Best Ink part 2 & Helmet Failure

So, I watched Best Ink again last night, and I got some stuff to gripe about- imagine that.  First off, I was a little disappointed in Joe's performance- he only made 1 person cry this time- you can do better Joey!  The show started with the 'Flash Challenge' again- Flash Challenge?  What flash?  I didn't see any flash.  What I saw was a bunch of people painting on douchebags.  I've never met any of them, so maybe they aren't all douchebags, but they were the California, TV 'pretty people', so I'm guessing that at least 50% of them are probably douchebags.  If ya wanna call it a 'flash challenge', then have them create some damn flash, otherwise just call it a challenge.  There's a good chance that most of the contestants have never drawn a sheet of flash, but why would they have?  These TV show have convinced the general public that flash, or anything off the wall, is undesirable.  'It's gotta be custom, it's gotta be custom!'  This is the cry of the new generation of customers- the ones raised on Miami/LA/New York Ink, and now Ink Masters and Best Ink, but to them, custom is something they found on the first page of Google image search.  Lemme tell ya something- I'd rather do a sweet piece of flash than another goddamn flock of bird silhouettes or rib lettering any day.  On to the main challenge- tattooing.  This week was the Pin-Up challenge.  They did a switcharoo thing with the artists and clients which caused some issues, and some tears.  I like the tears- you can pretty much predict them coming- oooh, ooh, here come the waterworks.  A little side note here- tattooers don't fuckin' cry.  The one girl, maybe it was Charlie or Jessica (I don't know), had a breakdown and cried "I can't do this, I don't know what to do"- boo fuckin' hoo- Bam, you're off the show, pack your shit and go home.  If I were running the show, as soon as I saw a tear, you would be headed home.  The one guy, Roman, got into an argument with his new client, and she left in tears because he refused to do what she wanted.  So, they got him a new client and gave him the same amount of time as the others.  In my opinion (which really doesn't count for shit, but I can force it on you because I have a blog) he should have been tossed off the show for failure to complete the challenge.  If he wasn't thrown off, they should have at least told him that he still had to finish his tattoo at the same time as everyone else- he should have just lost the time that it took to get someone else for him to tattoo.  They each had 5 hours to complete their tattoos.  Five hours is plenty of time to do a nice tattoo, but, to me, the majority of the tattoos did not look like 5 hours of work.  Maybe it's just that I work fast, but If these people had actually been paying clients, they should have been pissed that they got charged for 5 hours when they got a 2-3 hour tattoo.  I'll watch again next week and will surely give you my impressions of the show, but I'm not sure that I can watch through to the finale.  They should just put clips on YouTube of Joe making people cry- that's really all I'm watching for anyway...

Spent the day yesterday experimenting with painting a helmet with AutoAir Candies (I think it was Joe that suggested that I try the AutoAir line), and found out the hard way that you CAN NOT tape over these paints.  Apparently you need to shoot clear over them before taping over them, which kind of defeats the purpose of using them- I'm trying not to spray a bunch of heavy urethanes in my garage. I really only want to clear them after they are done. I'll have to experiment with them a little more because I really want to do some helmets in that 70's style heavy flake, crazy lowrider shit.  Here's a couple of pics of my first (failed) attempt, you can see where the masking film/tape pulled up the paint: