Feeling This: Bad Tattoos, Ungoogleable Bands, and More

An ode to Snake__Pit and noisy metal.
A black sweatshirt reading SNAKE PIT on a purple background
Courtesy of The Snake Pit

Welcome to Feeling This, a Friday column about cool stuff site editor Chris Gayomali has been digging.

I have a small constellation of awful tattoos, two of which only God and my partner know about. But my favorite bad tattoo is a word I got inked on the inside of my bottom lip that says "FOCU$."

This was at the height of MySpace—the only good social network—and I had gotten the idea after lurking the photos on some scene-y stranger's page. I probably clicked because she had an asymmetric haircut and presented as someone who enjoyed Broken Social Scene. So one night, my homegirl and I roll up to a tattoo spot like the annoying twentysomethings we were, thinking it'd be funny. The guy behind the counter tells us that, actually, you two are luck, because one big benefit of getting a tattoo on your lower lip is that it'll fade away in five years, kind of like an Etch-a-Sketch.

Okay, sick! we thought. Originally, I wanted to get the word "HU$TLE." Only that didn't work out because my homegirl went first, and she Neil Armstronged that shit and claimed it first. In my panic I pivoted to the less aesthetically desirable "FOCU$"—which is somewhat ironic now, as I currently have the attention span of a bichon frise.

The icing on the cake, though, was: tattoo dude lied! Mine only partially faded, so some 13 years later I'm the proud owner of a lip tat that says "FUJI."

Anyway, have you heard of Snake__Pit? It's a tremendous, NSFW Instagram account that collects bad and obscene tattoos, everything from Supreme box logos to phrases that could have been spellchecked to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin riding a missile, only the missile is a penis. (Again, NSFW.) Some of the pieces are jaw dropping, some quite beautiful, other times devastatingly sad.

Instagram content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Instagram content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Instagram content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

In a sense, Snake__Pit is misery porn that presents as real porn, meaning it's probably the most anthropologically accurate follow on Instagram. Aliens from the future could theoretically use it like a Sanskrit tablet to decode our present and they'd probably get a lot of stuff right.

This week I've also been listening to a lot of noisy thrash. There's this band I've been feeling (and they're a tricky Google) called Arms. Extremely aggro but the throaty screeching and weird time signatures are extremely my shit. Here is a good song to play should you ever be in one of those rooms where you pay money to wear goggles and smash TVs.

If that's your speed, they have this track called "Ceremonial Monster" from their 2016 album Blackout. Please note the incredible guitar riff, which is the last sound you hear before your body gets sucked into a black hole.

Oh, and in case you missed it, Brennan has a new service-y column for Olds like myself about the 4.5 songs you missed this week. This from Gunna is hypnotic and will fix your sciatica.

The Stuff We Read This Week:

An American Boy.

Speaking of, really enjoyed this retrospective on Kanye's career. I loved this line about "30 Hours": "It’s a weird, petty, stupid, lovely song. Andre 3000 is around to kind of half-heartedly harmonize, which is like getting Miles Davis to play kazoo."

At the New York Times, food critic and recent Los Angeles transplant Tejal Rao wrote a nice ode to some classic old-school haunts that've withstood the test of time, including King Taco and Lawry's.

GQ friend Alex Wong wrote a fascinating deep-dive about the NBA for Yahoo Sports, specifically the art of finessing the refs.

At The Atlantic, a devastating essay about love and grief and the decisions the latter forces upon us; the title says it all.

ICYMI on GQ:

Lauren Larson talked to Gossip Girl himself, and the conversation goes into fascinating territory about what it means to play a bad man in 2019. Jay Willis wrote about 21 Savage and ICE's incompetence as an agency. Sam Schube ID'd the next cool thing in menswear. Rachel Tashjian came in hot with a nifty explainer about Philip Plein and also talked to Gunna about shopping. For V-Day, Benjy talked to Esther Perel about why men keep doing sex bad, and meanwhile, a very good Molly Lambert met up with Cole Sprouse, the world's most famous archaeology major, and certainly the most stylish.

That's all for this week! Stay FOCU$ED and trust your stuggle and remember to moisturize and subscribe to GQ.