Joshua StorieWhere can you turn when life throws a wrench in your best laid plans? Who will lend an ear, reserve all judgement, and simply listen when you’re in need of answers to life’s toughest questions? Your mom, dad, or dearest childhood friend? No. You ask Jonah (with the neck tattoos).
He’s 29 (but he’ll tell you he’s 30), and he left a career as a ticketed automotive service technician to study English and Philosophy at the U of A. Just like you, Jonah doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, and has never held a steady relationship for more than a year. But he does own his own house, rides motorcycles, and is 4-0 as an amateur boxer. So, if you need advice from a guy who claims to have “seen Fight Club close to 50 times,” and has a tattoo of Curious George holding a banana, all you have to do is ask Jonah.
What’s your weirdest tattoo and why?
I have a tattoo on my right thigh that reads “Wolf Kabob Bear Ramage.” My friend Megan Tews did the tattoo out of a shop in Calgary. The tattoo itself is weird because it’s something Charles Manson sort of said in a court room once. I didn’t know for myself how crazy Charles Mason was until a friend of mine showed me a clip of his insanity. For some strange reason I adopted a paraphrase of Manson from that clip and say it in weird and/or awkward situations — sort of like when you send a Kazakhstan flag emjoi to someone in a text. I kept using “Wolf Kabob Bear Ramage” in conversation so I decided to have it tattooed on my leg. I hope I don’t get ever get arrested (again), because being associated in any way with Manson probably isn’t a good thing.
What’s your favourite colour? I want red, green, blue, and brightness values.
I’m not a colour scientist, but red is my favourite colour. And I think if you ask a psychologist they’ll say red is everyone’s favourite colour. There is a reason why stop lights and stop signs are red, because red’s a colour everyone pays attention to. Why do you think everyone wants to play paddy cake with Jessica Rabbit? It’s because of her red dress, red hair, and red lips.
Who’s the best tattoo artist (or top three) in Edmonton? Or should I just go to a different city to get a tattoo?
I’ve never been tattooed in Edmonton, so I can’t say anything of the artists or the work they put out here. But I have been tattooed in Red Deer, Sylvan Lake, Calgary, Abbotsford, Missoula, Hollywood, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. My two high profile tattoos would probably be the skull with a mohawk on my inside right bicep, which was tattooed at Hart and Huntington in Las Vegas; or the head of a boar on my outside right bicep, which was tattooed at High Voltage Tattoo in Hollywood.
Tattoos are good to have; however, tattoos can be a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The meaning of a tattoo is fluid, but the art isn’t (unless you get fat). So I recommend you get tattooed by an artist who has good art, and I’m not just talking about the stuff in the flash book, the sketches hanging in the parlour, or what the artist has tattooed on other people. Learn who the artist is, what they read, what they write, who they vote for, what their favourite sandwich is, and what punk band they listened to in high school, because all of that is going into your new tattoo. Getting a tattoo is going to put you into a relationship with another person and their artistic inspirations forever in the form of a tattoo.
Ultimately, I feel that the tattoos I have don’t belong to me. They are someone else’s art that I wear. Make sure your tattoo will be good art or at least funny to look at when you pull down you pants to show people.
