It’s safe to say that everyone at this tattoo convention can agree that the body is a blank canvas. Some go with designs that are small but meaningful, others will spend a small fortune to cover their body from head to toe. It’s all valid and beautiful and painful. But then you have guys like Arthur Cruz, who despite having a functioning brain has elected to fill up the entirety of his right arm with characters from the Disney animation renaissance of the ‘90s.
“Well I’ve always been a kid at heart, and some of the best times from my youth were my mom taking my siblings and me to see all those movies during that legendary run. Honestly it started with Genie because she took me to see ‘Aladdin’ for my 8th birthday and it’s just a great memory,” he said as if other animation studios didn’t exist at the time. You’re telling me your mom never took you to see “FernGully”? Robin Williams was in that one too, as a bat no less! Now that’s a cool tattoo.
“But you know how it is, if you get one you have to get another one to compliment it and before I knew it I had a full sleeve of my favorite ‘90s Disney characters. It’s like a party with all my favorite people invited,” something he actually said, completely straight-faced, to another man at the convention with a face tattoo of a wolf.
“You should have seen me at Disneyland last year, I was like a minor celebrity! I got so many compliments and the actor who played Gaston actually stopped to take a picture with me. I’m glad I went all in on the design. It’s brought me and a lot of other people happiness.”
Sir, you’re almost 40. With that kind of mentality you may as well be wearing a pinwheel hat while holding a giant lollipop. We’d all like to permanently memorialize the best moments of our childhood on our bodies but there are more mature ways to do it, like with an ignorant tattoo of Mickey Mouse smoking meth.
The real shame of this walking copyright infringement is that he could’ve gone with characters from any other animation studio and it would’ve been amazing, like a whole sleeve of something more dignifying like ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’.
Maybe someone here can talk him into lasering it all off and replacing it with a badass Iron Giant. Dreamworks knew what the fuck they were doing.