A Trip To The Tattoo Parlor

A: Lioux, Elle, and I all decided to commemorate our excursion this time around with some fresh ink. Marconi decided to be a douche nozzle and not participate in this oh-so-fun activity. We went to a reputable place right near where we were staying, Painful Pete’s.

Painful Pete, as we found out, had a long and storied career. His apprenticeship began at an early age, when at 14 he started studying the art of body adornment under the tutelage of Angry Artie in Des Moines. Artie’s shop was one of the best known in that part of the country, and Pete saw quite a bit of action in those days. He stayed on for 8 full days, experiencing a lifetime of knowledge in that time.

From there he traveled to Hong Kong, to study Asian-inspired design and get a feel for the art on that side of the world. He returned with a series of new pieces that he would soon introduce to the western world, including the dragon, and the unicorn. The weekend spent in the Orient would serve him well throughout his life.

He returned, slightly older, somewhat wiser, but with no roots. He got a chair in a shop in Bayonne, and over the course of 11 hours he inked a jaw-dropping 327 people on a very special and busy Memorial Day. He even gave himself a tattoo to remember the special achievement, a flag with an eagle next to it.

He finally opened his own shop, at the age of 15, just after his birthday on June 1, in a small suburb of Richmond known as Glen Allen. To this day he operates one of the most well-regarded and widely respected temporary tattoo parlors on the entire east coast of the US.

Thanks, Pete.

The Breakfast Club

L: After our brief visit to the Parthenon, we had an early business breakfast with our entertainment lawyer [link] from the night before. We decided to meet at a little arsty, quirky coffee place called Bongo Java Café.

We had originally planned on meeting at 11:00 AMish, but ever the professionals, we got there a little early. It was one of those over the counter kinda ordering places. You walk up to the counter, place your order and they give you a little stand to put on your table, so they can find you when your food is ready. We all studied the menu on the huge colorful blackboard behind the counter and placed our orders individually.

Instead of using numbers for the order stands, Bongo Java Café uses mythological creatures and artwork. Marconi wasn’t hungry and just got bottled water, so he didn’t get a stand. Alienwhere, ordering just before me, was handed “Dragon”. Getting back to the table I noticed Elle had gotten “Phoenix”.





Alienwhere: “What’d you get Lioux?”



[embarrassed silence]

Lioux: “Hey, Gnomes are pretty bad ass too!”

Alienwhere: “You really are a Lioux Zhurr.”

Anyhow shortly after sitting down our lawyer arrived for the breakfast meeting. It had been two years since we were last in Nashville and had a sit down meeting with him. He was really impressed with our show from the night before and the crowd we drew. He wanted to know more about other shows we’ve done, how things were going with our German label, what our immediate and future plans are for Sister Kisser.

He also wanted to know more about our online presence and what we were doing to promote ourselves on the interwebs. He nearly fell out of his chair when we told him our band’s MySpace has nearly 45,000 “friends”, more and more of which have been coming to the shows because of having heard of us on the MS.

Our lawyer went on to say that he’s been pitching some of our music to a few music supervisors out in L.A. and was telling us about this film that he submitted some material for called “Trailer Park Terror” or something like that. [Sounds like a pretty horrible B movie to me, but it’s supposed to have some pretty big Hollywood names attached to the project].

The meeting went very well and was very productive. We talked about a lot of plans we have for the future, near and far. Alas, we ended up having to cut it a bit short as Sister Kisser needed to be on the road by 12:00 PMish heading to Asheville in order to get there on time, relax a little and head to club.