What I Learned on Inkmaster Gentle Jay Blondel

WHAT I LEARNED ON INKMASTER

So it’s over. 13 seasons, hundreds of millions of dollars generated and approximately 200 artists who decided it was a good idea to put a gun to the head of their career in front of the whole world. I am one of those artists who “competed” on Inkmaster and I have seen what happens behind the camera. You want to know about the reality of reality TV? Ok. I’ll tell you. I’ve been waiting....

Yes being on TV has certain perks. You see your face on billboards and advertisements all over the place. People recognize you and ask to take pics with you and for you to sign stuff, brag that they

met you, hold doors open for you and buy you drinks. It’s like having nice tits. But the novelty of that wears off really fast. Then you start to notice other things like people being fake nice to you, like REALLY fake nice, to an embarrassing level. And not just strangers, but also some of the people that you’ve known for years or even decades start acting weird around you, like if you’re with them in public when someone notices Then there are the people who assume that I was on TV so I’m rich now. Well guess what, we get minimum wage while filming. I make more in one full day session than I made the entire 2 months on Inkmaster. Actors are rich because of something called royalty checks which are issued to the person in the show every single time that show is aired. BUT, the cunts at Inkmaster make you sign away your right to

you and makes a big deal; they get all stressed out and start huffing and shit, like it’s your fault. Try going to the midwest or anywhere in rural America. I walked into a little diner somewhere in Illinois with my friend Amy Nicoletto (if you don’t know her she was on L.A.Ink and looks like the type of chick that would be married to Dracula) and the whole place just stopped. Everyone just stared straight at us like we couldn’t see them or something.

We got seated awkwardly and no one stopped staring. They just pulled out their phones and started googling. When they figured out who we were they sent a little girl over to ask us to take pictures with them, probably figuring we wouldn’t yell at a little kid on the off chance we were dicks about it.

“I make more in one full day session than I made the entire 2 months on Inkmaster.”

royalties before you ever even get on the show (otherwise you don’t get on the show), and also the rights to our own artwork that we do whilst on the show which is how they put out books with our artwork in it and they NEVER have to pay us. And they can run that fucking show on a loop for 5 years and I wont see one thin dime. None of us artists will. But Dave will get paid, and so will the other 2 monkeys that sat next to him flinging shit. Yes, even the racist one. Mad yet? Don’t worry I’m not done. Now let’s get to the bullshit of the actual show. Actually, when you are there they NEVER let you call it a show. You have to refer to the show as “the competition”. They make you re-film whatever you just said if you refer to it as a “show” because they have to push the idea that it’s a competition, get it yet? To get on the show in the first place is a pain in the ass. I’ll speed through and hit the important points as best I can. First step is the casting call which is (no exaggeration) thousands of tattoo people from all over the place standing on a gigantic line all day with portfolios and the line wraps around city blocks several times. This process is controlled by casting agents from an outside casting company only, no producers, no one from the actual show at all. If these people (who have no tattoo background whatsoever from what was evident to me) select you, you then go on to the on-camera interview. This step is also done by the outside casting company and then the footage is sent to the producers who narrow it down and make the final selections. When you are chosen from there it’s not just “oh hey, you’re on the show! Congrats! See you there!” Nah. There is a confidentiality agreement (can’t tell anyone about any of this while it is happening) and a FULL background check first. Then a medical exam and a full psych profile. Yea, you read that right. If you get past that it is then mountains of paperwork and (approximately) a 30 page contract telling you everything you are NOT allowed to do. Without being too specific nor quoting exactly, it says things like ‘From the time you arrive until the time you leave you should have NO EXPECTATION of privacy’ and ‘Royalties! Nah Fuck you!! That money goes to people much better than you. Now go put your career and what little you have in this world on the line in front of everyone for our profit you bitch’. Again, I am paraphrasing.

While that is going on, other people from the show are calling asking odd questions like “Hey, so… can you go home tonight and take pictures of every article of clothing you own laid out on the bed so we can get an idea of your look? Like shoes, jackets, hats.. all of it. Omg thanks so much. I’m excited! Are you excited?? Ok talk later” No shit, that really happened. When all the paperwork is done they tell you that you have to wait for them to go through it all and make their final decision. So at this point, you realize that you aren’t actually chosen yet because there is still a chance you can be cut. So you did all that, now you’re just waiting to hear. Fun so far, right? Like being audited. So I don’t remember exactly how long they made me wait, I think it was close to a week. I will say, getting that call is exciting. So they tell you that you have to have all your shit packed up and ready to go by this time on this day. You can’t tell anyone where you are going. You just have to disappear from your life. Ok here we go, right? Nope, not yet. A car service picks you up and takes you to the Doubletree hotel where you are greeted by producers you haven’t met or heard of before. They are all very positive and enthusiastic as they check you in and walk you to your room. Then, they have you sign like 5 more things and then they take your money, ID, credit cards and room key. Now you do not have the power to leave or even wander around the hotel. It felt exactly like jail just with better beds and bathrooms. They tell you that you are now waiting for a call from the producers and they will let you know when we will begin. They do not tell you how long you will be waiting. To keep this from going on too long, I wound up waiting 3 days in that room with random people coming by every 6 hours or so to go over details of wardrobe or whatever reason they made up to hide the fact that they are fucking with me and checking on me here and there. So finally I get the call that I have to be camera ready by 8 am tomorrow. I get a good nights sleep, get picked up at my room by producers and brought to the lobby where most of the others are already sitting there in total silence with like 6 people with headsets standing around like detention monitors in school making sure no one talks to each other. They sit me down and tell me “You’re on Ice. This means you don’t talk to

Gentle Jay Blondel tattooing fellow Season 4 contestant and friend King Ruck at Ruck’s studio in Las Vegas.

anyone, you save it all for filming.” I didn’t know it yet, but there would be a lot of this. Code for “shut the fuck up”. Then they get us all into 2 vans and take us to the location where we will be filming the first thing. We sat in a room in an abandoned factory “on Ice” for over 2 hours. Every time you ask how much longer, the answer is either “soon” or “15 minutes” no matter what. So sitting around doing nothing, not being able to talk to each other you get bored and restless. Then out of nowhere a producer appears and starts trying to quickly get everyone up and going right now this very second, demanding energy from you. It goes on this way all day.

The house we all stay at is connected to the studio where we film. It’s in Newark, NJ. They want you to think it’s NYC but if you’re from here you know that most of their shots of the city come from the Jersey side. We do go there and film things on location, but its just get in the van, get there, film it, get back in the van and go right back to the studio with no time for fucking around. I did talk one of the low level producer people into buying me a hot dog from the cart when we were in the city one day because they take away our money and ID and everything. I think they do that so you feel powerless, like you cant go anywhere and you have no resources, just them. Like a little

kid they want you to need them. The whole thing is a giant mind fuck from start to finish. It takes 3 days to film an episode that they want you to think all happened in one day. The first day is the challenge. You film “reality” when you’re not doing the actual challenge which is when you see us all sitting around arguing, that’s what they call “reality”. If we are all sitting there and getting along the producers get pissed off and tell the camera men to “shoulder down” which

is them putting the camera down and not recording. Then the producers will talk at us saying things like “oh, you’re all friends now? Gonna split the prize money and start a commune? You’re competing for $100,000 guys lets hear what you didn’t like about Jay’s tattoo, GO! Let’s have some fucking energy guys come on!!” When you aren’t filming at all, they split you all into smaller groups and let you see them whispering with the others. Then they come over to you and whisper shit like “yo Scott hates your tattoo bro, he’s putting you up for Elimination, I think i overheard him say he hates you! That’s crazy right? Doesn’t that piss you off?” Or they have 3 or 4 people go into another room and film for like 20 minutes and then come back and they’re like “oh man they were rough on you in there.” The second day is the Elimination tattoo. I always get asked about the time limit. The time limit is the realest thin about that show. You have 6 hours exactly. They are very rigid about that one thing. The rest, well the magic of TV and so on... you film “reality” in the morning, tattoo from about noon to six, then film a little more “reality”. Quick aside about tha word; they call it “reality TV” because it is based on the reality that they create for you while you’re there. That’s why it isn’t Real-life TV or Documentary TV, because they edit the fuck out of it and make it whatever they want.That’s why every time you see me I seem aggravated. That’s what they want from me. They never show the times I have everyone cracking up laughing or just chillin not bothered by shit. They also don’t show the associate producers passive aggressively winding me up all day, quite on purpose mind you. Or how they set the carbon monoxide alarm off in the middle of the night all the time and have us standing outside in our

“The truth is, there are certain people that they will never make look bad no matter what they do.”

pajamas in freezing cold weather while the fire dept goes through and scans to make sure its safe to go back in (which it always is because they set the alarm off just to fuck with our sleep). Day 3 is critiques and elimination. This one is a bitch. We all line up and stand there waiting to be called. When it’s your turn you go up there and stand in front of the “judges” and you and your tattoo get ripped apart for 20 minutes or so. On TV you only get to see one or 2 comments of that. We get a full dose every time and it goes on all day long. The producers always try to talk you into arguing back and “fighting for your piece” but whenever you do they just make you look ridiculous. Then we film more “reality” after getting ripped on then it’s elimination and someone goes home. I remember the geometry challenge, I had a crazy client who didn’t even let me do geometry but I somehow talked my way out of that one. Scott Marshall who was declared the “winner” of our season by the “judges” did this thing with cubes and triangles that looked like a dollar store Christmas tree star. Not only was it a flash design that was in his portfolio like 3 times, but he blew out just about every line in the tattoo.

You could see it as clear as day up on that giant monitor in the studio and the “judges” didn’t say one fucking word about it (for those who don’t know, a blow out is when you go way too deep with the needle and the ink bleeds under the skin. It looks like someone held a sharpie on a napkin and it WILL cause a scar, which is a DEFINITE TATTOO FAIL). He was just given some generic praise and then they gave us all that “why can’t you all be more like Scott’’ look. You see, the “judges” say it all the time when you’re there, “Our job is not to focus on what you did right, but what you did wrong. We don’t highlight the good, we highlight the bad’’ but of course that is not true. It’s like everything else on the show, edited. The truth is, there are certain people that they will never make look bad no matter what they do. And the rest are there to make the “chosen ones’’ look even better, even if the producers have to trash their career to do it, those people don’t really matter to them anyway. Disposable people. They can take them from wherever and make them feel like they’re doing something special for a little while, then when they crush their hopes they never have to pay them anything again and

can use the footage as much as they want to make millions. Reality TV has actual formulas for this kind of stuff, what personality types to put with what to get the most explosive results, how to fuck with people to get them to crack and so on, it’s psychological warfare when you live in that house. It’s actually crazy, not like the expression but true insanity. Which leads me to the part I think everyone wants to know... What the hell happened when I called out Scott for cheating? “I’ll sum it up as succinctly as I can so here goes” I wasn’t even the one looking for shit on Scott, that’s number one. All I said was that the tattoo he did looked familiar, because it did. I had definitely seen it done before. I didn’t dig through his shit or ask anyone else to, I’m not a fucking cop. But someone definitely did. I was just sitting around in the morning before filming started one day and I was approached by people saying they had proof that Scott was cheating. Apparently they went to Scott’s tattoo room and saw his references sitting on the chair. They picked them up to look and saw that every single one was printed from google (they show the actual references I am talking about on screen) This is significant because before every single tattoo we do on the show we have to sign a new contract that says we will obey these specific rules during

this challenge or whatever we are doing. The first rule is ALWAYS the same. Always. It says that the only search engine we are permitted to use is Getty images because it is the only one guaranteed to have no copy written images, which we are not allowed to use because we are on TV and there are 5 million rules about shit like that, and the legal department are BEASTS. So the people who found this evidence did not have the balls to say anything, so of course they come to me. I won’t say the names but you know who you are. They are the same people who didn’t have the balls to speak up when Dave asked if anyone else knew about this. You didn’t want credit then, you don’t get it now. So the point is this; I didn’t call Scott out for tracing. i called him out for breaking the contract by using an “illegal” search engine, which was supposed to result in automatic dismissal from the show. I proved it. And they couldn’t have given a fuck less. They immediately told me that I wasn’t allowed to say any of that on TV because of all the rules we can’t say the name Google or anything else and can’t even say what actually happened. I did anyway, but they did what they do. They edited it, cut it all

“They edited it, cut it all apart and made it what they wanted.”

apart and made it what they wanted. All I can say is that it was one of the biggest lessons I have ever received in how the world really works. I was in that place for 2 months. They take your phone away first thing in the morning and give it back last thing at night. No TV (ironic right?) no going out at night, they tell you exactly what to wear every day and because it takes 3 days to film an episode you have to wear the same clothes for 3 days straight. Also, the editing. They can take something you said on day 1 and splice it into a conversation someone else was having on day 3 just to make it look like you said something fucked up or to start shit (this one does wonders for the reputation). You are NEVER unsupervised the entire time you are there, it’s exactly like minimum security prison except for the glaring fact that we all asked to be there. It changed me and the way I have seen things since then, and I stand behind every single thing I did and said. When I came home, I stayed in my house for about 5 days and didn’t call anyone or tell anyone I was back not even my closest people. I had not been my true self for so long that i needed to remember who that was. I don’t know any other way to explain how I felt. I stopped caring about winning the show the first day that we were there, everyone knew who was going to win the “judges” were all buddy buddy right out of the gate kissing his ass. The rest of us were like “do you see this shit?” That’s why I was so proud of how i left the show, Dave said his little line and before he was even finished saying it I gave Scott the finger and said “Fuck You Scott” and walked out. That was my way of saying “I know who’s going to “win” this bullshit and you can shove your “competition” straight up your ass.” So that’s the truth. Is there more? You bet your sweet ass there is, but this is the shortest version of it I could write without making it into a book. The reality of reality TV is that they take you out of your reality and drop you into a new one that is completely contrived and controlled.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Gently Jay has been on the TV show InkMaster. He owns Kinetic Body Art in NY and tattoos frequently at many Villain Arts Conventions among others worldwide.