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Ep. 157 – Molon Labe My Funko Pop Collection w/ Carlos Cordova of Stolen Heart Tattoo
435 Plays1 year ago
This week we’re joined by tattoo artist, comic book enthusiast, and longtime friend of the show, Carlos Cordova aka Stolen Heart Tattoo! Carlos grew up in a close-knit Catholic family. As a young man, his love of art and comic books dovetailed with a fascination with tattoos. Nowadays, he hones his craft at Archetype Tattoo in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We love his work, and had a great time talking to him about Catholicism, pop culture, and tattoos – the good, the bad, and the downright cringe! Follow Carlos on Instagram (@stolenhearttattoo), and go to www.archetypetattoo.comto schedule an appointment with him!
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Transcript
Tattoo Mishaps & Humor
00:00:00
Speaker
funny because there's pages I follow tattoo pages where they'll show people that copied other people's tattoos and it'll be like a chest tattoo and it had like the nipple in it so whenever they did the bad copy of it the copy had like the little nipple in the tattoo too. That's amazing. You got some other dudes nipple tattooed above your own nipple. It's hilarious.
Introducing the 'Growing Up Christian' Podcast
00:00:46
Speaker
Hey, everybody, we are back with another episode of Growing Up Christian. I'm Sam. I'm Casey. I'm Jeremiah. And Casey's going to bring us a hot topic tonight, not hot topic in the sense of that cool store that you hang out in trying to figure out which, you know, cool
00:01:04
Speaker
scene kid merch you should buy or where you watch emo band do some bullshit acoustic set in the middle of or the back of the store. But hot topic in that it's relevant for today. And it's an interesting time to have that conversation because
00:01:23
Speaker
I had four hours of sleep last night and Casey decided that now is the time to bring something topical. I don't know. It's an intro. It's an intro. But Casey wants to have a serious conversation, guys. And I don't know. Don't say anything anti-Semitic because I'm not editing this.
Concert Experiences and VIP Perks
00:01:41
Speaker
Oh man, that's not gonna, that's tough. That is a, that's a powerful starter right there. Look, listen, I'm a straight white male. You never know what internalized racism is going to slip out when I'm tired. It's, you don't think it's there and then it just pops out and you, it's a problem. And now I have a lot to worry about with you not editing.
00:02:02
Speaker
Uh, you're no more despicable than the average American. So that's generally what I go for is just trying to like ride that middle lane of not more or less despicable than others. But, um, you got a great abhorrence on us on a curb here.
00:02:20
Speaker
Last night on a Sunday night, dude, it's so funny. I had several people today send me a meme, which I think is circulated internet a good bit, but it's basically like, I don't know what's that wrinkly faced Reddit monster looking man that just shows up with like, it looks like his face is melting with all the forehead wrinkles. Um,
00:02:45
Speaker
Just one of the meme faces is that they would use a person? Oh, oh yeah. Is that soy face? Yeah, is that soy face? I don't know. But it's like the meme was stop giving me your toughest battles talking to Jesus and Jesus replying. You literally went to a concert when you had work in the morning.
00:03:03
Speaker
And that's what I did. Sunday night, we're recording this Monday night, the hotel year is back after almost a decade of not doing anything. Last time I saw them was maybe their last tour 10 years ago, playing with Foxing. Foxing's a fantastic band. Foxing is great. Foxing opened for brand new when I saw them
00:03:27
Speaker
And then Foxing also just did a song with Carly Cosgrove, who opened for the Wonder Years and Hot Mulligan when I saw them earlier this year. Yeah. Very weird crossover. They recently went on tour with Manchester Orchestra as well. Nice. They're doing great shit. But what's crazy is the last time I saw Foxing,
00:03:45
Speaker
was 10 years ago when they opened for the hotelier. And then the most recent time I saw them, or the only other time I've seen them was last night when Foxing and the hotelier are on tour together.
00:04:00
Speaker
They were the ones, Foxing was on tour with the hotelier last time the hotelier was actually on tour. So they played home like no places there for the front to back. And God, it was awesome. A buddy of mine plays in the hotelier. So it was really nice to just see that, to see him play, to enjoy that. It was also dope because you get that like cool, the cool VIP experience of just
00:04:28
Speaker
getting that cool balcony right next to the stage and you don't have to like suffer crowds and you can just sit up and look down at the stage and drink your beer and not be bothered by
Energy Drinks and Caffeine Humor
00:04:38
Speaker
other people. It was beautiful. I don't know any bands that you say anymore.
00:04:45
Speaker
Nothing. I don't know any of those bands or what they sound like. Sam went right from sounding like the old guy in the room talking about, I have this meme, can I describe this? I know. I've seen this meme before. Thank you for calling me on that. Is that a, is that a new, is that a band? Do they do a TikTok? You guys like Five Finger Death Punch? Yeah.
00:05:06
Speaker
Not really, we're five-fingered. I Yeah, it's it's one or the other which punch is a very unfortunate situation for a lot of young ladies out there All right, which monster you drinking all right? I just finished a prime. I've kind of switched a prime Downward move it's in a it's in like a condom at least it's not Celsius
00:05:36
Speaker
Okay, so is Prime, is that the Jake Paul one or Logan Paul one? Yeah, it is unfortunately. It's delicious. Oh my God. What does it taste like in comparison to like sugar-free monster? I think the white sugar-free monster is so good that I have to restrict myself to have like one every three or four months because if I let myself go, I'll become like a raving fiend. So how's it compared to that? Would you say you're a white sugar-free monster supremacist or?
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, actually, no, I'll co-sign that. That's right. Got you there. Yeah, I don't know. This one's fruit punch.
00:06:14
Speaker
God, they have arguably the worst flavor that's ever existed. Ever. Now, come on. Now, I like a bunch. Really? I mean, a banana flavored like. All right. It would be worse. It's banana run flavored energy drink. This is a beef bouillon. What if there was one that was like just energy flavored like it's just energy. It tastes like a little bit like an electrical fire. It's like battery acid, which is what.
00:06:46
Speaker
It tastes like a logical fire smells. It smells like you need a new hair dryer. Really, it's just a bunch of petties. They just have petties in a sock. They dip into it.
00:06:58
Speaker
I'm getting like you were the part to it. Wait, did you guys have you seen this new? It got advertised to me, so it probably got advertised to you too, because you know, white white men on Instagram bump. Have you seen bump? No, no, it's snortable caffeine. No, you got to be kidding me. It's called one one to bump dot com. Big energy anytime, anywhere. They need to be a real sponsor.
00:07:27
Speaker
Uh, one of their, one of the things at the top of their website, they have the FAQ section. What is it? How does it work? What does it feel like? And then one of them is called let's address the elephant in the room. It is a white powder you buy in a bottle that snort him. You snort it and it's caffeine. How does this get approved? Like, how can that be safe? I mean, how, I, well.
TikTok and Bin Laden's Letter - A New Crisis?
00:07:50
Speaker
We're gonna start drawing lines around what's safe and exactly our mission. Yeah, you're drinking a Logan Paul energy drink There's not even a high horse to get off of you live on Kratum and drink Logan Paul anything. You're safe and healthy Kratum is natural. I think Everything's natural Oh My god
00:08:16
Speaker
Well, let's get into the big topic of the night, Casey. Yeah, my skin's vibrating. Let's go. You picked something heavy to give us, what, 23 minutes to spend on. So let's roll into it. Okay. So the hot topic this week, well, over the weekend and stuff is there's been a series of viral TikToks where
00:08:42
Speaker
Young people are reading Osama bin Laden's letter to America and, and then posting like their reaction to it and basically being like, Oh my God, everything I thought I knew was wrong. Or like I'm going through an existential crisis right now and like encouraging other people to read it. So I read it, Jeremiah read it and I watched.
00:09:12
Speaker
probably eight different media outlets reaction to the the story and it's dude right left msnbc cnn fox news sky news whatever like they all of those are exactly the same it is like the exact same reaction to it like oh my god nine eleven three thousand people died right
00:09:37
Speaker
Like and basically just calling everyone under the age of like 40 stupid. Does that mean we're past the conspiracy theory that Bin Laden didn't actually have anything to do with 9-11 and that all the videos that he's in were dubbed? I don't think conspiracy theories like that don't ever really go away. So no less relevant. Is that a popular one? That's I just remember. I don't remember which
00:10:05
Speaker
conspiracy video on 9 11. It wasn't I watched, but it was like, it was like, it was basically saying that like, uh, all the videos that we have Osama bin Laden talking about why he did 9 11, uh, they're dubbed in English. And it's like, well, how basically stated that they dubbed it wrong to create an admission of guilt.
00:10:31
Speaker
as though they couldn't be verified by someone who speaks Arabic to prove that it was what he said but it's a bullshit but that was a conspiracy theory is that like Osama bin Laden's the fall guy and they made him quote unquote guilty of 9-11 because he was a thorn in their side and that Al Qaeda didn't really have
00:10:51
Speaker
it out for America in the same way, but it was a problem. I don't know. Basically like America. So we're somewhere between that and eliminating on like Shay Gorvera t-shirts. Like we probably have another 20 years to go before that happens. I think this this latest thing is somewhere right in the middle of that smack. Yeah, but that was a conspiracy theory. And I didn't know if that had like was coming up or if like it's too far because the generation that's really probably talking about this the most is the one that didn't actually
00:11:19
Speaker
have any recollection or live through 9 11 in any memorable sense. Cause we were pretty young. We were 11.
00:11:28
Speaker
Uh, 2000 what so, uh, yeah, but we also like, but that means we grew up like during the aftermath, which I think is, is more significant. This letter was written in 2002. This was written after nine 11. Okay. Okay. It really, it informs more of like the country's response, not this letter specifically, but more like the country's response for the next five or six years after nine 11 than it is about nine 11 itself. Yeah. And I think, uh,
00:11:56
Speaker
Well, like the take from all of the media outlets was exactly the same. It was like, young people are stupid. They don't know anything about history 20 years ago. I mean, just, there was a lot of that. It was a lot of, you know, the, the same like dispel story buzzwords, like antisemitism and conspiracy. Like they look, dude, everything's a,
00:12:21
Speaker
It's constant like they just label things conspiracy theories to get rid of them. You know, left, left labels everything a conspiracy theory. They're right. Probably labels it anti-Semitism. That's my guess. No, the right labels everything like it's it's the data and the babies. No, no, everyone can be anti-Semitic. That's not that's not a left or right thing. The the right, the right media outlets blamed it on, you know,
00:12:49
Speaker
public education and liberal activism and the left media outlets blamed it. They had to make a point of like, well, this is circulating now in right-wing conspiracy theory channels and stuff. It's like, come on.
00:13:04
Speaker
God, just, it's the least productive way to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. Like no, like, let's, let's not interact with the actual comfort. Let's just, yeah, it's like a misplace. I'll give Newsweek some credit. So Newsweek, like their article, the one that you sent us Casey, it starts out talking about how like, here's some of the reactions to it. You know, this is a letter that it's been publicly available. It just, it's kind of come back up and become popular again. People are rediscovering it a generation that wasn't alive or was very, very young when this happened has rediscovering it.
00:13:33
Speaker
I said, all right, the full transcript of the letter can be found below. Please note that this document was written with propagandistic intent from an international terrorist and mass murderer. I actually like that they did that. That's a pretty fair way of putting it. They didn't mince words because I can totally see how, I'm sure we're going to read some excerpts or something, but if you had no background context and you grew up believing just the rah-rah version of events, they hate us for our freedom, et cetera,
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. We read this letter and be like, wait a second. There is a whole lot of things in here. I've never heard before.
Analyzing Bin Laden's Letter & Media Reactions
00:14:10
Speaker
This is nuts. Why wasn't I told all of this? It's also important to remember a lot of the things in here aren't true. Like he he blames the Jews for a lot of stuff. And I have a hard time connecting some of these dots as I was reading the letter. I had to read three parts of it again. I'm like, I don't really think the Jews have anything to do with this. Like they're actually they govern the Philippines.
00:14:32
Speaker
Right. So I kind of I started out reading it being more like, oh, yeah, this is all the same stuff I've heard before. And then it's like, oh, no, there actually is some new stuff in here. And then by the end, actually circle back around to I think he might just hate us. Like, yeah, I only got the opportunity to skim it. And it was like one of the things that stuck out to me was like, and of course,
00:14:52
Speaker
yeah i get you know you might be saying like well why you know nine eleven that attacks civilians and the well civilians pay taxes and so there is no innocence. You are all complicit in what your government's doing over is like that's not how this works that's not how it works in your country that's how it is real that is not how it works.
00:15:14
Speaker
That's the case that the Israeli government is making right now. There's a whole bunch of Israeli government officials that have made the point of being like, well, there's actually no innocent civilians in Palestine because Hamas is their elected government. The last election they had is like 2005. Almost everybody there wasn't even alive yet when they elected Hamas.
00:15:38
Speaker
leadership position, which is that was the case. And I get it like I there's a part of you that feels well, I should say I'll speak for myself. When I first started shifting out of like evangelical Christian culture and embracing kind of different political ideologies, there was a part of me that had to wrestle with
00:15:58
Speaker
that feeling of guilt of like, yeah, I do live here. I'm legally required to pay taxes. And 50% of that goes to the military industrial complex that's acting in ways around the world that I find problematic.
00:16:14
Speaker
There's no opt-out. There is no opt-out. There's no opt-out anywhere on earth as well. To hold civilians responsible for the sins of their government is honestly just an insane take, but it is a sticking point. You can speak to it in a way that makes people go, oh, that's interesting. This is propaganda, and I think that's all he's trying to do is hook people. Can we go through some of it? Would that be okay?
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I got some notes here too. What stuck out to you? Well, it starts out really strong. He says, so, um, our replies based on two questions directed at the Americans. Question one, why are we fighting and opposing you? Question two, what are we calling you to? And what do we want from you? As for the first question, why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple because you attacked us and continue to attack us. And like fair.
00:17:07
Speaker
I mean, that's now you want to talk about the history of the Middle East and who's attacking who it at some point, it just all becomes a moot point because we're talking about like a thousand plus years of history. But the things he actually lays out bad, though. But some of the things he lays out in here, like, obviously, there's going to be a lot of conflicting opinions about the British handed over Palestine with your help and support to the Jews who have occupied it for more than 50 years.
00:17:31
Speaker
I'm not even going to wade into that because I can't possibly have an informed opinion on it, other than, of course, his bias is going to be, this land should belong to Palestine, not Israel. Big surprise. You don't really have to guess what Bin Laden's perspective is going to be on that. But then he's like, the creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Every person whose hands have polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price and pay for it heavily.
00:17:57
Speaker
And that that's one of those things that should be your first red flag of like, ah, OK, so he's not. This is definitely just propaganda. It's not just saying everyone in the U.N. Right. I mean, the U.N. was as we keep going. Yeah, you'll see who his his idea of who should pay for things for sure. But then they it says it brings us laughter and tears to see you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine.
00:18:26
Speaker
And then, you know, it goes into, again, a very pro Muslim perspective. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It's the Muslims who are the inheritor of Moses. Like it's the whole. Yeah, yeah. Muslims versus Israel. The line is a whole thing of like, no, no, we are the original ones who should have access to this for all these reasons in the Torah, not like the Jews who say they should have access to access to it because it doesn't.
00:18:52
Speaker
that's an interesting conversation is like who has right to which land based on you know religious texts from thousands of years ago it there's a there's a weird like there isn't a single I can't I can't imagine maybe someone could correct this but I can't imagine there's a single
00:19:12
Speaker
country who is the rightful owner, original owner of that land. You know what I mean? Like we're just, it kind of depends on when you start the clock and we're kind of past that. It's a move. I'm sorry. I don't want to cut you off, but I feel like the more interesting stuff is as you keep going, then he makes a cut of some, I'm not saying these points are 100% accurate. I'm just saying you can easily read this and go, Oh, okay.
00:19:36
Speaker
That's a decent point. Like you attacked us in Somalia. You supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries with act as your agents attack us on a daily basis. These governments steal our wealth and sell it to you as a paltry at a paltry price, referring to oil. And you're like, some of those things are like, okay, actually, they blend.
00:20:02
Speaker
Some truth into it, for sure. There's a decent amount of truth in there when it comes to geopolitics. We absolutely have done a lot of the things he's accusing us of. But then he goes right into the removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Sharia the supreme law and to regain Palestine. Ah, that's also we should be like, ah, OK, so he's not even going to he's not pretending like the goal is you leave us alone and we'll leave you alone. It's
00:20:31
Speaker
We have attacked, like you keep attacking us, so we're going to attack you. And our goal is all these governments should be eradicated and Sharia law should rule all.
Comparing Political Narratives: Then and Now
00:20:41
Speaker
Like he says that in different ways multiple times throughout this document. That's an interesting point because growing up, I remember like post 9-11, like
00:20:50
Speaker
Probably all of our dads talking about they just want Sharia law for everyone that you like Like the American propaganda we heard isn't a hundred percent wrong like that's well, I think that's like a pretty general like a pretty common like Islamist
00:21:16
Speaker
opinion of, or like view of the world. Yeah. Islamist, meaning like people who are like kind of Islamic supremacists that want, you know, like a global caliphate. And in a world of 2 billion Muslims, like, I don't know what the percentage is of people who are Islamist, but it's
00:21:38
Speaker
It's not much. It's not a coalition of half the planet that's out to snuff out Christianity or America, for sure. It just so happens to be the people that plan attacks in other countries. So they definitely get a bigger say and are handed them. They have the microphone, if you will. I think that's part of why it's so irritating to watch these just
00:22:07
Speaker
old mainstream journalists just dismiss like people's interest in this or what, you know, what like polls at their heartstrings about this, because there's there's genuine, you know, valid critiques of what the US has done over the past 50 to 100 years. And, and for sure, you know, I mean, I think
00:22:33
Speaker
to live in the Middle East, to live in Afghanistan during Russian occupation and ousting, and then to live long enough to see the U.S. invade Afghanistan and stuff.
00:22:48
Speaker
you're gonna have some extreme ideas about things. And you know, like, I don't know, I mean, it's the perspective of someone who's lived through a lot of that stuff. But, you know, mixed into that is the idea that like, it is propaganda, and he does want to dominate, you know, a lot, you know, everyone else is a part of that. But he does continually like draw,
00:23:16
Speaker
The criticism always loops back around to the Jews over and over and over again. It's a common theme throughout history. Try to have one autocratic dictator of some kind or madman who doesn't eventually want to loop it back around to the Jews.
00:23:41
Speaker
my biggest gripe with people complaining about people being interested in this. I think I agree with you, Casey, but I just think it's very interesting of like, yeah, a lot of the things that you were maybe taught, and I don't think it's fair to say what we were taught in school growing up about 9-11. It was just the common cultural discourse. Like the information was all there if you wanted to hear it. It's just if you were only lightly paying attention to what was being commonly talked about, like most people do,
00:24:06
Speaker
then you were only hearing a very sanitized version of events, but that's always been true. Like some of those people griping about, Oh, like you didn't know all of this real story. Like you didn't all know all this information quiz them on why did we actually get involved in world war two? Like,
00:24:23
Speaker
how many of those people wanted to acknowledge that there was an American Nazi party having rallies at Madison Square Garden, and how we were actually pretty split on which side we wanted to support until it was in our best interests, not great Patriot interests across the world. Patriotism was part of it, doing the right thing was part of it. Also, economics was a huge part of it.
00:24:46
Speaker
and wanting to join the winning side of something that we felt like we couldn't avoid. Like it's not nearly as cut and dry as people would like to make you believe for one of what is arguably one of the most cut and dry wars in human history, at least as far as the common discourse talks about it.
Motivations Behind Wars & Public Support
00:25:02
Speaker
Exactly. Well, and that's the whole thing. You know, like I ranted about this a little bit last week because there's that new World War Two doc docu-series coming out about it's like a Steven Spielberg one about pilots.
00:25:14
Speaker
But that's the context in which everyone joins a war, unless they're directly attacked. Nations act in their national interest, and that's what draws them into these conflicts. And the idea that it's some ideological point for us to step in and
00:25:37
Speaker
and liberate the people of Europe and stuff. I mean, there's some of that. That's why, you know, guys on the ground did probably. I mean, that's I think that, you know, at the individual soldier level and stuff, there is a lot of that, you know, but the US government was not.
00:25:53
Speaker
acting for those purposes. The ideology is how you build and keep public support to get the public to rally behind the war effort and support it long term. And the exact same thing happened after 9-11. Now, our goals post 9-11 were a lot murkier and a lot more oil related, but it is the same thing. It's like you need that public support to support whatever you're going to do less so than you need to do the right thing because the public supports it, if that makes sense.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, which I think the other thing too is that like they're so It's like he said like there was information Available to the public, you know you you you could go looking up for information about the historical context of why you know the Al-Qaeda attacked the us and stuff why bin Laden felt this way or whatever but
00:26:44
Speaker
You can't overstate the hellstorm of fury that would come down on anyone who spoke out against the US narrative on the war on terror.
00:27:02
Speaker
Anyone who spoke out about it for a good eight to 10 years after the fact was just obliterated as like, you're not a patriot, you don't support the troops, support the troops. Any criticism of our policy was you were directly in support of the enemy killing our troops.
00:27:25
Speaker
So this this stuff wasn't like it wasn't there wasn't a conversation around this in most households, I don't think. No, definitely not. And I think that's the backlash of like, quote unquote propaganda, right? Where it's like,
00:27:39
Speaker
Yeah, the information's available. Our history of the Middle East in the 80s was readily available, but people aren't looking that up. And when you kind of sell people a false bill of goods on why we're doing what we're doing, a vet like what you can capitalize on in the moment is the zeitgeist of like,
00:27:58
Speaker
The support for invading the Middle East was in the 90-something percent order. Yeah, but to be fair, what's the alternative? We're going to explain everybody the last 30 years of context to get us to this point. No, it's never going to do that. Of course. Sure. That's also irrelevant.
00:28:16
Speaker
At the end of the day, how much do people care about all the complicated reasons why Bin Laden attacked us? They don't. He did, and they want him dead. That's it. That's the human emotion. It doesn't really go farther than that. That is the recourse when you- Which is why they- Take down a skyscraper with 3,000 people inside. It's also why it's incredibly frustrating because the backlash is
00:28:40
Speaker
20, 30 years later, whatever, people start learning, and they feel like they've been deceived, and they feel like they've been told a lie, and that, when you feel that way, the natural response is to say, everything they tell me isn't true, and they can't parse through the actual information. It's the amorphous day, as they are lying to me. You're really fucking yourself down the road with your, quote unquote, electorate, or whatever it is. That's all anyone seems to fucking care about, anyway, is,
00:29:08
Speaker
Electorates, but yeah, but how much did they quote-unquote lie to us and versus how much like was all this information available? But we were 11 then how much of it's irrelevant. It just this is what's going to happen Just all depends on what you were what if you know where your information came from which at the time was a lot of cable news, right? I mean, yeah, that's true. What we had we had CNN Fox it we had very few outlets and
00:29:34
Speaker
Nobody was given this perspective on his own. Giving us some business. Actually, maybe we did. Actually, no, we did. We did. He was broadcasting live during 9-11. Yeah, that was the glory days. He had broken on his podcast on like 9-11 or not his podcast, his radio show. That's podcast or anything. But I think it's what's what's so like interesting about like the the reaction to this.
00:30:02
Speaker
is that it hasn't changed that much. The mainstream media outlets have the exact same reaction now that they did in 2003.
00:30:16
Speaker
tar and feather the people who are daring to like, you know, entertain ideas about like US incursions into other countries and stuff like that. And I mean, there's a lot of stuff here that, you know, it's along those same lines. I think one of the interesting points though is like, you know, Jeremiah touched on about like the justification of attacking civilians.
00:30:43
Speaker
And because I feel like this is something that we see over and over again, like in every conflict, if a conflict gets ugly enough, this argument is made and people dehumanize normal people on the other side to allow themselves to go after. I mean, I think we're seeing the same thing in Gaza right now. Like I said, there is no shortage
00:31:06
Speaker
Israeli officials that that have got on TV and talked about how like there is no illness there there are no innocent Palestinian civilians because they're all kind of supportive of Amaz and they voted them in and stuff and I think that's part of why like they're losing the PR war right now is because God, I mean how many videos do you have to watch of like kids being pulled out of rubble before you're like, oh
00:31:34
Speaker
What are we doing here? That also, I think, is since 9-11, social media has democratized the spreading of information.
Media's Role in Shaping Public Opinion
00:31:42
Speaker
Now, it's also, social media is one of the worst things that's ever happened to humanity and probably responsible for the problem in our society. The democracy of misinformation? But when a government comes out and does the old tricks of just flat-out lying about something, it's much easier to have an overwhelming amount of evidence that contradicts that. In the same way, like when Russia comes out and is like, we're going to murder Ukraine, we're going to stomp a hole in them, and then everyone watches
00:32:03
Speaker
Two thousand videos of like Russian tanks that can barely drive and soldiers that have hand-me-down gear That's 50 years old and stuff and like that's propaganda to people taking those videos and uploading it But it helps show people of like oh, there's another perspective here. It breaks down that wall a lot quicker and
00:32:22
Speaker
I think governments just haven't changed the tricks. Like our cable news is still using the same old tricks. And I don't think any of those individual anchors are trying to be tricksy, right? They're not doing a deep dive. They're doing a five minute snippet on this particular story. And so they're not just going to put a lot of effort into coming up with an original take on it. They're just going to poo-poo it as a waspy
00:32:43
Speaker
liberal New Englander about like, how does everyone not know this information? It's like, because it's not relevant to their lives. It wasn't relevant to them when they were two years old. And they're interested in it now. And you're not telling them anything. It's entertainment. It's just entertainment. I think it's their business model. Yeah. And that's their audience. Like they they they they
00:33:02
Speaker
The whole like the cable news audience is old and they're not interested in hearing like perspective on anything. No, it's just like regurgitate to me that I am smart and they are dumb and we are the good generation and everybody under this age is stupid and they've been destroyed by liberal media and this and that and the other, you know, like it's just there's just nothing of value there.
00:33:29
Speaker
Like, and I don't know, you know, I mean, I've had this conversation though. I think that's what's frustrating is like the irony of like, people have questions and you go and the media goes, these people are dumb. And those people go, you're not engaging with us in good faith. It's like there's actual reasonable critiques of the United States government. And when you don't acknowledge that, that kind of pushes them deeper into a bad ideology instead of meeting them
00:33:56
Speaker
where they're at and having a conversation about where we fucked up and where we should go. Exactly. You're creating the problem. Your disengagement from the conversation that's being had is actually exacerbating the problem and creating new ones. So I think that that's what that's one of the things that's like frustrating on the other side of this. And you see it's over and over again is like this. There is like to some extent there is
00:34:24
Speaker
Like one piece of this is like this justification of Ben Laden as like some sort of freedom fighter. And they all roll out this quote. I couldn't tell you the quote, but it's like any any act of aggression against the colonial power is justified for this reason or that. It's like the favorite of, you know, 19 year old tick tockers. Yeah. But I think so on
00:34:51
Speaker
the Unraveling is a great podcast. They did like the first six or seven episodes of the Unraveling is like about
00:34:59
Speaker
the Iraq war and it's, you know, Jocko Wilnick, who was a part of the Iraq war. And then Darrell Cooper from Martyr made, and they're talking about like the lead into it history and stuff. And then like, you know, ground level perspective from two guys who were a part of it. Right. And that's one of the things they talk about. Cause I mean, there's lots of people that will justify the invasion of Afghanistan. Right. I mean, that's where Al Qaeda was. And then the other, we all tend to agree on the fact that like,
00:35:28
Speaker
Iraq was a mistake, you know, we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. That was, you know, a distraction from the main goal. It was unnecessary. It led to catastrophe, but, but.
00:35:44
Speaker
But with a capital B.U.T, Saddam Hussein was garbage and a terrible guy. And like, no one should shed any tears about the fact that Saddam Hussein got hung in a closet. Like, I mean, he's a scumbag that tortured people. He killed tons of innocent civilians. I mean, he gassed his own people. He gassed the Kurds. He was a terrible, terrible dude. And like, that's what's like irritating in the
00:36:11
Speaker
the realm of like all this like TikTok stuff and everything is that you know just because like there's
00:36:18
Speaker
there's like legitimate critiques of US wrongdoing in all of these topics. That does not make Osama bin Laden a cool guy that was like a principled freedom fighter. It doesn't mean that you should even take what he wrote as his like cut and paste views on any of the things that he talks about. Like I said, this is a propaganda document and Osama bin Laden was garbage.
00:36:45
Speaker
Same with Saddam Hussein, same with Muammar Qaddafi. And we never actually saw the body. Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Obama. But they lost it. They lost it overboard. Anyway.
00:37:04
Speaker
Not that I think we really need to preach to the listeners of this podcast, but I think the best thing any of the younger listeners who can do, or maybe just anyone who was never paying that much attention to this early on, which is totally fine. Most of us weren't. It's no big deal, but the best thing you can do is just use this opportunity to learn
00:37:21
Speaker
the fuller history of most of the events you take for granted. Start with wars. Just start with all the wars that you're like, oh, 100%, we were on the right side of that one. You really want to rock your worldview. Go back to the Revolutionary War. Start there, and it's just going to get complicated from then on out. The goal is not to make- Don't even get it started on the Civil War.
00:37:42
Speaker
The goal isn't to just like hate America by the end of it. It's to have a fuller understanding of history is complicated and it's never a simple answer and it's almost never the simple cut and dry answer you were given in middle school. So states rights is what you're saying.
00:37:57
Speaker
That doesn't mean that people have been intentionally lying to you this whole time. Sometimes it means the answers are complicated and they're just too complicated. And so the one sentence answer you get given, you just stick with it for maybe a decade or two longer than you should have. And that's okay. Like you didn't know there was more information out there to get, but
00:38:15
Speaker
There is. And in this case, like, yeah, I don't think the conclusions of this should be any different. He's still a monster. Absolutely nothing has changed. Just reading his own letter, it ends with, what does he want out of all of this? It's not for, stop attacking us, go back to your country, leave us alone. It's no, eradicate all the governments, eradicate all other religions, Sharia law rules all, like,
00:38:36
Speaker
We will do anything that we want. We'll subjugate you, essentially. Like reading between the lines of what he's saying, it's exactly what you think terrorism is. What jihadist Islamic terrorism is. Exactly what your conservative dad said, honestly. And that's what's kind of annoying. He wasn't that wrong. That rubs you the wrong way. That's your problem, I guess. Look.
00:38:58
Speaker
No one was ever worried about Sharia law becoming a problem in America. And that was the fear of our dads. They want a subjugated Sharia law. No, they don't. No Muslim in the United States. No Muslim wants to have Sharia law here. There's some conservatives, they're calling it something different. But that was the point. Your dads were wrong about plenty of things.
00:39:24
Speaker
And they were wrong to be worried about certain things, but that's at least what was in that document. You cannot boil the vast majority of of like geopolitics and historical, you know, conflicts and stuff. You cannot boil them down into a good guy and a bad guy. It's just nothing is is that simple, you know, and if it feels that simple,
00:39:53
Speaker
try reading some other things. In closing, I will say, OK, of all the videos that I watched about reaction videos to this whole thing, there's a few that had decent takes that bothered to actually delve into why this was resonating with people. And it was breaking points, rising, the Young Turks, and Kyle Kalinsky.
00:40:21
Speaker
those were the four that actually had like a decent take that actually cared about what was resonating with these people about the videos. So like, it's just, it's worth noting that, you know, there are some decent places to start source information and learn more about stuff. But I don't know.
Meet Carlos: The Tattoo Artist's Journey
00:40:41
Speaker
Anyways, Sam, tell us about our guest.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah. Our guest is our boy Carlos, AKA stolen heart tattoo. He's a tattoo artist in Albuquerque. Um, he's just been, uh, he's been a long time follower of the podcast. Him and I have interacted a lot over
00:41:02
Speaker
Instagram. I really like his tattoo work. I have enjoyed just conversing with him since we started this thing. He's been a good supporter, likes, comments. We have a lot of cool interactions. So after just a couple of years of him just being there and supporting us and me really enjoying his tattoo work,
00:41:29
Speaker
In his artistry, I just decided that he would, I'll reach out to him, see if he has a similar background, see if he grew up in the world that we did. He grew up Catholic, which as we know as Protestants is emphatically not Christian.
00:41:43
Speaker
but it counts for the podcast. So, uh, but it was super fun. I think, you know, it started out with us trying to, you know, we talked a good bit about the difference between, um, you know, growing up Protestant versus Catholic kind of sussing that stuff out of it. Um, and I really feel like it picked up and just became a real good time as we like just got further into it. Um,
00:42:06
Speaker
you start out just talking about some of the sim the differences of similarities whatever but it turned we had some really fun fucking conversations about like the shittiest tattoos he's had to do just the kind of stuff you want to ask any tattoo artist fun little rapid fire round at the end with like
00:42:24
Speaker
us just what we're just stating some of the goofiest fucking tattoos we could think of that says, you know, guaranteed he's done. But it was fun, man. We had a great time talking to Carlos. Love the guy. I think I might have mentioned the podcast. My brother in law was out in Albuquerque. If you live in Albuquerque, look him up. Stolen heart tattoo. Go get a tattoo by him. He is great. If I'm out that way, we want my wife and I want to go visit my brother in law.
00:42:54
Speaker
Uh, that's on the docket. If I'm out in Albuquerque, I'm going to go get a tattoo by our boy Carlos. Uh, but we had a fun time. Goofy shit. Uh, bottom line for Catholics. Amen. Uh, so there we go. Great review. Great review the show and join the discord and enjoy our conversation with Carlos.
00:43:21
Speaker
Hey everybody we are back with our guest Carlos aka Stolen Heart Tattoo. What's going on Carlos? How's it going guys? What's going on man? For anyone listening we'll obviously record an intro before this as we normally do and there'll be a noticeable difference in probably the way hopefully there'll be a noticeable difference in the way I sound by the time we record an intro for this.
00:43:44
Speaker
I lost my voice over the weekend. I got most of it back. But that might annoy people who hate that vocal fry sound. I feel like a valley girl, but with a real deep voice now. That's in right now. What's that podcast girl? The awkward girl that's like everywhere all of a sudden. Oh, which one? Oh, I can't remember her name. There's like this this girl that came out of nowhere as a podcaster and she like
00:44:13
Speaker
Immediately landed an interview with Drake Yeah, she's the one who does like that like kind of deadpan shit, right? Yeah, and she's she's got a little of that like that
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody loves vocal fry. Anyway, Carlos, man, thanks for joining us, dude. We've just been interacting online for quite a while, I feel like. I always pay attention to, because I spend too much time on social media, I guess,
00:44:45
Speaker
like, who follows the page and stuff. And I always check I'm like, oh, so and this is apology to everyone that I'm not following after they hear this. But when I see people doing cool shit, especially artists and musicians, I'll always check out what they got. And if I like it, I give it a follow. And I just perused your page and you are a you're a tattoo artist and you're in Albuquerque. Is that right?
00:45:07
Speaker
That's correct. We're going to Mexico. We are part of the United States. You're the new Mexico. You're not the old Mexico, right? Yeah, exactly. Which is funny. You'd be surprised how often we get that from people that don't know.
00:45:25
Speaker
That's actually sad. New Mexico is awesome. I'd never really been to New Mexico until I moved to Kansas and now we've taken several road trips where we've gone through parts of New Mexico. I love that place. Cimarron Canyon, have you ever been there? Oh, yeah. It's beautiful out here. There's some gorgeous areas.
00:45:53
Speaker
And you have like everything like this, like such a diverse array of like, uh, eco ecosystems. I don't know if that's the right word, but you've got like heavy, heavy desert. You've got like, you know, rolling sand dunes and like white sands area and stuff.
00:46:13
Speaker
There's like those mountainous, you know, old growth forests, hardwoods and stuff. And then like far what Eastern is just like gorgeous grasslands. Like you come out of the rocky areas and you just roll onto these like just epic proportion rolling hills and grasslands that go forever. You can just like close your eyes and imagine like 2 million Buffalo stampeding across it. Oh yeah. Easily.
00:46:42
Speaker
And then even stuff like you go south and there's the caverns and stuff. So you could even go underground and everything. It's just, yeah, New Mexico is really diverse. We're, we're in that good section between, between Texas and then like the desert that's kind of Arizona. So we get like a good little climate. And then as you go north, you get closer to Colorado. So you get that nice like rainfall and snow and everything coming from that direction. So I think it's a controversial take.
00:47:12
Speaker
Absolutely. We'd expect nothing less from you Casey. Colorado is gorgeous, but Colorado is played out.
00:47:20
Speaker
That's what I hear. I'm over it. There's too many people. It's too packed. It's too, even in the city areas, it's too kind of snooty and bougie and stuff. Either go north or south. Either go to Wyoming. Wyoming's incredible and nobody's there. Or you go south to New Mexico. New Mexico's incredible and nobody's there. That's where I go now.
00:47:48
Speaker
I feel like my geography is just that bad. We can't even blame America's public education system because I wasn't a participant in it.
00:48:02
Speaker
my G I always feel like I feel like it took me until my like early 30s to realize exactly where Colorado was because it's so known for skiing that I just had this I always picked if you say Colorado I picture like northern like northern in the United States and it's not there I've never found it up there it's uh yeah
00:48:25
Speaker
It's really a lot lower than always. Always remember it. It's not a great feeling to constantly be faced with how little you know about your own country. Are you made in New Mexico? Yes, born and raised. Nice. Have you been in the Albuquerque area? Was it same area or somewhere else? No, Albuquerque's been my home since I was born.
00:48:54
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. So my brother-in-law lives out there and we're, we'd like to make a trip out there. It seems cool, but he just posted all these pictures. There's like a bunch of hot air balloon. There's like a big hot air balloon festival thing or something like that. We have, we have annually, we have one of the largest balloon fiestas in the, in the world. We get people from all over the world who travel here for it. Cause for some reason at the beginning of October,
00:49:24
Speaker
And the way our environment is we have like the perfect biometric pressure, whatever that allows for balloons and everything to fly and stuff. So it's crazy. It gets, it gets massive. There's like so many people that come out for this thing. That's crazy. So they come up from all over the, so they just like pack up their, I mean, their hot air balloons, right? The people just pack them up and then.
00:49:51
Speaker
They ride them there. They pack up, get over here and then they'll fly them. Sometimes I think last year we had sometimes the weather is not as friendly. So every morning they got to do like a weather check to see how the wind is and the air and stuff to see if they're going to have a no fly day and stuff. And I think last year we had quite a few more of those, but this year it seems like we had a good day where every day was launch day. So in the mornings you're driving to work and stuff and all you just see is just all the balloons just filling up the sky and stuff. It's crazy.
00:50:20
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah, the pictures looked amazing. Like, literally, the sky was full of balloons. You definitely don't want to pick the wrong day for a hot air balloon. Like, the wrong day puts you in bed. Like, you're either going up or down. You go down, you're going to hit power lines, which I recently accidentally saw a video of a let's call it a small personal aircraft hitting power lines.
00:50:47
Speaker
And it did not go up. It went up in smoke. It's like when you catch your hair in the dryer or something like that and it just sizzles. Or you go up and you go into the ionosphere and then you fall back to Earth. It's like a frozen turd.
00:51:09
Speaker
Got to find that perfect, perfect meeting ground. The power line thing happens at least, not every year, but at least once every few years, we'll have some story where one of the balloons accidentally hit a power line or something. It's nuts. It's such a wild deal.
00:51:31
Speaker
all the traffic and stuff because everybody's going to work at the same time launch time is. So everybody's too busy paying attention to the balloons in the sky instead of the traffic in front of them. And so it's a mess. Balloon seasons is the only time. It's the only thing more dangerous than like playing on your phone while you drive hot air balloons. And people already do that enough as it is. So then you got him driving, trying to take pictures of the balloons while they're driving. It's just a mess.
00:52:04
Speaker
Dude, so let's hear a little of your story, man. Obviously Albuquerque. What kind of environment did you grow up, family-wise? I actually had a really good family. I mean, my dad and my mom split when I was little and stuff, but I had a stepmom who came in when I was really young and stuff, and she brought her daughter, my sister with her. And so we had a really good family.
00:52:29
Speaker
Because like we were saying in messenger, I've come from a very Catholic home, which is it's predominant in this area. Anytime you get into Hispanic areas, you run risk of a lot stronger Catholic family. So my family is very, very Catholic. So we grew up that way and stuff. And I mean, I was always an artist and everything, but I had no idea what I was going to do with my art. And.
00:52:55
Speaker
I was about 16, I think, and my dad got his first tattoo and I went to the tattoo store with him and I was looking at all the flash on the walls and everything. I was like, dad, I want a tattoo. He's like, you got to wait till you're 18. I bugged him and bugged him and bugged him and it wasn't until I was like a week before my 18th birthday, I went to a shop and luckily we knew the guy that owned the shop. He was like a family friend and I was bugging him and he ended up just calling my dad on the phone. He's like, hey, I got your son here in my shop.
00:53:20
Speaker
wanting to tattoo, my dad's like, I guess he's already there. Mind you, this was mid 90s. So it was a time when you can do that without. Exactly.
00:53:30
Speaker
No. And it was about, maybe after about my third tattoo, I started really looking into it and going, gosh, this is something I really loved. I was hoping I was going to be like a comic book artist or something, but my skills just weren't at that level. I don't think so. When tattooing came to me, it was just, it was a all guns blazing sort of thing. I started bugging my artists. What are you taking on? Can you, how do I become an apprentice? How do I become an apprentice? How do I do this? And yeah, never kind of looked back.
00:53:56
Speaker
That first one, did you go real Catholic with it and get like stigmata tattoos on your palms? No, that would have been dope though. I don't know if I could have handled it. It's 18. It's funny, my friends. It's been getting covered up now, but it was like a little evil smile now cry later that I had drew up.
00:54:15
Speaker
It's funny if because being raised in a Catholic home, you either dip into the Catholicism really hard or you kind of slowly fall out of it. I am my favorite George Carlin quote was always I was born and raised Catholic until I hit the age of reason, which is always kind of where I grew up loving like heavy metal and hardcore and art and cartoons and comics and stuff. So I tended to lead a little bit more to the dark side. And
00:54:43
Speaker
as opposed to everybody else. So I was always, you know, especially in the mid nineties, which was the height of the satanic panic. So you had like Marilyn Manson and everything and stuff like that. So yeah, I was always a little bit more on that side of life than, than I was. And I remember we got into plenty of fights with my stepmom about that. So, and everybody was finally, and she used to get mad at me for not going to church. She's like, well, as long as you're living in my home, you have to go to church. And so like the minute I moved out is like, okay, no more church.
Catholic Upbringing and Religious Humor
00:55:12
Speaker
I don't think I've got I've gone back for like weddings and funerals and stuff, but that's about it That's fun. Dude. That's how it was for me too is like as long as well It's so funny cuz that I feel like that was the rule for me, but my younger siblings I mean they went more voluntarily not
00:55:29
Speaker
I shouldn't say more voluntarily. I was more than happy to go. But even though I was like the most fully in and invested and like all about it, I couldn't take like a weekend off to stay at a friend's house without it being like a huge problem. And it just, that never made sense to me. Cause I'm like, I'm the only one who wants to be there all the time. Like everyone else is just doing it cause I kind of have to like my older sibling had kind of fizzled out on it. And you're just like, what do you,
00:55:57
Speaker
That was like the only time I think I really experienced like just like a more strict legalism in my family was just like, you guys are pretty chill about a lot of stuff and for you to like draw your line in the sand because I want to have a sleepover at a friend's house on a Saturday was really bizarre. So I would like sleep over and then have to like get up at six in the morning so I could like go to church, you know? I made a pact with God that we will all as a family be miserable for five hours once a week.
00:56:28
Speaker
I couldn't imagine. I was, I used to spend summers with my mom because my mom had moved out to Las Vegas whenever I was in, uh, when I was like six, Nevada. So I would go stay with her. And there was one time where I think she was just trying out churches cause she had always kind of struggled to find out where she fit spiritually and stuff. And she tried a Christian church and it was one of those ones where they have like the singing and everybody's standing up and singing along and they take coffee breaks about an hour in and stuff. And it was the most.
00:56:57
Speaker
It was the most culture shock thing I had thought I had ever experienced. I was like, how is church so long? What are people doing? People are singing along. Everybody's standing up and saying, you don't have to kneel down and stand up and recite. And it was the craziest thing. So like a five hour mass, that would blow my mind. We had to do like two hour masses on Christmas Eve or something, or the night before Easter. And it was just like, that was,
00:57:23
Speaker
That was too long. Dude, something that stands out to me, and this is a reoccurring thing I've heard my entire life, is when talking with people who were Catholics or who grew up Catholic, it's like they're Catholic and they'll refer to the evangelical stuff as Christian. And it's like, well, I didn't really grow up Christian, I was more Catholic. And it's so funny to me because
00:57:49
Speaker
I have always like wasn't, well, despite growing up evangelical and then being like, well, not all Catholics are really Christians. We got a lot of that, but it's still like under the umbrella. So what's the, what are you thinking when you say that? Or what's like, what was the, like the conversations like when you were a kid when like parsing out the differences? I was, you know, I was kind of raised the same way where it was like, those are Christians, we're Catholic and stuff.
00:58:17
Speaker
We're different because we have, we praise the saints and we have saints in our homes and we do these things like pray the rosary all the time. We have our set mass where we go and we say all our prayers and stuff and there were just like these little differences that we did. We didn't do like youth cramps and stuff like that.
00:58:37
Speaker
We had youth group and stuff, but that was like at the end of catechism that once you graduated from catechism, the next one was youth group. And that was like the high school equivalent of church school. And, but yeah, they were just, that was always told. I was always told, you know, Catholics, we worship all the saints and stuff. And we had the Pope and everything. The Christians are just, they're more all about Jesus and they definitely want to make you a part of the Christianity. And it's like, I thought we were all, I thought,
00:59:03
Speaker
Catholicism was Christianity, but apparently there's differences. I think your Catholic youth group is probably just like a once a week scheduled session for teenagers to finger each other. That's pretty much what it was. So many people hooked up at those things.
00:59:23
Speaker
So Catholics and Christians, air quotes, are a lot more similar than maybe I thought. Everyone was getting fingerbanged in the back. That's cool. Oh no, there are a lot of like, there are a lot of like. It's just those, it's the little differences that the older generations seem to hold on to and like to be like, this is how we're different.
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those I like started realizing how like, because aesthetically, it's incredibly different. It's like, stylistically, the way it functions, the way a mass is versus just your Southern Baptist Sunday morning service are so wildly different. But then like, I just remember getting older and hearing from like, just reasonable Catholics just be like,
01:00:12
Speaker
just talk about their faith and you're like this is weird because it sounds like you're saying all the things that i believe but you're supposed to be wrong about everything so it would like it's kind of like outside it once you get past the aesthetics i know the saints thing is like the big hang up for evangelicals they can't they can't handle that uh and i was just talking about this the other week because i think the funny thing about it is like
01:00:37
Speaker
And maybe this changes from depending on like your Catholic culture, but it's because I know even in evangelicalism, there's tons of different thought processes, but it's like.
01:00:52
Speaker
The idea is, um, at least on paper that you will communicate with the saints for the purpose of them interceding on your behalf to God. Like, so whatever the saying of this or that, you know, it's kind of just like upping the ante, right? It's kind of double, hopefully you get like just a couple extra prayers in your, in your corner. And then maybe God will pull through.
01:01:15
Speaker
And it's just funny because evangelicals are like, no, no, no, no. Like that's really fucked up. That's like, that's like worshiping saints. That's, that's taken things too far. But then they like send out prayer chains and they hope that the more people who like pray for them on their behalf, like increases their favor with God. And it's just like, you're doing the same thing. The only difference is your people are still alive. It's kind of like that game at the circus or the fair or whatever, where you got to shoot the little water pistol and the little jockey on the horse moves.
01:01:44
Speaker
You're like you're you're in a race to see who can fill the water hopper faster and then If you get to the finish line, then your boss dies and you get to move into a position with health care And we can't forget about the guilt there's the Catholic guilt Everything is based on guilt Yeah, that one seems. Oh, you're you're Carlin quote. I don't you know Mike Berbiglia the stand-up comic I
01:02:11
Speaker
No, I can't say I've heard him. He, um, he just, he has, I think it was his bit where he's just like, uh, he talks about how he grew up Catholic. He goes, I'm not, he's like, I went to Catholic school and I'm not Catholic anymore because I went to Catholic school.
01:02:27
Speaker
And it's kind of reminds, it's like a similar vibe. It's just like, that's how it seems most people feel when they grow up in that, that rigidity. Um, or like the strict Catholic upbringing is just like a little too heavy handed, a little burnout. We saw the same thing in our, uh, in our sphere as well. Again, that's what I was going to say. It's almost the same thing because you have Christian shame as opposed to Catholic guilt. You're shamed instead of guilted. It's almost pretty much the same thing. Like you said, they're similar, but just slight variations.
01:02:58
Speaker
What's noticeable to me is I feel like a lot of people who move on from their Catholic faith will still talk about the Catholic guilt. And I feel like despite living in this world of exvangelical internet and people talking about how it still impacts them, my personal experience with people who have left the evangelical faith is that
01:03:24
Speaker
After several years they stopped giving a fuck about any of it like they they weren't overly like Shamed or feel felt a whole lot of guilt But I feel like I hear that so differently with people who grew up Catholic Catholic guilt are two words that go together Pretty frequently
01:03:46
Speaker
there's like a trauma inherent in it. And I think like a lot of people, we still deal with that. I mean, like I said, my family is still extremely Catholic and stuff like that. So I am very much aware of it through them as well. So I'm kind of the black sheep, but you know, I get along with everybody. Everybody loves me, but I'm still very, very cautious about like what I say around them and what I do. And
01:04:09
Speaker
I know my sisters very much on my Instagram stories and stuff. So there's some things I would probably like to post and then in the back of my head, I'm like, your sister's going to see this. But at the same time, it's like, I love sacrilegious humor and all. So it's one of them.
01:04:25
Speaker
Exactly with this humor, it gets funnier. When it first hits, you're like, I'm uncomfortable with it. And then you just let that sink in a bit more. And then it's so funny. It's so funny.
01:04:41
Speaker
And it's sad that even people who are still deeply in their faith can't have a better sense of humor about how other people might perceive it or why they would make sacrilegious jokes. Well, I feel like it's funny because it's like when you first hear it, it stings a little.
01:05:05
Speaker
You know? Yeah. And like knowing that- It's a little close to home, yeah. Yeah, and like knowing that after the fact, after you've left and it doesn't sting anymore, like knowing it stings the people that are still there that you don't like makes it all the more funny. But it's so funny, even in high school when I was deeply Christian, I was like,
01:05:29
Speaker
I loved commenting, I loved watching stand up, and any time people would shift into Christian jokes or jokes on religious people.
01:05:37
Speaker
I always found it, even if I was like, Oh, that was a, that was a rough one. I still always part of me just found it funny. And I think it was just easier to have. I always had an easier time having a, a good sense of humor about it and not finding things particularly offensive. I don't know. I don't, I think it's good.
01:06:02
Speaker
No, I was going to say, it's funny that you say that though, because that was one of the biggest things I did notice like between Catholics and Christians, because where Christians are, there's a lot more piety to it where, you know, we don't drink, we don't do drugs, we don't smoke, we don't do this. It's all about our faith and our worship and stuff. We're Catholics, Saturday night, they're out partying and drinking and doing everything. And then Sunday morning, they're in church.
01:06:25
Speaker
trying to pray away the bad. And guilt's the only thing holding that, that rickety old structure together. Exactly. Without the guilt as long as you just admit your sins. The confessional has to play a role in that, I would think. Like having to go in and talk about like the bad things that you did or thought or said or whatever, like,
01:06:54
Speaker
You know, there's a, I feel like there was, at least in our, in my church, there wasn't a lot of like public outing of your dirty laundry. It was kind of like, hey, you should feel bad, but feel bad quietly.
01:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, no one wanted to have uncomfortable conversations, especially when sex or porn came up. It was like, we know. But everyone would be like, put their finger on their nose, like, not me. They look around like, it's got to be somebody else. Everyone acted like they didn't and then just internalized that. If there was a screen and an old man dunking his McNugget in the booth next to you,
01:07:42
Speaker
Maybe we'd have an easier time with it. I don't know. Yeah. It was just, it was literally just that it was a box. You went into like a little box and you had the separator and he would draw the little thing close. You would say your prayer and then you're just supposed to be like, okay, these are the sins I committed this week. And he's like, all right, go say 10, how Mary's and three are fathers and think about what you did stuff like that.
01:08:01
Speaker
It's the same thing as a therapist though, you know, if you're not going to be, sometimes people don't want to be completely open with a therapist. So you're going to, you're probably going to weed out the harder stuff that you don't want them to know so much. It isn't something that you're going to confess some things. I don't think there's anybody in there giving a full list of everything they did through the week.
01:08:19
Speaker
and hoping to tray it away with a few Hail Marys. What actually is pretty wild about being a priest is more closely related to being a therapist than I would have thought just because they can't, like it really is like a vow of secrecy. Like they have to keep your shit secret. And they kind of get to follow the same rules as therapists if there's like a crime being investigated. It's just like,
01:08:49
Speaker
to get a priest to talk is like they have to be like formally subpoenaed and it's a full process. I don't think- I'm sure they take seriously as they do their vow of celibacy. Yeah. Well, you're still celibate as long as you don't have sex with a woman, so that's the ultimate vow very seriously. Yeah, unfortunately they really, really have. Yeah.
01:09:18
Speaker
But I don't know that pastors in our circuit, Casey, kept the lid on people's secrets as much as maybe priests do. I would have told it. That would have been a real problem for me. It would have been like a guess who. I can't keep any secrets. It's like the kids game guess who, where you start telling secrets and people are like, does he have white hair? It's like, everyone just gets to figure it out.
01:09:46
Speaker
Did you guys have like the, was your pastor kind of like the, like the school counselor? He's just going to come sit on the corner of the desk and tell you how cool it is and that you could share all your secrets with him. Like it's okay. I'm here for you. Let's talk. Let's get this out. Oh man. Try to get to the root of your problem. He's your buddy.
01:10:05
Speaker
We had one guy like that and he was only like somewhat connected to our church and stuff. But yeah, I did. I remember going on like a retreat where like nobody showed up. So there was only like four of us and we were camping out and.
01:10:22
Speaker
There's like a fire and he wants to get out his guitar and like sing and there's four of us. It sucks. And he really wanted us to all cry and talk about ourselves and stuff like that around the fire. And none of us wanted to do that. And then he got angry the one night like that we were guarded, I guess, or something. I don't know. It was terrible.
01:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, he got real like snarky and preachy about it and stuff. And we're just like, uh, I want to go home now.
01:11:02
Speaker
It's like one person in the audience that you know did something and the pastor is going real hard on it like but trying being vague It's like that but with just the four of you he's just like now I know some of you here have done x y and z and everyone's quiet He's like, I mean we know
01:11:31
Speaker
Somebody went to their sleeping bag last night. Do you remember anything that you like confessed to that like stressed you out, like that you got really worked up about? Obviously, you know, don't share anything you don't want to, but like, I don't know, you broke a window in your mom's house or something like that that you lied about or something, I don't know.
01:11:45
Speaker
Pretty I mean someone here has to be struggling with this and you're all just like oh, I'm good
01:11:59
Speaker
It was always like the most basic things whenever I went in there. It was just like, oh yeah, I cussed this week. I talked back to my mom. I disobeyed my parents. It was like the most basic things. You never, never gave full confession. I honestly don't know how many people get full confession. There was some people that would go in that box and they would be in there for
01:12:18
Speaker
Long time You know, he's just got a grown when certain people like open the door. He's like, oh god. I was gonna take a lunch It was just a mutual masturbation session Yeah, that was exactly exactly what it was. There's no way
01:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, there's no way you could be completely honest in those things. Nobody wants to, especially when you go to Catechism, sometimes the priest would teach some of the classes and stuff. He's familiar with a lot of us that are younger, that are growing up and stuff. We had a priest at our church and my grandpa at one point in time was
01:12:56
Speaker
on the road to becoming a deacon and stuff. And so he would come over to their house and have dinner and stuff. So he knew all of us. So you get in that box and you know, it's him. There's no way that you're going to be completely honest. He's like, you're not going to be going to tell him my family or my grandpa anything about me. Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:18
Speaker
to think about the level of honesty that someone would have in there because it does feel like I mean, like you said, some people go in for a long time. There's got to be people who are just like we all know overshares in our real life. And the only thing that stops them from going on forever is like people getting tired of it and leaving the conversation and having one of those types of people walk into that box is like you just get a gear up for a good like 45 minute vent session. Yeah, it's got to be a nightmare.
01:13:48
Speaker
It's like a therapy session that you can't just say, well, that's our time, you know? Yeah. Angel, you're not getting paid extra for it. That's like just part of the, the probably not wonderful salary.
Social Media's Influence on Modern Christianity
01:14:00
Speaker
Like how often do they just tune out? And then it's like, okay, we're at the end. They're saying the closing prayer. All right. Think about what you did. Go say these prayers and hopefully we're better.
01:14:12
Speaker
He's just playing a candy crush with one earbud in. Yeah, exactly. Taking a nap, even. That's so cool. Dude, I feel like Catholics, I've said this before, but Catholics, they get some of the cooler things. All the horror movies are about Catholics. They have so much cooler lore and stuff. I remember as a kid being a little creeped out by it in a way.
01:14:39
Speaker
Like it was more ritualistic. I think I kind of thought about it as like, this is like the radio edit of the Bohemian Grove ceremony. It's great. You get the movies, you get all the night, all the crazy exorcist movies. You get the movies about the devil coming in and all that stuff like that. But then you start getting into history and you see the church tied up with
01:15:04
Speaker
with states of power and colonialism and stuff. And so it like really becomes like all this real life horror stuff that it's tied up with too. It's just like, Jesus. And then obviously the modern day stuff that we get to hear the joys about when it comes to Catholicism. So it's like, Jesus, it is like a real, like a real horror movie out there, isn't it? It's actually, it's honestly incredible how, um,
01:15:32
Speaker
how well structured it still is like because we know what the power of the Catholic Church has been throughout history obviously doesn't share quite that much power anymore but it is still wild that like your local priests are only like
01:15:49
Speaker
what, like five, four positions removed from like the Vatican, you know, it's just really interesting the way that they are still so well structured. And of course we've seen them use that in some use that structure to, you know, obviously you move people around, you see that the dark side. That's exactly what I was going to say.
01:16:16
Speaker
It's fascinating that it still like functions like without any, I mean, without any major splits since fucking Luther.
01:16:25
Speaker
You know, like how, how is it not? Every other denomination has split hundreds and hundreds of times. We have thousands and thousands of denominations. But for some reason, Catholicism is still just like staying in their lane and people are showing up. I don't get it. Maybe there's a deal with the devil horror movie stuff after all. Well, I think there's like subsects of the Catholic Church.
01:16:55
Speaker
in similar ways as like denominators. They do seem to have like more of a respect for like the infrastructure of it though. Because like I have family that are real serious Catholics and you know they don't
01:17:13
Speaker
They haven't liked the last few popes, including the current one. So they don't think that they're true popes or something. And they have like different ideas of both. I don't like how some of us do with presidents. Yeah, exactly. It's just like Christians, it can very much become very political depending on.
01:17:33
Speaker
who's in charge, because I listen to, I think about the stuff I hear from my stepmom and my sister, because as they get older, they seem to get a lot more religious as they get older. But I look at some of the stuff that they lean into and that they pay attention to, and I'm like, how much church is feeding this? It's funny, my sister got married back in 2016, I think it was, as one of the last times I had been in church that wasn't a funeral.
01:18:02
Speaker
And we were sitting there, and the priest gets up, and he does his speech after the wedding, and he gives his little sermon and stuff. And he used that as a chance to start talking about gay marriage and stuff like that, and how marriage is between a man and a woman, and loving stuff like that. And I'm just sitting there today, because my uncle is in a couple rows behind me, and he's been in a relationship with his significant another for years now. Everybody knows. And I'm like, how? This is what you're out here preaching. I could only imagine what your normal Sunday sermons are like.
01:18:31
Speaker
So it's, it's interesting the way the churches can on both sides can dip into the politics and what they preach and stuff. I'm sure you guys, I think you guys probably follow the page on Instagram, the Christian nightmares one. Oh yeah. And always seeing that stuff just every time I see a post, I can laugh at it. But at the same time, it's just like,
01:18:51
Speaker
damn there's people yeah whoa there's some people out here it's getting more outrageous the internet's made it so much worse it's everyone's just like try I feel like everyone's trying to be more outrageous and the just that like tick-tock
01:19:06
Speaker
Christian influencer lane is, Oh my God. Like you thinking about anyone in particular. Yeah. There's one that we follow and he may have been a guest on this podcast with his wife at some point, but, um,
01:19:25
Speaker
But just in general, it's just like you see their light, their eyes just lit up with the ring lights and they have like this passionate look on their face and they just like just go off on how amazing Jesus is and how he's going to solve all your problems. And it's like it's all like similar stuff that I've heard, but definitely more like a resurgence for younger people with like prosperity gospel stuff.
01:19:49
Speaker
really like a very maybe it's just a generational thing but like a overly self-absorbed version of like Christianity like that it's all about the individual there's no communal aspect of it anymore there's no like I don't know it's just uh it seems to just be all about the person talking about it and it's funny because they've convinced themselves that
01:20:12
Speaker
They're doing it for another reason but it's just clearly not true and I don't know what in what world they'd be able to convince me otherwise unless they like found these people and saw them actually like changing lives.
01:20:28
Speaker
Around them and in their city, which I doubt it's like when you hear like a 20 year old just go on rants about the problem with politics or the economy and you're just like Nothing about what you're doing. Well It's hard to I could never listen to it like
01:20:47
Speaker
You're you're no you're in no place. You don't you haven't felt it. You haven't experienced so and I get it. That's like the old fuddy duddy way of just like dismissing the younger generation. But like you have to at least have moved out of your parents house to have a credible take on the state experience a little bit of like me. Yeah. Some experience. Yeah. Some experience. That's the same tween on there is like like
01:21:13
Speaker
Hey guys, five reasons why the chips act is lit. Number one will blow your mind. So stay tuned and smash that like button. Yeah. Yeah. And then they'll, they always like queue up their next video. And if you want to know how to XYZ.
01:21:33
Speaker
Like and subscribe and watch the next video. Like every time I see a TikTok and it shows like this, they do this with a cop interaction videos all the time, which I am a sucker for. Um, but as soon as I see like that it's part one, I'm just like, I'm out. I'm not going to watch any more of this because they're going to get me right to the point where it's getting good.
Comic Collecting and Breaking Bad's Impact
01:21:53
Speaker
And then they're going to try to make me watch another video and I'm not going to be a bitch to the algorithm like that. That makes me.
01:21:59
Speaker
I'm so mad. I feel like I'm getting cucked every time that happens. I keep edging you. I just want to see a man get tased through his cracked window at a border crossing. That's all.
01:22:15
Speaker
The amount of videos I've seen that start with a guy have his windows three quarters of the way down, the cops like, can you roll your window down? It is down. Please roll your window down. It's already down. I need you to roll your window down, sir. My windows down. I'm within my legal rights to not roll my window down any more than I already have. It's like, I cannot believe it's like watching a toddler argue with their parents about something. It's, it's, it's funny. Okay. Cause you mentioned that and back to the city. Um,
01:22:42
Speaker
Whenever cops was like really big in the 90s and Albuquerque here, we had a big crime problem in the 90s. A lot of people were coming from LA because they realized that Albuquerque was the prime spot to come and sell drugs and things like that. Like the height of gangster rap and stuff like that. So we had a real bad problem.
01:22:58
Speaker
And it got to the point that cops was getting so much material here that the current mayor had to be like, you guys can't come and film here anymore. You're making us look bad. Cause you just constantly, cause they had so many episodes and everybody just looked like insane. And so the mayor was like, yeah, no more. You guys can't. So they, we were one of the cities they had to stop coming to because the mayor didn't want that, that image put forth. That's so. You know more than shut that down. And then you got Breaking Bad.
01:23:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And then Breaking Bad comes along. That's a whole other level. Yeah. That got a lot of people back into meth. You know, you got to give them credit for that. That shit, it was huge. I can't even tell you. We have somebody owns the RV from the show and they actually do tours around the city for people whenever they're visiting and stuff like that. It's like, oh, he's chipped me out. Like the way I was a comic con dude. Oh, yeah, it really is.
01:23:57
Speaker
It's like the guy, the guy who, who recreates like the sixties Batmobile and then just like toes it around to comic cons, like making $300 a weekend. He just looks miserable, but everything he has is this.
01:24:12
Speaker
like a Halloween city car. His wife already left him. Both of his children don't talk to him anymore. It's literally all he has left. Every time I see it though, I'm going to go, oh shit, that's a Batmobile. Then I'm going to stop and look. It's still going to get my attention every time. He's like Jamie Foxx and collateral, but instead of like a limo company, he's like, someday I'm going to buy a DeLorean.
01:24:42
Speaker
I'm going to turn this thing up to 11. I didn't, because I'm not a car person, I didn't know what DeLorean was an actual vehicle for, uh, until probably into my, uh, mid to late twenties. So you're welcome for another embarrassing bit of information about my lack of knowledge. So people would describe it as a vehicle.
01:25:07
Speaker
Yeah. Dude. Okay. So you, we, before we hit record, we, we talked briefly about your vast library of comic books that you have behind you. It looks like you've got a sampling of everything. Yeah, literally everything. I mean, we have one, there's a couple of homemade shelves, but like these shelves here, I got about another eight or 10 scattered throughout the home.
01:25:35
Speaker
There's a couple of smooth ones behind here that you can't see.
01:25:39
Speaker
A couple of years ago, I mean, I always had a collection. Like I said, it's my one vice. I've been collecting comics since I was little. Since I was about eight, 10, I started becoming a serious comic collector. And most people, most people when they're collecting comics, they hit a point in their life where they meet girls or they go to college and the comics kind of fall away. And then eventually they come back to it or something. I never had that. It was always there. Every Wednesday I was at the comic book store waiting to get my new comics and stuff. And so I've always kind of had them. And then a little bit before COVID, I was like,
01:26:10
Speaker
I'm missing some books I need to start filling holes in my collection. And so I started converting like some of my soft cover ones into hardcover ones and things like that. And I had luckily I had the girlfriend at the time and she's like seriously dude more books she kept me controlled.
01:26:24
Speaker
But then about two years ago, we ended up, she ended up dumping me. And I always made the joke that I was trying to fill a hole because I swear my collection has grown like twice in its size since then. So I have like this massive library throughout my house. Like that comic books, I have single comic books and boxes and a filing cabinet and stuff. I have regular novels, art books. It's, it's a little, I've been looking at it the past couple of weeks and I'm like, I'm a little out of hand. I need to
01:26:50
Speaker
Take a troll a little bit. That breakup point, that's always a seminal moment in every episode of Hoarders. That's when you start pooping in jars. It either makes you or breaks you. Do you still have some of the comics from when you were eight, nine, 10? You held on to all of them? No.
01:27:13
Speaker
No, I did for a long time and I was lucky that I was one of the, I collected more, I enjoyed reading than I did more collecting. So to me, it was just the enjoyment of comics. Reading it and the art, obviously, I was always more drawn to the art and stuff like that. So there came a point to where to get the trade paperbacks and the collections like that, I would take my singles and I would just take a long box to like one of these local stores here in town and just trade it in for store credit and switch over to the graphic novels and stuff.
01:27:41
Speaker
So I managed to get rid of a good chunk of my collection that I had been collecting that. So there's still some books that I've had for years and years and years, but a lot of my older ones I think have already been passed on every now and every few months because I do this thing double dipping because they've got it. The comic companies got us under this fear that if you're not buying the monthly issue, you're not supporting it. So we might not get a collection of the issues. And it's like, well, shoot, I want this. I want
01:28:08
Speaker
the creators to keep putting out this book. So I buy the singles, then I buy the trade, and then maybe they'll do a hardcover collection. And so I buy the hardcover collection. So I'm triple dipping into this stuff. See, I told you it's a problem. So every six months or so, I have to go through all my single issues and go, okay, I got collections of these. Why do I need these? So I got to take them, find someplace in town that I could take them and trade them or donate them or do something just so I'm not literally hoarders and just have like books everywhere, which I already have.
01:28:38
Speaker
before the fire department comes in and intervenes. Seriously, there's been plenty of times where I'm like, what's the integrity on the floor of my house? Is it strong enough for this? It has to be strong enough. Dude, I was actually going to bring that up. My wife, when she was in college, she had a professor who he just is a history professor. And any history book he could get his hands on, he bought.
01:29:04
Speaker
And he had to have someone come into the basement and just add a bunch of structural support under his office because he just had so many books up there. It was starting to warp the floors and actually get dangerous. That's crazy.
01:29:28
Speaker
It's heavy, I guess. Books get pretty heavy. Everyone knows what it's like when you move a box of books out of your house and you're just like, Jesus Christ. Movie was the worst thing. Yeah, when I had to move out of my house and my girlfriend and I got in my place, it's like moving the books. It's like, I seriously, if I move again, this is going to suck. I have that collector's mentality though.
01:29:50
Speaker
It's funny though, like I said, I call it a vice, but it really is. It's the one that I chose. It's where I focus. But when I find something I like, I need to consume it. If it's music and I find an artist, I'm like, I need to hear everything you've ever put out. I need to find and discover all of it. I find a writer. I'm like, what's every book you've written? Same thing with comics. I'm like, this creator is amazing. This artist is amazing. What's everything you put out? So trying to temper that and kind of control that.
01:30:18
Speaker
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Yeah, I'm a little that way too. I can get, I get minor, minor is like somewhat temporary. I always make the joke that like my wife and I can get just, we can get into something just enough to spend a whole bunch of money on gear for it and never do it. That's kind of how I am about everything. But like, uh, yeah, like artists and, um,
01:30:45
Speaker
authors and so like this year I, I haven't, I'm like the worst read person in the world. Like I haven't read anything. Cause we didn't read much when I was in school, you know, at Christian school, but I found out about Cormac McCarthy. And so I've just been blasting through like his entire catalog and like, I've listened, I don't know how many of his books that I've listened to, most of them at this point. And then I've listened to blood meridian three times now.
01:31:14
Speaker
Not in the past like four months. That's a lot for the same book. It's funny, you know, it's funny that you said, listen, because I'm the same way because tattooing most of the day and then the evenings I come home and I have to draw for whatever upcoming tattoos I have. So my reading time is slim because by the time I'm done, it's like, okay, I'll read in like 20 minutes into it. I'm like, God, I'm ready for bed.
01:31:39
Speaker
So my passion to read has got me devouring audio books too. So it's like, if I'm not listening to podcasts, okay, I'm doing my podcast for the day. I guess I'll start in this book. So I'll start listening to this book. So I'm listening to a book. I'm reading a book. I probably have a digital book on my iPad or something that I'm reading here and there. It's like, I don't even know. I don't even know. But yeah, same thing. Audio books will take me far whenever I'm not listening to the podcast.
01:32:06
Speaker
Okay, audiobook, graphic novel crossover. Do you like The Dark Tower? I've listened to the first book of The Dark Tower. I think I have, I think I have like the first four physical books of The Dark Tower. I just haven't found the time to read them yet. I think I even own the graphic novel that they started doing that they did that Marvel put out a few years back.
01:32:30
Speaker
from the dark tower i just haven't sat down to read them yet and i remember listening to the first audiobook but i don't know if my attention to span was there because i feel like i have to go back and re-listen to it again
01:32:42
Speaker
I think I bought those graphic novels too when they came out because I was like really big on it for a minute. And I don't think I've ever read them either. I'm looking at some pictures. It's funny because there's stuff that you know, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say there's stuff that as a geek or whatever subculture you're into that there's like the pillars of stuff that you should read. Stephen King's The Dark Tower is one of those things.
01:33:09
Speaker
Al Rick from Michael Moorcock is one thing. Lord of the Rings, you know, there's all these seminal books. So every now and then it's like, okay, well, this is really popular. Maybe I should give it a try and get into it. And then half the time you either like it or half the time it's like, okay, I own it. It's on my shelf. Eventually I'll get to it. And I feel like there's some things like that. Yeah, there's some things that like you sometimes you have to like hold yourself back on. You're like, I don't,
01:33:36
Speaker
I'm not ready to invest in this right now. I shouldn't start it and then get like a lukewarm feeling from it just because I'm not like ready to listen to it or read it right now. That's why I don't ever read books. I never start. I mean, I haven't read outside of reading for school for a little while, but it's like
01:33:56
Speaker
That's the hardest part. I always want to get sucked into a good novel and then I'm like I have this fear of just not liking it enough and then like what I mean which is stupid because you should just be like oh I'm not enjoying it I won't keep reading it but then I just feel like it it makes it harder for me to
01:34:17
Speaker
Try out a new book. I don't know. It's such a strange because it feels to me like books have always felt like commitments and then I like my wife will read a book in two days and I'm like, huh? That it's an investment though. It better if I because I'm like, oh, I'll read a book in a month. Like I have to devote a month to it. I read three pages and I fall asleep. Like it is so challenging for me to finish a book.
01:34:41
Speaker
and get sucked into it that I'm like I kind of like you know what you just kind of wait for like the perfect thing and it's obviously not coming along but you're like well I don't want to stop here because I something better might be right down the down the road so I'm like I'm not gonna start this book I'll keep looking for something different and then like five years go by and I haven't read a novel and have never even attempted to find one that I would even like and then I'm like well let me just look into some idea like I like these concepts so I'll
01:35:10
Speaker
What kind of novels are there for that and then you're like that that idiot side of me that's just like oh that one's really well known so I know it's like good but it's like that mainstream hatred I guess that plagues you too where you're just like
01:35:28
Speaker
It's hard for me to even though i would probably love some classic books i'm like. I can't bring myself to like read them i don't know why i'll just read mine comp again. What's up with your poser. What do you think is like i know there's a.
01:35:47
Speaker
So many comic book series, but I feel like there's always some that are like, you know, always in the mainstream. And then, you know, those are the ones that kind of fund. Companies ability to like to random smaller things that might not have like the poll or would need to end up maybe having a cult following at some point down the road after they get canceled or someone makes a TV show about it and it has a resurgence. But like.
01:36:13
Speaker
We see a lot of that come up. There's been a lot of TV on graphic novels. What do you think is a super overrated comic book series? And then what do you think is a super underrated one that you've loved and hasn't gotten the attention you think it deserves? Oh, that's a really, really good question. That's a hard one, just because, yeah, because if it's overrated, I'm not going to waste my time on it. No, that sounds really, really
01:36:43
Speaker
Yeah. Um, no, but you know, there's only so much money you have to devote to this hobby as it is. So if something's like super overrated or if it's just not for me, luckily it's like you're saying, it's not like a novel, a novel is kind of investment. You get halfway and you realize that you're not liking it. You're like, but I'm already halfway through. So I can cloud through to the end or I could just give up right now and have that disappointment of like, I finished it. I didn't want to go through and maybe it got better. Maybe it didn't, but.
01:37:12
Speaker
So luckily with comics, because they come out on a monthly basis, you get to try out a book for a month or two. And if it's really not picking up on you, then you're not feeling it. You could drop it and stuff like that. Underrated book. No, my taste isn't like that. I'm not picky. I'm not too fancy or anything like that. I have plenty. I have an entire Batman shelf, an X-Men shelf in there.
01:37:37
Speaker
And so there's, I have all the big, fun ones.
The X-Men's Enduring Appeal
01:37:40
Speaker
And then I have a bunch of small, independent books. It's pretty much whatever, whatever cancel catches my fancy. I guess I didn't really answer that question, but it's a hard one. Yeah.
01:37:51
Speaker
I so obviously we've lived through like the Marvel Comics universe just exploding on the big screen. A lot of people are quite over it, even though they're still making shitloads of money. So that's obviously not the correct perspective. But I was always
01:38:12
Speaker
I was always a huge X-Men fan as a kid. What pulled me into X-Men was obviously the cartoon from the 90s. And then when I was in college, I was probably 20 at the time. I just had a friend who was torrenting everything at that time. Everyone had that friend that torrented everything imaginable.
01:38:37
Speaker
And just because it's there. Yeah. So I was like, you know, I've always wanted to read some of these comics. I'm never going to go out of my way to buy them at this point. A lot of them are not even accessible. I mean, a lot of them were, as you said, like they get free packaged into like soft or hardcover packages with like 10 issue runs and stuff like that. And I started buying up a bunch of those for a bit.
01:38:59
Speaker
There were several that I just couldn't get. He sent me a flash drive with every X-Men comic on it from issue one up through 90
01:39:15
Speaker
98 I think and I blew through them. I just like read and read and read and read and what I thought was so super cool was how well they the the cartoon series like did the biggest story arcs in x-men and that got me so hooked like into that and I always was such a huge x-men fan and then for the rest of my life
01:39:42
Speaker
I had to just like, I couldn't get people to stop bothering me about new Marvel movies, comic book movies that would come out. It's like, I like X-Men.
01:39:53
Speaker
And those movies turned out to be shitty after like X2. And it didn't matter which one came out. It was just like, I'd get messages and texts. Bro, you want to go see the new? I don't. I don't want to see Captain America. I don't want to go see Thor. I don't care about the Avengers. I don't care about any of these. Something about X-Men always like just pulled me in. And I still feel like
01:40:20
Speaker
It's almost like, that's another thing that's so big, right? It's such a big universe at this point where it's like, I wouldn't even know how to get back into it even if I had the time and expendable income to just start grabbing them again. But that's one thing I wish I didn't fall out of because I read through them and then I started
01:40:44
Speaker
signing up to just get them mailed to me monthly and from several different of the story arcs going on. And it was so fun. I loved it. And then you just like let the subscription lapse. And it's like I, that's one thing I really regret is like not staying up on that. It was a lot of fun and wish I stuck.
01:41:04
Speaker
it's it's so popular storytelling which is the x-men is always good comics are one of those things because they do keep you coming back every month so you know a lot of them have cliffhangers or they're telling long stories and stuff to keep you invested and keep you coming but the x-men was one of the things that made him really popular was the characters because it was
01:41:23
Speaker
It was soap opera. This person was sleeping with this person. This person was this person's child and stuff. And it always makes me think of soap operas too because I would stay home sick because I had the stomach ache or whatever reason I had the stomach bug and I would stay home with my stepmom and she would watch her soap operas and stuff. And so I had to get invested for those couple of days that I was
01:41:43
Speaker
But I was there, I'd just get all sucked in, like, what's going on? So the next time you're sick and you're watching and you're like, wait a minute, wasn't this person with this person? No, it's the same way with the X-Men. You can always go back to the X-Men and be like, wait a minute, what happened to this person and this person? And it sucks.
01:41:58
Speaker
sucks you like right in but it's yeah it's always like this person was bad but now they're good but then they're bad again and now they're just kind of an anti-hero it's like they always it back and forth like it's a little it is dramatic as shit isn't it oh yeah that was one of my first that was that was one of my first real pulls into collecting comics because before that it was what i could find it like thrift stores or hand me downs and little things like that but my first comic that i bought off of at a
01:42:29
Speaker
off a spinner rack at a drug store that really got me hooked on comics was an X-Men comic and from there it was just I was in and never looked back. Who do you think is like sometimes movies are a blessing and a curse because like the dark tower movies like a particularly
01:42:50
Speaker
bad adaptation is horrible. Like, is there any, what characters do you think, like what series or whatever do you think would make a good movie and which ones are you like, yeah, it'd be cool to see it on screen, but like I wouldn't trust them to talk to the source material. It sucks because the few that I think would have made
01:43:17
Speaker
really good ones they've done adaptions of and I haven't cared for them like right behind me here there's preacher and they did a TV show of that one and the TV show compared to the comic was kind of like I don't know it wasn't as good at the comic but they've done the boys too where I like the comic book but everybody loves the TV show even people who didn't really care for the comic love
01:43:39
Speaker
the show.
01:43:57
Speaker
major distaste for superheroes. So a lot of it is just poking fun at superheroes and superhero tropes and pushing it as extreme as he really could. And then as you get like halfway through the series and you start ramping up towards the end of the series, it starts finding its heart underneath all that extreme stuff. So, but the show seems to be, it's veered off in a lot of ways, but it makes sense for what they done.
01:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, but at the same time as me being a fan of the series, being a fan of the comic series, I wasn't too big on the show. I guess the changes were enough to bother me. But I've heard people who have hated the comic book, who really loved the show, they feel the show got right with the comic didn't. So it's kind of it's that balance. And there's even there's even the Amazon show to the invincible one, which is a comic book.
01:44:45
Speaker
Which is one of my favorite comic books from like the past 20 years, like superhero comics, because it was just done really, really well. And the cartoon seems to be, they've made changes to it, but it stays pretty close to the comic and has like a lot of the same feel and drive from it that I think they did a really good adaption with it. The Sandman show on Netflix is a really good adaption of the show too. That was a good show too. I haven't watched that yet.
01:45:11
Speaker
And Invincible was fantastic. I loved it.
From Comics to Screen: Adaptations and Challenges
01:45:14
Speaker
And we got season two coming out in November, which is sick. Oh, yeah. And I think with those ones, the big differences is that, like with Sandman, because they have Neil Gaiman, who is the creator of the series, he's the main showrunner on it. So he's able to keep it true to his vision. But there's things that he's changed along the way. He's like, I would have wrote this this way now, 20 years later, this is what I would have changed and then different. So it makes sense with stuff like that. I think Invincible is the same way because
01:45:41
Speaker
the creators still really involved at the show and stuff. He's the same guy that did The Walking Dead and stuff, so. Oh, really? Yeah. Which are two different, completely different genres. So different. Yeah, they were. One of the things you would. Sorry, you get me talking about comics and I just remember. I think this is so fun. And this is this is a topic we probably haven't touched on once in the past few years. So I'm here for this. I. You you had mentioned
01:46:11
Speaker
You got into art when you were young and you had wanted to do comic book art and that didn't, for whatever reason you felt like that was not the right direction for you. And you made it sound like, well, I'm not good enough to do that. That's what I heard, so you can correct that if you want. No, no, that's pretty much, yeah.
01:46:36
Speaker
uh what was it what feels so different about uh just like the what what felt different or inaccessible for you about that and then what felt accessible about getting into uh tattoo tattooing uh comic art leans a lot more it's sequential sequential so you're you gotta know storytelling you gotta be good with
01:47:02
Speaker
you gotta be good with your body language of your characters telling stories, your characters gotta look different, your anatomy's gotta be good, people drawing intense backgrounds and stuff like that, where I could probably do a pretty mediocre comic, but it's not gonna be anywhere near what I think should be good quality art, whereas tattoo art, it's a much more graphic image, where you can still have a sense of storytelling to your image, your image could still tell a story you're not trying to do
01:47:30
Speaker
three panels, conveying whatever emotions and whatever you're doing to push the story aside. It's a lot more, tattooing is a lot more commercial art almost in a way because we're given this one image that the customer wants, whether it's 20 ideas and this one image that we got to put to make them happy and stuff like that. And I think that's where my strength was as an artist was a lot more as just an illustrator.
01:47:57
Speaker
and even almost a graphic designer. After my tattoo apprenticeship, I went into graphic design school and actually have an associate in graphic design advertising art. And I think that helped me a lot when it came to being an artist and just even my sense of design and stuff when it came to my art and improving me as a tattoo artist. Dude, you've had to have
01:48:19
Speaker
had to draw and do some tattoos that you thought were ridiculous over the years.
Unexpected Tattoo Reactions and Client Experiences
01:48:26
Speaker
Like I would love I would love to hear some like tattoo horror stories either people like freaking out or just giving you like a really bad idea or like
01:48:39
Speaker
You know, it's funny because people all the time they ask me like, what's your, what's the craziest? I must not have a very low constitution when it comes to stuff because there's not too much that surprises me. But as far as nightmare clients go, I've had people cussing at the top of their lungs. I've had people screaming to the point that they're apologizing to everybody else in the shop. Like, oh my God, I'm sorry. It's not him. It's me. I swear. And we're just, everybody, myself included, we're all just sitting there rolling our eyes like,
01:49:07
Speaker
It's almost done. It's almost done. Every now and then, it's funny, that was one time I had this girl and it was her first tattoo and she was young. She was maybe like about 18 or so and she was excited to get the tattoo and her boyfriend was excited for her to get the tattoo but she was getting herself so worked up that she was like practically crying. She was sitting on this floor in a panic attack. I'm telling her you don't.
01:49:34
Speaker
have to do this, if you don't want to do this." And her boyfriend's like, come on, babe, it's real small. It'll be done. She's just freaking, and we had like three false starts. It goes to the point where you don't want to do this. It's okay. We don't have to do this. And she finally, she's like, okay, I don't want to do this. You know, I've had people pass out. I've had people throw up. Yeah, it's intense sometimes. Did you get some warning on the throw ups or did they just sort of do it?
01:50:03
Speaker
Every now and then, no, luckily we can usually catch it in time. Sometimes it's like a split second. They're like, I don't feel good. I'm going to throw up. And you're like, you're just reaching with your glove to drag the trash as close as you can to them. You're like, here, throw up in this. Because what it is is you get, you're so worked up that you get almost like a glue close drop. So if you're a diabetic, it would be the same thing as like a low blood sugar drop. So you get real clammy, lightheaded, all the color drains from your face.
01:50:29
Speaker
you feel like you're going to pass out or you feel like you're going to throw up or crap yourself, you get all these things. So sometimes I've gone to the point to where I warn clients, like if you start feeling clammy or lightheaded in any way, let me know. We'll get you some water, some sugar, but sometimes that doesn't work for people. And they're just like, I'm not feeling good. And next thing you know, they're either about ready to topple over and you're trying to catch them or like that where you have to drag the trash can and they're just, and you're just like, oh, we're going to be throwing that.
01:50:55
Speaker
We a friend and I were just talking about how so I I don't have any tattoos I have Just started there's a I just finally had I've been looking around for an artist whose work in this area that I like but I'm so Okay, I think we can parallel my The reason I don't start books to also the same reason I don't have a tattoo I'm like terrified that like it has to be perfect. I have to like
01:51:25
Speaker
people be like this is a good artist and I'll look at their website and I'm like sure but like also I don't see it and go I love it I'm here I'll do it like and until I see that I'm not interested so I finally found one
01:51:40
Speaker
in the Boston area that I messaged and I'm like, I wanna, I'm moving forward with it. Or I believe I am, we'll see. I don't follow through on things, great. But so I was talking to my friend who has several tattoos and I was like, man, another fear is like that, you know, as soon as I hit you with the, like as soon as I hit you with it, you're gonna like,
01:52:08
Speaker
And you flinch and that you'll end up with like a ridiculous line or something that they have to figure out how to cover up is and my friend was like I he's like I always feel that way before I get one and then I never do because you're kind of you're like your body has it like your body kind of just knows not to do that, but I'm wondering if that's always true or has anyone flinched and ended up with You guys
01:52:32
Speaker
obviously accommodate for movement pretty well and I think that I think I think being a tattoo artist is something that people find to be one of the coolest jobs I think no one no one meets a tattoo artist isn't like as a bunch of questions and thinks it's fucking sick so but now I'm being now I'm going off on tangent do has anyone ever flinched in like fucked up like their tattoo I've been doing it long enough that
01:53:01
Speaker
I can usually tell when the body jumps that I know to lift my hand and catch it. But every now and then there's those people that you're working on and they just jumped so hard. And that clean line that you're trying to do just goes and you just sigh.
01:53:15
Speaker
And you kind of look at it and you kind of just, you kind of just fix it up. Every now and then there's been people that have had uncontrolled, like I've had a couple people where I'm tattooing, say like their calf or something and their foot's literally going like this. I'm, I'm trying to hold it down and work and I'm pulling my line like a 16th at a time. Cause every time I touch them, they're doing this and it's fighting me that I've had to tell them, you know, if you stayed still, this would be a lot better. I did what I can, but.
01:53:44
Speaker
This is what you got. Most of the time, they're like, sorry, sorry, sorry. But every now and then, they do those hard jumps where you get that squiggly line. You're like, I tried to fix that. Just so you know, that's on you. You should have stayed still. You should be like, I was telling you to.
01:53:58
Speaker
But it's like for you, you would be surprised how many people I hear that are like, I love tattoos and I'd like to get a tattoo. I just don't think I could commit to having something on my body for the rest of my life. And there's so many people that I've seen that are like that. I feel like you should stop overthinking it and just go with the classic.
01:54:22
Speaker
a little anchor right on your pubis chub or maybe like a rose like on the back of your calf. Yeah.
01:54:31
Speaker
Yeah, classic mom tattoo. You can never go wrong with that. I like when people get enough tattoos where they can just start doing anything they want and it doesn't matter. That, I think, is the coolest lane to be in. When you start out with silly tattoos, you kind of look like an asshole or just like a crust punk. A lot of crust punks went in that direction.
01:54:54
Speaker
When you finally just have enough and it's just like fuck it not like you can just get anything anytime whenever you want is pretty cool but it just takes too long to get there but I feel like it's less about like the idea or concept of something that I want forever like
01:55:10
Speaker
What do I like that I'll want on my body forever? That's kind of irrelevant to me. And I'm glad I went through my Christian phase before getting a bunch of like shitty Christian tattoos. That would have been interest crosses and stuff. Yeah.
01:55:25
Speaker
I had some bad ideas, real bad ideas. But I feel like as long as you find the artist that you like and the art is dope, to me, the concept is less relevant than just the quality of the art. And I feel like now that's why, because even so many ideas I have, my wife is like, that's kind of a dumb idea. I'm like, well,
01:55:55
Speaker
like it and even if I don't like John it'll still it'll still look cool and that's all that matters
01:56:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, there's plenty of, there's plenty of people I tattoo that all my tattoos have meaning and this one's for this and this. And most of us, especially like tattoo artists, a lot of us, so that was just fucking cool. That was a cool idea we had and we decided to do it. Most of my stuff that I have on my body is just all, oh, that's cool. I want to do that. And you know, I've seen some of the stupidest tattoos because tattoo artists are like, ah, you know, it's funny. We should do this. And the other tattoo is like, all right, let's do it. You know?
01:56:28
Speaker
You have plenty of friends. When you're a tattoo artist, you have plenty of friends that whenever you toss out stupid ideas, there's always somebody who's like, yeah, let's do that. And you, you brush shoulders with so many artists that you know and respect and like, some of it's just wanting them wanting their work done too. It's another, it's another level of collecting on this person's dope. I want something from them. You know, there's plenty, there's plenty of people that I tattoo and they're just like, you're my artist. I'm going to come to you for everything. But.
01:56:57
Speaker
then like myself and even so many other people that I tattooed too, where they're like, I want to get tattooed by everybody at the shop and stuff like that. And it's like, yeah, do that, experience it, go get all this different art and do, I'm not, you don't have to, like, how dare you cheat on me with other artists, you know, nothing like that. I'm like, hell yeah, go do it. Dude, I would love to be like a magic eight ball of tattoo ideas for people. I feel like I could do that really well.
01:57:24
Speaker
Anytime somebody's deliberating, you just send me a text and I just spit out an idea. Like a chain link fence but made of sausage. We have this one artist at our shop and he's so good when it comes to turn of phrases and stuff or even just taking two things like that, like sausage and chain link fence.
01:57:51
Speaker
he will completely just draw something around that idea. And it's all you always look at it, you just go, that is ridiculous. But that is the dopest image I've ever seen in my life. Some people are so good at that. And it trips me out, it blows my mind. But yeah, he's, we would have a cup, two cups and every year short an idea and just have different ideas and I'm gonna just pull two random images, you got to make something out of them. And every time you would just
01:58:16
Speaker
It's like, oh, you son of a bitch. He tattooed this one, a friend of ours, all of ours.
01:58:22
Speaker
He did like a pirate booty and it was literally somebody, a booty with like where it's chopped off, like a booty torso. So it's basically like the waist, the booty up to the top of the thighs and then it was like decked out like a pirate. It's like stuff like that. It's just what the hell? Like a leggings mannequin in a Latino store? Yeah, exactly.
01:58:49
Speaker
I wouldn't be so funny if I didn't have to drive by so many places like that growing up. Dude, they're keeping the half mannequin trade in business, for sure. Oh, yeah. Is there anything that you being in that industry and hearing and seeing so many ideas, spitballed and storyboarded, is there anything that immediately, when you hear it, you're like,
01:59:17
Speaker
That is super lame and I hate it. Oh, yeah. A lot of it comes from clients.
01:59:24
Speaker
which I don't think anybody's going to hear this, you know what I mean? But sometimes, cause a lot of it gets filtered where I have the people that message me directly and that talk to me directly. But a lot of the stuff that comes to the shop, it goes through our counter person and she'll look at emails and she'll be like, what do you think of this? Does it sound like something you want to do? And you just see it and you see the customer's ideas and you're just like, yeah, no, that's not for me. I'm not doing that. So it happened. It happens quite a few times a week. You'd be surprised.
01:59:51
Speaker
Every now and then it's something that I just look at and go, oh yeah, I can't do that. That's like far above my ability to do, but we could recommend it. But most of the time it's like.
02:00:00
Speaker
They want to get what? No, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And, and, and tattooing is not, we're not special enough that we're, that we were not affected by trends too. So tattooing goes through trends too. So something becomes popular all of a sudden, everybody wants that. And you realize that you've tattooed this, this one tattoo or this certain style of tattoos so much for the past few months, you're just like, no more.
02:00:27
Speaker
No more bringing you like their head hardy jeans you like the back pocket on my chest.
02:00:34
Speaker
Exactly. Like the biggest ones you see are like lions and roses and stopwatches, stuff like that. Trees for some reason, I do a lot of trees. That was, there was the whole thing. It seems like it's slowly starting to trickle down, but where everybody wants like the nature scene on their arm. So it'll just be a silhouette of a forest just wrapping around like their arm or something. And
02:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's idea for like the back window of your grand Cherokee, maybe then your arm. Yeah. I love gun sticker and Trump.
02:01:12
Speaker
It makes for a better tire cover on the back of your Jeep Wrangler. It's funny that you mention lions because Instagram, anytime you hit the search button, it just shows you everything it thinks you want to see. And I see constantly lions on shoulders.
02:01:35
Speaker
Um, it's like lions, you mentioned stopwatches. I feel like compasses have always been huge since I was in college. I just have known countless people to get some variation of like a compass tattoo. Um, but yeah, it's, it, that is interesting to think of it as trends and that you actually end up tattooing variations of the same thing. So right. This part is trying to make them different because there's like only so many, unless I'm out in nature and actually protect.
02:02:05
Speaker
photographing like lions in the wild and stuff. There's only so deep into Google or the library that I could research pictures to find different lions. Just go to Google and look at lion tattoos and look at how many of those tattoos you can see use the same reference for each one.
02:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, at some point, you just if it's like if you're really attached to that idea, like there's tattoo artists who have their own unique, everyone has their own unique style. So at that point, it's just like, I'm getting a redundant idea. So I just need to find the absolute best person to do it. So it stands out artistically, I guess. And I always try because there's people that'll come to you in their
02:02:46
Speaker
they'll show you like a picture on their phone and they're not showing you like a picture or something like they're showing you a picture of somebody else's tattoo that they like and you're like okay so this is a tattoo that somebody already has on them so let me so the only thing I can ever really do most of the time if it's something extremely unique that that artist did for this person you usually tell them that's that's probably not for you that's something that was specifically created for this person let's do something else but most of the time if it's like
Tattoo Trends and Unique Designs
02:03:15
Speaker
a day of the dead girl with roses or something that they're showing a tattoo, I will at least try to put my own spin on it. I'll use my own reference for things. I'll rebuild it to where the way they want it, but I'll try to do everything.
02:03:29
Speaker
by my own hand as opposed to just taking the tattoo image and copying it out, right? Which you see a lot of the times because it's funny because there's pages I follow, tattoo pages where they'll show people that copied other people's tattoos and it'll be like a chest tattoo and it had like the nipple in it. So whenever they did the bad copy of it, the copy had like the little nipple in the tattoo too.
02:03:54
Speaker
You got some other dude's nipple tattooed above your own nipple. It's hilarious. I want to throw out some things and you tell me if you've been a part of tattoos that included these things. Okay. Some sort of the joker quote or reference or picture.
02:04:22
Speaker
Um, I've done, I've done quite a few jokers. I've done the ha ha ha's from the joker. I've done images of the joker comic book. I haven't done any of the movie ones, but I've done comic book joker quite a few times. One with the camera, the killing joke one. I've done that one once.
02:04:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Have you ever tattooed someone's fursona on them? Their persona? They're like, you know, they're a furry. I've been No, no, no. Luckily, I haven't done anything like that. I've tattooed people that have pinup portraits of themselves on them. I've seen that a few times. Old. They got themselves tattooed on themselves.
02:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, but like as a pinup and stuff like that. That's nuts. That's a that's a level of nuts that I've never really even thought about before. That's a handful of times. Have you ever tattooed a constitution on someone?
02:05:28
Speaker
I've done the opening statement from the Bill of Rights. I've done my fair share of that people that take quotes and stuff from the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. I've done Bible quotes.
02:05:44
Speaker
not just like the Leviticus 13, 16, whatever, anything like that, but like full on quotes. And we have to tell people like, if you want, if you want this whole thing, it's going to have to be about like this big because there's no way you're fitting it in an area this big to actually heal and look good over time. So yeah, I've done like entire ribcages with just Bible quotes and
02:06:07
Speaker
constant Bill of Rights quotes and stuff. Giant text tattoos of always are very like some words, obviously fine. But when it's like a huge amount of text, it's like maybe take that idea and turn it into a picture. That would have probably been a little bit better for you. What about I'm guessing you've done plenty of American Eagles cloaked in flags or some variation of a flag behind an eagle.
02:06:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Eagles, flags. I've done as many Patriot ads. We actually have a giant Air Force base here in Albuquerque, so we get plenty of military people. So I've done a lot of my share of that stuff. Oh, yeah.
02:06:50
Speaker
I want you to match the, I want my arm to have the same artwork as the airbrush design on my road glide. You'd be surprised. You'd be surprised. Molan Labe, have you done that one? Yep, I have. I've done that one quite a few times. I've done variations on that one too, where they have like the Spartan soldier going with it and everything too. Portrait of Donald Trump.
02:07:19
Speaker
No, thank God. Any other political figure? No, luckily nobody's ever asked me for a political figure. I remember those that we had a local artist here in town.
02:07:34
Speaker
that I know that whenever Bernie was at the whatever it was, and he was sitting there in his coat with his little on his chair that everybody made the meme out of. One of our local artists was one of the first ones to tattoo that image. I remember it went like viral for it. But oh, that's likely I've never done. I've never done that. I've done. You've done Ted Bundy. Yeah.
02:08:00
Speaker
Yikes. I've done my fair share of portraits, whether they be like actors and movie stars and things like that, serial killers and stuff, horror movie things, but luckily I stayed away from political. That's taking the I Like True Crime podcast as a persona. That's taking it too far when you're having murderers tattooed on yourself. Yeah, yeah. With a disconnect from what actually happened and just it being strictly entertainment for you at that point.
02:08:28
Speaker
Yeah, you're like, I wanted his picture because I'm fascinated by the way he raped. Justice for Ted. What about like strange product placement? I have done
02:08:48
Speaker
I've done my share of logos, whether they're sports teams, there was a time whenever that like famous star, the family's, whatever it was, it was like a sharp angular F. I think it was famous something and I don't remember what it was. I did quite a few of those and yeah, every now and then there's a brand or something that becomes just absolutely popular.
02:09:09
Speaker
I haven't done anything ridiculous where somebody's getting like a Mountain Dew logo and they're just like, I love Mountain Dew or anything like that. Luckily, but people that want like Versace and Louis Vuitton and things like that on them. Okay. So no KFC Taco Bell. Luckily nothing. Yeah. Never say never.
02:09:37
Speaker
Cause most of the time people are coming, are you like, you sure you want this? And they're like, yeah. All right then. I guess we're doing this. If you're a tattoo artist is asking if you're sure it's just a bet. Just take the hint. It's a bad idea. Go home and rethink it. Exactly. Most of the time, you know, but they're never asking, are you sure? Cause it's the most bad-ass tattoo they've seen. Exactly. Are you sure you're cool enough for this awesome tattoo?
02:10:04
Speaker
It's like, are you sure you want to do this? You got to think about this, especially like young kids that want to tattoo their hands or their throats or their face or something. It's like, are you sure you're still kind of young? You got a whole life ahead of you. It's not, you try your best to talk them out of it. The conversion is always a good decision, you know? Yeah, right. What about, okay, have you overwritten old, like someone's tattoo that they regretted?
02:10:31
Speaker
Oh yeah, all the time. All the time. That's frequent. Definitely. Is it usually like a... No regrets. Yes, this is a good decision. No, it's nothing like that. Usually it's like names, so breakups and stuff. Of course. It's so wild what people think is a good idea. You come face to face with bad ideas that people think are good ideas more than anyone else in the general public. Oh yeah.
02:11:02
Speaker
Okay, one last one. Have you ever, because I'm sure you get a lot of, it's a confessional in the tattoo chair, I'm sure. So have you ever been giving someone a tattoo and they're telling you the story of why they did it? Like, yeah, my girl wants to split and I just want to show her how much she means to me by getting this tattoo.
02:11:34
Speaker
uh yeah i have seen that a few times this is good this is going to save our relationship right here i'm getting this tattoo hopefully hopefully it makes her not mad at me i've had that happen a few times and yeah it doesn't go the way they want it to go
02:11:50
Speaker
Wow. That is so, dude, the thought process behind that is hard to, it's like, it's just be a little self-reflective and realize that it's that thought process that's probably ending your relationship. It's great for you though. That's repeat business guaranteed. Like, you want me to, uh, you know, just turn this into like, uh, you know, a muscle car.
02:12:17
Speaker
with a crazy rat driving it, like come back in six months, you know? Exactly. For the longest time, for like half my career, people came in and they wanted like a name of their significant other or something. You try to tell them, you know, are you sure? Are you sure this is really something you want? There's always that like jinx to it where eventually it's going to cause like, you're not meant to be by doing this and stuff.
02:12:42
Speaker
So a lot of the times I tell people, you know, you'd walk them through the whole spiel, but then it hit a point to where you realize that most people didn't care. So you just stop. I just stopped. It's like, this is what you want. All right, let's do it. And then if they come back to get it covered up, well.
02:12:57
Speaker
Hey, perfect. Double price to get it covered. Exactly. Like you knew better, but I'm one to talk. I've done it. I've had two of my ex-wives names on me and even knowing better, I still did it and I had to cover them up myself. Dude, number three, go for the gusto and do your forehead. Right? Just really put it out there. Show my commitment.
02:13:26
Speaker
I really appreciate your self-disclosure here. That shows you're an absolute real one, just not hiding it. You're also part of the group that you're making fun of a little bit, and I like that. Oh yeah. I deserve the back of my neck for my third love, Christine. May this last forever. Third time's a charm. Oh yeah.
02:13:51
Speaker
Carlos, this has been a lot of fun, man. I really appreciate you joining us. It's been great meeting you, getting to talk to you for the past hour and a half. Appreciate you, man. I've enjoyed our interactions online and it's nice to do this.
02:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you guys for having me on. Like I said, I really enjoy listening to the podcast and stuff. Usually whenever you guys drop the new episode that day, that next day, I'm pretty much listening to it. I enjoy it. Thank you. Whenever you have on the more interesting couples going around singing around the country.
02:14:28
Speaker
My favorite Christian influencer. Yeah. That was a good time. Yeah. No, but I do. I appreciate you guys having me on. It was a good time. Well, where can people follow you? Uh, you can follow me on Instagram is usually the best way. Stolen heart tattoo is the best way to find me. You'll find all my fun tattoos and stuff that I post right now. I'm taking part in the Inktober challenge. So every day has just been a different piece of art freaking off of a
02:14:57
Speaker
a prompt that's been given to us by some lists. Then you can look at my stories, which are absolute chaos and maddening and all over the place. That's where I put all the fun stuff. The page is professional and then the stories are wild. If you're in the Albuquerque area, going to pass through, maybe taking a vacation, definitely look them up if you're looking for a new tattoo as well. Yeah, you want to get some choker hahaha on the back of your left hand.
02:15:21
Speaker
Yep. I've done, I've done this. I've done the Joker mouth that matches up like that too. Well, thank you for your service, Carl. And we will see you next time.
02:15:52
Speaker
you