I can’t believe they fired Kat Von D. from Miami Ink.
Or, rather, I couldn’t believe it until they ran the promo for LA Ink afterwards. But, Jesus, did they have to spend an episode (and several earlier episodes) trashing her, then firing her, and filming her in tears, before they launched her on her own?
Though I have to say that I’ve been very disappointed in the Discovery family of channels in the past few years in terms of their female-visibility quotient. Mythbusters had equal numbers of male and female on-air personas during the second season (and each of the women had different relevant skills), then it got rid of Scottie, and Christine left, leaving Kari, whose main purpose seems to be cheesecake-to-the-geeks (though, to be fair, she is a talented artist even though her screaming at surprising events leaves me cold). Now, though, there’s Jess, who’s the newest Mythtern, though without the camera time of Christine.
But other than that — the women featured by the Discovery networks (save on Animal Planet, where they’re animal handlers or animal-welfare agents, or animal rescuers, or whatnot) tend to be the self-sacrificing mothers of either children who are bigger than they are (Little People, Big World), or who outnumber them to some scary extent (16 Children…) or who’ve lost lost large amounts of weight, usually through surgery (various “look at the freaks!” Sunday-night weight-loss shows). Or, you know, Stacy London.
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Did they get rid of Scottie, or did she leave? She wasn’t getting to do a lot of her specialty, metalworking, in the course of the experiments, so I thought she must have just left. On her MySpace she mentions she doesn’t like TV.
theres also the doctor on “honey, were killing the kids” and i looooove her. she doesnt take no for an answer, no matter how ‘daddy knows best’ the family is. i havent watched trading spaces or any of the home renovation shows in a long time, but those shows always seemed to feature some pretty tough women. and i cant help it, i LOVE stacy london. she reminds me of a superhero with that grey streak in her hair, and the way she takes these people who hate their bodies and who just seem to have acepted that life will consist of sweatpants and oversized tshirts and she shows them that, no, they can look wonderful, no matter their size or shape. i do however hate the episodes where they make people over not becos they are frumpy or unkempt, but becos they have a quirky nontraditional style. that always pisses me off.
I think Zettaichan is right — they always said that Scottie left on her own because the TV thing was taking too much time away from what she really wanted to do (and I don’t think she particularly liked being on TV). I was sad to see her go, but I love Grant, so I figure life is full of tradeoffs.
But, yeah, overall the Discovery Channel is the Testosterone Overload Network for guys who are insecure in their masculinity, so they have to watch “American Choppers” so they can pretend to be Paul Sr. Some of the hosts have fun with it — I like how Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” totally undercuts the whole “manly man” thing — but most of them totally buy into it.
Creepiest host? The host of “Future Weapons.” Could he be any more of a Jeff Gannon wanna-be?
Mr. Mnemo just reminded me that not only does Kat Von D. live here in Los Angeles, he actually saw her working out at our gym down the street (and we’re not in a fashionable part of LA County). So it may partly have been that the commute was getting to her.
Oh, and now he’s going off on a spontaneous rant about how much he loved Scottie and how much he misses her on “Mythbusters” without any prompting from me. This is why I married him. :-)
I loved Scottie too!
On the Science Channel there was (might still be, I don’t watch TV much anymore) a science news program hosted by a rather brilliant woman. I learned that chocolate has THC in it from that program :).
I enjoy Kari on Mythbusters – she does scream a fair amount, but she also doesn’t shrink away from the potentially dangerous stunts whent they have them, and her cheesecakeness has never seemed particularly played up to me; it’s always felt to me that she dresses the way she does because it’s just how she dresses (not because she was handed cutesy t-shirts by an executive), and she’s respected by the male cast members, which is also a nice change from a lot of other shows.
Then again, last week I ran across “Discover Man-Day Monday” commercials, and was reeeeeally quite irritated.
I saw the episode where Kat got into trouble:
She mouthed off to Paul Sr.’s wife.
They were having a conference call about what tattoos the American Choppers folks wanted to get, and his wife mentioned an armband.
Kat, already annoyed that Paul Sr. didn’t know what he wanted as of the conference call, snarked to his wife that, “[she] hadn’t done armbands since she was sixteen.”
A boneheaded move, from a customer service perspective. Enough to fire her? Dunno.
She definitely never seemed like a good fit with the rest of the studio. They often forgot to call her if they were all going out, she was having trouble making friends in the area, etc…
So it’s entirely possible this was a long time coming.
(I hope it was more a “I’m out, this isn’t working for me” than a “You’re fired.”)
Knowing nothing about the show in question (thank God), I will register a more generalized complaint about my educational suite of channels: I definitely don’t want to hear about UFOs, The Knights Templar, Atlantis, or the goddamned motherfucking DaVinci Code, either in their own program or gratuitously inserted into a legitimate program in order to spice it up.
Did they get rid of Scottie, or did she leave?
Scottie’s departure remains ambiguous. Christine openly says she left on her own accord. I’m not really sure how much more “equal” you could make the show when the build team is three people. Jamie said many times before he hires people based on talent and his support for local artists/engineers. I think it’s great he hired Jess after her work in the death ray episode. (And on the dumb guy level, I think she’s cuter than Kari so that’s part of my “put her on the air more” stance)
Not sure what position to take on the Kari-ogling issue, because she sort of 180′ed on her previous stance on not wanting to be eye candy as soon as Stuff cut her a check. Obviously that’s her right and it’s not anything to praise or condemn, but she did in fact pose for a magazine in which its stated purpose is to offer pictures of half-naked women to look at.
My hope was they both would realize the best thing for business and friendship purposes was to reach the place where Kat moved on in the near future, but had an open chair when either needed the help of the other. From the get go Amni and Kat had a bad mix of personalities and bad timing.
Amni seemed to interested in putting down roots and growing to into a relatively stable life at work and home. Miami Ink and his other projects are to him hard won rewards for the time and effort he put in over the years. Amni is also pretty patricentric, and it is seen in his different mannerisms when dealing with his male clients and female clients. This may be from the magic of editing, but I see him getting under the skin of the guys he tattoos more infrequently then the women he tattoos. Combine that with his authoritarian streak, and any woman will have difficulty becoming a full partner with him in any aspect.
Kat did not help herself much in her approach. She didn’t seem to get how much crap Amni had gone through to get to the place he was at. Kat had 10yrs+ of experience and an amazing talent, but she never seemed to understand the place she got to in 10 years was more then many before her got in their lifetime. 10 years ago if tattoos were on TV, they were predominately seen on National Geographic specials and the makers of such were not held to be artists worthy of praise. Kat seemed to be catching on as the show progressed, but the damage had been done to her relationship with Amni and to a much lesser extent the others.
All in all Amni didn’t fully understand position Kat had, and Kat did not fully comprehend the position Amni was at. That aside, Miami Ink is a wonderful show in that is pretty much documenting the change in the cultural values or more accurately the cultural evaluation of tattoos in America.
I love Muthbusters and Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch, but I hate how that block of programming is promoted on the Discovery Channel. The ad where the guy is supposedly “manly” for lying about chewing off his own thigh when trapped in a snow storm? Ugh. It makes me feel a bit left out because I love those shows, too.
My TV-viewing consists mostly of the Discovery Channel, Travel Channel and Food Network. The Travel Channel and Food Network are also pretty bad when it comes to diverse roles of female hosts on their shows. Just once, I’d like to see a woman host a show about traveling to all different countries and really getting into the culture and trying new things- instead of just staying in hotels and shopping. “Globetrekkers” does a good job with getting their female hosts out and about, but that show was produced back in the 90s, I believe.
I love Anthony Bourdain, and Andrew Zimmerman is pretty good (though I wish his definition of “strange foods” would extend beyond “let’s see how many weird animals I can eat!”), but just once I’d like to see a woman take their place as the intrepid, snarky culinary traveller. Most of the women on the Food Network host programs about cooking dinner for your husband and six kids in 30 minutes. Ugh.
Thanks for the spoiler warning. I have it on Tivo.
If you can’t handle a little sass from your tattoo artist, then maybe you should rethink the whole idea of getting a tattoo.
Fair enough!
I also think Paul Sr’s not used to getting sassed.
How’s that show with Joan Cusack?
Oh, like you couldn’t have figured it out from the promos.
The thing with Paul Sr.’s girlfriend Beth is not so much that she made a snarky comment, but that Ami kept harping on it and harping on it, and trashing her to Paul Sr. and Beth long after everyone else had moved on. Nunez even said it was time to move on, though he never seems to actually do anything about it.
And then Ami has the gall to whine that Kat trashes *him.*
From the next-season promos, though, Garver looks *pissed.* Kat was his protege, after all, and he brought her there when Brass broke his arm. I’m guessing the producers pushed them to keep her on even when it was clear it wasn’t working. Maybe Garver will turn up on Kat’s show, since IIRC, he’s actually based in LA.
Certainly not by anyone other than Paulie or Mikey. Everyone else just puts their heads down when he’s in a mood and tries to keep their jobs. Paulie and Mikey know he’ can’t do anything to them.
ive got a tattoo of bela lugosi that kat did when she was a guest artist at a shop in baltimore last year. shes really nice, but i dont think u wanna know how much she charges hah
I saw just a bit of that episode, or one of them, where one of the guys was harping on her because she didn’t want to do a certain style of tattoo, didn’t have proficiency at it, and didn’t want to tattoo people in that style to gain proficiency.
Personally, I can’t believe the guy. I don’t want somebody tattooing me if they don’t like doing, or are not proficient at, the style of tattoo I want! To me there’s a significant difference between art that someone loves creating and art that someone performs as a tedious chore, and I fully expect that if a tattoo artist is not “into” what I want, they refer me to someone who is, rather than inking me with the same enthusiasm as if they’re balancing their checkbooks.
Zuzu, I saw this coming to a head a while ago, because Ami and Kat are both people that have difficulty with conflict, and the promo basically gave it away, so yeah, you didn’t tell me much that I didn’t know.
I wonder if Ami and Nunez realize how bad it would be to both send Kat packing and alienate Garver. Kat is a celebrity in her own right and an artist with a following; and Garver has huge credibility and name recognition. I’m not sure that Ami can match that and draw enough skin to keep the shop profitable without them; and let’s face it, I don’t think that Nunez or Darren are pulling big-dollar jobs to the store.
I want to know…
totally, totally agree, kyra. ami is so crazy about doing all the styles that anyone would ever want, i betcha he’d do a nazi tattoo. at least kat has some boundaries!
fashionablyevil-
for a portrait going from my hip to the middle of my thigh (its on the side)- 600$. there i said it.
wanna seeee?
haha thats too creepy, im sorry.
Oh, that’s not too bad at all. I’ve heard of worse.
Nah, it’s not. Thanks for sharing. I had no idea tattooing could be so lucrative (although I assume it’s not that good for everyone). Why didn’t they mention this at high school career day (which at my school was most notable for the lawyer proclaiming “whoever dies with the most toys, wins.”)?
She has a post up on her Myspace page discussing what was left out of the American Chopper incident.
My two favorite Mikey vs. Paul Sr. comments:
“Yeah, Dad, the CIA broke into your office and hid the tools from you.”
“First, apologize for calling me fat.”
Okay, that second one may have been mostly funny in context, but it really was damn funny. I love me some Mikey.
If I may complain about the Discovery Channel (and perhaps TLC and even Animal Planet):
I can’t stand how so many of their shows just get things wrong or go off on stupid tangents or omit data or etc. I was watching something on the Vandals attacking the Roman empire and their persecution of the “Catholic Christians.” It was mentioned that their beliefs were “Arian,” but the word “Christian” was never used in conjunction with this–it was always “Arianism” with no qualifiers or hints that Arianism was a very big branch of Christianity at the time.
Or all those “most extreme” shows about animals where they talk about an animal for 5 minutes, then spend the next 5 on some tangent that’s barely related. “You know, monkeys are smart, but they can’t solve a Rubik’s Cube. Watch this guy solve one in 12 seconds… etc.”
And all those shows about Nostradamus (sp?), UFOs, etc. (basically, what norbizness said above)… can’t stand them. They once had an entire hour-long documentary about some sort of really intelligent and odd-looking monkey that was supposedly thought to be “the missing link.” The whole show was devoted to asking this question and documenting just what the monkey could do, where it had lived, how it looked, and how scientists responded to it at the time. Then, in the last 5 minutes of the show, it was revealed that it was all a hoax and the owners had just shaved the monkey and trained it to do certain strange things like walk upright. There was not a single iota of an inkling that this was the case during the whole rest of the program–it was presented as if it the monkey had actually been a real anomaly and that it was still a question today.
I could go on, now that I’ve started thinking about the programs I’ve seen (I hate the Duggers), but I won’t.
/end rant
Most tattoo places I know of charge by the hour, and that rate (even in mid-America) usually runs about $100/hour. I have a good-sized cardinal covering my lower back, and it cost $350 (=3.5 hours).
sheesh. my friend is my tattoo artist and i just pay her whatever when i have money. she did my whole back which took about 7 months (not sure about hours, but we did 5-8 a session…and about hmm, id say 10-12 sessions) and i ended up paying her 1000$. shes really amazing! (pssst…www.ghostprint.com…wink)
oh and the travel channel kicks discovery’s ass.
I love What Not to Wear with a goofy and unqualified love. Every episode has catharsis and a happy ending!
I managed to get my tattoo for $50, I think, but it’s a circle of half-inch high black text smaller than my palm and thus wasn’t complex enough to bump the price up past supplies and basic labor. I think it took less than an hour, maybe half an hour.
I’ve seen Ami turn people away. He only does japanese style waves, for instance.
Kat should have left a long time ago. She wanted to quit last season. She’s young, her husband, friends and family are in LA and the guys at the shop are quite sexist. She’s a good sport for having put up with it as long as she did.
Kat does such amazing portraiture it blows my mind. I’ll see her take a line drawing that looks okay and then she’s done and it looks amazing. They’ll lose customers without her – no one else in the shop can touch her work. They all have specialties and are very good at what they do, but they can’t do what she does.
Yeah, Kat has an amazing talent. If I ever wanted to have my mother’s engagement photo tattooed on my body, I’d call her. But, uh, I’m not sure I’d want to have my mother on my back all the time, you know?
I only watch Miami Ink intermittently, maybe I’ve seen 10 episodes total, and every time I’ve seen an episode, there was Kat whining about how she doesn’t like Miami and she misses LA and she has no friends. Every episode. So really, fuck it, let her go home and stop bitching.
If you can’t handle a little sass from your tattoo artist, then maybe you should rethink the whole idea of getting a tattoo.
Or maybe you should rethink getting tattoos from people who don’t treat you with respect. I’ve got about a dozen tattoos, from a total of six different artists, and none of them have treated me with disrespect. When you choose someone who will spend a lot of time touching your naked skin, your comfort level with that person is important, and if they speak to you in a way that makes you uncomfortable, choose another artist. To assume that being treated obnoxiously is part of the tattoo experience is just wrong. A tattoo is a mark of beautification or spirituality or commemoration—not a violation to be endured.
As to cost, artists who don’t charge by the hour are calculating hours in their heads when they quote a per-piece rate. You get what you pay for; you want a bargain? Get something returnable. $100 an hour is about average, although top artists go as high as $150. If you’re getting charged a lot less than $100, then maybe you should double check the quality and reputation of the artist.
I wonder how much of the situation with Kat was real and how much was a setup. I haven’t watched the show for a while, but I had to look it up on TLC’s site to find out more. As it turns out, Kat is getting her own show – LA Ink.
http://tlc.discovery.com/tv/la-ink/la-ink.html
Wow, someone should read the posts a little better. I missed the part where you mentioned LA Ink. Duh.
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