest in icon artwork. I’ve always had an interest in icons, and while I know I’ll never become anything resembling a student of the art (in theory or in practice), I do happen to have a little book at hand that does give you a bit of explanation on its components. I’m not trying to spark any kind of debate here –– or, to be honest, even any conversation about this belief or that belief –– I just wanted to share some artwork that I’ve always loved. 

From Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church:

“The icon (from the Greek eikon, “image”) is a sign of the presence of God. It is the simplest, most immediate form of religious self-awareness that the Byzantine and Slavic people possess. Before the icon, each believer can say: ‘Behold my faith, that in which I believe, in these divine personages and saints, made visible in forms and colors’…It thus becomes clear that what people worship in the icon are not the wood and colors, but what it represents as it travels a path from the visible to the invisible, the material to the spiritual.”

This is one of my favorites, The Virgin of the Passion, also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Here’s more from the handy little book on what’s going on here:

“Compared to icons of the Virgin with the Playing Child, which allude to the Passion subtlely, this image is more explicit: two angels appear beside the Virgin’s nimbus, showing the young Christ the cross, the lance, and the sponge. The angels thus reveal why the Child stirs in his mother’s arms, and why her face appears tense. The child takes fright, and as he begins to move, one of his sandals comes loose.”

That’s all I got for now. Thanks, P.

No ranting, no rambling, nothing halfway angsty or moving this time, just wanted to do a little post so I feel productive. 

Earlier this week, Heeb ran a nice and profane little interview I did with kerin.rose, bedazzler to the stars. Kerin is rad, in every sense of the word. They took out my witty little intro (ok, it was long) about how she’s a combo Peg Bundy/Ziggy Stardust/Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling type who can speak just as articulately about Black Flag as she can about Afrika Bambaataa. Kerin is also super smart. I think it comes through in the interview and I can’t wish her enough success.

The new issue of Inked is out, too, and I’ve got a couple of things in that. The first is their travel page, where I reconnected with Noon and he told me about catacombs, sex museums, etc. Good stuff. The second, they really hooked up with some rad illustrations by Michael Miller. It’s basically an “advances in tattoos” type of piece, though less on the technical side, more on the “hey, isn’t this neat” side. It looks amazing and makes me feel like I’m doing something right.

I’ve also been talking with the guys at Tattoo Master about some upcoming stuff but I won’t spoil the surprise/jinx myself and end up with nothing. Which will now, of course, happen. It’s really strange how things can change from one week to the next. Not gonna get all philosophical here, but things are lookin up and I’m pretty fine with that. Next up, apartment search.

ALSO, there’s a party tonight at the shop, free beer! Huge artwork! So come out. Drink a beer (no mystery beer this time, PBR and High Life, plus red and white wine) and tell me I’m doing something somewhat decent with myself these days. And compliment me on my haircut. Or else.

The rules of capitalization are always escaping me. Anyway, “Home Is Where I Say It Is” is a phrase I’ve been turning over in my head since May, when Dave drew up a little tattoo for a german girl at Roseland; a little anatomical heart with the established saying, “Home Is Where the Heart Is.” 

The more I thought about the nice little saying, the more it seemed a little too sentimental. And I get it, that everyone longs for a place to call home, and that home can be anywhere. It can be physical, it can be mental. The idea of home can be something you carry with you, it can be a little spot you’ve carved out with your loved one,  it can be a collection of memories, it can be something that exists in music, it can live in words and it can be as simple and amazing as a house you love filled with the people you love. You know, if you’re lucky.

Yesterday, my apartment was robbed. I came home to a busted door and lock. They swiped our two laptops, digital cameras, my backup drive and some cash. It coulda been a lot worse. But long story short, my mind’s been jumping all over the place these past 24 hours. But I keep coming back to New York, thinking about moving up here and piling on other peoples’ stories about moving here, too. About being broke, being jobless, hustling constantly, breaking your back to pay your rent each month, pushing yourself through more school, more classes, more certifications, playing one more show, having more drinks to meet the right people, more bars, more exes, more hangovers, more soul-crushing nights as a bartender or waiter or door man or delivery person or, let’s face it, maybe even a more unsavory position — and then finally getting some work on top of the forty-plus hours you’re already working that will maybe –– maybe –– allow you to do what you really came up here to do in the first place. Or maybe you’ll just get laid off. 

So to think about these last four years, or last night, in retrospect and say, “Ah, well, home is where the heart is,” makes me wanna take a bat to something. Not because it’s wrong or thoughtful, but because it seems that so many people are constantly fighting just to keep their head above water that you need something a little more forceful, a little more confrontational. Sure, home is where the heart is. But more than that, it’s where I say it is. It’s where I demand it to be because God knows it’s an epic battle to muster up the heart to create the kind of home, real or imagined, that we can fondly remember or look forward to or even smile about. It’s where I say it is because I need something stable, something untouchable, something that I control. 

This could be one of the few times I pull the ol’ NYC bitch-fest. But this year has been unrelenting. Honestly, I’m of the opinion that everything in ‘09 has happened for the better and I’d even make the argument that getting thousands of dollars of stuff swiped is for the best, too. I might even tell you that getting robbed just means it cuts my odds in half of getting robbed later in life when it might really matter. I might even offer to kick in your door and rob you fucking blind all in the name of making you a better person. But then I might even tell you that home is where the heart is. And I’d be willing to bet you’d wanna punch me in the mouth for it. 

Cheers, NYC. I hate you a lot of the time, but I love you for making me into the hard-nosed, paranoid curmudgeon I’ve always aspired to be. Home has nothing to do with laptops or cameras or cash. I’ll be honest, it’s where the heart is. But sometimes my heart needs jumper cables and a kick in the ass. Not sure if any of this made sense.

All right, this is something I wrote a couple months ago and thought it was worth sharing. Then, I thought it was somewhat poignant that it’s around Thanksgiving time. Then, I realized just now that the funeral was on Thanksgiving four years ago. Anyway.

My grandfather didn’t much like vacations. At his funeral reception back at the house, grandma made a point in proclaiming herself the matriarch of the family, saying that now, at seventy-seven years old, she could finally take that trip to Hawaii and take her first step onto an airplane.

During the reception, my dad and the uncles sat her down just to keep an eye on her because she’d spent most of the day running back and forth between different attendees, asking them what they needed –– shirts, socks, underwear, some work pants, pocket knives, Paul had some old ties, too –– disappearing into his closet and emerging with an armful of flannels, a shopping bag stuffed with cardigans. I found a child-sized shoe lying near the couch and hopped into the bedroom so grandma could slip it back on. She would die eight months later, to the day.

Paul Douglas Sullivan was the fourth generation of the line of Sullivans descended from William Thomas Sullivan and Catherine Margaret Conway Sullivan who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1838 or 1839. They lived in Kinney, an Irish settlement about twenty miles north of Coudersport, and eventually settled in Ohio after their daughter, Elizabeth was born. Their first child, James, was too young to travel when his parents came to America and was brought over later by a Catholic priest. Later, in Findlay, Ohio, James would join the 21st Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He was killed in a skirmish near Vinnings Station, Georgia on July 9, 1864.

Their youngest son was John Henry Sullivan. He studied five years for the priesthood but quit over a disagreement with the church and married Anna Mary Shumaker, who they called Mollie. John Henry ran a sawmill in Dunbridge and it’s said that he lived his life by one of his favorite sayings: “If a man’s word ain’t no good, then the man ain’t no good.”

Their son William Thomas Sullivan married Hallie May Fetterman. They named their son William Thomas Sullivan, Jr. and he married Edna Mae Dennis, who my father and his brothers called Grandma Dennis. Grandma Dennis gave birth to Paul Douglas Sullivan and on February 9, 1947 he married my grandmother Patricia Ann Shetzer, who was German and a quarter Blackfoot, of which specific tribe no one is sure.

They held grandpa’s funeral reception back at the house he and my grandmother had lived in for just about as long as they’d been married. He built it with his father and it was the house in which my father grew up with his three brothers, Hal, Denis and Kevin.

When I knew my grandfather, he was a barrel of a man with a deep, crisp, bass voice. He wore glasses, work pants and flannel shirts, which he always tucked in. He made his own belts. He was always clean-shaven and was up before the sun, out walking around the house, checking on the garden, doing some kind of work. He’d always say, “Hello, young fella!” and bury me in his arms, landing a bear-sized hand on my back. When I knew him, he was already retired from his career at Dupont and spent a great deal of time in Ohio and Michigan hunting and fishing.

You never came into the house through the front door –– it was always in through the side door of the garage and up the few stairs to the door of the kitchen, which opened directly above the stairway to the basement, the walls of which were lined with what must have been at least twenty pair of mounted antlers and the bullet that got them there.

Everything happened in the kitchen. Grandma would either be cooking or planning out the week’s meals on a yellow legal pad, and whoever was around would be sitting around the table talking and drinking coffee. The table is where we played cards, where I learned how to play euchre, and where I must’ve gotten my dislike of going to bed at a reasonable hour. Grandpa could only ever make it to about ten o’clock and then turn in for the night.

In the garage he had a worktable where he tinkered with old toasters or radios he’d buy at garage sales. He had mouse traps hung up that he’d used and washed to use again. In the basement he had another worktable and when he died, he must’ve had something like thirty different meat grinders, five blenders, a shelf of fixed toasters, drawers full of odds and ends, all meticulously labeled. He even had a drawer for rubber bands, all arranged by size, and a drawer for plastic bags, bundled neatly and labeled with the same neat handwriting.

My dad and his brothers divvied up his guns and appliances and everybody took handfuls of pocketknives. I only took two: one from his nightstand and one that looked the oldest. The odds and ends were collected and split up and given to me and the cousins. I only know that Kip got most of grandpa’s army stuff; he was on leave from Iraq when Grandpa died. I have grandpa’s “P.S.” cufflinks and tie clip, and an old bracelet he bought when he was stationed in Germany in 1947. I can’t imagine he ever wore it. The only jewelry grandpa ever wore was a watch and his wedding ring. The bracelet barely fits around my own wrist and, how I remember it, Paul Sullivan’s arms were as thick as as logs.

So everyone milled around at the reception. Grandma was back and forth with armfuls of clothes, people talked with others they hadn’t seen in a literal lifetime, bland sandwiches were quickly inhaled, plenty of cousins couldn’t stop crying and cans of beer were constantly being passed into the kitchen from the cold garage stairs where they sat next to boxes of pop. It was November.

None of the uncles cried, but I’d never seen any Sullivans cry. Mostly it was jokes, talking a little too loud and a lot of back-slapping. Nobody really drank.

Grandma and Grandpa weren’t religious but Grandma had a preacher relative in there somewhere and when he got up at the funeral to read the story of the prodigal son, the front row of Sullivans quietly erupted with whispered laughter. Later, the big joke was that Grandpa hated that story and could never get his head around why a father would welcome a wayward son back when he’d blown his inheritance. He never could understand what it was all about. When we brought the casket to his plot, the proprietor said it was customary to release a dove, so when they brought it out of the box everyone figured that someone better shoot it quick, before it got away.

Grandpa died when I was twenty-two. I took two green thermoses when Grandma died the following year.

And by taxman, I mean CPA, and by CPA I mean the good kind; one who will hopefully get me sorted this year for taxes so I won’t end up owing the government a pound of my flesh stuffed with hundos on a mound of Sacajawea dollar coins. So I’ve got a meeting tomorrow with a guy who comes highly recommended: “He’s gotten my cousin out of some serious shit!” And who am I to argue with that kind of finagling?

A bit more pressing is my interview with Bowery Stan that I’ve gotta edit and clean up a bit before I can turn it in tomorrow. In related news, Heeb magazine asked me (after I suggested it to them) to write up a piece on righteous pal and bedazzler to the stars, Kerin Rose. I’ve caught up on a bunch of other stuff (see: buying pants for the first time in over a year) and for the first time in a while feel really energized. Not necessarily when I get up in the morning, but after those first four cups of coffee, I feel all awake and focused, like something is blocking my sleep receptors… But aside from the coffee, I feel like I’m working towards something, no matter how convoluted the path to some blurry future may look, like I’m working and maybe that’s enough, maybe there’s a happiness in doing.

That there photo up top is from The Selvedge Yard. It’s got a pretty unbelievable collection of various old photos: bikes, tattoos, Alice Cooper, Gary Cooper, Elvis, Life magazine, watches. Go look at it. It’s one of the better things to ever utilize the internet –– that’s right, I’m looking at you, twitter. I chose that photo because sometimes I love this country a ton. Maybe that love will convince the government to take fewer monies.

It’s been a dudes kinda week so far. This past weekend I went upstate with a handful of friends where we built fires, played baseball and drank beer. It was almost like an over-assertion of our collective masculinity, but we had Ralph the dog to keep us in check and I’m pretty sure at least a couple comments were made on the pleasant weather and stunning leaves.

Today, myself and a couple friends went and got haircuts and the two of us that are not skilled tattooers got tattooed by the one that was, Mr. Andy Perez. There was pizza and exactly three beers. I’ll be tossing somethin’ up on N+S about it tomorrow morning if I can figure out a good way to tie it all in to old New York tattooing/barber shops without sounding too nerdy/sad. In the meantime, I’ll steal one of Leahy’s photos from the weekend and call it a night. And let this righteous skull on my calf heal up.

When I moved to New York in ‘05 I didn’t know anything about New York. I knew where Trash Bar was, I knew how to get to the L and knew I needed to find a job pretty immediately. I also knew I wanted more tattoos. My first tattoo was a pair of bluebirds on my chest a couple months after I turned 18. They were a little on the new skool side but at that point I didn’t even realize there were different styles of tattoos.

So I got the outline put on one week, went back for color the next and got some quick advice on aftercare that involved Chapstick and went on my way. When I moved up after school I’d gotten a couple other little ones and managed to convince Matt from Great Southern to do the good brain/bad brain on my shoulder. Matt was a good dude; he was super nice, willing to work with a broke college kid who was pretty ignorant of tattoos and, most importantly, stoked to be tattooing. (Sidenote: Haven’t been able to find any more info on Matt Lautar so I don’t know if he tattoos anymore. He also gave me my first straight razor simply because I expressed an interest.)

Back to NYC. So I came up here with a few tattoos and, even with cheap PBR and free Tater Tots, I was instantly broke. So since I couldn’t really go out and load up, I spent hours on countless tattoo websites/myspaces using our wonderfully spotty, stolen internet, and re-reading the few magazines I’d managed to remember to bring up with me. Later that first year, after scraping together some cash to get another couple small ones, I bought one of my favorite books of all time, New York City Tattoo. This book was like the key that opened up this old, heavy wooden door to a New York full of tenements, back-alley brawls and serious gloves-off tattooing. I learned who Charlie Wagner was, I learned about Sands St. and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, about the down-and-dirty, rough-and-tumble Bowery. I caught little details that created more of a story about people like Millie Hull, Sam O’Reilly and figured out pretty quick that tattooers were dudes you did not fuck with unless you wanted a ball pein hammer to the face.

That particular story is one from Stanley Moskowitz, who loomed in my mind as a larger-than-life superhero of a bygone age, one that I couldn’t ever imagine living in the present day –– let alone a guy that I’d have the chance to interview. But I get to interview him next week. And I get to ask him whatever I want. So I hope I don’t blow it and I hope he doesn’t jump through the phone and beat me ’til I’m bloody and toss me down the stairs for the Bowery rats to feast on.

Last February I lost my job and last night I helped a blind drummer get a cab on the corner of Graham and Metropolitan. The two instances are related, but I’ll back up to nine months ago when I was simultaneously cursing up a storm, doing the international sign for “Yes!” and drinking like a seventeen year-old who’s just discovered cider.

In 2007 I took a job at a small company as a copywriter. Now, because it was a small company, it was explained to me that I’d be doing three jobs: writing, reception-ing and taking care of my boss’ “other things.” These other things weren’t expanded upon but he’d mentioned an idea of his that he’d like to see happen, so I assumed these things would essentially be pet projects. I took the job at what now seems like an unable-to-be-lived-on salary –– and actually took a financial hit because I made more money bartending –– with the caveat that I would eventually be moved to full-time copywriter.

It turned out that by “other things” my boss had meant “you get to be my personal assistant and open Diet Cokes for me.” For nearly a year I juggled heading up email campaigns, churning out ad ideas, overhauling the sales materials and taking on the thrilling job of writing the new instruction manual all while answering phones, disposing of dead mice, fetching sugar-free Red Bulls and trying not to flip over my desk and tell my boss what I really thought of him. I finally got put on copywriting full-time (though I didn’t get the title I felt I deserved) just in time for the company to decide they had to make cutbacks due to the economy. And just when my salary finally became able to be lived-upon.

I went on a handful of interviews right out the gate but so did about half a million other sad, bearded semi-writers. Couldn’t get a bartending job because bars were flooded with the thousands of resumes left by double thousands of unemployed hands, didn’t have rent money, so I went on unemployment. I hadn’t been this broke since I moved to New York in ‘05. Awesome. That was in March. I couldn’t really tell you exactly what’s happened since then. But this morning I woke up in my friend’s sweet apartment in the city; they’ve got a dog and steam shower. My girlfriend and I just got back from a trip to New Orleans. In a couple hours I’m heading to Williamsburg to work at the tattoo shop where I’ve been part-timing, and Friday, after doing some work for Bryant Park/34th St. Partnership, I’m going upstate with some friends to hang out in the woods and drink like a seventeen year-old who’s just discovered that cider is more like beer’s inbred cousin and whiskey is like it’s hot, immortal mom that is really, really smart. Next week is tattoos and haircuts day, plus some friends are in town, plus Dave does some more work on my chest, plus I have work every day if I want it. And to top it all off, I get to interview Stanley Moskowitz for Inked, a magazine that for whatever reason keeps tapping me for what works out to be about an article an issue.

Last night after dropping off a few things at the apartment, I went to get on the train and didn’t really notice the blind guy on the corner. A biker rode by him and he turned with his cane and said “excuse me?” raising his hand and eyebrows in the direction of the noise. The biker looked and ignored him. I turned around from the stairs to the subway and walked over and asked what was up. The blind guy told me he’d missed his stop and was late for band practice and asked if I would help get a cab. I said I would and while we talked for a minute, I hailed a cab and led him over. The cab abruptly sped off. So we walked back to the curb and I called Northside. While we were waiting he told me that he was a drummer. He lives in south Jersey but has been making the trip up here once or twice a week for the last month or so because he hooked up with a new band. He takes the train from New Jersey to Penn Station to Brooklyn. He plays the fucking drums. We waited some more and his phone rang.

“Ah, this is gonna be Steve,” he predicted, taking the phone out of his pocket and running his thumb over the buttons. “Hey dude, I’m so sorry, I missed my stop I’m gettin’ a cab and I’ll be there in ten.” He hung up his phone and sighed. We picked up the conversation where we left off and right then the Northside car pulled up. I led him over and got the door for him. I told him to have a good night and I rode the train back into the city smiling the whole way.

Since this here blog used to be my website catch-all and since I now have a website (which I still need to update with a bunch of stuff and which I’m still not happy enough with to start spreadin’ around town), Gouge doesn’t have much purpose. So after a few minutes of thought, and thanks to Chris “Mr. L.A.” Blumberg, I suppose it could be worthwhile to make it the home to some of my writing. Not the tattoo-related stuff, not the stuff I get a trickle of checks for, but the short, non-fiction nonsense that I work on occasionally. I’m not really trying to drum up interest here, so I probably won’t be throwing up links all over facebook or anything, but hopefully it’ll be a driving force and if I can do it regularly enough something halfway decent’s bound to come out of it. Right? Right. And I’m sure I’ll do plenty of ranting and raving. Thanks for reading.

Got back from New Orleans this past weekend and spent most of Sunday recuperating, though we did manage to go food shopping and check out Genuine Motorworks on N. 14th. I need new jeans, which basically means I buy the exact same Levi’s I’ve been buying for however many years. They had some great stuff, (see: Pendleton flannels) but I’ll wait another couple wks to make any purchases. And speaking of bikes, I know nothing about ‘em but plan to take the written test at some point so I can at least learn to ride next spring and maybe become magically mechanically inclined. Mike “I beat Pat to it” Martin actually beat me to the test, so maybe that’ll light a fire under my ass. That’s all for today.

Above Britt is hanging out with one of the many swamp cats that lived around the swamp shack where we hopped a swamp boat and rode around the, uh, swamp.